The + Effects of TV (on your Soul)

This is Not Jim and Pam.

2009-07-18T18:36:00.003-04:00

I think I've blogged before about Dorm Life, the brilliant web series about college floormates. The first part of the season 2 finale went up on Monday, but because this is a web series, and not something airing on TV, I've delayed watching it until just now.

And when I finally did get around to it, I found that, though I'd been rooting for Mike and Brittany since the first episode, because they were another take on the Jim/Pam not-exactly-unrequited romance, I was THRILLED with the way Dorm Life took the cliché, a cliché I was more than happy to embrace, and flipped it on its end.

Am I disappointed that Mike and Brit are really "just friends"? Maybe. But it's nice to see a show do something different.

I'll be excited to see what goes down in the second part of the finale (surely something hilarious with Danny B. and Lacey) on Monday.

Over the Rainbow

2009-06-26T22:25:00.007-04:00

I have a weakness for chick flicks/Romantic Comedies. I don't care if they're good or bad, really, I just enjoy watching them. The meet cutes, the chemistry, the awkward situations, the big spinning kiss at the end...they always leave me happy and swoony. They're an instant lift.

Which is why last night, when I was so physically exhausted that I literally could not fall asleep, I came to the conclusion that it was vitally necessary for me to watch You've Got Mail.

Now, I hadn't seen YGM in years...probably not since around the time it came out. There were several things I remembered about it (mostly the ending, with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" tinkling in the background and Meg Ryan, in full on RomCom swoon, saying "I wanted it to be you"), and some things I didn't (Dave Chapelle?!). I've seen Sleepless in Seattle countless times (a movie I don't even like all that much, and yet I can't stop myself from watching it whenever I catch it airing on TNT or TBS or USA or really any other three letter cable station), but for some reason this particular Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks chick-like flick always seems to pass me by.

But then the trailer came out for Julie and Julia, a movie I didn't even know existed, but instantly felt the need to see (the blog-turned-book it's based on is sitting next to my bed as we speak, as yet uncracked, but complete with movie tie-in cover). It's another Nora Ephron movie, sure to give me that lift I spoke of earlier.

And a few weeks ago I saw this on youtube:

Suddenly I wanted to see the movie again, wanted to see if it was as I remembered.

And it was, for the most part. Hate turned to love, random happenstance, not-so-strangers passing each other on the street oblivious to the fact that that man, that man right there, was their true love.

But the thing that struck me more than anything else was just how nineties it felt.

I am, without a doubt, a child of the millennium. I was using e-mail on a regular basis at age seven. My first password was "Peter Pan." I started begging for a computer of my own when I was nine. I discovered the wonderful world of online fandom when I was thirteen and I haven't looked back since. I'm writing about this on my blog for goodness sake.

So this movie, this movie where Greg Kinear's character is obsessed with his typewriter and thinks computers are leading to the end of civilization as we know it. This movie where the two main characters have laptops that can hardly be transported to the bed, let alone to a Starbucks or to class. This movie with dial-up internet and America Online...it feels dated. It's a window into a world where online dating wasn't profiles on match.com, before youtube and wikipedia and even google, when we couldn't begin to imagine what we could do with the internet. It's only ten-ish years old, but it's already a snapshot of the Past. With a capital "P."

Which just makes me wonder...what does the next ten years look like? What's the next website we won't be able to live without, or the next fancy way to watch video? How long before it's movies about blogging that seem like they're from the dark ages?

"Oh My God, that is a BOSS ZEfron poster!" - Ron Weasley

2009-06-23T18:04:00.003-04:00

I've been on something of a Harry Potter kick lately. These aren't unusual for me, every two or so years I get the urge to reread and then it quickly becomes the ONLY THING I THINK ABOUT for about a month and a half.

This time I'm reading the series in reverse order (although I skipped Deathly Hallows--it's the one I most want to read at the moment, but my hardback copy is awkward to hold and the spine is cracked, so I've got to wait until the paperback comes out in a couple weeks). I'm about 100 pages into Goblet of Fire and spending all my time wishing that there was something new for me to read.

The thing is, JK Rowling created one of the richest parallel worlds I've ever seen. It's more than just Harry's story or Harry's years at Hogwarts, the books are just one small window into a fully formed universe that's just out of sight. When I read them I crave more. I want to dive into this world and then swim out past the edges of Harry's story to see what else is there.

There is nothing that I want from JK Rowling more than the opportunity to read Hogwarts, A History. And not some 50 page version like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them or Quidditch Through the Ages, but a big block of a book.

I want to know about those tertiary characters, the ones that floated on the fringe of Harry's life, but never came front and center. Occasionally one of them would step forward for a little while, give us their first name, maybe, or a piece of their story, but for the most part they existed, complex and complete, but just out of ear-shot.

I want to know about the Potters! About James's parents, because all we ever learned was that they were good to Sirius, that they were pure-blood. I want to know how Harry was related to Sirius, and to Ron, if all the pure-blood families are connected somehow.

I want to see Neville at Hogwarts during his seventh year, and I want to know Luna before book five. I want to see Ginny away from the trio, because she was always one of my favorite characters, and when she stepped out from behind her shell she just shined. I want Hermione at home with her muggle parents and Dean Thomas keeping secrets from his. I want to know what happened to the Dursleys!

Anyway, all this to say that I really, wildly love Harry Potter.

I also happen to love musicals.

Which is why this post on PopWatch this afternoon caught my eye. Harry Potter: the Musical!, you say? Why that sounds brilliant!

Which is how I ended up spending my entire afternoon watching the complete show.

It was worth it, though. Between the excellent musical numbers, the creative stage magic and Voldemort's tap number (yes, you read that right--apparently Voldy longed for his body just so he could tap out a beat once more), plus hilarious interpretations of Draco, Dumbledore and Snape, the musical is well-worth a watch. Ron as the sitcom-y best friend (always with a snack in hand, not to mention his own intro music) was also a treat.

My favorite thing, though, is, without a shadow of a doubt, the inclusion of a Zac Efron poster. I won't spoil it for you, but I encourage you to watch.

Here's the first part, and the rest of the show can be found on their youtube account:

Now, I'm off to learn how to knit, and to debate, once more, the pros and cons of purchasing my own wand.

Our President the Nerd

2009-06-20T18:48:00.000-04:00

I love John Hodgman.

I like it.

2009-06-03T01:08:00.001-04:00

Loving the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. And this was the perfect way to get the ball rolling.

This just in...

2009-05-29T01:13:00.001-04:00

I own too many books/DVDs. It's a little ridiculous.

I want love to love me back

2009-05-27T15:55:00.002-04:00

I don't generally talk about music on here because...I don't know how. I mean, really, I could (and do) talk about television ad nauseam, but as soon as you ask me to discuss music I just get tongue tied. But my love for Mandy Moore knows no bounds, so a mini-review for her new album, if you will:

Amanda Leigh is gorgeous. Just folky, poppy goodness. Especially "Merrimack River" and "I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week" and "Everblue" and "Bug." And there are little tastes of Wild Hope and Coverage while still being an unique album. Two thumbs up!

Plus, it's on PopWatch's Must List this week.

This is what Hulu is good for.

2009-05-27T01:21:00.004-04:00

Commercial Free Comedy Day on Hulu means...well...not all that much, actually, since I'm not all that bothered by the commercials on Hulu. (They're rarely more than 30 seconds long. That's not even enough time for a bathroom break.)

Never-the-less, I used my commercial free comedy day to watch Andy Barker, P.I., a show I had never seen before, despite its creator (Conan) or ties to Jane Espenson (one of my very very very most favoritest TV writers ever in the whole wide world). Or the fact that Tony Hale plays the side-kick. Turns out, I was missing out.

I wouldn't call it the greatest show in the history of comedy, but it makes me laugh. Jane Espenson snuck in a reference to Buffy's Doublemeat Palace (which originated in a Jane Espenson penned episode...she's just this side of Aaron Sorkin when it comes to self-referencing, and I love it). Andy says things like "Excuse my French, but I am P.O.-ed." Tony Hale is hilarious. Wally, the owner of the Kebab restaurant, is played by How I Met Your Mother's taxi/limo driver, Ranjit (Marshall Manesh). The jokes range from very broad (Tony Hale trying to unbuckle a seat belt) to just plain smart ("Slaughter Room 5").

And there are only six episodes, so it's completely digestible.

(Plus, Richard Alpert shows up in episode 5.)

Look what I built!

2009-05-27T00:42:00.003-04:00

I didn't build it from scratch or anything (it's a full-sized black-brown Malm by IKEA), but I did construct it from several individual parts. Mostly by myself (Miranda helped in the very early stages). And I'm very proud of it.

I also spent the past two days pinkifying those walls. Just yesterday morning they were yellow, but my bedroom in New Jersey was yellow...I figured it was time for a change. Nevermind that I'm now a twenty-one year old college grad with "Shy Little Piglet" Disney painted walls.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer." The movie. Again?

2009-05-26T02:58:00.004-04:00

This is pretty much the worst idea that I can think of. Joss Whedon and Buffy are one and the same, so while Fran Kuzui might have directed the original crap-fest of a 1992 movie (and while I might have written an A paper on said movie way back Freshman year), I can't imagine it will go very far.

