There's a subject line out there with my name on it; some day, it will be mine
Belated happy birthday to simplystars! And happy birthday pipsqueaky!
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Travel tip from me to you: if you find yourself thinking, "It's a national holiday and the weather is gorgeous; I think I'll just jaunt down to Santa Cruz and hang out on the beach," have yourself committed immediately! Wall-to-wall people, it was. In our defense, we were in the Santa Cruz mountains in the morning anyway; Mrs. D. coordinates events for her brother's catering business and had an appointment at a wedding venue. So heading to the beach seemed like a good idea at the time. Seemed
Santa Cruz is a strange town, at least from the outside looking in. I used to go down there pretty often with my college boyfriend and our roommate; the roommate had relatives who lived in Soquel, on a big lot with goats and chickens and a house they'd built themselves and slowly encroaching neighbors as the area got built up, and we'd stay with them; later, the roommate got a job with a family-owned lumber company with land around Davenport, and we'd spend weekends in the redwoods in a cabin with a propane refrigerator. This is the lens I've seen the place through. Now there are monstrous Mediterranean-style villas sprouting among the redwoods along the 17. It always seemed like there was a divide in the town, between the hippies and the professionals, between the tumble-down properties and the neat little homes alongside each other, but all of that Silicon Valley money seems to have pumped steroids into an existing faultline over the past ten years.
Come to think of it, if you substitute hippies for artists or just longtime residents, that's pretty much the story of half the towns in the Bay Area.
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I hadn't seen "The Runaway Bride" before Friday and I really wonder how different my view of Donna would have been if I'd seen it in order. Because yes, she yelled a lot and smacked the Doctor around, but it was actually a pretty realistic reaction to what was happening to her. As far as she knew, she'd gotten sucked up into a spaceship and dragged along on a strange and frightening adventure, and the person most proximately responsible for all of it was the Doctor. The difference between Donna's reactions, and Martha's and Rose's, was that Donna didn't give the Doctor a free pass because he's fascinating and charismatic; he was part of the mess and he was there and she was going to scream at him. And the cartoonish reactions of the first half of the episode soon gave way to a more complicated picture of someone with an utterly average life, who had gone about the pursuit of that averageness with a relentlessness, and was for the first time seeing something beyond that. I would probably have found her more annoying initially if I didn't know she was going to be the next series companion, and if I didn't feel at this point like having a companion who doesn't give the Doctor that free pass, who doesn't shrink back a little in awe, is going to be an utter breath of fresh air.
toysdream had an interesting post on the monsters of old and new Who through the first Tennant season.
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I rewatched all of Season 1 of Farscape over the last week and am heading into Season 2 now. I was talking with pellucid at one point about how wierd I am about rewatching the show, how it's so emotionally involving for me that I have to watch the whole thing from beginning to end, because I have to take the whole journey in its entirety, the highs and the lows, all of the pieces falling into place and breaking apart and rearranging themselves, the absorbing intensity. I am completely incapable of popping in a couple of episodes. It's a project, a commitment, but it's been too long since I've seen it.
Yes, I am strange.
It's also, as it turns out, a great motivational tool. Watch an episode; vacuum and swiffer floors; watch an episode; empty dishwasher; watch an episode; clean bathroom; watch an episode while folding laundry. I actually got some things done that really needed to get done this weekend.
* * * * *
I've been sitting on the last four books in the Dresden Files series for a while, and since it's been long enough that I've forgotten most of the details of the bookverse, I've started re-reading from the beginning. OMG, I had forgotten how badly Harry's attitude toward women (He's a "gentleman"! He opens doors for the ladies! Because he's an old-fashioned guy!) grated on me in Storm Front, and how creeped out I was by Butcher's description about all the female characters' makeup regimens, and their general portrayal as either sexy and flirting to get ahead or ball-busting and hardened beyond repair. Or whores who are vampires. As I remember, this softened up quite a bit in later books, and both Murphy and Susan became more complex, and Harry stopped acting like girls were mysterious aliens with mysterious girl cooties. I have to think it did, or I surely would have stopped reading? A lot of the character development in the first book is pretty sketchy and cartoonish, there's a ton of exposition, and I remember both the characterizations and the writing gaining depth and ditching a lot of stereotypes, both gender and other, as time went on, and getting a lot more interesting as a result. I am, however, overwhelmingly grateful that they ditched that part of Harry's characterizaton for the TV show; TV Harry doesn't have a fabulous rapport with women either, but it's all part of his damage, not some creepy fetishization of chivalry. And TV Murphy doesn't get authorial flack for her hard edges; they're there for a reason.
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The second season of Eureka starts tomorrow night at 9 Eastern! Not only am I looking forward to the show itself, I'm looking forward to an end to SciFi's bizarre promotions for it. I don't know what it says about me, but when I saw the one about the mouse trap with the mulch setting out of the corner of my eye while doing something else, I thought it was real and just shook my head at The State of The World Today.
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I finally, finally, finally bought my tickets to Dragon*Con. I'm actually flying in Thursday night, so if you're going to be around that early, let me know. If left to our own devices, asta77 and I might end up watching a frightening amount of Stargate.
