hipspinster

pretty in pink

2010-10-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

"nothing happens to me."

that's what army doctor john watson (martin freeman, the newly minted bilbo baggins) tells his therapist in episode 1 of the BBC miniseries sherlock, when she urges him to blog about his experiences as a way of working out the trauma of being in afghanistan. as this phrase is one of genre fiction's top 10 NEVER SAY THATs (along with "no one can stop me now" and "i think we're safe here"), it is absolutely no surprise that, a very short time later, watson comes face-to-face with his future partner in crime-fighting, sherlock holmes (the wonderfully named benedict cumberbatch).

holmes asks for a cell phone, watson offers his, and -- just like that -- the good doctor is pulled into a world where so much happens to him, he can scarcely believe his own words when he later tells someone he only met holmes yesterday.

wait a second, cell phone?! yep. steven moffat and mark gatiss's three-episode series, which debuted in july across the pond, is a thoroughly modern take on sir arthur conan doyle's vintage tales. it got picked up in the states by masterpiece mystery! and kicks off in southern california on PBS affiliates KOCE tonight at 9 and KCET thursday night at 9.

moffat is the current doctor who showrunner, and gatiss has both written and appeared in episodes of that venerable british sci-fi program, so it's no surprise that the UK press beat the comparison to death this summer, and i shan't belabor the point. suffice to say that both shows feature a lot of running, and cumberbatch's singular "consulting detective" bears more than a passing manic resemblance to 11th doctor matt smith's singular time lord. and, as smith's doctor sparked a renewed interest in harris tweed jackets, so did cumberbatch's detective spark excitement over sherlock's coat.

as we know from who reviver russell t. davies's spin-off series torchwood, the 21st century is when everything changes, and that includes sherlock holmes ... at least in terms of the trappings. he still grabs a london cab when dashing off to investigate, but the cabs have horsepower, not horses. he still alternately annoys and abets scotland yard's lestrade (rupert graves), but now he bugs the hapless detective inspector by texting rebuttals to the media in the middle of police press conferences. he still has an addiction, but it's to nicotine, not cocaine, although it's sort-of alluded that he had a more illegal addiction at some point. his science of deduction is now a website, but holmes still has a brother, mycroft (gatiss), who occupies a minor position in the british government or is the british government, depending on which version of his job description you believe, and who drives sherlock crazy with his concern.

but the main thing that hasn't changed is that sherlock holmes is still desperate to not be bored, a fact the villain in this first story is counting on.

the tale is titled "a study in pink," and it neatly mashes up details from other conan doyle stories with the plot of the novel a study in scarlet, the first appearance of holmes in print. as in the original, a mutual friend introduces watson to holmes. they meet at a hospital lab, holmes runs down all the reasons he might be a crap roommate, and watson is impressed by his future flatmate's whole deal. watson remains a wounded veteran of the afghanistan war, and moffat amusingly finesses the contradiction between the first novel (where watson's wound was in his shoulder) and later stories (where it's a leg wound) by labeling the latter a "psychosomatic injury." thus, watson walks with a limp and uses a cane, but no worries. the healing power of sherlock holmes is nearly as awesome as his giant deductive-reasoning brain.

pretty soon sherlock holmes and dr. watson are greeting mrs. hudson (una stubbs) at 221b baker street. and pretty soon after that, watson is pulled willingly, if confusedly, into his first case, involving a string of suicides that turn out to be murders most foul.

as with last year's sherlock holmes movie, the bromantic elements are emphasized, although moffat plays them less as oscar/felix odd couple shtick and more on the are-you-boys-TOGETHER? tip. the jangly-jaunty music, by david arnold and michael price, kind of reminded me of hans zimmer's score for the film, too. likewise, the dry, witty banter between our heroes flies fast and thick, which befits the feverish pace, slam cuts, swooping camera, and clever framing. sadly, there is not as much fire in the miniseries as in the film, but one cannot have everything.

at 90 minutes, each episode is nearly movie-length, and they all feel stuffed full (something that cannot always be said for the much shorter episodes of doctor who this past season). i almost felt like the series was written for me, a viewer who loves clever yarns, adept acting, and awesome overcoats. but then moffat went and slapped me in the face with a gratuitously sexist moment. holmes's demeaning remark concerning sgt. sally donovan's (vinette robinson) extracurricular activities yanked me right out of my isn't-this-fun? mood for a good two or three minutes. (yes, she actively hates him and calls him "freak," so obviously there's no love lost between these characters. but here's an idea: how about having an insulting exchange with a woman that doesn't involve basically calling her a whore? crazy, i know.)

anyway, the mystery is unraveled and holmes gets his man ... with more than a little help from watson, natch. before said man goes down for the count, he lets slip that he's working for someone else -- someone who has a great interest in holmes. "there's a name no one says," the killer taunts, "and i'm not gonna say it, either." (and it's not "voldemort," as any sherlock holmes fan has already deduced.) but eventually, he spills.

all three episodes are well worth watching, but the last one, "the great game" (penned by gatiss and debuting on KCET nov. 11 at 9 p.m.), is easily the best, despite the maddening cliffhanger. you don't really need a giant brain to figure out the mystery, but i promise you one thing: you will not be bored.

boogie woogie

2010-10-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

he was a child prodigy destined for greatness. he only needed one name. he was a pioneer of the personality-as-commodity school of celebrity. and, as he was so fond of saying, he didn't give concerts -- he put on a show.

last weekend i took a road trip to blazing hot las vegas to see the liberace museum. my pals catherine and julie cooked up this idea at cat's birthday party a few weeks ago, so we did not take the beast but instead rode in the air-conditioned comfort of cat's honda. not sure why i decided to go along, as i'm not particularly a fan of "mr. showmanship" -- the flashy pianist who was the greatest entertainer of someone's generation, but not mine. in fact, i didn't really know much about him. but suddenly we all really wanted to see the museum before it closes on october 17, due to declining attendance and the liberace foundation's desire to focus on its work providing scholarships to students in the arts. which, especially in this day and age, is more important. (the collection will live on as a touring exhibition, according to the foundation's official press release.)