Still...I fear for the future of the fandom and the franchise if this is where things end up. There can be no Buffy without Joss...let alone SMG and the Scoobies.

Should it happen, I say "boycott!"

The Graduate

2009-05-19T19:19:00.001-04:00

It hardly feels like it's been four years.

The End of Another TV Era

2009-05-07T23:47:00.003-04:00

Scrubs: The episode that will always be "My Last Day" to me, because I like parallels and I think it was dumb that they titled it "My Finale" instead...even if that was the only imperfect thing about the whole episode.

Let's just start with the end, because...because I'm a sucker for a good ending. I'm a sucker for any ending, really, good or bad, because I'm a nostalgic person and because the tiniest smidgens of nostalgia can make me totally, outrageously weepy, but whatever. This was a good ending. It was an ending that followed with the entire nature of the show (that we see this world through JD's eyes, that JD's got a wildly romantic imagination, that maybe what we wish for will come true and that maybe it won't, but we can always hope for the best), and that gave us hope for the best possible future. Plus, it was set to the perfect song (as Scrubs was always wont to do) and it was both nostalgic and funny (I'm talking about Sam and Izzie's engagement, here).

I thought at first that the song was Colin Hay (I mean, this is Scrubs after all...and he did make an appearance in JD's Hallway of Memories), but it turns out it was Peter Gabriel.

This was only the ending of the perfection, though. The episode was arranged to trace JD's goodbyes through the hospital, so we were treated to one of those goodbyes every few minutes, but it did a good job of reminding us that, though this is JD's story and JD's world, things at Sacred Heart will go on after JD has left. There were still patients to see, the interns (who I adore, btdubs) had their own issues to deal with, and new things were introduced to the canon (Ted getting stuck on a thought, for example, and Glenn Matthews)...though I'm in the camp that hopes the series really will end here, that they won't try and carry on without the MAIN CHARACTER, it is nice to know that this world is not entirely in JD's head. The image of JD pulling away in his Prius as another patient pulls into the hospital (and an instrumental version of "Superman" plays) was so perfect...a reminder that life goes on.

JD walking down that hallway was what really got me. I knew that several past guest stars would be making appearances and I was really hoping to see Brendan Fraser and Kathryn Joosten. I guess if I couldn't have the first one then I'm glad I got the second. "My Old Lady" was the first Scrubs episode to ever make me tear up--it's a perfect example of how a good comedy is about more than just making you laugh. That's something The Office does on a semi-regular basis.

And there were other faces that I'd practically forgotten about. Tasty Coma Wife, Jill Tracy, Hooch and Mr. Cropper among them.

It's always nice to see Tom Cavanaugh.

I guess what it comes down to is that I like a finale that acknowledges that it is a finale. Whether that's returning guest stars or some iconic final image or even a self-conscious narrative/fantasy about the sitcom finale being a sitcom finale. And Scrubs did all three. We had that long walk, we had JD's dream future actually projected before his eyes, we had his fantasy about turning out all of the lights and the pandemonium that ensued (another nod to the fact that things have to keep turning there when he's gone, really).

We even got a moment between JD and Dr. Cox that made me tear up. (Reminiscent of the time that he told JD that he was proud of him.)

There was a brief period during the summer of 2006 where I was mildly obsessed with Scrubs (and it was quickly replaced by my desperate love for Doctor Who...that was the summer of "Doomsday," after all), but since then I've been more of a casual fan. I adore it, it makes me laugh, and season 8 has been perfect, but I wouldn't say it was my favorite show of all time.

But that doesn't mean I won't miss it. I hope to miss it anyway, because I can't see a ninth season working the way it should.

Anyway, I probably have more thoughts, thoughts that would require a third and a fourth viewing...probably a rewatch of the entire series, but those will have to wait. Instead, some highlights:
- Glenn Matthews (if that is his name)
- Music choices/cues
- Both of JD's great love stories (Turk and Elliot) seen through to the end.
- His final scene with Carla
- The Carla/Elliot hug
- Elliot being so Elliot (all season I've felt like Stella might have taken Elliot's place a bit, but, no, she was here for real in the finale)
- Keith!
- The penny
- Muh Night. (Made me think of M'Fashnik and Mmm'cookies.)
- Sunny
- Jordan and Ted
- Kelso
- Have I mentioned "Book of Love"?
- HUGH JACKMAN!
- Dr. Cox's big book o' rants
- The Cox/JD goodbye--and then the (almost) willing hug in JD's dream future.
- Elliot and JD's wedding
- The Christmas sweaters!
- A reminder of how Jordan and JD met
- Bill Lawrence as the janitor at the end
- Jo
- Ted's cup filled with dirt
- Sam and Izzie getting married (and that JD and Turk have barely aged)
- really just all of it. Really.

The Planet of the Dead

2009-04-02T19:33:00.004-04:00

Somehow, despite my well earned status as Rabid Fangirl, I was completely oblivious to the fact that BBC1 would be airing the first of this year's Doctor Who specials next Saturday (April 11). That was remedied yesterday when the trailer went live:

I'm excited for some new Who (with the fifth series not airing until next year, we have to take what little we can get), but it brings us one episode closer to the end of Russell T. Davies' reign, as well as that of the Tenth Doctor. And I am really going to miss Ten. He brings such light and joy to the series, not to mention his distinct style and delivery.

I can only hope that "Planet of the Dead" is better than the 2008 Christmas Special, "The Next Doctor." I was so disappointed by that episode that I didn't even bother to watch it a second time.

Dorm Life

2009-03-31T19:40:00.005-04:00

So I have a new addiction.

Dorm Life, a web-series that's what I imagine The Office would be like if it were set in a college dorm. It's smart, funny, real...it's got a bit of Undeclared, a hint of Greek, and a whole bunch of crazy.

Watch the first episode:

And speaking of Greek, I should find last night's episode. I'm so excited that it's back!

Volume 6

2009-03-29T21:33:00.008-04:00

Windy, approx. 3:00pm

76˚!, approx. 5:30pm

Storm Rolling in on Blue Skies, approx. 5:45pm

Self-Portrait, approx. 8:00pm

Homework, approx. 8:00pm

Evening, approx. 8:00pm

I haven't really got that much to talk about today. At midnight I watched most of the shows I missed this week, but they haven't had much time to percolate, yet (largely because I crammed so much into such a small amount of time), so I haven't had much of a chance to form proper thoughts. I did think that Dollhouse was outstanding, though. I'm glad it sees to have found its footing after getting off to such a weak start. (And "Echoes" is to Dollhouse as "Tabula Rasa" was to Buffy, absolutely, although where "Tabula Rasa" was all about forgetting, "Echoes" was largely about remembering...how odd.)

This afternoon I finished The Writer's Tale. That book will definitely be in my top 5 for the year. The experience of reading it was both entertaining, heartbreaking and informative. I'm struggling to think of the last time I learned so much from a book–even a school book.

Now, I realized yesterday that I've still got $16 left from the amazon gift certificate that I used to buy The Writer's Tale, and the question has become: what do I buy with it? I'm thinking season 1 of E.R. With the season finale this week, I'm interested in seeing where it all started.

Volume 5 and Some Thoughts on "The Writer's Tale"

2009-03-28T22:57:00.009-04:00

The Remains of my Lunch, approx. 2:00pm

This is what my desk looks like organized (you should see it messy!), approx. 4:15pm

A (delicious) snack, approx. 4:30pm

Reading The Writer's Tale in my Pajamas, approx. 5:45pm

Picking Up Dinner, approx. 6:30pm

Listening to Doctor Who soundtracks, approx. 10:45pm

I've been reading The Writer's Tale all afternoon, just throwing myself back into the end of series 4 of Doctor Who full force (a feat that would be significantly easier if I could actually watch the end of series 4, but that will have to wait for tomorrow), and I'm finding that, reading these scripts (almost as they happen, as they come in unfinished pieces, interspersed with the e-mails that make up the body of the book) is nearly as intense–possible equally as intense–as watching the episodes.

Not long ago I got to the reunion between Rose and Ten, at the end of the penultimate episode of series 4. Watching it was all giddy joy and pumping blood and bounce-off-your-chair happiness followed immediately by complete terror (as was intended), but I was not expecting the same feeling from the words on the page, not because I don't think that words can carry that kind of intense emotion (they absolutely can), but because I already knew what was going to happen; I've witnessed it several times. I think that says so much about the writing itself, the tiniest phrasings and details:

Far off in the distance, as far away as possible, on a cold and empty ordinary street...

A woman. Walking towards them.

ROSE.

And the Doctor smiles.

CUT to Rose. And she smiles. The best smile.

It's that "the best smile" that gets me. All of the emotion in their reunion is in that smile. Well, the happy emotion...

I'm also adoring this book because it's so much more than just teleplays. Last semester I was reading all of those Buffy and West Wing scripts, and they were wonderful, but there was no sense of the process in them, not like there is with this.

If I hadn't treated myself to this book, I'd never have known that they wanted Kate Winslet to play River Song in "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead" (and if they'd gotten her I might have actually liked River Song...maybe) or that they'd hoped to bring Midshipman Frame back for the end of series 4 (and how amazing would that have been?!). It's an insight into the whole machine of television making (at least of British television making...I think a lot of it works differently over this-a-way).

