Jesus must die!!

Okays. So, I love Jesus Christ Superstar. Particularly the 1973 version. What's not to like about it? It has all these elements that equal a very happy Nacey:

- Rock-n-roll
- Awesome vocals
- Brilliant actors
- Hippies
- It's filmed in the desert at real ruins
- BARRY DENNEN!
- Hot whores (There is NOTHING you can't BUY!)

So, it was with some slack-jawed horror that I saw the London 2000 production of JC Superstar on Youtube. It features the unique vocal stylings of Jerome Pradon. Jerome Pradon sounds like a man who is having a full colonoscopy without lube or sedation. He fluffs every. single. fucking. SWEET SPOT in the song. And his buddy Jesus (Glenn somethingerathergay) isn't much better. He looks like Michael Bolton's less talented brother's friend. He wears khakis and a wife-beater and gets all gay for his disciples (which normally I wouldn't mind but this dude is so wussy that it just makes me laugh hysterically and that kinda kills the buzz of the drama that they're totally failing to build in the first place). Every cast member is completely shit.

And oh - Rik Mayall. Rik Mayall displays perfectly his descent into crapness with his cameo as Herod. Just because you use WIK voice, doesn't mean whatever you do or say is automatically funny, Mayall.

But don't take my word for it. Here's a video on Youtube of my brother, nephew and I (and other people who wander in and out to have a look) riffing on the fly. It's not a proper riff track so we haven't had time to think up good jokes. We're just lambasting while we go.

We did the entire thing, by the way. So if you go to YouTube, barrydennen12 has it all. :D

Creating a new world in our own.

I love writing my own story. There's something very thrilling about carving out an adventure and a world entirely from your own mind - no 'canon' to fall back on. You have to make your own.

Amaryllis is really turning out to be a deeper and more exciting book than I'd imagined. All these underlying currents to the seemingly frivolous chick-lit facade (a mermaid and a human swap souls) that I think pushes it quite firmly into the realm of modern fantasy.

I'm really loving creating the Mermaid People. I am basing them on the worldwide myths and stories of mermaids. It thrilled me that there are even mermaid tales in Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. Isn't that fantastic? I'm making a catalogue of all the different mermaid races from different parts of the world, taking note of their anatomical differences, their local names, a diagram showing their tail and body patterns so one can tell which race they are, and their basic cultural structure (politics, lifestyle, etc).

I've got this book that I'm all sticking this into. There's a map there right now indicating where the Mermaid territories lie. I've researched the hell out of marine biology, so that there aren't any mermaids living in areas where it wouldn't be appropriate. Brightly coloured mermaids in tropical zones, plumper, fatter mermaids in the colder areas, things like that. And I've made subtle alterations to the 'human' half of the Mermaid, like a slightly streamlined skull, smaller nose, nostrils they can close with muscles, ears that they can do the same with. They're beautiful but they're not entirely human. :)

I'm also laying down the backgrounds of all the characters, digging into their pasts and trying to discover who they are, why they are, all that sort of thing.

The beauty of this is that it's *mine*. All of it! Amaryllis is mine. Miri is mine. Felix and Genevieve and Errol and Neryssa and Olga and Hadrian and just - all of them. All of them are mine. I get to choose their fates. And I'll write them out, and then share them (somehow, even if I can't get it properly published) and then, if I'm lucky and I've done my job right, they'll live in other people's minds too.

I just hope I can do my characters proud. :)

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It's a scrappy, fun thing for my Amaryllis scrapbook.



It'll be available for download soon!

I am SUCH a dork.

Mum is buying a globe for the new corner in our living area next to the kitchen. I got ridiculously excited when she insisted the following things:

- That it not be bright blue and modern. She wants it Ye Olde Piratey looking.
- That it be a LIGHT UP ONE.

And I was all, "YUSSSS!" *arm pump*. And then I started singing the end of Rocky Horror. I really, really need to stop being such a dork. LOL!