Summer vacation, Rescue Me, Doctor Who, forks, and names.
I'm semi-officially done with school! Post-planning on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I'm free until August 7th! God, this is such a relief after the topsy-turvy year I've had. I couldn't have survived it without y'all -- and I really do mean that. All the support you've given me has made *such* a difference. Much love!
BTW, I kinda love High School Musical. Yesterday, I rented it as a treat for my 3rd period class... and you haven't lived until you've been in a room of twenty 11-13 year olds singing and dancing along to every word. Badly. And SO adorably.
So I'm already settling in for the summer; not bored yet, but I'm sure it'll start soon. I'm off to Dallas in mid-June for the semiannual family visit, and then maybe NYC in July. Plus, of course, Writercon, for which I'll have to travel... fifteen minutes around I-285. ;) In the meantime, I'll do a lot of sitting around on the sofa. Can't wait.
I'm also thrilled to bits that Rescue Me premieres on Tuesday night! As I've said before, I have no idea why I love that show so much, given that it's the polar opposite of my usual tastes, and much of it would offend me under other circumstances. But I fell for it anyway, and I suspect Sean Garrity is 50% of the reason. Oh, Sean. You're such a stupid, jackassy him-bo, but dammit, you make me laugh like crazy. Doesn't hurt that you're so gorgeous; RM easily has the hottest male cast on TV. ;)
If you've bored and have never seen the show, do check out the bonus scene on AOL.com -- it's fourteen minutes of sheer hilarity, and both fun and accessible even for newbies. And John Scurti (Lou) is doing a hilarious "celebrity blog" on tvguide.com (like Jenna Fischer did for The Office.) God, I wish actors from my other favorite shows would do those; I'd love to read weekly posts from someone like VM's Enrico Colantoni, or BSG's James Callis. Here's hoping we'll get something like that in September!
As for Doctor Who....
Another beautiful episode. Really, they must be treating their cinematographer very well indeed. Though I'm getting rather sick of staying on Earth (or a reasonable facsimile), they do the time/place settings quite wonderfully.
The cast was marvelous -- Ron Cook gives me a warm, homey feeling inside, and Maureen Lipman was as delightfully wicked as I would've expected. The others felt very realistic, which is always a good quality.
Otherwise? Meh. I never quite warmed to the episode. It had much going for it -- emotion, mystery, setting, acting -- but the overall effect felt rather standoffish. I think this speaks to a problem with the season as a whole. S1 (technically S27, but hey) had a unified feel to it, an arc with a beginning, middle, and end. Granted, much of that was due to Eccleston's limited time, but everything seemed to fit together, even the standalones. This season doesn't have the same momentum; "The Idiot's Lantern" seemed to exist in an emotional bubble, as have many of the others. Character continuity is nebulous, to say the least. I don't feel like I'm going on a proverbial journey along with Rose, Ten, and the others they've met and left on the way. To put it in a different context, it feels like a midyear one-off in an American 22-episode season, the kind where you say, "Oh, that was nice", but the resonance doesn't linger.
To be fair, this doesn't portend doom for the rest of the season. Many of last year's episodes felt too random and meaningless until "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways" wrapped everything up so perfectly. But right now it just feels like Davies et al have settled in for the long haul, getting a bit too comfortable along the way. I want that sense of urgency, of even the simplest things being larger than I could possibly imagine.
Random segue: a few weeks ago, the DW boards on TWoP got into a discussion of the different ways we hold cutlery. I've always used the zigzag method -- cut the food with a knife, then set it aside and eat primarily with a fork -- but the continental method is more prevalent in Europe and parts of the U.S. I've noticed most people on TV use continental, because it's seen as more "sophisticated". Whatever. I tend to eat really slowly, so zigzag works for me. Cultural differences like these are quite intriguing; one of these days I'll have to do a long post about it.
In fact, I keep thinking of topics about which I'd love to write loooong posts.* I'm tempted to start talking about the use of characters' names in fic, and how the names we choose often have significant meanings -- especially with shows like BSG, where a character is called by several different names, or one like X-Files, where the two leads were almost always "Scully" and "Mulder", and calling them something else felt wrong. ;) But right now I'm jonesing to write fic, so I'm off to my favorite Starbucks patio.
