August 3, 2012: A Fablelous lunch break! Phone-spinning! Wormhole Riders! Days of Stargate: Atlantis Past! Irresistible!

I’m in the midst of an exhaustingly thorough life/housecleaning. Today, I decided to take a break and grab lunch at Fable Kitchen (in the premises formerly occupied by Refuel, and Fuel before that).  We came in on Dessert Master (and Stargate fan) Curtis Luk working his confectionary magic:

Spinning a web of liquid sugar that, once hardened, will figure into that day’s dessert.

We said our hello’s, grabbed a table, and enjoyed a casual lunch of:

A green herb salad and quinoa salad for Akemi. Bonus points for the use of shiso which is rarely used in anything outside of Japanese dishes.

The chicken salad sandwich and house potato salad for me. The sandwich was great, but the pulled chicken with the tomato jam I had the last time was outstanding!

And, of course, what lunch would be complete without dessert(s):

The chocolate pudding uses five chocolate variations and offers a variety of tasty textural contrasts. I could have had three of these.

Peach Melba with vanilla-raspberry swirl ice cream and that spun sugar we saw earlier. Akemi LOVED this dessert.

And then, it was back to work – into the crawlspace, hefting boxes, looking through old files and financial statements.  To be honest, it’s a pleasant break from all the business-related phone calls of late.

Yesterday, Paul and I were on a call that, as far as we knew going in, was going to be all about on one of our pilot scripts.  Instead, it turned out to be a pitch call.  ”Your agent says you have some other ideas?”we were asked – at which I scrambled to bring up my file on the series ideas Paul and I discussed the other week before launching into my sales pitch.  We’ve got a drama, a procedural, a fantasy series, and an SF offering.  I’ll freely admit that we are better on paper and wanted to say “Why don’t we just wait and you can read the script in a couple of months?” but pitching/spinning is part of the business.

I didn’t think anything was going to stick UNTIL we were asked “Anything else?” and I considered, then realized: “Yeah.  We do have one more.” at which point I launched into the pitch for the series we’re developing with Ivon Bartok and Robert Cooper.  To be honest, Rob is A LOT better at pitching than any of us and I would have preferred to defer to him – but he wasn’t on the call.  And I didn’t know if he would be talking to these people anytime soon so I went ahead and made the pitch.  Happily, they ended up liking the idea and asking for any materials we had on the proposed series.  And, double-happily, Rob is in L.A. this week and next and he’s scheduled to meet with them Monday morning.

Speaking of calls, I’ll be doing a phoner with the gang at Wormhole Riders this Sunday night.   I hear the topic of conversation will be fairly open.  Comics books?  Chocolate? The last episode of Master Chef?  I think I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Continuing our trip down Stargate: Atlantis memory lane…

IRRESISTIBLE (303)

One of the great things about working on Stargate was the freedom it gave us when it came to scripting a wide variety of episodes.  For instance, the season opener, No Man’s Land, is a big, splashy visual effects-laden affair that touches on some of the major threads woven over the show’s previous seasons.  The season’s second episode, Misbegotten, also touches on some of these same big arc elements in a story that is more human, character-centered and, ultimately, quite tragic.  The season’s third episode, Irresponsible, switches gears in delivering a lighter, more humorous episode that presents Atlantis under threat from a most unlikely source – a seemingly affable, simple fellow named Lucius Lavin.

In playing the role of Lucius, actor Richard Kind becomes one of a handful of actors who guest-starred in both the series and the original Stargate movie (in which he played the part of an archaeologist).

Eagled-eyed viewers will also notice a familiar face among Lucius’s village admirers – namely Julia Anderson (now Julia Bensons) who would go on to play Lieutenant Vanessa James in Stargate: Universe.

Some memorable bits of dialogue:

LUCIUS: “The sick have been cured, the lame can walk again … well, some still crawl, but they crawl a lot faster than they used to.”

and

LUCIUS: “How do you get your hair to go like that?”

also

SHEPPARD: Well, what about Beckett?

McKAY: Oh, he … now, he can walk on his hands. Did you know that? Yeah, he was showing Lucius just before he left. You should have seen it. He was down on his hands …

- Which was actually a reference to Paul McGillion’s reputed background as a wrestler and his ability to, yes, walk on his hands.  Ask him to show you next at his next con appearance!

And finally:

LUCIUS: Mess hall. Blue jello. Just a little bit of whipped cream.

- Yet another reference to Stargate’s famed blue jello.

I remember that we shot this episode in late April, around the time of my annual chocolate party.  Richard Kind was in the office across the hall, making travel arrangements while I was in my office, making arrangements for incoming chocolate shipments.  He happened by and I invited him to join us that Saturday night at my place.  He ended up having a great time and, even years afterwards, would drop me an email or note about some heavenly dessert place he’d discovered (like Graeter’s in Cincinnnati, OH).  Very nice guy.

Kudos to Carl Binder on the script!

This blog’s resident film critic, Cookie Monster, urges you to join our Supermovie of the Week Club.  Every week, we’ll be screening and discussing a different superhero movie.  We’ve been working our way chronologically through Hollywood’s superbest and superworst and have finally reached 2000 and Monday’s entry, X-Men.  Cookie Monster is confident we’ve turned the corner and that, from here on in, it’s super smoooooooooooth sailing.

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All of Cookie Monster’s past film reviews have been archived here: Film reviews by resident film criti…

Tagged: Atlantis, Comic Books, Comics, Curtis Luk, Irresistible, Richard Kind, SGA, Stargate, Stargate: Atlantis, superhero movies, SuperMovie of the Week Club, Wormhole Riders, X-Men