* * * * *
Travel tip from me to you: if you find yourself thinking, "It's a national holiday and the weather is gorgeous; I think I'll just jaunt down to Santa Cruz and hang out on the beach," have yourself committed immediately! Wall-to-wall people, it was. In our defense, we were in the Santa Cruz mountains in the morning anyway; Mrs. D. coordinates events for her brother's catering business and had an appointment at a wedding venue. So heading to the beach seemed like a good idea at the time. Seemed
Santa Cruz is a strange town, at least from the outside looking in. I used to go down there pretty often with my college boyfriend and our roommate; the roommate had relatives who lived in Soquel, on a big lot with goats and chickens and a house they'd built themselves and slowly encroaching neighbors as the area got built up, and we'd stay with them; later, the roommate got a job with a family-owned lumber company with land around Davenport, and we'd spend weekends in the redwoods in a cabin with a propane refrigerator. This is the lens I've seen the place through. Now there are monstrous Mediterranean-style villas sprouting among the redwoods along the 17. It always seemed like there was a divide in the town, between the hippies and the professionals, between the tumble-down properties and the neat little homes alongside each other, but all of that Silicon Valley money seems to have pumped steroids into an existing faultline over the past ten years.
Come to think of it, if you substitute hippies for artists or just longtime residents, that's pretty much the story of half the towns in the Bay Area.
* * * * *
I hadn't seen "The Runaway Bride" before Friday and I really wonder how different my view of Donna would have been if I'd seen it in order. Because yes, she yelled a lot and smacked the Doctor around, but it was actually a pretty realistic reaction to what was happening to her. As far as she knew, she'd gotten sucked up into a spaceship and dragged along on a strange and frightening adventure, and the person most proximately responsible for all of it was the Doctor. The difference between Donna's reactions, and Martha's and Rose's, was that Donna didn't give the Doctor a free pass because he's fascinating and charismatic; he was part of the mess and he was there and she was going to scream at him. And the cartoonish reactions of the first half of the episode soon gave way to a more complicated picture of someone with an utterly average life, who had gone about the pursuit of that averageness with a relentlessness, and was for the first time seeing something beyond that. I would probably have found her more annoying initially if I didn't know she was going to be the next series companion, and if I didn't feel at this point like having a companion who doesn't give the Doctor that free pass, who doesn't shrink back a little in awe, is going to be an utter breath of fresh air.
toysdream had an interesting post on the monsters of old and new Who through the first Tennant season.
* * * * *
I rewatched all of Season 1 of Farscape over the last week and am heading into Season 2 now. I was talking with pellucid at one point about how wierd I am about rewatching the show, how it's so emotionally involving for me that I have to watch the whole thing from beginning to end, because I have to take the whole journey in its entirety, the highs and the lows, all of the pieces falling into place and breaking apart and rearranging themselves, the absorbing intensity. I am completely incapable of popping in a couple of episodes. It's a project, a commitment, but it's been too long since I've seen it.
Yes, I am strange.
It's also, as it turns out, a great motivational tool. Watch an episode; vacuum and swiffer floors; watch an episode; empty dishwasher; watch an episode; clean bathroom; watch an episode while folding laundry. I actually got some things done that really needed to get done this weekend.
* * * * *
I've been sitting on the last four books in the Dresden Files series for a while, and since it's been long enough that I've forgotten most of the details of the bookverse, I've started re-reading from the beginning. OMG, I had forgotten how badly Harry's attitude toward women (He's a "gentleman"! He opens doors for the ladies! Because he's an old-fashioned guy!) grated on me in Storm Front, and how creeped out I was by Butcher's description about all the female characters' makeup regimens, and their general portrayal as either sexy and flirting to get ahead or ball-busting and hardened beyond repair. Or whores who are vampires. As I remember, this softened up quite a bit in later books, and both Murphy and Susan became more complex, and Harry stopped acting like girls were mysterious aliens with mysterious girl cooties. I have to think it did, or I surely would have stopped reading? A lot of the character development in the first book is pretty sketchy and cartoonish, there's a ton of exposition, and I remember both the characterizations and the writing gaining depth and ditching a lot of stereotypes, both gender and other, as time went on, and getting a lot more interesting as a result. I am, however, overwhelmingly grateful that they ditched that part of Harry's characterizaton for the TV show; TV Harry doesn't have a fabulous rapport with women either, but it's all part of his damage, not some creepy fetishization of chivalry. And TV Murphy doesn't get authorial flack for her hard edges; they're there for a reason.
* * * * *
The second season of Eureka starts tomorrow night at 9 Eastern! Not only am I looking forward to the show itself, I'm looking forward to an end to SciFi's bizarre promotions for it. I don't know what it says about me, but when I saw the one about the mouse trap with the mulch setting out of the corner of my eye while doing something else, I thought it was real and just shook my head at The State of The World Today.
* * * * *
I finally, finally, finally bought my tickets to Dragon*Con. I'm actually flying in Thursday night, so if you're going to be around that early, let me know. If left to our own devices, asta77 and I might end up watching a frightening amount of Stargate.