in life, walter "lee" liberace (who died in 1987 and was for two decades the highest paid entertainer in the world) assumed such sobriquets as "the glitter man" and "mr. showmanship," but his retconned catchphrase is "the king of bling." it's all over what's left of the merch in the gift shop -- postcards, stand-ups, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, etc. and once you get a load of his mirrored automobiles, mirrored pianos, and elaborately sequinned costumes, it's hard to argue with that.

the museum is in two buildings in a corner strip mall on east tropicana avenue. liberace's music -- a blend of classical and pop revered by his fans and often reviled by critics -- wafts through both spaces, delicate and light-as-air, playful and unfailingly joyful. one building displays his cars and his pianos, the other one presents his costumes and jewelry, a little bit of furniture, and walls full of awards.

cat insisted there was no way he could possibly drive the mirror-encrusted roadster shown above, because it would blind people! also among the auto collection is his 1972 gold metal flake bradley gt (with a silver candelabrum etched on each side), his custom-made mirrored rolls royce (with convenient one-man bar in the back seat), an old british taxi with a working meter (which the info card said he occasionally used to pick up friends at the palm springs airport), and a pink vw pimped out like a rolls royce.

the pianos include a mirrored grand and a vintage player piano customized with mirrored tiles and other flourishes. another one is painted a deep blue to match one of his outfits. my favorite was this elaborately painted number that was featured in the 1945 film a song to remember -- about the life of frederic chopin, who was of polish origin like liberace. it inspired the budding mr. showmanship to create his famous candelabra-on-piano stage settings, and he bought the movie piano later on as a memento.

for me what made the trip worthwhile were the costumes. almost all of them are totally over-the-top, but what do you expect from the glitter man? sequins, beads, feathers, fur -- all the trappings of luxury and excess, reflecting his oft-repeated quotation of his friend mae west, that "too much of a good thing is wonderful!" every outfit has a cape to go with, and special shoes too, because one cannot go running around in custom-made finery with off-the-rack footwear, darling.

i took a lot of pictures, all with my iphone, which did surprisingly well considering that the showroom is covered in mirrors and draped with chandeliers, so light rays are constantly bouncing around. some of the cooler costumes are in a glass case, which made it really hard to get a good shot, but most are just behind ropes/rails. the purple ostrich feather ensemble above is among my favorites; it reminded me of lilacs (and i learned later from the website's trivia page that lilacs were liberace's fave flower, omg). but it's hard to choose just one. check out my gallery if you want to see more, including his famous red-white-and-blue bicentennial hotpants outfit and a fairly spectacular matador-themed costume, along with this red and black number that is vaguely art deco:

i couldn't get a good picture of the most amazing one -- the crazy-elaborate "king neptune" suit. (luckily, someone else on the internet has a great shot of it.) it features a ridiculously high, clamshell-shaped back collar, loads of pearls, and a cape lining embroidered with shimmering green kelp strands and coral branches. it was his heaviest costume and weighed 200 pounds!!

i told my dad about the trip, and he had a story about seeing liberace live, some time in the '70s, at a nightclub in jersey. his party was seated right next to the stage, and the woman in the couple he was with had on a LOT of gorgeous diamonds. liberace made his way up to her and kissed her hand, saying, "i don't know what you do, madam, but you're obviously doing it right!" ahaha.

reading about liberace in the fairly extensive wikipedia entry left me pretty impressed by how driven he was and how much he did. (he played in cuba. he met the pope. he performed for the queen.) and also wondering what he was really like. in the clips i watched on youtube, including the one linked from the title of this post, his public persona is likable, almost sweet, and he seems to genuinely be enjoying himself even while busting out the schmaltziest shtick. he was savvy enough to lampoon himself (as did many comedians and critics), as when he appeared in a double role on the '60s batman show, playing a concert pianist and his criminal mastermind twin brother.

which is an odd irony, and not because liberace had a twin brother who died at birth (shades of elvis, ahaha). liberace lived a double life -- he was gay but spent his entire life denying it. it's sort of sad that a man who exhibited his talents and tastes so boldly ended up having to hide who he really was. but otoh it's hard to feel sorry for him, and he probably wouldn't have wanted that. after all, back in the '50s, he won damages from tabloids that made insinuations about his sexuality. and, as he said then, "i cried all the way to the bank!"

when i grow up

2010-04-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

it's not a new doctor -- it's the same man. new doctor who showrunner steven moffat has said this a lot recently, and it's true. in his latest incarnation, the doctor is the same man. only different.

the BBC's time lord hero has a new face (matt smith, above at left), along with a lot of other new things. and at long last -- well over a year since smith was cast to replace outgoing doctor david tennant -- the ever-growing u.s. who fandom will see him in action in "the eleventh hour," airing saturday night on bbc america at 6 and 9.

do i even need to say it? all right, i will: SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

the episode kicks off at high, loopy speed, with the seriously damaged TARDIS flying out of control over nighttime london while the newly regenerated doctor dangles, hollering, from the open doorway. he crash-lands in the garden of a house where a girl named amelia pond, who lives there with her aunt, is praying to SANTA (ahaha!). she needs someone to fix the crack in her wall, from whence mysterious whispers emanate. "thank you, santa," she says upon seeing the battered police box that has just crushed the garden shed.

it's a great start (restart?), and in general i like matt smith as the 11th doctor. as much as i loved tennant (and christopher eccleston before him), and almost everything former showrunner russell t. davies did with doctor who (including bringing it back to the screen in the first place), i have been looking forward to a change. after all, change -- brought on by the character's periodic regeneration, allowing another actor to take over -- has been at the heart(s) of this show practically since it began in 1963.