Now, it's 40 minutes till midnight and the end of my self-imposed week without TV. I've got some more reading to do before I queue up Monday's How I Met Your Mother (followed by Wednesday's Lost and then last night's Dollhouse and then after that...well the list goes on and on. Some of it I'll have to save for tomorrow).

Volume 4 and Some Musings on Sci-Fi

2009-03-27T21:04:00.010-04:00

A Zombie-Movie Fog, approx. 7:00am

I Finally Got a Picture of Erin (sort of), approx. 12:30pm

"Feminine" and "Polysyllabic" (Even Professors Misspell Words Sometimes), approx. 2:30pm

Spring Has Sprung, approx. 5:15pm

The Hill Dorms, approx. 5:45pm

Walking to Rita's at Dusk, approx. 6:30pm

I've had about a week now to muse on the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, and my initial thoughts on it haven't changed much. The episode, "Daybreak," was 2 hours and 11 minutes of crazy/awesome/action/insanity/hilarity/heartbreak/what-the-frak-just-happened! and I pretty much loved it. I've always been a sucker for happily-ever-afters and epilogues, and while I wouldn't necessarily call this ending "happy" (would it even be possible for such a dark show to end with genuine happiness? I doubt it), I would say that it's exactly what I was hoping for.

Of course, not everything about the finale was perfect. The running theme of the show–"all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again"–was kind of forced down our throats a bit at the end, there (though unlike Blane, I was rather thrilled with the epilogue, even if it was the exact opposite of subtle...there's something nice about the idea of Head Six and Head Gaius wandering around Manhattan, unseen...and the Ron D. Moore cameo was a nice nod to the pure brilliance he poured into these past six years, much like Aaron Sorkin's cameo in the West Wing finale, less-so Stephenie Meyer's in Twilight), and, like pretty much everyone, I found Starbuck's exit...unfulfilling. It smacked too strongly of Cordy's farewell on Angel (a final problem to solve/day to save, a fond goodbye to the great love, and then a vanishing act as soon as his back is turned), but not done as gracefully as with Cordy.

The thing about "You're Welcome" is, when you go back and rewatch it, it becomes clear from the beginning of the episode that Cordy's only got so much time left, and she knows it. She may be the corporeal, bubbly, shopaholic Cordelia of old (finally, after the literal monster that replaced her in season four), but there's also the Cordy in the hospital bed–"miss one-foot-in-the- grave"–and what we can later see as her farewell conversation with Wesley...we had none of that with Kara. Only frustration and angst.

This past week I reread Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, which I first read a couple years ago. Back then I had never read anything by either author, and I had no clue what to expect from the apocalypse-centered novel. I don't think I was expecting quite the level of hilarity it contained.

Of course, since then I've read several of Gaiman's books (Stardust, Neverwhere, Smoke & Mirrors and the first hundred or so pages of American Gods), as well as a smattering of Pratchett's Discworld novels. They are both hilarious, inventive and brilliant storytellers, with very distinct styles, and it was interesting to go back to Good Omens and see both of those voices in the novel. Gaiman's darkness tempers Pratchett's silliness, I think, except where such tempering is entirely unnecessary (primarily in the interactions between the Them), and while nearly every page offers up genuine laughter, the book is never trivial. This is a book that is rooted in both the now, with its highways, telemarketers and technology, and the then. This apocalypse hasn't forgotten the Bible.

It questions good and evil and the very dense gray in between.

And, as I've said about five times, it's hilarious:

"To the right collector, the Witchfinder Army's library would have been worth millions. The right collector would have to have been very rich, and not haveminded gravy stains, cigarette burns, marginal notations, or the late Witchfinder Lance Corporal Wotling's passion for drawing mustaches and spectacles on all woodcut illustrations of witches and demons."

Neil Gaiman is coming to C-town a month from today, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival (though why they would have an event in Chestertown is beyond me). (He actually tweeted about the event the other day, and then mentioned it in his blog today, which was pretty thrilling. It's nice to see our tiny college recognized by the rest of the world for once.) I can't wait for the chance to hear him speak–about writing, about reading, about the process. (Nevermind that I get about a bajillion updates from him every day, via Twitter.) There is something so uniquely special about being in a room with a writer. Writers create something from nothing, and no matter how many of them I meet (and it's a lot–I have been surrounded by writers, famous and obscure, published and unpublished, of all different mediums and genres, since infancy), I'm always fascinated.

Spring!

2009-03-27T15:39:00.003-04:00

Today has been the perfect first day of spring (even if it came a week late). Warm–but not too warm, not a sudden thrust into summer, just warm enough, hovering around 60˚–and bright enough for sunglasses after a full week in the miserable 40s. Chestertown is in full bloom at last, and this is my favorite time of year at Washington.

The weather couldn't have come at a better time. Today the campus is crowded with prospective English/Creative Writing students for our annual Sophie Kerr weekend. In a few minutes I'll head over to Norman James theater for a reading by Ted Kooser. I'm excited.

I remember my Sophie Kerr weekend (four years ago!) in snippets: the way the light filtered into Norman James before the reading by Christine Lincoln, everything starting to bloom, sitting around the Literary House with a crowd of current students–each entrusted with one of us, the prospectives–as they discussed changes to the creative writing minor and drank beer, a loud St. Patrick's Day party in the basement of Middle Hall. It felt like everything I expected college to be.

Of course, little of that connected with my own experiences here, but on days like today, after a one-on-one conference with a professor and a poetry workshop, it feels a little bit closer to what college is like.

(I'll post pictures later, as well as some thoughts on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.)

Volume 3 (a rainy day), and some thoughts on spoilers.

2009-03-26T21:32:00.012-04:00

A Gray Sorta Day, approx. 2:15pm

Tattoo, approx. 2:45pm

Blane Before Dinner, approx. 6:30pm

I Accidentally Took a Nap on my Book, approx. 8:00pm

Mary Asked for a Picture of her Blueberries, approx. 9:00pm

Mango Tea in my Doctor Who Mug, approx. 9:00pm

I was reminded today by one of my roommates (the one that won't allow me to take any new pictures of her. Boo. But she does appear in this entry) that we read "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" in our contemporary poetry class last year. Somehow, I completely blanked on this (though I did remember that I had read another of the poems we read in Forms of Poetry yesterday, "Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford, in my Freshman Creative Writing class...odd how that works), but apparently at the time I reached over, crossed out "Martins Ferry, Ohio" and wrote "Dillon, Texas" in it's place. It's nice to see that I'm consistent, at least.

Tonight I did not watch The Office. This is the first time since I got back from London last summer that I missed an episode as it aired. Generally, I have very strict rules about what I will and will not miss The Office for. Study Abroad? Sure. Meeting John Krasinski in person? Sure. But beyond that...

The thing about not watching a show when you know that, within a few hours, LiveJournal will be flush with posts about what happened in the latest episode (and I'm thinking possibly something big happened tonight, especially after the way last week's ep ended), is that it makes it a lot more difficult to keep myself from clicking on spoilers.

I used to be a spoiler addict. I've never been a particularly patient person, whether it comes to Christmas, baking or television shows, and, what with the internet, spoilers are generally pretty available.

But these days, I kind of prefer to wait things out. I generally have some sense of what's coming up on my favorite shows–especially since Entertainment Weekly gave Ausiello his own page–but I try and avoid the big things and the minute details. I want the surprise, the moment of visual and aural squee-worthy glee.

For example, last summer I knew that something big would be happening with Jim and Pam early on in the season, and that whatever it was (and we all pretty much knew), it would take place during a rainstorm.

But I didn't know that we'd be getting that rainstorm (or the gloriously well-played proposal it offered us) in the premiere. And it was so much better that way!

Or better yet, I knew that Billie Piper was returning for series 4 of Doctor Who last spring–as soon as she was spotted filming in November of '07 the entire fandom (and most of Britain) knew–but we didn't know that she would be popping up in the final moments of the premiere, "Partners in Crime," and I'm struggling to think of another cameo that has been so thoroughly thrilling.

In The Writer's Tale (yes, I did end up buying it, and it is just as brilliant as I'd hoped, but I haven't finished reading it, yet–it's over 500 pages of e-mails and script drafts, essentially, and after reading the first 250 pages in what was practically a single sitting, I needed to take a break to allow my excitement to subside a bit), Russel T. Davies actually talked about that moment a bit:

If a lot of Series Four is building up to Rose's return, I'm thinking, do we film a scene for 4.1, right at the end, a glimpse of Rose? End of 4.1, story over, danger past, the Doctor standing by the TARDIS, about to give Donna one of those classic 'come aboard' speeches, but Donna interrupts, 'Hang on a minute,' and runs off, leaving the Doctor stranded. That's quite funny. She runs over to the crowd--police, army, ambulances--looking for her mum, just so that she can give her the car keys. In a rush, a panic, Donna shoves the keys at a woman in the crowd--'Her name's Sylvia Noble. Give her these. It's that red Toyota over there'--and runs off to her new life. Reveal the woman that she gave the keys to: it's Rose! Just standing, watching, waiting. That could be nice. Or too inward-looking? But thrilling! There's an undoubted 'ooooh!' in that moment.

