August 4, 2012: Japanese fest, cucumber soft serve, and moscow mules! Days of Stargate Atlantis Past! Sateda!

Hey!  Today, Akemi, Bubba and I checked out the annual Powell Street Festival.  Where were you guys?!!

Akemi and Bubba check out the Powell Street Festival

The spam sushi!  I believe this is an Okinawan thing since Okinawa shares many cultural similarities with Hawaii, spam central.

Akemi helps out a fast-tiring Bubba.

Checking out the Japanese-themed festivities.  We missed the taiko drummers.

On our way back to the car, we decided to drop by Fat Dragon for take-out dessert.

Cucumber soft serve!  It was light and incredibly refreshing.  All three of us enjoyed a cone.

Ivon texted me “Mules today?”, a reference to the Moscow Mule cocktail we discovered during our trip to Tokyo back in 2010.  I had the ginger beer.  All I needed was the limes.  And, it turns out, the vodka.  I returned home to find an empty bottle of Grey Goose in my liquor cache – compliments, I suspect, of our former house sitter, Lawren.  I popped out to get a bottle and, when I got back, Ivon was already there -

Ivon on lime duty.

Why do I look scared?  I’m sure it’s delicious.

And it was.  The only thing missing was the copper mugs – and, believe me, I’ve been looking.

We retire to the patio.

Jelly joins us.

As does Ivon’s girlfriend, Lulu.

Tomorrow, Ivon joins Akemi and I for a trip to the farmer’s market. See you guys there?

Our trip down Stargate: Atlantis memory lane continues with…

SATEDA (304)

This episode marked Robert Cooper’s second foray into the writing/directing/producing trifecta and it turned out to be a much bigger episode than his opener, Crusade.  Plenty of action, great character moments, and flashbacks to Ronon’s past made this episode a standout among the early season entries.  Jason Momoa was always terrific in his role as Ronon Dex, but it was in episodes like these that we really see him him shine, not only in his onscreen performance but his incredible offscreen preparation and dedication as well.  It was something I was to witness firsthand in later Ronon-centered episodes like Reunion and Broken Ties.

The part of the uber-wraith is played by local Vancouver Dan Payne who also played the part of the fearsome super soldier on Stargate: SG-1.

I have to admit that, whenever we watched the dailies and the wraith with the crazy goggles came onscreen, I would shout: “Wraith free swim!”.

For some reason, the network took issue with this episode and insisted on pushing it to later in the season.  Brad and Robert rightly argued that the episode belonged in the #4 slot since it established certain elements (Ronon’s acceptance of the Atlantis gang as a family unit) that would through later elements.  Finally, after much back and forth, the network relented and the episode did air in the #4 slot.

Thoughts?

Tagged: Atlantis, Sateda, science fiction, scifi television, SF television, SGA, Stargate, Stargate: Atlantis