tennant became the most popular doctor ever in the UK, but matt smith is going to be the biggest doctor ever in the states. not because he's better than tennant or even necessarily more appealing to americans; it's just about timing. BBCA has relatively recently been ramping up its profile and didn't even air the show first over here for much of the new who run (which premiered here on scifi). doctor who is still a cult jam here, but the buzz is building. the major u.s. dailies have made a fair amount of fuss over this latest series, as have the entertainment rags and blogs.

smith, 27, is the youngest actor to play the doctor (a couple of years younger than peter davison, who was 29 when he became the fifth doctor back in 1981). and his secret weapon is karen gillan, a 22-year-old scottish redhead who is super-cute and very likable as the doctor's new best friend, amy pond. this week they did some promo appearances in new york and l.a., and boy are they adorably goofy and geeky together.

this apparent turn toward the youth market might be worrisome, were the very fine writer and award-winning fan fave moffat not at the helm. as it is, all that talk about smith playing old in a young body wasn't complete hype. smith makes a strong mark here, and i think it will become more distinctive. still, eleven's catchphrase -- "geronimo!" -- is not a patch on nine's "fantastic!" or even ten's "allons-y!" but at least he still says "whaaaat?!" and now he gets to pingpong about time and space in a redone TARDIS that is, as moffat says, "even bigger on the inside." hallelujah for that!

(image lifted from the eclectic banana blog; thanks.)

moffat is straightforward about his take on the show. "doctor who is a fairy tale," says he -- more grimms than disney, of course. his previous who stories often feature fantastical goings-on and creepy hybrids of myth and science fiction -- the gas-mask people in "the empty child"/"the doctor dances," the fabled weeping angels of "blink." however, like fairy tales, moffat's stories resonate not because of the supernatural but due to the all-too-human: lies, guilt, secrets, love. both moffat and RTD are emotional writers, but where RTD's who popped on every level -- visually, sonically, dramatically -- moffat's is so far more nuanced and intimate, although just as likely to get loud and silly.

sure, the doctor has 20 minutes to save the world in "the eleventh hour" -- without TARDIS or sonic screwdriver. but that's just backdrop. this is really about setting up the relationship between the doctor and seven-year-old amelia, a complex and psychologically fraught connection that's a far cry from "nice to meet you, rose tyler. run for your life!"

still wearing ten's battered suit and trainers, eleven hauls himself out of the TARDIS wreckage, but his extraordinary entrance barely fazes amelia. that crack in the wall, however, has her worried. "must be a hell of a crack," muses the doctor over a restorative meal of fish fingers and custard (the culmination of some overlong spit-take slapshtick involving the doctor searching for the right food to help him through the last phases of regeneration).

he got that right. on the other side of the crack, an ominous authoritarian voice announces, "prisoner zero has escaped." amelia's heard those words before but doesn't know what they mean. the doctor doesn't either, but he's going to find out ... right after he deals with the regenerating TARDIS. he tells amelia he'll be back in five minutes, and then she can come with him. amelia packs a suitcase and parks herself in the garden to wait.

and wait ... .

"geronimo!" be damned; the real catchphrase this season may be "timey-wimey" (a moffat-ism that basically means time travel causes weirdness). that is, the doctor doesn't come back in five minutes: he comes back 12 years later. well, it seems like five minutes to him, but ... like i said. timey-wimey. get used to it.

anyway, little amelia is now stunning redhead amy (karen gillan), the girl who waited a fucking long time. and her wait is not quite over. if this all seems kinda familiar, you've probably seen the tennant episode "the girl in the fireplace." penned by moffat, it had the doctor popping in and out of the life of madame de pompadour in a similar time-stretched fashion.

i got that feeling a lot: moffat, another lifelong who fan and more of a traditionalist than RTD, has made something so different, yet so very familiar. moffat establishes through-lines that will doubtless run all season, one of which is related to that crack in amy's wall, something called the pandorica, and the admonition that "silence will fall." there's also a laptop boldly emblazoned with the product name "MΨTH" (which recalls the atmos thing from last season but might just be a throwaway gag). amy doesn't have a family (nor, thank god, an unrequited or even requited love for the doctor), but she does have tenuous ties to ordinary life that may prove hard to shake. yet all this treading of familiar territory is preferable to new ideas that don't really work, such as the fast-forward "doctorvision" bit meant to show us, i guess, how the doctor's perceptions work.

eleven's tweedy jacket and bow tie somewhat recall the second doctor's get-up, but he's not as deceptively clownish as patrick troughton played two. smith does have a distinctly eccentric edge to his acting, and if he doesn't radiate manic joy at playing the doctor from every pore (as did tennant), his doctor still at times comes across as benignly unhinged and perennially distracted, a la the great tom baker, the fourth, longest-running, and still best doctor ever.

happily, amy is a bit unhinged herself. who wouldn't be, after that childhood experience? the doctor clearly left a big impression, as she grew up making dolls, stories, and comics about him -- likenesses so well rendered that when he finally does return, everyone in her tiny town is like, "hey, it's YOU! the raggedy doctor! YOU'RE REAL OMG!" which is a pretty funny running gag.

it's rather horrifying, however, to have all the adults around you trying to convince you your "imaginary friend" isn't real, when you know he is. the experience has made amy more independent-minded but has also damaged her. "12 years and four psychiatrists," amy fumes at the doctor -- yikes.

the doctor seems a bit hurt by her attitude. "i grew up," she snaps. "we'll soon fix that," he cheerfully replies. the doctor is peter pan, and now amy doesn't have to grow up.

it is like a fairy tale, or a dream. we never see amy in regular clothes; she wears either her nightclothes or her ridiculous "kissogram" costume, a policewoman outfit with the shortest skirt evar -- just like how sometimes in dreams you're wearing totally inappropriate clothes for whatever's happening. even the new opening sequence befits a fairy tale, as the time vortex swirls like a menacing black rose, shot through with lightning bolts and fire.