(I just spent about 5 minutes looking for that quote only to realize that I'd already typed it up in my LiveJournal, back when I first read it in January. *sigh*)

But what RTD says is so true. There is an "ooooh" in that moment. Or rather an "OMGSQUEE!" Before I could even form proper thoughts on the episode itself (a very good episode on its own, the first fifteen minutes of which are one long, brilliant gag), I had to run to my LJ and flip out at cyberspace. The post I made was all in enormous capital letters that ran together. It looked like the inside of my brain at that particular moment.

I don't know that that feeling would have been quite so intense if I had known ahead of time that it was going to happen. "Turn Left," the first of Billie's full episodes (and it's up for a Hugo Award, by the way, against four other brilliant nominees), was exciting, but it was also subdued a little. We knew that episode was coming, and we were ready for it.

I guess I have a lot to say about TV this week, now that I'm not actually watching it.

Small Towns

2009-03-26T01:55:00.004-04:00

Today in my Forms of Poetry class we read "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio," by James Wright, and while I try to keep the TV references to a minimum in my actual classes (it's difficult to shake the feeling that it detracts from my brainiac English major image–nevermind that the professor herself once brought up Battlestar Galactica), I wanted to tell someone what it was that the poem made me think of/feel/je ne sais quoi, which is...

It's like every episode of Friday Night Lights has been compressed into 12 lines. Or the feeling that Friday Night Lights emits, anyway, of big dreams and desperation and the way the dust gets caught in the football lights. FNL is definitely a show that lends itself to poetry.

Here's the poem:

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
by James Wright

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace of Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginnings of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

Volume 2

2009-03-25T22:28:00.009-04:00

Starting to Look Like a Building, approx. 2:30pm

Mammojam, approx. 2:30pm

What I Do at Work, approx. 3:30pm

I Carried This Bowl Around All Afternoon, approx. 3:45pm

Popcorn Shrimp and Fries, approx. 6:15pm

Suitemate Art Project (Work in Progress), approx. 10:00pm

Tonight I finally got to see I Love You, Man. I am trying to think of a movie with a better cast and I honestly can't come up with anything. Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, JK Simmons, Andy Samberg, plus hoards of easily recognizable character actors whose names I don't know. Anyway, it wasn't quite the movie I was expecting, but it was laugh out loud funny, and entirely quotable.

And I'll watch pretty much anything with Jason Segel.

Actually, the same goes for Paul Rudd. I've loved him since Clueless, but his guest-starring role on Veronica Mars a few years ago was one of the few genuinely worth-while things about the third season (along with the Logan Logan episode and anything involving Piz).

I'm also currently trying to forget that, somewhere out there, there is an episode of LOST that I have not seen. And to think that, only about a month ago, I wouldn't have even thought of myself as a fan!

This has nothing to do with TV or books or movies or or or...

2009-03-25T01:00:00.010-04:00

I'm taking a week off of TV. It's for an article I'm writing for The Collegian, one of our campus publications, and I'm finding it rather trying (no clue what I will do when I have to voluntarily skip LOST tomorrow. Have to skip? Something about this doesn't make sense), but I'm trying to occupy my time with other things.

For example, a "Week in the Life" meme, the goal being 6 photographs a day, with titles and times, but no descriptions (unless you can be sneaky, like me, and slip those descriptions into said titles). I figured I might as well post the results here as well.

Here is Volume 1:

Snooze, approx. 10:45am

Mary is Wildly Inappropriate in Toll, approx. 2:15pm

(George) Washington (College) is Under Construction, approx. 3:00pm

This Doesn't Even Include All of My Milo Posters, approx. 4:30pm

Last Light, approx. 6:30pm

What I Should Be Reading, approx. 10:00pm

And now it's time for me to go to bed.

I cannot wait to see this movie!

2009-03-17T14:03:00.004-04:00

I was already excited about this movie (the combination of John Krasinski and Dave Eggers alone!) but it's also got Allison Janney in it, and Allison Janney is one of the best things a movie can have.

I still refuse to call it anything but Farlanders, though. It was a much better title than Away We Go.

Check the Shirt!

2009-02-12T17:19:00.003-05:00

I basically think Joss Whedon is a genius. He's a brilliant writer, a brilliant storyteller, he creates complex characters in complex situations and then tells complex stories with them, while still managing a general sheen of hilarity and a very dark undercurrent. He's just amazing.

And one of my goals in life has been, for the past several years, to meet him.

Which I got to do on Tuesday!

It was an event at the SoHo Apple Store that, by sheer luck, occurred during a week where half of my classes were cancelled, so my roommate and I drove up on Tuesday afternoon and back to school on Tuesday night (only about 7 hours roundtrip). Advertised as a "Meet the Creator" event, a discussion with Joss Whedon about his new show Dollhouse (set to premiere this Friday and you'd be crazy if you didn't think I was psyched), it turned out to be a discussion with both Joss Whedon and the star of Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku (who is unjustly gorgeous), followed by a very long autograph line.

And while I failed miserably at coming up with anything remotely original or spectacular to say, and while I thanked him maybe 15 times during the 45 seconds I had with him, it was an awesome experience (and something to check off on my "things to do before I die" list).

2009-01-24T17:19:00.004-05:00

I am, at present, lusting after a new book.

This time around it's The Writer's Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, a sort of behind the scenes look at Doctor Who series 4, at the writing in particular. The reviews I've seen are excellent, it's supposedly jam-packed with goodies for those interested in Who and in writing (and there's no denying that I'm ~~somewhat~~ obsessed with both), and the foreward is by Philip Pullman, the author of both the His Dark Materials trilogy and the Sally Lockhart books. But it's also $29.67, and I'm trying to justify purchasing such an expensive book.

I do have the means to purchase it (a $50 amazon gift certificate I received for my birthday last month and haven't yet spent), but as a frequent customer in the amazon marketplace, I've clearly got a predisposition for books under $3 (or, better yet, books under $0.02), and this? Is not that.

I'll probably purchase it, though. My will-power is not that strong, and as my roommate just pointed out, I'll still have $20 left--more than enough with which to purchase a handful of penny paperbacks.

First, though, I'm going to take a shower, and get some dinner, and maybe watch an episode of the series itself, as a reminder of why a book like this would be worth it to begin with.

Barack Obama: the 44th President of the United States of America

2009-01-20T21:39:00.005-05:00

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

I watched the inauguration in class today. In my Creative Non-Fiction class, to be specific. I was incredibly worried that I would miss the inauguration, but rather than focusing on the syllabus or the book list today, we turned on the TV and watched the swearing in of the 44th President of the United States of America. On BET, at that, a network largely free from Talking Heads and (aside from an unobtrusive scrolling banner at the very bottom of the screen) network banners.

And since returning from class this afternoon (overwhelmed by what is clearly going to be an intense final semester) I've kept the transcript of the speech open in a word document, so that I could refer back to it, quote bits of it to friends, and just reread my favorite parts. I thought the language was elegant and beautifully phrased, and, had I been watching somewhere other than a classroom, I'm sure I would have been moved to tears. I did find myself tearing up, even in the public setting.

Anyway, I just wanted to quote my favorite part, the ending:

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

What an amazing day to be an American. I voted for this president, in the first election in which I was old enough to vote, and right now I am living in a country that's all about hope and change and new beginnings. It's not a cure all, of course not, but it's a step, even just a small one. It was a wonderful inauguration, I thought, and I kind of can't believe it's happened, now. Bush is no longer our president, he's moved on to his little piece of our nation's history, and now we're living in a whole new chunk of that history.

It's amazing.

Dear Bravo,

2009-01-20T11:05:00.002-05:00

There could be no better programming today (on a cable network that's not showing the inauguration itself) than a marathon of the end of the seventh season of The West Wing. You win all the prizes.

Love,
Elizabeth

Beginning of the End

2009-01-19T17:11:00.006-05:00

So my final semester of college kicked off today with my Forms of Poetry class and a trip to the bookstore. $415.10 and one difficult trek across campus later, I have 4 big stacks of textbooks, novels, anthologies, memoirs and non-fiction books to read this semester and I'm really looking forward to getting started.

I have to say, though, the towering stacks are a little terrifying.

Books: The Best Medicine

2009-01-08T16:28:00.008-05:00

Over the past few days, as I've recovered from having my wisdom teeth removed, I've done pretty much nothing but sleep and read.

I started out the week by finishing up Revolutionary Road. I picked up a copy last month when I got home for winter break, read about half of it, and then became distracted by various other books, tv shows and activities, so when I pulled it from the depths of my purse on Monday afternoon it was for the first time in about two and a half weeks.

I liked the book. I get a thrill out of language from a time before I was born, and Revolutionary Road is full of rhythms and slang that can only be found in the past. And I'm always surprised when I find novels written in the forties, fifties and sixties to be so contemporary, as I did with this novel. It was horribly sad, the ending even more so than I was expecting, but still beautifully written, and I look forward to seeing the movie.

The second book I read this week was Beginner's Greek. Dad lent me a copy over Christmas and the summary on the inside cover reminded me of the movie Serendipity, one of my chick flick guilty pleasures. The book itself was equal parts delightful (smart, funny, self-aware) and over-the-top. I came away from it certain that I had loved it and also certain that I hadn't. But I'm glad I read the book. It felt at times like reading Jane Austen as written by a man, and the characters, even those that weren't particularly likable, were charming and distinctive.

