I'm sitting here listening to City of Angels and feeling content. The speakers overhead are playing "You're Nothing Without Me," which is this awesome duet between the two male leads of the show: a novelist and his fictional private eye alter ego who represents everything the writer wants to be. Anybody surprised that I want to play both of those parts?

This was my sister's final senior play, by the way, which I saw last Friday and Saturday. I was fairly unimpressed by the Friday performance, but closing night was much better. My sister continued the family tradition of providing moral leadership to the company and leading on stage by example, for which I feel justifiably proud of her. I do feel like The Director could have supported her performance (as the play's leading lady\\villain) more if she'd had a better grip on the script, but Stone (the private eye) did a good enough job of playing off her on closing night that I feel mollified.

It wasn't really strange going back to the Chaminade Players, but there were a few slightly weird things. For one thing, there are people in that company who I've never met respect me as the star of the previous generation - for nothing more than watching me on stage two years ago! That's a bit odd, really. It was also funny to think that other folks in the company have been up to the Shrine and seen my signature there ... it's like it hit me at a whole new level that I'm part of the legacy of that company. And for all of that company's flaws, I am proud of that fact. And I am proud of the legacy that my sister left behind, too.

I don't really miss performing on stage, though it might be fun to give it another shot. It'd be fun to have a performing experience that was an honest performing experience. Of course I can't guarantee that a production at Stanford would be that. What I mostly miss is having a chain of command that has genuine give-and-take (i.e., what Polybius called monarchy) instead of democracy. And I can't guarantee that a production at Stanford would give me that, either.

There is a 1/2 inch binder sitting at my left elbow that contains the fruit of my labors over the past several weeks: pages detailing each of the 41 basic weapons and 24 basic armors of Classical Phoenix Earth, and the 260 basic human spells of the game. I have already added a number of character-specific items and spells to that, but it is oddly satisfying to see the official Phoenix Earth binder filled with a new generation of rules that represent a new generation of game. I have almost nailed down the history of Phoenix Earth, and this latest game will take place when the first of the Big Historical Events is only just on the horizon. Alexis Lashrainne has just been born; Vonsus Au'roun is still dashing and substantially innocent, and Karlhoss Modron is still just an ambitious young man. Even G'arthan the Chronicler is a mere three centuries old. It's kind of refreshing to face the world when it is still free of one of the major taints that humanity will put on it.

The session is Friday, and I'm having a bit of performance anxiety. The Modern game was ill-conceived but had some really virtuoso moments by yours truly. I'm sure I'll be fine, but the prospect of crafting a party out of no less than eight characters (Islington will be a part-time player) is a rather daunting task, especially since I've only got six hours to do it in. Still, it will be fun to play with the gang whatever happens. And speaking of playing with the gang, tonight there's an Infernal Gaslamp session, which is very exciting to me since I haven't played Danielle Meroit in forever, and we're in the middle of this very exciting expedition to Antarctica to do what we do best - battle the forces of Cthulhu. It's been too long since the IG party dealt with some good old-fashioned evil. The ability to have a truly evil villain is one of the great things about fantasy, and one of the things that makes it more real than other genres of fiction (inasmuch as the real world does in fact have a truly evil villain). I'm looking forward to it.