Opera Idol!

Tonight, at the end of Brit Hume's show on Fox News, he played a YouTube film clip of Mr. Paul Potts, a gentleman from South Wales, singing an operatic aria called "Nessun dorma" from Turrandot on the British version of American Idol.

Potts was awesome!!! Nice, full voice, lots of power, without sounding heavy. Simply beautiful. His dream was to be an opera singer, he said. He wants to do it as a career. Currently, he is a cellphone salesman.

The audience ate it up. They were cheering by about the fifth measure.

And Simon? Simon was grinning from ear to ear and applauding.

Forget American Idol. Obviously, the better show to watch is Britain's Got Talent. :D

Here is a link to the video.

This is what 'living the dream' truly means--doing what you want in life--not trying, but doing it.

"The next time you see our son..."

Writing: I have this Trek RPG character, Dhuro Lanis--ex Bajoran Resistance fighter, now a Starfleet doctor, CMO on his starships, the USS Courageous. The Courageous is involved in a plan to repel some Big, Nasty Aliens who want to destroy all intelligent life in the Milky Way galaxy. We don't know why; they just do.

Our ship is sent forward thirty years in time and winds up meeting the crew of the future Courageous. My character meets his future self, and his future self tells him, "The next time you see our son--shoot him."

The way I figure it, either Lanis can refuse, or he can do as his future self says--or he can figure out the third alternative. Because going with either of the first two options would be way too predictable, right?

Personally, I think Lanis likes to say shocking things, just to see how I will react. Usually, though, I simply think they are cool and try to finagle ways to work them into stories. I like characters who surprise me.

Lenoir: The Paul Lenoir story is bubbling up inside my head again. Paul Lenoir is a character I created for an RPG called Cherveaux: Palace of Light. He has a daughter with a terminal illness, and his reaction to her illness is causing him an even bigger problem. He's bugging me to write about him again, and I am inclined to do it. He would fit well into my Avriet universe. This story was inspired in part by a book called The Apothecary Rose.