likewise, we see flashes of the more dangerous being behind the doctor's devil-may-care demeanor -- the emergence, perhaps, of the great and terrible time lord described by river song in moffat's "silence in the library." the doctor is the same man -- a point beautifully reflected in a sequence where 11 suits up in his new outfit while warning off the extraterrestrial threat du jour, as a montage of his previous incarnations plays over the alien's info screen. but by the end, when moffat puts a clever twist on the doctor's oft-repeated command of "run," it's clear that 11 can indeed be her doctor.

blown away

2010-01-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

guess what, people? i have seen "the end of time part two," and it is good. and that's about all i'm gonna say about it here. you can watch it tonight on bbc america and decide for yourself. i have a million thoughts about the final appearance of david tennant's doctor, however. although it was not as soul-rippingly sad as "journey's end," it was still a satisfying yarn and an emotional roller-coaster indeed.

i laughed, i cried, i went "what the FUCK??!" so, despite lack of making me quiver on the floor in pain, i say well done, RTD. (and that's taking into account the inevitable OTT moments and did-you-HAVE-to? bits that are an essential part of the russell t. davies canon.) i alternately moaned and clutched the throw pillow and bounced up and down cheering, and that is an acceptable mind-fuck, so yay.

and i must say, the regeneration was pyrotechnic indeed. yummy! in his first scene as the doctor, matt smith appeared a lot more confident than he did when running through it in the "EoTpt2"-related episode of doctor who confidential. (which was titled "alons-y!" hee.) and now we get our first trailer dialed to 11. check it; this is also the first time hipspinter has posted a video clip. (or see it on youtube.) it's a brand-new world indeed.

one last thing: do not stay tuned for demons following "EoT." it sucks. i found it ridiculous when i watched the pilot almost a year ago, but thought i'd stick with it. only one episode later, i realized it was rubbish. a waste of philip glenister and your precious time.

you look so fine

2009-12-29T20:03:00.000-08:00

this holiday season has been full of perpetually reincarnated fictional british heroes: on christmas day we got to see our favorite time lord, as well as shakespeare's angst-plagued danish prince hamlet, as portrayed by doctor who star david tennant in the film version of gregory doran's stratford-to-west-end production of the namesake play. and yesterday i caught the latest incarnation of the world's greatest detective, sherlock holmes, starring robert downey jr. as holmes and jude law as his faithful companion doctor john watson.

this guy ritchie-directed extravaganza is handsome but hardly cerebral (directly the opposite of how i imagine holmes to be), although there are a lot of great lines in a script also plagued by horribly cliched ones. ("solve this case -- whatever it takes!" ugh.) it is mainly a bunch of fight scenes and big ol' set-pieces strung together by an amped-up mystery and a few half-hearted attempts to show us holmes's deductive reasoning in action (which are mercifully soon abandoned for more traditional demonstrations of same). at least three people leap out of windows in this movie. one of them is on fire. that's pretty much all you need to know.

the many references to watson as "the doctor" here led to silly associations in my head. at one point i even poked JD and asked her how come the doctor couldn't just use his sonic screwdriver to get them out of the situation. RDJ was pretty good as holmes (despite, apparently, some objections to an amurican playing the part; isn't that why it's called acting?). but in some ways this movie was, for me, all about watson.

i'm not especially enamored of RDJ or JL as hunks of manflesh, but probably the best thing about sherlock holmes is how wonderfully, spiffily tweedy watson is with his walking stick and amazing clothes that seem to never get dirty, even in grubby ol' victorian england. his grey flannel/magenta pinstripe suit (seen above) is the best of several natty ensembles that kept my eyes riveted, as he does indeed wear them well. man-in-a-suit alert!

the second best thing about sherlock holmes is the original music, by prolific veteran hans zimmer. much of it is this zesty yet off-kilter fiddle-y, banjo-y, piano-y stuff that provides a much-needed organic element in the mix of relentless fisticuffs, fiery explosions, elaborate chases, and wildly evil ambitions.

i recently started reading sir arthur conan doyle's original holmes books, which i somehow never got around to as a kid. having inherited my techie sister's cast-off ipod touch, i downloaded a bunch of free holmes for my kindle app and started from the beginning, after reading a couple of short stories from later in the run. i've only just started the hound of the baskervilles (the third of the four early novels), but i've read enough to know that the movie's writers pretty much frankensteined different parts of doyle's tales and changed details at will. (one example: in the movie, holmes has never before met watson's fiancee, mary. but the whole second novel, the sign of the four, revolves around a case mary brings to holmes, which is how watson meets her in the first place.)

as a result, we have a very au courant emphasis on the bromantic aspect of holmes and watson's relationship, with watson sniping about how messy holmes is and how he keeps borrowing watson's clothes without asking, fussing over how holmes always forgets his revolver, and protesting how holmes uses the dog to try out his latest sleeping potions. ("he doesn't mind," holmes insists, as the plump bulldog snores in the corner.) holmes is still the savvy deductive-reasoning dude and master of disguise, but his ass-kicker quotient is pumped way up. (and his drug-use quotient is shrunken to just barely mentioned.) he also acts very much like an adolescent boy over watson's impending nuptials, using cheap tricks and rudeness to try to split them up. which may all be in the original mix, idk.

anyway. the main story involves a chap named lord blackwood (the amazing mark strong, who has been and will be in many things, but who i especially loved in our friends in the north). he's an apparent master of the dark magical arts who begins terrorizing london with his scary evil ways and has a BIG PLAN TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD. also hanging around is irene adler (rachel mcadams, who is just ok), a criminal american woman who has a History with holmes both here and in the written stories. a more mysterious figure from the holmes canon lurks in the background.

