(no subject)
It is HOT. Summer has hit with full force: the past week has been the first consistently warm and sunny one this year. Good things about this are: sunshine makes me feel happy, I can spend my lunchbreaks picnicking and reading in the park, I can legitimately wear big dark sunglasses which means I can stare at interesting people on the bus without them noticing. Bad things about the onset of summer are: I have to worry about crisping up like a lobster whenever I'm outside for more than half an hour, the buses are unbearably hot and even more unbearably smelly, and the heat makes me feel lethargic and lazy. And so the rest of this post is going to be in handy bullet-point form.
- I finished watching season 2 of Lost. I sort of loved the last few episodes what with big, important-seeming things actually happening for once, like people dying and things blowing up and answers being given at long last! And Desmond came back! About time.. But anyway, the thing is I've realised that I can only enjoy Lost as long as I don't think about it too hard whilst I'm watching it, or reflect upon it for too long afterwards. Because as soon as I do I start to despise it. Passive, non-intellectual-engagement is the way to go. Lost is like my boy-toy.
- I've seen Veronica Mars advertisements on TV and in the media over here for the first time ever. The second series is about to start airing on Living TV, a medium-sized satellite channel. Various magazines have made NiTW their pick of the day and such, there's generally some good buzz, and this of course makes me happy. But I hate, hate, *hate* the TV trailer. Someone who is blatantly NOT Kristen Bell, and sounds suspiciously like a British woman doing an American accent, does a voice-over spiel which is all "teenage girls shouldn't fool around with boys, get involved with drugs, mess with the cops etc etc...but I do! Ha! Watch Veronica Mars!" with a series of completely literal, dull and unilluminating scenes from LitB and NitW playing underneath. It's possibly the most uninspiring trailer I've ever seen for anything. It wouldn't make me want to watch the show. Sigh. You've got to love Living for paying to run these ads on other channels, but I wish they could have made more of an effort with the style and content of the thing. You can see it here, if you want to be depressed. Or maybe you'll love it and tell me so and cheer me up. The UK needs more Veronica love!
- I find myself addicted to The Feeling's debut album, "Twelve Stops and Home".. It's all bouncy and summery and quirky and makes me want to jump around a lot.
- Jonathan Creek is the TV show currently being marathoned on DVD in our house. It originally aired in the mid-nineties, and I vaguely remember having seen bits of it before, but most of it is new to me. Jonathan Creek is a slightly nerdy, reclusive genius-type guy who is a magical theorist - he devises illusions and magic tricks for others to perform. He gets mixed up with Maddie Magellan, who is a bossy freelance journalist with an element of the Bridget Jones about her, and together they solve bizarre, doesn't-make-sense type crimes. The emphasis is always on how it was done, rather than who done it. The lateral-thinking puzzles are a nice twist on the usual types of detective show MotWs, but the thing that really makes me love it is it's sense of humour (both leads are played by actors from a comedy background) and the relationship between Jonathan and Maddie, who are constantly sniping at each other but obviously each loves the other really. Also, Anthony Stewart Head features heavily in the pilot episode camping it up as a magician and doing the WORST attempt at an American accent I think I have ever heard on TV. Oh, but it is *bad*.
- I can feel myself gearing up to vid again. Though as usual, having thought I knew exactly what my next project was going to be, I've suddenly been distracted from it by three or four totally new ideas all begging me to believe in them and choose them over the rest. This is such a familiar, gut-wrenching feeling. I don't want to have to make the decision that one idea is better than all the rest, especially as some of them are mutually exclusive, ie I have two different song possibilities for the same theme/character/relationship, and realistically could only ever vid one of them. It feels like having to choose between children or something - I love all of these songs and these vague ideas I have about what to do with them so very much. In fact, I probably love them so much precisely *because* they are currently vague, and so their holes and inadequacies are not yet apparent. They are each just potentially pefect, largely formless, swirly mixtures of ideas and characters and visuals and emotions that play through my head when I listen to the music. Making a choice to run with one of them; actually laying down the first clip - that's is too scary because then it becomes concrete and thus susceptible to failure. Head-vidding is definitely better, for now.