ETA: Welcome to the world, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. You're going to be gorgeous... and you will never, ever have any privacy. Poor kid.
BTW, I kinda love High School Musical. Yesterday, I rented it as a treat for my 3rd period class... and you haven't lived until you've been in a room of twenty 11-13 year olds singing and dancing along to every word. Badly. And SO adorably.
So I'm already settling in for the summer; not bored yet, but I'm sure it'll start soon. I'm off to Dallas in mid-June for the semiannual family visit, and then maybe NYC in July. Plus, of course, Writercon, for which I'll have to travel... fifteen minutes around I-285. ;) In the meantime, I'll do a lot of sitting around on the sofa. Can't wait.
I'm also thrilled to bits that Rescue Me premieres on Tuesday night! As I've said before, I have no idea why I love that show so much, given that it's the polar opposite of my usual tastes, and much of it would offend me under other circumstances. But I fell for it anyway, and I suspect Sean Garrity is 50% of the reason. Oh, Sean. You're such a stupid, jackassy him-bo, but dammit, you make me laugh like crazy. Doesn't hurt that you're so gorgeous; RM easily has the hottest male cast on TV. ;)
If you've bored and have never seen the show, do check out the bonus scene on AOL.com -- it's fourteen minutes of sheer hilarity, and both fun and accessible even for newbies. And John Scurti (Lou) is doing a hilarious "celebrity blog" on tvguide.com (like Jenna Fischer did for The Office.) God, I wish actors from my other favorite shows would do those; I'd love to read weekly posts from someone like VM's Enrico Colantoni, or BSG's James Callis. Here's hoping we'll get something like that in September!
As for Doctor Who....
Another beautiful episode. Really, they must be treating their cinematographer very well indeed. Though I'm getting rather sick of staying on Earth (or a reasonable facsimile), they do the time/place settings quite wonderfully.
The cast was marvelous -- Ron Cook gives me a warm, homey feeling inside, and Maureen Lipman was as delightfully wicked as I would've expected. The others felt very realistic, which is always a good quality.
Otherwise? Meh. I never quite warmed to the episode. It had much going for it -- emotion, mystery, setting, acting -- but the overall effect felt rather standoffish. I think this speaks to a problem with the season as a whole. S1 (technically S27, but hey) had a unified feel to it, an arc with a beginning, middle, and end. Granted, much of that was due to Eccleston's limited time, but everything seemed to fit together, even the standalones. This season doesn't have the same momentum; "The Idiot's Lantern" seemed to exist in an emotional bubble, as have many of the others. Character continuity is nebulous, to say the least. I don't feel like I'm going on a proverbial journey along with Rose, Ten, and the others they've met and left on the way. To put it in a different context, it feels like a midyear one-off in an American 22-episode season, the kind where you say, "Oh, that was nice", but the resonance doesn't linger.
To be fair, this doesn't portend doom for the rest of the season. Many of last year's episodes felt too random and meaningless until "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways" wrapped everything up so perfectly. But right now it just feels like Davies et al have settled in for the long haul, getting a bit too comfortable along the way. I want that sense of urgency, of even the simplest things being larger than I could possibly imagine.
Random segue: a few weeks ago, the DW boards on TWoP got into a discussion of the different ways we hold cutlery. I've always used the zigzag method -- cut the food with a knife, then set it aside and eat primarily with a fork -- but the continental method is more prevalent in Europe and parts of the U.S. I've noticed most people on TV use continental, because it's seen as more "sophisticated". Whatever. I tend to eat really slowly, so zigzag works for me. Cultural differences like these are quite intriguing; one of these days I'll have to do a long post about it.
In fact, I keep thinking of topics about which I'd love to write loooong posts.* I'm tempted to start talking about the use of characters' names in fic, and how the names we choose often have significant meanings -- especially with shows like BSG, where a character is called by several different names, or one like X-Files, where the two leads were almost always "Scully" and "Mulder", and calling them something else felt wrong. ;) But right now I'm jonesing to write fic, so I'm off to my favorite Starbucks patio.
ETA: Welcome to the world, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. You're going to be gorgeous... and you will never, ever have any privacy. Poor kid.