Finally, I've just finished The Reader, yet another book that's just been turned into a movie starring Kate Winslet (despite my general aversion to movie tie-in book covers, I'm often wooed by their low prices, and I now seem to own three different books with Kate Winslet on the cover: Little Children, Revolutionary Road and The Reader, and two with Leonardo DiCaprio: Catch Me if You Can and Revolutionary Road). It's a sad little book, and I don't know that I liked it or disliked it (or that it's a book that can be liked or disliked). The language is very abrupt, which could be a side-effect of translation, but I suspect it's got more to do with the original German. I did come away from the book with the distinct feeling that I did not need to, or want to, see the movie, though.

My next read, I think, will be Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby. It's the third and final compilation of his columns for The Believer about what he's been reading each month, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books like this (The Polysyllabic Spree and Homecoming v. the Dirt). Nick Hornby is one of my favorite authors (if you've never read High Fidelity I strongly suggest that you give it a try) because of his incredible ability to be both hysterically funny and emotionally true.

The Eleventh Doctor

2009-01-03T13:05:00.004-05:00

So the BBC has just announced that Matt Smith will be taking over as the Eleventh Doctor on Doctor Who (probably my very favorite tv show) in 2010.

Now I'm very attached to the current Doctor (David Tennant). The general feeling in the Doctor Who fandom is that everyone has "their" Doctor. It's generally the actor you first saw play the part, but not necessarily (if that were the case with me my Doctor would be Nine--Christopher Eccleston). David Tennant himself has said that his Doctor is Five (Peter Davison), the Doctor of his childhood.

Because I'm so attached to Ten I've been having trouble with the knowledge that, after the five specials set to air this year, I'm going to have to give him up.

But I've seen Matt Smith in a few things (most notably The Ruby in the Smoke) and I was hoping for a young and attractive Doctor (Smith will be the youngest actor ever to take on the role). As sad as I'll be to see David Tennant leave, and to say goodbye to Ten, I've got pretty high hopes for the fifth series (especially with Steven Moffat behind it--I won't say the man can do no wrong, that would be a complete lie, but he's written some of the very best episodes of Doctor Who, like "Blink," "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," and I'll be interested to see what he does next).

Now the question that remains--what's the Eleventh Doctor going to wear?

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T16:30:00.002-05:00

Oh TNT, why would you do this to me? Don't you know that, when given the opportunity to spend an entire day watching a Bones marathon, I'll take it? Especially when I'm sick and all I want to do is curl up with a box of tissues and my remote? I mean, it's David Boreanaz and all of his David Boreanaz-ness.

The marathon is on until midnight, on TNT, just FYI.

My Top 20 Books Read (for the first time) in 2008

2008-12-31T17:53:00.003-05:00

I read 81 books in 2008, 71 of them for the first time. Which means narrowing this down to a top 20 was pretty difficult (in fact, there are an additional five books at the end of the list. Anyway, because narrowing things down was hard enough, these are not in order of preference, but rather in order of my having read them...

The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett I read this book in one sitting, the afternoon of New Year's Day. It's a cute, short read, wherein the Queen of England's yorkie runs off while she's taking it for a walk and she follows it into a book mobile that visits Buckingham Palace once a week for the kitchen staff. It's very sweet.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Actually, she had heard this phrase, the republic of letters, used before, at graduation ceremonies, honorary degrees and the like, though without knowing quite what it meant. At that time talk of a republic of any sort she had thought mildly insulting and in her actual presence tactless, to say the least. It was only now she understood what it meant. Books did not defer. All readers were equal, and this took her back to the beginning of her life.

Going Postal, Terry Pratchett My first foray into the Discworld, but certainly not my last. I actually read 6 of the Discworld books this year, and loved them all, but decided to limit my list to just the first one, because choosing between them would be too difficult. If you haven't read Terry Pratchett, you really really should. Laugh out loud hilarity mixed with fantasy and social commentary. Delicious.

Atonement, Ian McEwan You'll notice that there are 3 different Ian McEwan novels on this list, because apparently this year I went on a bit of a binge. I actually started this book toward the end of 2007, got most of the way through it, saw the movie, and then didn't finish the book for another week or so. The first part was my favorite, and I had to drudge through the middle bit while Robbie is in France, but as a whole the book is beautifully written. I can certainly understand why Ian McEwan is often considered a man's writer, his details are sometimes almost clinically harsh, but that doesn't make the words any less lovely.

They stared at each other in confusion, unable to speak, sensing that something delicately established might slip from them. That they were old friends who had shared a childhood was now a barrier--they were embarrassed before their former selves. Their friendship had become vague and even constrained in recent years, but it was still an old habit, and to break it now in order to become strangers on intimate terms required a clarity of purpose which had temporarily deserted them. For the moment, there seemed no way out with words.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan This is the only book I read twice this year, once in January and again right before the movie came out. It's like Before Sunrise for teenagers and very sweet.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë I did actually attempt to read this once before, when I was in fourth or fifth grade. I didn't really appreciate it then, though. My mother read it again earlier this year, for the first time since she was in high school, and so I picked it up after her. Of course I loved it. The story is equal parts empowering, heartbreaking, sweet, romantic and gothic. And my mother assures me that, when I'm her age, I'll find even more to appreciate in Jane's story.

The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde Of course I had to follow it up with this, which was hilarious and smart and did I mention hilarious? I had read The Fourth Bear and The Big Over Easy already, so I knew that his writing was witty and intricate, but not like this! I read the rest of the series, too (except I haven't really gotten into Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, yet), and loved each book more than the last, it seems, but again, I'm only listing one.

On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan More Ian McEwan. Another perfect little book. I read it in a weekend, staying up late to finish it while all my roommates slept in our flat in London. I especially loved the way the last few pages spin the story out into the future and we see the paths these characters end up on.

Peter Pan, JM Barrie As you might have noticed, I had a bit of a literary love affair with the UK this year. 13 of these books are by British writers, and 13 are at least partially set in the UK (14 if you count Going Postal). This is largely because I was studying abroad in London last semester and falling desperately in love with the city and the country. I read a little more American fiction once I got back to the US, but that was hardly what I was most interested in. Peter Pan was one of the many books I purchased abroad, a £2, lime green Penguin Popular Classics copy from the Borders on Oxford Street. It's small, technically it's considered to be a children's book (though the only one I've ever seen that included the word "orgy"), and it's rife with murder and racism, but it's also maybe the sweetest book I've ever read. The language is playful and the story is wonderful. I've been fighting off the urge to read it again ever since I put it down April.

Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder. They are not really friendly to Peter, who has a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side to-night, and anxious to get the grownups out of the way. So as soon as the door of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of the stars in the Milky Way screamed out:

"Now, Peter!"

Saturday, Ian McEwan The third and final of the McEwan books on this list. I bought my copy at a used bookstore in Brighton, and read the book with a map of London in front of me, tracing the main character's path across the city, just blocks away from my own flat in Bloomsbury. I think it may be the first novel I've read that takes place in a post 9/11 world, which isn't to say the first book I've read to take place after September of 2001, but the first to be so sure to remind me of that fact. It was interesting to see it from the perspective of someone that wasn't American. Also interesting was the fact that the whole book takes place on a day when my parents were working their way across London to Portabello Road, Americans trying to get from one side of the Anti-War march to the other.

The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureshi The first of these books that I read for school. I took a Novels of Britain and Ireland course while I was abroad. There were only 3 of us (all girls) in the class, and I've never had so much fun doing assigned reading. Each 2 and half hour class was just a long conversation, and I always came away from it feeling like a knew so much more about literature and about Britain. This book is largely about what it's like to be half English and half Pakistani (but born and raised in London) in a post-colonialist Britain. It's hilarious, but also touching. And I wrote one kick-butt essay on the book.

Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert I made the mistake of starting this book on the way home from Europe. Of course, by the time our plane landed in Philadelphia all I wanted to do was turn around and fly to Italy for pizza in Naples. The book is, on the whole, inspirational, and not in the sappy/cheesy way. It also made me very, very hungry.

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman I love Neil Gaiman. He mingles fantasy and reality so beautifully, so that you really believe that, if you looked hard enough, you might actually find the magic that permeates his books. It's the thing I've always loved about Harry Potter as well, the ability to transition between a real place (a tube stop, King's Cross Station) and somewhere that exists only in your imagination (London Below, the Leaky Cauldron).

The Hours, Michael Cunningham Mrs. Dalloway just missed this list (look for it below in the honorable mentions), but The Hours really stood out to me. It ties in with the book that inspired in so beautifully, while existing as its own story as well. And admittedly, it's a much easier read.

"As she rubs Louis's back, Clarissa thinks, Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am."

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien This is one of those books that left me totally unsettled, gave me bad dreams even--largely because I dozed off immediately after finishing it--and yet I still loved it. The writing is beautiful, and the stories are heartbreaking and sometimes funny.

Possession: A Romance, AS Byatt I don't really remember why I picked this up, but I had trouble putting it down once I had. It's a love story that literally spans centuries, and leads to another love story that's less romantic than neurotic, but still enticing. I haven't seen the movie adaptation, but I can't imagine it holds a candle to the book.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed.