the problem right now with BIG PLANS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD is that every fuckin' genre movie has them. i know warner bros. can't make tons of cash if they don't inject some epic-ness and over-the-top action into a tale involving a guy who mostly uses his mind to defeat bad guys, but they could have still had lots of fight scenes and stunts and set-pieces with a story that had a little less at stake than some mofo who wants to bend the entire world to his will mwahaha. in other words, bored now.

ah, but i mostly enjoyed the flick, although sometimes i laughed at it and not with it. it is way too long at two and a quarter hours, and the uneven pacing doesn't help. the thing takes off at full speed, which yanks you right in, but then it drags and revs up again in cycles that just make you wish they'd get it over with already. and, while i do love me some kicky-fighty, sherlock holmes has so many extended choreographed battles that, by the time we got to the big climactic numbers, i felt like i'd seen it all before.

oh, well. it is worth seeing for the escapism of it all. the man on fire, btw, is not the only cool pyrotechnic thing. so if you, like me, are a firebug who's crazy about balletic fistfights and well-dressed men, by all means go see it. but do get yourself some popcorn on the way in.

blue christmas

2009-12-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

in honor of the beginning of "the end of time," here is a blast from christmas 2007 past. my original doctor who christmas song, penned for my DW buddy richie. although, while 'tis the season for a doctor who special, we are not going to get daleks. i don't think. but we will get wilf (see above)! so yay.

Santa, Bring Me a Dalek

Santa, I've been good this year
Now bring on the excess
But I don't want no costly gear --
No earrings, no Lexus
No MP3, no GPS,
No diamond watch, no Wii
This Christmas I will be a mess
Without supremacy

Santa, bring me a Dalek
I swear it is the best
Santa, bring me a Dalek
The Doctor's nemesis

It's fun, it's keen, it's neat, it's mean
Oh, what a sight to see
The scourge of planet Skaro
As cute as it can be
A mutant form of human life
It's programmed to survive
Mostly made of metal
And yet still quite alive

Santa, bring me a Dalek
The sci-fi king of death
Santa, bring me a Dalek
Or I will hold my breath

[dramatic pause]

I've been good, I've been sweet
I got high marks in school
I do just what my parents say
And follow all the rules

So give me what my heart desires
This super-duper beast
It never stops, it never quits
It's tops, to say the least
There's just no better way to prove
I've got the upper hand
Come Yuletide night I'll be the one
Who's lord of all the land

Santa, bring me a Dalek
It's round and cool and tough
Santa, bring me a Dalek
It's got balls, and that's enough

Santa, bring me a Dalek
Right now, it's not too late
Santa, bring me a Dalek
I will ex-ter-mi-nate!

happy christmas to all!

run

2009-12-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

HELLO, FRIENDS. GUESS WHAT'S GOT ME BACK IN THE MOOD TO POST? THAT'S RIGHT: THE LATEST DOCTOR WHO SPECIAL, "THE WATERS OF MARS," AIRING TONIGHT ON BBC AMERICA. FOLLOWING IS AN IN-DEPTH DISCUSSION OF SAID EPISODE, COMPLETE WITH SPOILERS. SO DON'T READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

"it's the end. but the moment has been prepared for."

the final words of the fourth doctor do apply to "the waters of mars," the latest new doctor who special ... and the proverbial beginning of the end for incarnation number ten, played by the smashingly manic and wonderfully emotional david tennant. a mix of classic sci-fi thriller and dark morality play, the episode has already aired in the UK, and bbc america will screen it for stateside whovians tonight at 9 pm.

four's last words work as commentary on tennant's departure just as well as they served tom baker (still the longest-serving doctor and, until tennant, the most popular) in his day ... for surely no moment in british tv history was ever quite so prepared for as the tenth doctor's last story, "the end of time." (like i would know, ahaha.) "the waters of mars" brought a deluge of "the-end-of-time"-is-near coverage: magazine features and covers, radio and tv interviews, news stories, and special tie-in episodes of programs like the panel show never mind the buzzcocks. the UK has so many who-related broadcasts that the doctor who news page made up a handy chart for fans to keep track of it all. pubs in the UK will throw special parties to celebrate the final two-parter, airing on christmas day and new year's day over there, and dec. 26 and jan. 2 here. even time out magazine got into the act with a special edition featuring 10 different doctor who covers, one for each incarnation.

so, yeah. the moment has been prepared for. however, something in "the waters of mars" is a more direct throwback to the demise of doctor number four, which happened in the serial titled "logopolis," way back in 1981. but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

in "the waters of mars" (working title: "red christmas"), the TARDIS materializes on the red planet, looking ever so fetching alone against the brick-colored landscape. out leaps the doctor, wearing the spacesuit he got in "the impossible planet" over his burgundy-pinstriped blue suit. (which we will never see again, sob! it's my favorite.) he's still traveling without a companion, which is just a bad idea. and he knows that, so it's actually a crazy bad idea.

he finds a base station and some scientists, led by the tough adelaide brooke (lindsay duncan), and quickly figures out he's in the middle of a soon-to-be-tragic historic event from the year 2059 -- background on which we see through the curious, somewhat clunky device of flash-asides to what look like 2009-era web pages with info about the scientist-pioneers. (a big problem of having no companion: no one to expositate to.) it's the flip side of the doctor's triumphant shout of "everybody lives!" from "the doctor dances." that is, this time, everybody dies.

the doctor knows the story and its characters well: in 2059, the inhabitants of earth's mars colony bowie base one (lol!) all died in a massive explosion. and he really should go. because this is one of those pesky "fixed points in time" that he's not allowed to change, due to the laws of time.

shades of "the fires of pompeii," no? but this time the doctor doesn't have the amazing donna noble around, not to persuade him to just save someone, but to stop him from going too far, as companions tend to do. and guess what happens? he goes too far. first, however, we get a lot of the usual clever banter and running about, along with some goofy robot shenanigans and a more external horror story involving contaminated water that begins to turn the bowie crew into super-creepy-looking zombies, one by one.

