SCA Makes Me All Misty-eyed

I'm not in SCA, but my minors in college were medieval history and Elizabethan literature, so I have a soft spot in my head heart for things anachronistic.

Many of my FL are active in SCA, and in this part of CA that means the realm of the Mists, or whatever the official SCA jargon is. Recently they changed who sits on that throne, and the person in charge now is someone who apparently is challenged in several areas of social acceptability.

And many of my FL are venting, ranting, criticizing or just doing the "we'll just have to wait this 6 months out" thing.

I just wanted to put something in perspective here. SCA started out as an organization to try to replicate, for fun and education, how things were in europe, especially England, during the times of knights in armor. In those days, one had no say whatsoever in who was in charge. God allowed royalty to give birth, and God put kings and queens on their thrones. Every now and then some very clever and talented fellow would put together a coalition of disgruntled lesser royalty (dukes, barons, earls, etc.) and use their combined armies to kick out the guy God had placed on the throne, but that was rare, and when it did happen it merely said God had changed His mind, and now there is a new dynasty to bow to.

Most of the time, you were stuck with who was on the throne, as long as he lived. And then you were stuck with his heir, usually his first-born legitimate son.

So for my friends in SCA who are griping about the new ruler, I have two suggestions.

1. Deal with it. God put him there. Six months beats the authentic "till death us do part" paradigm
or
2. Follow historical precedent and gather ye higher-level mucky-mucks to overthrow the bastard.

Disney Music

One of the reviewers who gave an otherwise thumbs-up to Jekyll & Hyde made a rude remark about how much of the music sounded like it was from Disney. He said it as if it was an insult.

I don't get it. I've heard this kind of comment before, and what is comes down to is complaining that the music in a musical sounds like it is, well, from a musical.

I like songs which have a melody, lyrics which rhyme, and words which fit the music. And that's pretty much a general definition of show tunes. If that's not your kind of music, maybe you shouldn't be reviewing musicals.

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I should add, in the spirit of The Whole Truth™, that I have played in concert bands, jazz bands, classical groups, marching bands, a sinfonietta which recorded new compositions, musical show orchestras, stage bands (40's swing), and ethnomusicology groups (African, south American & Asian music). I like all kinds of music. I sing and write pop, rock, country, and sing operettas and musicals and swing and jazz. The only music-like genres I don't like are rap and metal. Rap because it's a very very old Caribbean art form which has had the lilt and humor sucked out of it, and metal because on an oscilloscope it looks like noise.