One night they fell asleep, side by side, on Maud's bed, where they had been sharing a glass of Calvados. He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh I picked this up when I first saw the trailer for the new movie, because I very much love Matthew Goode, Haley Atwell and Emma Thompson. I hadn't anticipated loving the book quite so much, but the language (the sort of stylized speech of decades I wasn't alive for) drew me in and the characters (especially Sebastian) kept me reading. Of course, the movie was hardly true to it, and I haven't had a chance to watch the 1981 miniseries, yet, but it did introduce me to a new novel to love and cherish.

"What is it?"

"His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word."

A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley Jane Smiley visited my school last semester, while I was abroad, and just a few weeks before I saw King Lear at the Globe. I'd never read any of her writing, but I was a little bummed about missing a visit from such a respected author. Then, this summer, I had the idea that I wanted to write some modernized version of King Lear. Of course, that was when my roommate told me it had already been done, by Jane Smiley. The book was even sitting on my bedside table, waiting for me in my To-Read pile. So I picked it up and fell in love and of course it broke my heart, but it was absolutely worth it.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers Is it a bit pretentious? Sure, but it's also a beautifully, brilliantly written book about love, loss, responsibility, and trying to get cast on The Real World. I laughed, I cried, all that good stuff.

"They are gone and I am soaring. Those motherfuckers! My head is clear and muscular and filled with blood. Something has happened. We're alive, we've won! Powerful us! They were scared. We scared them off. They feared us. We won. We told them to go away and they did. I am the president. I am the Olympics."

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell If I hadn't come to the conclusion that Sarah Vowell was stalking me, I don't know that I ever would have read this book. History? Presidential assassinations? Really? But her name started popping up everywhere, largely because I was binging on This American Life at the time, and it became clear that she was both hilarious and charming, so I picked this up at Barnes and Noble (pet peeve: there is no S at the end of Barnes and Noble, unless it's a plural--"there are two Barnes and Nobles in my area"--or possessive--"I prefer Barnes and Noble's Starbucks to the stand-alone Starbucks at my mall"--so Cashier-that-rung-me-up-the-other-day, take note!). For a book about murder and american history it's a surprisingly light, entertaining read. I picked up a copy of The Partly-Cloudly Patriot the other day and can't wait to read it.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, JK Rowling This is mostly a sentimental addition to my list, because it's Harry Potter, but it was a fun, easy read, and some of Dumbledore's commentary was deliciously biting. I've missed the Potter-verse, so it was nice to step back into it for an afternoon.

This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater.

Honorable Mentions
College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now by Lynn Peril - I asked for this for Christmas last year thinking I'd flip through it and read bits and pieces, but I ended up reading it cover to cover. It's a fascinating book about the evolution of the "College Girl."

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson - Another book I read for Novels of Britain and Ireland. It's the bible without women, basically, and it's both touching and funny.

I learnt that it rains when clouds collide with a high building, like a steeple, or a cathedral; the impact punctures them, and everybody underneath gets wet. This was why, in the old days, when the only tall buildings were holy, people used to say cleanliness is next to godliness. The more godly your town, the more high buildings you'd have, and the more rain you'd get.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - It was tough going at first, but I ended up really enjoying this book.

Ah dear, she remembered--it was Wednesday in Brook Street. Those kind good fellows, Richard Dalloway, Hugh Whitbread, had gone this hot day through the streets whose growl came up to her lying on the sofa. Power was hers, position, income. She had lived in the forefront of her time. She had had good friends; known the ablest men of her day. Murmuring London flowed up to her, and her hand, lying on the sofa back, curled upon some imaginary baton such as her grandfathers might have held, holding which she seemed, drowsy and heavy, to be commanding battalions marching to Canada, and those good fellows walking across London, that territory of theirs, that little bit of carpet, Mayfair.

And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if ones friends were attached to one's body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which (as she dozed there) became hazy with the sound of bells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spider's thread is blotted with rain-drops, and, burdened, sags down. So she slept.

The Overwhelming by JT Rogers - I read this play about the genocide in Rwanda for my playwriting class, and then had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the playwright. It was an interesting play with a subject about which I knew very little.

Nory Ryan's Song by Patricia Reilly Giff - The only book from the Children's and Adolescent Lit class I took this semester to make top 25 (though Tuck Everlasting would have been top 10 if I hadn't already read it several years ago). It's sort of a miserable little book about the Irish potato famine, but I found it charming.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

An Afternoon With Harry

2008-12-04T20:19:00.001-05:00

So today was the release date for The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the book of wizarding fairy tales form JK Rowling. My copy was pre-ordered (of course) and came in the mail this morning. I spent my afternoon reading it.

It was wonderful!

The fairy tales themselves are sweet and true to the universe JK Rowling created with the book series. They're dark (as all good fairy tales are), relatively simple, and come with morals attached--morals for wizard and muggle children alike.

It's the commentary "found" in Dumbledore's office that really makes the book something worth reading; each story is followed by a little essay written approximately 18 months before Dumbledore's death. The essays are not only filled with bits of new information about the wizarding world that couldn't be squeezed into the 7 novels or the 2 Hogwarts textbooks previously released (like the existence of a school we'd never heard of, the Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts--WADA), but are written with all of Dumbledore's self-assurance, silliness and occasional snark.

A few quotes:

As the emminent Wizarding philosopher Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes [Bertrand of Profound Thoughts] writes in his celebrated work A Study into the Possibility of Reversing the Actual and Metaphysical Effects of Natural Death, with Particular Regard to the Reintegration of Essence and Matter:

"Give it up, it's never gonna happen.

And

This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater.

I fully enjoyed the book, and I'm sure I'll go back to it again and again, just as I have with the novels.

Now we've just got to wait until July and the release of the Half-Blood Prince movie for our next taste of the Wizarding World.

The Power of the Rewatch

2008-12-03T01:34:00.001-05:00

Just as I love to reread, I love to rewatch. Sometimes it's the same thing several times in one week (there was a period a couple years ago where I watched the Disney Beauty and the Beast 10 times in 1 week, and my annual Thanksgiving-Christmas Love Actually period is sure to expand from my 1 viewing last weekend to at least 5), sometimes I need to take a break between viewings. It's a way to forget, or to allow my initial reaction to harden into vague impressions...easier to write over on further viewings. And when it's TV shows I'm rewatching I tend to watch whole seasons at once.

Lately I've been working my way through season 3 of The O.C. I watched the whole series through back when it was airing, and I had some pretty solid opinions of it. Seasons 1 and 4 were awesome. Season 2 was decent but far from perfect, and season 3 was the weakest link. Poor plot, poor writing...it was where the show veered so totally off course that I considered dropping it from my weekly line-up.

I've said before that when the show started it wasn't trying to be anything. There were models (90210 was mentioned often), but at the same time, The O.C. was something completely new. In season 2 the road block was that the show was trying to hard to be itself. By season 3 it was becoming One Tree Hill (one of my guilty pleasures, yes, but also some of the worst...everything on television). In season 4 The O.C. was back to attempting something brand new, and while it wasn't the same show as season 1...it was pretty awesome.

But now that I'm rewatching season 3 I'm starting to realize that it wasn't quite so bad as I remember. Even season 1 had a black pit of doom (the Oliver Period), and while I disagreed with some of the decisions that Josh Schwartz and co. made (Seth's drug phase, Sandy leading the Newport Group, Volchek, Ryan's brief return to a life of crime), it's still making me laugh and cry and everything else that I look for in good television.

This is the season where we were introduced to Taylor Townsend, who became one of my very favorite characters in season 4 and who turned me into a big Ryan fan just by association. It's the season where we got rid of Marissa (finally), and where Kaitlyn returned as a different actress, more grown-up and with her own plots.

It's not perfect TV, but it's decent, better than I remembered.

That's the nice thing of about rewatching, you can discover something you missed the first time around, when you were busy making snap judgments. I found out that Johnny wasn't really that bad (like when I found out that Veronica Mars' Piz was more awesome, less annoying), nor was Kaitlyn, who seemed terrible the first time around, only growing likeable in season 4. I had forgotten about the quality Seth/Kirsten time we got this season, and about how adorable Neil and Julie's engagement was. The one thing that doesn't seem to have changed is the way the finale brings me to tears.

It's nice to find out what you missed when you weren't really paying attention (intentionally or otherwise).

2008-11-24T15:47:00.004-05:00

JOSH takes off his laminated ID tag on a chain that hangs around his neck and hands it to DONNA.

DONNA
(into phone)
Uh, yes...yes...yes.

DONNA holds the tag in her hand, trying not to show that it's the first piece of jewelry anyone's ever given her.

I'm reading television scripts again, but with the West Wing scripts instead. When I reached this quote from the second part of "In The Shadow of Two Gunmen," the season two premiere, I had to put the book down and sigh happily. This is what I meant in my last post about stage directions providing insight into characters. It's a small moment on screen, and a sweet one, that says quite a bit about Josh and Donna's relationship. This is from a flashback scene where they meet for the first time, and the rapport that made them such a popular part of the series exists already.

Here's a quote from the season two finale, "Two Cathedrals," that encompasses a much bigger moment on the show, the funeral of Dolores Landingham:

And during this we see that all of our friends are here. LEO, SAM, TOBY, C.J., DONNA, JOSH, BONNIE, GINGER, MARGARET, CAROL...with everything that's been going on, this is going to serve as a sacred 90 minutes. They obviously never had the relationship with her that Bartlet or even Leo did, but she was a friend of theirs and they worked in a foxhole and this is probably the only time they're given to come to terms that she's in that box.

