Did you tell all your friends about Serenity? Send Universal the bill.

Once upon a time, there was a tv show called Firefly. It was really good, and the people who actually watched it liked it a lot, but it was cancelled quickly by the Fox network, who found it to be cheaper to run shows like Joe Millionaire. Fans of the show wrote e-mails, postcards, and petitions, even taking out full-page ads in Variety, to demonstrate to the other networks that if they picked up the show, they would have an enthusiastic, loyal fan base and the show would find an audience. They adopted the name Browncoats, the brave souls who fought a war against the all-engulfing bureaucratic Alliance, but were eventually defeated by the better-funded Big Brother types in the Firefly mythology. The other networks didn't bite, but Universal Studios knew that Firefly creator Joss Whedon was a hot commodity, so they asked him to make a movie based on the series. [For those of you who aren't familiar with the Whedonverse: this part of the story scores high on the irony-meter, as Joss's most famous project, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was a tv show based on the movie that didn't do well at the box office.]

Looking to cash in on the built-in fan base, Universal created a web site and courted the participation of the Browncoats, appealing to their loyalty to the franchise and asking the fans to stir up word of mouth about the movie, to be called Serenity, as it was being produced. Fans were encouraged to create fan art to use on posters, decals, and flyers and then urged to display and distribute these materials to anyone not actively running away from them. "Go!" said Universal. "Promote our movie!" So the happy Browncoats recruited a membership of 75,000, talked up the movie to anyone who would listen, spent hours creating images promoting the movie, and generally acting as Universal's foot soldiers. This technique isn't new, by the way, it's called "viral marketing." Universal was just seeing how far they could ride the free-advertising train.

While all this was going on, the Browncoats were clamoring for merchandise related to the film. Where are the official t-shirts, decals, action figures and breakfast cereals? This was a youngish fan base, bursting with disposable income and accustomed to buying tv-show collectibles. The studio responded by making a few items available as premiums, rewards for accumulated points earned by participating in the marketing campaign. They weren't terribly great t-shirts, and you couldn't buy them. The fans responded by creating their own artwork, t-shirt designs, decals etc. A few enterprising souls created storefronts and sold them to other fans. Since the official franchise showed no interest in merchandising their own show, the fans bought the stuff.

Well, the movie came and went. Serenity wasn't a huge success... but it wasn't a huge failure, either. Amazingly, renewed interest in the franchise sent dvd sales of the three-years-gone Firefly series at Amazon.com through the roof. Subsequent special screenings of Serenity are still being shown as fundraisers for charity events, and have raised some respectable cash. But also amazingly, the corporate beasts involved with Firefly and Serenity are flexing their corporate legal muscles. Fox, which gave up on Firefly four years ago, has suddenly sent its legal team to shut down sales of Firefly-related goodies because they directly compete with... what? Their non-existent product lines? Then Universal hauled out its legal big guns and proceeded to send shut-down orders to everyone selling fan goodies, and went so far as to bill them for lost licensing fees. This is the same studio that spent nearly three years asking fans to take fandom into their own hands and donate their time and enthusiasm to the studio, gratis. This year's Christmas wishlist: somebody please send the folks at Universal a dictionary, so they can look up the definition of class.

Well, we did it! Hannah's bedroom has always been kind of generic--the same old peach color it was when we bought the house, a dresser we bought back at a moving sale in Stamford ten years ago,... she's been dying to have a room that felt like it was hers. Which means, of course, that we had to paint it purple. If she had gotten her way entirely we would have painted the whole room, including the ceiling, dark purple, but we compromised. The ceiling got a fresh coat of ceiling white, two opposing walls would be lilac, and the other two opposing walls would be a slightly darker shade of purple.So Cliff's mom Jacqueline came up for a weekend visit and kept Hannah company while Cliff and I painted. Now some of you may recall that our house was built by monkeys, and I suspect they weren't particularly well-trained monkeys. This theme carried through our painting project: it took us nearly an hour just to shut off the power to the outlets in her room so we could wash the walls and remove the switchplates. I fully expect, someday, to find the original wiring certificate for this house, signed by Alf and Ralph, the Monroe Brothers. The overhead light was on the same circuit with our bedroom and one wall fixture in my downstairs office. Two of the three electrical outlets shared a circuit with Cliff's upstairs office and the downstairs bathroom, and the third outlet was somehow on a circuit with one of the rooms in the basement. So it took about 12 trips up and down the stairs to isolate the three switches on the breaker box, shutting off the power to room after room, hoping that that last holdout outlet would somehow be included. (Yes, next time we'll use the walkie-talkies, but of course this occurred to me halfway through the project, and thus too late to bother.) And my apologies to that family in Canarsie whose television kept blinking on and off--really, it won't happen again. At least until we have to paint another room.

The next step in Operation Purple Blast was a lot of brush-painting. The walls in our upstairs rooms are all done in a proto-drywall, where the seams between drywall sheets are covered with a strip of wood trim. So each strip of wood trim had to be brush-painted, as well as the drywall surrounding the trim ("cutting in"). Now consider that we had to go through this process with white (ceiling) and two different shades of purple, so there was taping and brush-cleaning at every turn. It took us two full days to get the job done. But it's done! Yeah!

Now, with freshly-painted walls, our task was to assemble the new furniture as it arrived. We chose the Mission line of bedroom furniture from Target. And lest those of you who know me well would mock me for this, we had looked around a bit and the Target stuff got excellent customer reviews and looked really nice, and simply turned out to be the best match for our needs/tastes out of what we looked at. So she's got all kinds of new furniture, and we're on our way to a finished room. And, hey, the Mission stuff went on sale this week, so we got an additional $80 back in price adjustments. I'm just sayin'. The stencil pattern we'd chosen is only sold by a co. in the UK(!), so we're patiently waiting for that to arrive so we can stencil a border on the walls. Yet to come are white blinds on the windows, magnetic bulletin boards for her artwork, and select pictures.

The family taking a break--relaxing in front of the first fire of the season.










Various interesting things I've come across online:

What to get this holiday season for the gal who has everything. But does it fit in your pocket?

Wondering what day today would be if we were citizens of the Revolutionary French Republic? Here's a program to tell you that.

My favorite music video ever. You've probably seen this already, but...this is just too fun to watch.

This weekend we headed up to Hartford, Connecticut for the Pipes in the Valley concert. One day of Celtic music and festival food on the banks of the Connecticut River.

Mother Nature was kind to all that day--the previous day had been drizzly, the day after was actually heavy thunderstorms, but Saturday was fairly sunny, and a great time was had by all. There was a band with bagpipes and steel-drum-effect keyboards ("Celtlypso"!), a band with bagpipes and didgeridoo, and more traditional types in between. Hands-down fave with our family was Albannach, playing big honkin' drums and bagpipes. And hey guys, this is cool--if you click on that link and go to their web site, you can listen to their music streaming online. Not just samples, but pretty much anything they've recorded. It's traditional going-into-battle music, which got the crowd very riled up, and I think if they had asked us to, we would have willingly banded together and invaded Massachusetts. Or at least nearby Bristol---we coulda taken 'em. Anyways, there's footage on the videos page, including a moment where I'm talking to Hannah and she gives me her patented "you can't be serious" look. One note about the video--I think all of us, at one time or another, have given in to instinct and turned the video camera sideways, trying to get a taller shot. Hey, you can rotate photos, right? But rotating footage in iMovie requires purchasing third-party apps, and on the whole, I'd rather not bother. But this is the footage we have of Hannah dancing. So if you're not prone to vertigo, just tilt your head to one side when prompted (or turn your screen sideways, you laptop folk), and I promise to try to stay upright in the future.