eeeyieeee! scary, huh?

the doctor can't resist this mystery. continuing to protest that he really should go, he stays right where he is and investigates the problem, even making a vague passing mention of the ice warriors (a reference to the classic series, be still my beating hearts). and as his time spent in this non-changeable event grows longer, he finds it harder to quietly accept the inevitable. fighting back is the doctor's raison d'etre. but today it will be his undoing.

lindsay duncan as adelaide is wonderful to behold, all tough and businesslike but with hints of love and compassion. adelaide embraces risk without a second thought, and the doctor admires that. but he's so impressed with her, and so upset about what's supposed to happen to her, that he breaks one of the rules -- the one about no spoilers for people's futures. he means to comfort her, but adelaide can't be expected to see things the way he does. as much as the doctor goes on about how his perceptions of time and the universe are painfully unique, he often fails to remember that in practice. instead of helping her, his relevation puts her through an even worse ordeal.

once the doctor breaks one time lord rule, the rest start to seem pretty damn stupid, especially because they're keeping him from getting what he wants, which is to save these people. damn the consequences -- he's the only time lord left! so the rules of time are his to command! he can do anything he wants. and no one can stop him. mwahahahahaaaaa!!!

i don't think i've ever wished harder for donna to pop in and smack him on the head.

but, nope. no one's there to stop our budding doc vader. as the perhaps-not-last of the time lords finally went off the rails completely, claiming his legacy with a power-mad arrogance (which is probably just the sort of thing that caused time lords to make up their dumb rules in the first place), i couldn't help wondering just when he really started losing it. i mean, things like this don't happen overnight, right?

arguably he's been kinda unhinged since the time war, but i prefer to imagine he snapped after returning donna to her human self, saving her life but going against her wishes, and dooming her to be ordinary forever ... not to mention lost to him forever as well. maybe the doctor's mind began to turn during that scene in "journey's end," where, his awful duty dispatched, he's standing in the pouring rain, heading back to the TARDIS all alone, having lost his beffie, someone he probably actually could have traveled with for the rest of her life. i like this idea because donna's granddad, wilfred mott, is there when it happens, looking at the doctor in that kindly knowing way of his and telling him he will think of the doctor on donna's behalf. and we know from the trailer at the end of "the waters of mars" that ten will seek out wilf again.

he will definitely need a friend. because when the dire resolution of his mars misadventure unfolds, it is dark indeed, akin to torchwood: children of earth dark. what adelaide does to stop him is so shocking and yet so clever -- exactly the sort of thinking he might applaud under different circumstances. in her own way, she does serve the companion's purpose of putting a lid on his excesses and keeping him grounded, although it's too late this time and she pays a terrible price to shake him out of his mania.

when it's all over, the doctor's actions leave history, the mars colonists, and us viewers totally messed up. and the doctor doesn't look so good himself. he knows he did wrong, but he doesn't want to face the music.

not just the music, mind you, but the song. ood song, that is. as the full weight of what he's done sinks in, the doctor leans against the TARDIS ... and hears the beautifully mournful psychic song of the tentacle-faced race known as the ood. then he sees him -- ood sigma, standing expectantly in the snow.

the doctor looks remorseful ... and afraid. "i've gone too far," he whispers. "is this it? my death? is it time?" he asks with distress.

why does the doctor think ood sigma is a harbinger of his death? well, he's seen this sort of thing before. in "logopolis," he kept encountering this white figure, hanging around at a distance from the action. the figure, called the watcher, was a signal to four that his time was up. (and was also apparently some future incarnation of himself ... wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey!) he didn't make a fuss about it then; in fact, seeing the watcher was a sort of comfort. so far, ood sigma doesn't seem to be a future incarnation of the doctor, but, hey, anything could happen.

but the doctor sure isn't comforted by sigma's appearance. in the last special, "planet of the dead," tennant's performance felt, by no means terrible, but definitely off his game, as though he just didn't have the energy to give it his all. here, he is fantastic -- not just in the broad physical shtick he does so well, but especially in the subtler moments. he does some of his best acting inside that damn spacesuit, for one thing. and also in this scene, where a dozen different emotions pass across the doctor's face as he slips into the TARDIS, still looking shaken to his core. the cloister bell -- that eternal harbinger of bad bad stuff for time lords -- chimes. and then the doctor turns defiant. "no," he says. and, slamming a lever on the console, he dematerializes the hell out of there. straight to, no doubt, the end of time. will he stop with the "i am the great and powerful time lord" jazz now? is he running away from his death because he wants to fix things or because that's what he does?

we'll know the answer in less than a week. i can't wait, but i'm also scared. the doctor's dark side has always been there, and it can be magnificent to behold in the right circumstances, but i don't want him to keep being frighteningly megalomaniacal till he dies. i hope he snaps back to some semblance of his usual self while dealing with all the delicious spoilery stuff yet to come. because you know that, when we see him again after regeneration, he will be very different ... and not just because he'll be wearing matt smith's face.

anyway. it seems i was right that RTD will be torturing the doctor to death for three episodes. SIGH. i never thought i'd say it, but all of this pain and drama and torment kind of makes me ready for a new doctor. (hmm. perhaps that is the plan.) i'm starting to miss the days when he just bopped out of the TARDIS with his companion and rushed off to embrace some new adventure. i mean, i am loving the angst and can't wait to see just how dark things are gonna get, but i really want the tenth doctor to have the proper wonderful sendoff he deserves. almost every single incarnation has died a heroic death, and if ten doesn't get one, i'm going to be well pissed off.

furthermore, if RTD doesn't give ten a heroic death and rip me into little pieces and throw me to the floor and make me cry just thinking about the ending -- as with donna and "journey's end," which to this day i have to shut off before it plays out or risk blubbering like a baby -- well, then he will have FAILED. so, russell. it is on. and you'd better bring it!