One paragraph, and particularly the last sentence of it, perfectly encapsulates Mrs. Landingham's funeral. It's an admirable economy of words for a man with a reputation for being so prolific.

TV + Books = Love

2008-11-09T11:59:00.004-05:00

For my sister the fashionista, online shopping is about clothes. For me it’s about amazon.com. My wishlist (7 pages and growing) is a constant work in progress, and the (sometimes ridiculously) cheap books in the Amazon Marketplace make my life a better place.

My more recent Marketplace purchases have been script books, Buffy script books, specifically, though I did just place an order for one of the two books available for the West Wing.

For a few years I thought that I wanted to pursue a TV writing career after graduating. Now, most of the way through a playwriting class, it’s becoming very clear to me that dialogue has never been my strong suit and that I’m probably more suited for writing about television (hence the blog). But my interest in the process has not declined, which is part of the reason I wanted to read these shooting scripts.

I’ve always thought of stage directions in a very Shakespearean, straightforward way (all “they kiss” and “exit, pursued by a bear”), but that’s not at all what you get from these scripts. Character development, in-jokes and the love that a writer has for his or her characters…that’s what you get in the Buffy stage directions. And that’s what is valuable here, the way the writers see and talk about the characters outside of their dialogue.

This is not the first time that I’ve read a shooting script by Joss Whedon; there’s one for Serenity, in the official companion. I read it a few years ago, and while I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, I do remember laughing a lot, and not just at the lines that I’d heard so many times before (I saw the movie 3 times in theatres, the number limited only by the lack of opportunity in the small town where I go to school and my lack of a car at the time). Joss’s dialogue has always played with the English language in new and unique ways, and I’ve spent hours on youtube watching interviews with and speeches by him just to see what interesting sentence will emerge from his mouth next, so it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise that his stage directions were as playful and word-tastic as everything else. But they were.

I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to the things I enjoy reading: novels, short stories, the occasional play, but there’s a certain charm to the way TV scripts are written, at least these TV scripts, that you don’t get with other mediums. Take this, from the season 2 premiere, “When She Was Bad”:

CORDELIA walks along with a couple of Cordettes. As usual, all the talking is done by

CORDELIA
It was a nightmare. A nightmare. They promised me we were going to St. Croix and then at the last minute, they just decide we’re gonna visit Tuscany instead. Art. Buildings. Totally beachless for a month and a half. No one has suffered as I have suffered…

It’s that blend between stage direction and dialogue, where we jump right from what Cordy’s doing to what Cordy’s saying, that I find so appealing. While it probably could be and has been done in a narrative format, I doubt that it would work in the same way.

Though general opinion has it that scripts are meant to be watched and not read, you’d never know that reading one. When Buffy’s seldom-seen father utters a half-hearted "great" in the same episode, the word “half-hearted” would probably have sufficed, but instead Joss writes, “There isn’t much GREAT! in his ‘great.’” Later, when Cordelia refers to the core Scoobies as the Three Musketeers, “brief confusion crosses the faces of our heros [sic].” While the obvious audience of any script is the viewer, these jokes, subtle and otherwise, are not here for them.

But what is maybe my favorite thing in the entire “When She Was Bad” script comes toward the end, while Buffy is doing what she does best, slaying: “Then Absalom SCREAMS, and inhuman shriek that galvanizes the vampires (BOB, JANE and NED) into action. They effectively flank our girl, and Jane and Ned rush her simultaneously.”

“Our girl.” It doesn’t seem like much, but those two words say it all when it comes to the relationship between creator and character, between actor and character, and between viewer and character. Buffy is our girl, our hero, at the center of this, our show, and referring to her as such backs it all up, connects the script’s audience (not the episode’s audience) with her that much more.

(And giving the vampires, whose names are never mentioned in dialogue, who do not even have lines, names like Bob, Jane and Ned in a show where vamps tend to get names like Absalom, Drusilla and Kakistos…well that’s just a bonus.)

If, like me, you’re interested in the TV writing process, I highly recommend Jane Espenson’s blog. She’s written for everything from Buffy to Battlestar Galactica to The O.C., and she’s kinda awesome.

Alphabeticals: C is for Chuck

2008-08-22T00:44:00.003-04:00

I'm a week late on this one. Apologies.

So last fall Josh Schwartz (creator of The OC) entered the TV season with 2 new shows, about as different from each other as possible, but both firmly routed in The OC. The first of these shows was Gossip Girl, the second and the subject of this week's Alphabeticals, was Chuck.

Chuck is the story of a guy named Chuck (big surprises there) whose future was veered off course while at Stamford when his best friend and roommate, Bryce Larkin, framed him for cheating and got him kicked out of school. He also stole his girlfriend. Since then he's been living with his older sister, Ellie, and her boyfriend, Captain Awesome (ne Devon). He heads up the Nerd Herd (a fictional Geek Squad) at the Buy More (a fictional Best Buy) and hangs out with his friend Morgan.

Then, without any warning, he gets an e-mail from Bryce Larkin (who grew up to be a CIA agent, and turned rogue at that), an e-mail that contains a computer program called The Intersect, a series of rapid-fire images that contain massive amounts of confidential intelligence and that lodge themselves in Chuck's brain, effectively turning him into a powerful computer and a resource for the CIA and the NSA.

Of course this means that any number of people would be glad to see Chuck dead, since all he needs to do to find out whether or not they're dangerous is look at them. He's put into the hands of Sarah Walker, a CIA agent, and John Casey, an NSA agent. Sarah is his fake girlfriend, an excuse for her to hang around, and Casey moves in next door and gets a job at the Buy More with Chuck.

Meanwhile, the government is trying to figure out how to get the computer out of Chuck's brain.

It's a fun show. It's easy to see that Chuck is who Seth Cohen might have grown up to be, that is if Ryan had gotten him kicked out of school and stolen Summer away from him.

The cast is wonderful, especially Zachary Levi as Chuck. Sarah Lancaster (who you may recognize from lots of things, like Everwood or Scrubs or What About Brian) plays Ellie, whose desire to see her brother happy makes her a completely lovable character, and there is little that is not awesome about Captain Awesome. The writing is hilarious, as are the secondary characters (like the other members of the Nerd Herd, who spend their days playing Name-That-TV-Show on the Buy More TV sets).

The highlight of the show, though, is probably Chuck's less-than-subtle crush on Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), which is made all the worse by their pretend relationship, a farce that they have to keep up for the sake of Ellie and Chuck's best friend, Morgan (Joshua Gomez).

The show did not come back after the Writer's Strike last winter, choosing to hold out until the beginning of the fall season for new episodes, and if the previews currently airing on NBC are to be believed, this season is going to be even better (especially with Tony Hale guest starring this season).

Season 2 starts September 29th.

Alphabeticals: B is for Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2008-08-07T09:15:00.003-04:00

The thing about packing is that you have to make choices: what to take with you, what to leave behind…it’s not easy. I learned this lesson as I was packing for a semester in London last semester, and trying to pare down my books. Once I’d weeded it down to 17 (I came home with closer to 30, and don’t ask how I fit those in my suitcase) I stared hopelessly at the massive binder that contains all of my DVDs. It was not going to fit into my suitcase, and I couldn’t cram them all back into their individual cases…those wouldn’t fit either. I dug out a couple of old CD wallets, the kind that hold 24 and 62 CDs, respectively, and started making choices.

I don’t own a whole lot of movies. I narrowed those down to the good (Before Sunrise, Pride and Prejudice), the girly (Wimbledon, Love Actually) and the geeky (Serenity). Then it came time for the TV shows.

I have an extensive collection of TV shows on DVD ranging from season 1 of Clarissa Explains it All (if you’d asked me to write about my favorite TV show when I was 9 that’s what you would have gotten), to a random smattering of Friends seasons, to the four good years of Gilmore Girls (everything pre-Logan, basically). There are the shows that never made it past season one (My So-Called Life, Firefly), and the ones that always lead to hysterical laughter (Arrested Development). And then there’s the jewel of my collection, the collector’s edition Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Complete Series. 40 discs of pure, unadulterated awesome.

I was a late-comer to the Buffy fandom; my sister and I started watching the show through 1 AM re-runs after Saturday Night Live the summer before my senior year of high school and a year after it went off the air. I don’t think it was what either of us expected…it was funny. It was smart. One of the best episodes of the entire series didn’t even have dialogue and another was a musical! And all of it born out of a relatively crappy Luke Perry movie from the early nineties.

Joss Whedon, creator/producer/writer/God, wanted to create a metaphor for high school as hell, and set the series in the fictional Sunnydale, California, in a high school that literally was hell, or situated directly over it, anyway. He also wanted his heroine to be the girl from all those slasher movies, the blonde that gets killed in the first act. Enter Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar): a pretty, popular cheerleader who could kill you with her pinky. Not that she would. Unless you had fangs and a particular aversion to sunlight.

