Back to $5 Gas

"$5 Gas Could Be Here Soon," some news article or another seems to warn every other day. In fact in California it's already here.

I was reminded of how our gasoline prices are higher than elsewhere in the country when I was traveling on the East Coast last week. Near my childhood home in Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington DC, the going price for gasoline was $3.25/gallon regular grade. Stations in some areas ran as high as $3.50. At the opposite end of the price spectrum I saw one station going for volume sales drop its price down to about $2.93 midweek.

The going rate of about $3.25/gallon held in many parts of Maryland I traveled through, particularly as I got farther away from DC en route to Harrisburg PA. Central Pennsylvania gas was noticeably more expensive, ranging $3.59 to $3.65 at most stations.

Back here in Silicon Valley gas is $4.69 - $4.89 per gallon at name brand stations. Independents run  $.20 - $.30/gal cheaper, and the nearby Costco is only $4.19. But the base price in high 4s at name-brand shops mean that the price for premium grade fuel runs over $5. And while my town doesn't have the cheapest gas in the area, it's far from the most expensive. I can easily imagine towns in the Bay Area where even regular grade gas starts above $5 per gallon.

Wheel of Time S1E1: Leavetakings [NON-SPOILERS]

I've finally watched the first episode of The Wheel of Time, the new Amazon Prime streaming series that debuted a week and a half ago.Yeah, I'm a little late to the party. It's been tough to avoid everyone else's blogs and discussions about it so it wouldn't get spoiled for me. But now I've watched S1E1, "Leavetakings" and I have... So. Many. Thoughts.

To put some organization around these thoughts I'm going to break up my writings about the first episode into two blogs. This first one will be non-spoiler-y stuff. And I'm going to structure it as Five Things. So, here are Five Non-Spoiler-y Things about Leavetakings:

1) OMG, where is this filmed? The landscapes are amazing! [Hawk searches web from sofa in front of TV] Uh, Czech Republic? Okay, I would've guessed China with the stone spire mountains. Well, Czech Republic just moved up my list of places I must visit. And wherever it is, this is a far more stark landscape than I ever pictured for the Two Rivers based on Robert Jordan's books. I always envisioned the mountains beyond the Two Rivers as being gentle, worn ridges like the Appalachians, with the Two Rivers itself being sort of piedmont (midlands) country, with lowlands on the other side. ...Not unlike the geographical regions of Robert Jordan's home state of South Carolina, BTW.

2) The kids are 20? So the main young characters, Rand, Matt, Perrin, and Egwene, are all 20. The show is clear about that. I'm not sure that the books ever put a number to their ages— and I'm not going to go back and read The Eye of the World for like, the seventh time in 30 years— but I always interpreted Matt, Rand, and Perrin as being 16-17 based on Jordan's descriptions, with Egwene being younger but precocious at 14-15.

3) A very diverse cast. The casting is very diverse. Maybe half the characters are portrayed by White European/American actors and actresses. Perrin, Nynaeve, and Padan Fain are at least partly of African descent. Egwene is Indian. Lan is Korean. On the one hand I really like the diversity. It shows that the series creators really looked for talent in different places from the norm for the industry. On the other hand, from my perspective as a storytelling creator, it seems a little unrealistic that with the Two Rivers being an insular area for such a long time— and the show does state that on-camera— it has such an ethnic diversity among its locals. Outlanders looking very different rather than just White European-Americans wearing different styles of clothes? Heck yeah! But not people from an insular, back-woods town who've been intermarrying for generations.

4) OMG, am I going to need to take notes? More than once during the episode I thought to myself, "How am I ever going to remember all this stuff for my blog?" There is so much stuff to talk about. For this non-spoiler-y blog I only have to pick 5 from 6-7; for my next blog I might have 20— if I can remember them all! I really don't want to my enjoyment of watching the series into an obsessive exercise of note taking like I'm studying for some class. I'm thrilled to revive my love of the books from 30 years ago; I will not be thrilled to feel like I'm restarting university or graduate school 25 years after I purposefully finished with them.

And finally....

5) On the show changing things from the books.... Yes, the show changes things from the books. I expected that— and to a broad degree I accept it.

Good screen adaptations are always different. Partly it's for brevity, partly it's because the visual medium allows certain things to be shown so much better than told; and partly it's because screenplay creators can choose to take certain liberties with the written source. It's their artistic license. Diverse casting is an example of a liberty the latter. But where this episode diverges from the storyline of the books—and I'm merely going to state that it does without divulging spoilers about what— I'm left trying to puzzle out what the impact of those changes will be.

Some differences are likely inconsequential. I noted a few that seem to be in that category. (I'll address some in a subsequent blog with spoilers.) But others struck me like, "Wait, WHAT?"— portending significant changes to the plot ahead.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to these changes per se. I'm not a purist who demands slavish devotion to the source books. I'm fascinated by the potential the changes hold and enjoying trying to figure out where they'll lead.

---- Please do not include spoilers for the streaming series in comments on this blog entry ----