a love supreme

2009-10-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

so, my friend brendan mullen died last week, which was a really awful shock to many, many people. me included.

if you don't know who he is, just google him and you'll see. that's him above, in a recent photo i nicked from his facebook profile, taken by the amazing gary leonard of brendan holding a much earlier portrait of himself, also taken by gary. (i hope it's ok to post this photo here; if not, please let me know and i'll take it down.) but as many (including the man himself) have already noted, brendan was a pioneer in the l.a. punk scene, nicknamed the mad scot (and possibly less flattering terms as well). so i, of course, met him through the local music world, when i was music editor at the l.a. reader. but i didn't even arrive in town until eight years after his legendary club, the masque, had closed. i first knew brendan as the booker for club lingerie; he'd leave me detailed voicemail messages with the listings for the week, which is how we did things in the dark time before e-mail.

anyway, brendan was one of the many original punks i got to know through going to shows and being a music critic -- people i loved meeting and talking to, but around whom i also felt kind of intimidated, as i was younger and had not "been there," as it were. but brendan was easy to be around, and he was fun to engage in conversation: so passionate, smart, funny, and wry. over the years i came to really adore him and was always happy to see him and his longtime companion, kateri butler, at a show or anticipate them being at a party -- especially at a party, as i am horribly uncomfortable in groups and they were guaranteed friendlies. but brendan's world was big, and as i struggle to write this, i feel like my own sense of loss is small and remote compared to what his real loved ones, and the communities he was part of, have lost.

still ... i knew brendan for a long time, and i felt comfortable with him. he was easy to talk to: as much as he could TALK, he was a good listener too. but we weren't really close pals, just simpatico people whose paths crossed a lot, especially after i took up with 00soul, who knows everyone from back in the day.

and one of my best memories ever revolves around brendan; indeed, it was set in motion by him. it happened last year -- almost exactly a year ago, in fact -- when i took my UK trip and very spur-of-the-moment met up with brendan in wales, where he was taking a break to visit his friend michael while caring for his sick (now deceased) brother. brendan had seen my facebook status about being in cardiff, and messaged me to come to hay-on-wye for a day. i wrote about that adventure at the time (see link), but it really stayed with me as a rare pleasure -- being welcomed like an old friend in a totally foreign place, spending a whole afternoon and evening just sharing stories and a meal and very fine conversation. i'd been traveling alone for most of a week by then, and, although i loved the independence of that, it was a good change to have friends to talk to.

the experience added a dimension to my friendship with brendan that hadn't existed before and made me feel like there was more to come. which maybe could have been so, but now that possibility is gone. i saw brendan a few more times, under circumstances both tragic and celebratory ... including at the bigfoot lodge in august, when 00soul and phast phreddie DJ'd to a packed house. i teased brendan then that the next time he needs a ride to london from the wilds of wales, he should just come right out and ask me, hahaha.

anyway. someone said that brendan was no saint, and that may well be true. but he was always kind to me, and i really liked him, and i'm very sad that he's gone. my heart kind of breaks when i think of kateri, and i wish i could do something more than write these words. but i have to celebrate that brendan was ever here at all ... because of my own little vignettes of remembrance, sure, but also because, for a lot of people, the world would have been very different without him.

so goodbye, brendan. you were a special person. and i'm really gonna miss you.

midnite dog

2009-09-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

we interrupt this lack of service to make an announcement of epic proportions. epic RAWK proportions, that is ... the imperial dogs website is live at last!

long before i ever knew him or was even an adult, my main man don waller was involved in some sort of voodoo experiment with amplifiers, musical instruments, leather, chains, fur pants, and shock value. the imperial dogs had the misfortune of being ahead of their time, but they did do the original version of "this ain't the summer of love," more famously recorded by blue oyster cult. and they also impressed iggy pop.

anyway. but the point of the new website is, now there's a DVD of the group's live shenanigans, captured on B&W videotape in long beach on october 30, 1974 ... almost 35 years ago. and let me tell you, people -- i mean, i know i'm biased, but you've gotta see this thing. it is just, like, totally fierce and completely balls-out. the between-song banter alone is simply killin'. for a taste, visit the site to check out a couple of clips, or click the links above. it's an hour long, with a lush booklet full of history and lots of color pix (like the fetching one above of 23-year-old d-dub on stage), not to mention un-PC imagery, angry rants, dancing fools, and partial nudity. so don't turn it up too loud if you're at work.

back to black

2009-07-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

this is rhys. he doesn't get to have a spiffy torchwood-logo'd action-y wallpaper image like the core torchwood team -- more's the pity, since he's totally worthy of one. rhys is the glue that holds gwen together ... and, while jack has been messing up badly at playing defender-of-earth, gwen's been doing a lot of the heavy lifting, with rhys there to carry her bag and come up with brilliant theories every step of the way.

this review is shorter and not as originally written, b/c my macbook's hard drive crashed yesterday, taking with it my work on "day five." thankfully, i have an awesome brother-in-law who sorted me out on trouble-shooting and buying advice (new HD on the way). and also a spare laptop, my trusty old ibook g4. so now come the KAPS:

SO TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH "DAY FIVE" AIRED LAST NIGHT ON BBC AMERICA, BUT I'LL STILL SAY SPOILERS AHEAD! BEWAAAAAAAAAAAARE.

we got some answers at last in this episode, which is rich in deep, dark irony. but one burning mystery remains: what will become of the TW SUV?

anyway. rhys didn't have much to do here, except sit on a park bench with a laptop, waiting for gwen's signal to transmit evidence to the world's media. and help gwen try to hide the kids rhiannon and johnny had taken in. btw, the aliens want the kids for the "hit." they're mainlining earth children. and it seems to be a growth market (or a serious addiction). it's kind of horrifying and kind of darkly funny -- very russell davies.

and so today the children must be collected -- all of them, say the 456. the afternoon quickly degenerates into scary scenes of the-monster-is-us: soldiers descending on the kids, citizens fighting back, everyone screaming, and gwen running running running ...