The show combined 3 key elements, all in its title. “Buffy” – comedy, “Vampire” – horror, and “Slayer” – action. (The “the” just holds it all together.) Sometimes it went to very dark places—in the episode “the Pack,” Xander (Nicholas Brendon), along with several school bullies, is possessed by a hyena. While he’s detained by Buffy, the other students eat the principal for lunch (not the only principal to be eaten in the course of the show, either. Buffy was never afraid of a high body count). It also went for completely silly comedy—after a bad break-up in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” Xander blackmails a girl in his class into casting a love spell that goes horribly, horribly awry. As every woman in Sunnydale tries to seduce and then destroy him, Buffy gets turned into a rat and Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) tries to keep the women in line long enough to reverse their spells.

At its best, though, the show combined comedy with drama. In the aforementioned musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” Buffy deals with her unhappiness at being brought back to life by her friends with a backdrop of dancing demons and silly songs (Sample lyrics to “The Mustard Song”: “They got the mustard out!”). It could wrench your heart and then make you laugh through your tears.

Every season of the series focused on a theme (season four was all about friendship, and how that can be tested in college, and season seven was about loneliness and alienation), and every season had a “Big Bad” around to cause problems. Some of the best include the Mayor, a germaphobe and all-around nice guy, if only he hadn’t sold his soul in exchange for immortality, and the Trio, three extreme nerds (Buffy writers almost all say that, if they needed dialogue for the Trio, all they needed to do was stick their heads into the Writer’s Room and write down whatever conversation was going on there, hence fights about the best James Bond and the line “Scully wants me so bad.”) who decide to take over Sunnydale.

After season 3, Buffy was spun-off into Angel, a darker, though sometimes funnier, show that followed Buffy’s en-souled vampire boyfriend, Angel(us) (David Boreanaz) to Los Angeles where he starts a mystical detective agency with a half-demon, half-drunk Irishman, Doyle (Glenn Quinn), and Buffy’s best frenemy Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter). Like any show, Angel had its ups and downs, and the body count was high, just as with Buffy. It was never a clone of its sister show, but they dealt with similar themes.

Buffy is what they call a cult show. It never had the highest ratings, but it had, and continues to have, a fan-base that loved it passionately. So much so that a year ago it returned, not to the screen, but to the page, as a canonical comic book written by Joss Whedon and several old writers from the show, as well as people who wrote for the early Buffy comics, and some new names as well. New issues are released every month, and they’ve contained some big surprises (literally, one of the characters is now a giant), several old faces (including a few that are supposed to be dead), and a lot of new characters. In the comics world there’s also Fray, a sort of spin-off set several centuries in the future, in a world where vampires are called “Lurks” and there hasn’t been a slayer for a very, very long time.

So you can see why the show lasted seven seasons on two networks, and why I gave up almost half of my DVD space to Buffy discs. The show was smart, funny, sad, and beautifully shot to top it all off. The acting, especially from Sarah Michelle Gellar, was always top-notch (Ashanti’s season seven guest spot aside). It was TV gold.

"What's that? A disease?" - Ronald Weasley

2008-08-01T00:43:00.003-04:00

This morning, as I huddled beneath my comforter watching this past weekend's Comic-Con panel with the writers of The Office on NBC.com (a panel you should all watch if you've got even the slightest interest in the writing process...or in watching Mindy Kaling and BJ Novak bicker adorably), a little red box of sunshine popped up in the top right corner of my screen.

It's always a joy to get an e-mail, and Gmail Notifier makes it that much more fun by adding a little dinging sound and alerting me almost instantly to said e-mail's existence. But this particular e-mail was that much greater. Why? Because it was from Amazon and it was informing me that I could pre-order this.

Now, I've been dying to read The Tales of Beedle the Bard since...well, since I read Deathly Hallows, and the desire only mounted when I found out that JK Rowling had actually written the stories, written them by hand at that, and illustrated them! But, bummer of the century, she'd only written 7 copies, to be given to friends and, in one case, auctioned by Sotheby's for a ridiculous amount of money. I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance to read the book.

Which is only a part of the reason this is so exciting. After a year with the knowledge that, basically, my childhood had come to an end along with Harry's, that there would be no more Harry Potter, we were offered one tiny new glimpse of the Wizarding World when JK Rowling wrote a little prequel to the series, a peep at Sirius and James in their youth, for Waterstones. And now we've got just that little bit more. And fairy tales, at that!

Because what's better than fairy tales? Not a whole lot.

So this is the real question. Who do I convince to shell out the $100 for the fancy pants edition?

Could the Dawn Just Break Now, Please?

2008-07-31T04:50:00.000-04:00

I've been fighting it all week, the urge to squeal like a little girl over Friday's Breaking Dawn release.

Sure, it's certain to be the number one book of the summer and every article in recent memory has compared Stephenie Meyer to (her holiness) JK Rowling, and, yes, my nineteen-year-old sister and her gaggle of equally obsessed minions have been talking about nothing else (except for, of course, the Twilight movie) for months, but the part of me that would like to retain some street cred as someone with decent taste was trying to push aside the part of me that fell hard for these books last year.

I mean, let's be honest, Stephenie Meyer is never gonna win a Pulitzer (clunky exposition is never the way to go). Edward and Jacob could probably tie for the title of boy-most-likely-to-turn-abusive-if-he-doesn't-get-his-way (that is, if they don't kill each other first). Bella is a total Mary Sue.

BUT THESE BOOKS ARE JUST SO MUCH FUN.

So, as I was scrolling through PopWatch just now, I succumbed to the urge to read just one little spoiler. And damn if I didn't pick a good one. And then it happened, that inner twelve-year-old caught hold of my consciousness and made a bee-line for my brain where she promptly started bouncing up and down. Now I've got no choice but to admit that I'm excited. I'll be there Friday night, twenty bucks clutched in my sweaty palm, rocking back and forth onto the balls of my feet, just waiting for the clock to hit 12:01 AM (while trying to block out the sound of over-caffeinated thirteen-year-olds debating Edward v. Jacob and swooning). I'll devour all 800-some pages in less than 24 hours, I'll probably cry, I will most definitely cackle with glee. And then I'll be able to move on.

Until the movie comes out, that is.

Alphabeticals: A is for Arrested Development

2008-07-31T01:06:00.000-04:00

If you've never seen Arrested Development I'm telling you now, there is a gaping hole in your pop-cultural education. It's one of those shows that shines in every way, whether that's writing, plot development, characterization, acting, continuity...even narration. It's a show that is so perfect, so flawless, that it only ever managed a cult following (and the heaps of critical adoration that tend to accompany those things followed by cults). What it is, at its most basic, is pure brilliance in half-hour mockumentary form. Like The Office only really really not.

The basics
A family of odd-balls (GOB, the lazy older brother; Buster, the socially awkward younger brother; Lindsay, the socially conscious--so long as it's convenient--sister; Tobias, her analrapist-turned-actor husband; Maeby, their rebellious daughter; Lucille and George, the white-collar-criminal parents; George-Michael, the geeky teenager; and Michael, his father, the straight-man holding the whole family together), the Bluths, are falling apart at the seams when George gets arrested and Michael takes over the company. They all come together in a poorly constructed Model Home while Buster (sort of) grows up, George-Michael battles incestuous feelings for his cousin, no one except Maeby gets a job and Michael struggles to remain sane amidst it all. Plus, it's all narrated by Ron Howard.

Yes. That Ron Howard.

Why You Should Watch
1. The entire cast is excellent, but David Cross as the brother-in-law with acting dreams and an unclear sexual orientation is especially hilarious (an impressive feat with such stiff competition).
2. Pre-Superbad Michael Cera, baby fat and all, was just as good at the awkward pause then as he is now.
3. Cameos from James Lipton, Julia-Louis Dryfus, Scott Baio, Liza Minelli, Martin Mull, Henry Winkler, Harry Hamlin, Zach Braff, William Huang and several other random celebrities.
4. It's a show with undeniable foresight. Watch it and then rewatch it...there's foreshadowing for events in season 3 from the very beginning.
5. The best running jokes on television.
6.

7. Mostly, though, it's a show you'll still find funny on the twelfth or two thousandth viewing.

Those Lazy Hazy Not-So-Crazy Days of Summer

2008-07-29T23:33:00.001-04:00

I'm hardly a summer person. I'm sure when I was eight I claimed it as my favorite season the same way recess was my favorite subject and dessert was my favorite meal, but the further I get from my childhood, the more I accept that the drowsy, sticky, endless boredom of summer is just not for me.

But there are two things summer will always be good for: reading and catching up on TV.

I am both a voracious reader and a voracious watcher and I often find myself torn between my two favorite hobbies. They're hardly activities that can be done simultaneously, too much plot trying to infiltrate the brain at once (and more than that, I may be the world's worst multi-tasker). The number of summer evenings I've spent trying to decide between slipping into the bathtub with a paperback and curling up under the covers with my laptop and a DVD box-set are too many to count.

In fact, so far this summer I've read twelve books and watched at least 100 episodes of TV (this might be/probably is an under-estimate). Add to that my 2-3 days a week job at a local movie theatre, sleep time (and I'm a big fan of sleep) and all the additional hours I spend checking LiveJournal, reading webcomics, Twittering and refreshing Whedonesque and...I've still got too much time on my hands.

So I've come to you, the good people of the interwebs, to share this love of all things that pop (culture wise). Television will probably predominate (I watch a lot of TV, not all of it "quality"), but books and movies and music are all a part of my cultural diet and will all play a role in this here blog.

Enjoy!