... but jack saves the day by reversing the polarity on the 456 -- which requires a child, steven, who will of course have to die. jack saves the world but kills his grandson, alienating his daughter for, probably, ever. his fellow middleman, frobisher, also pays in blood, after finally drawing the line when the PM taps him to be the government's symbolic dupe and publicly send his daughters for "inoculation." instead, froby goes home and shoots his family and himself, mere moments before jack fixes everything.

bridget takes the torchwood contact lenses and records the whole child-snatching operation, ruining the PM's career and leaving denise effectively in charge. boo-yah!

so where's RTD gonna go after all this horror and trauma? after burning down the whole bloody thing? ianto dead, and more of a mystery than ever? (it seems like a waste that ianto could have blossomed as a character and now won't get the chance; but i guess that's life.) torchwood disintegrated? jack mercilessly frying his own grandson, tears streaming down his cheeks while his daughter screams her son's name from outside?

well, where else but six months later, as rhys and a very pregnant gwen meet jack at night on a hilltop. she gives him his time agent wrist gizmo, and he says the whole planet is like a graveyard to him. she cries and says it wasn't your fault, but jack says ianto, steven, owen, tosh ... everybody was his fault. he began to like it, and look what he became. the monster was us ... but it was also jack.

well, like i said. he wasn't all that fantastic a person (charming or not) even before he became immortal. but i guess he tried. so maybe he'll live long enough to learn how to do better. but for now he's too tormented to stick around. so, time to go off to the intergalactic monastery and become the face of boe, or something. yep, he's running away -- again. gwen weeps ... for jack, for her lost purpose, for everything they've all lost. and rhys -- who is still there, like always -- says let's go home. gwen takes his comforting arm.

"yeah."

TW: CoE comes out on video this tuesday.

ask

2009-07-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

WELL, THEN. HERE WE ARE AT "DAY FOUR" OF TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH. IT AIRS TONIGHT (THURSDAY) ON BBC AMERICA, AND THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. SO STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. AND THIS TIME ... SOMETHING REALLY REALLY BIG HAPPENS. AND I'M GONNA TALK ABOUT IT NEXT PARAGRAPH, SO YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

what becomes a casualty of captain jack harkness's hubris most? is it his fretful moue, his sadly unrequited love, or his own unerring grasp of the inevitable? maybe it's his way with a coffeemaker or his flair for finding just the right tie. ianto jones had all those things ... not to mention his share of secrets. yet it's not his secrets that get him killed in this episode, but his implacable faith in his boss/lover, who is fatally incapable of keeping his damn ego on a leash.

so yesterday we found out how jack's tied to the 1965 thing, and today the whole world finds out about that previous 456 visit. and torchwood: children of earth begins its inexorable slide off the rails. but at least now we understand better why jack was so blase about handing that little girl to the evil fairy creatures in "small worlds" -- he'd already done that sort of thing before.

in 1965, the 456 said a new strain of flu would kill multi-millions, then offered an antivirus in exchange for the "gift" of a dozen kids. jack may have been the decision-maker with the evil fairies -- giving them the girl so they wouldn't destroy the whole planet -- but he was just a middleman in 1965, like frobisher now. as jack's contact on that night explains, he got the job b/c he's the guy who doesn't care. in fact, he even says it's a pretty good deal.

gwen can't believe jack didn't see it was a protection racket. (well, darling, your fearless leader is many things, including not too bloody bright.) at once disappointed and self-righteous, ianto asks jack how come he never told him about this. "i tell you everything," ianto says. (hmm, really?) jack gets defensive and asks what he should have done, and ianto says that the jack he knew would have fought back.

yeah, well, be careful what you wish for, grasshopper.

meanwhile, after frobisher asks what the 456 will do with the children, the alien shows them ... via a terrified cameraman sent into the tank. amid the toxic muck and alien limbs, we see one of the children from 1965. wearing a sort of ventilator over its nose and mouth, he's kinda ... plugged into the multiheaded creature. still a child, in the same clothes even, and seemingly ... aware. everyone -- torchwood, frobisher, the PM and visitors -- recoils in horror.

hey, we don't hurt the kids, say the 456 (who look disturbingly like a cross between something out of doctor seuss and the aliens from alien), and they live a long time! frobisher loses it, and the creature flips out and plays a recording of froby asking to keep 1965 on the downlow. the cameraman gets out. and so does great britain's big secret. then the 456 give them one day to deliver the kids ... or else they'll annihilate the world.

the PM and his cabinet discuss what to do. exceptional weasel rick yates, played by voice of the daleks nicholas briggs, actually says they could maybe play on current fears about overpopulation and spin this as a good thing. nice! but the banality of evil is in full effect in these briefings (secretly recorded by lois's camera eyes), where they refer to children as "units." nothing like a little dehumanization to sanitize a dirty process.

all options exhausted, the PM tells his more squeamish underlings to save the hand-wringing for later: they've got 10 percent of their own children to sacrifice. well, not their children, of course -- the kids and grandkids of everyone at the table will be spared. but how do they pick the victims ... uh, units? denise riley (deborah finlay) has the genius idea to use the school ~~lead~~league (EDIT: misheard that and misunderstood it too!) tables to identify the bottom 10 percent. hey, they'll just be a burden on society anyway. it's practically a win-win!

time for gwen to make stuff happen again. she sends rhys and a laptop full of video to an undisclosed location, ready to transmit everything to the media. she also shows the info to johnson and turns her to their side. via lois, she confronts the PM and makes him let jack and ianto into thames house. gwen can't save clem, though: the alien has had a vestigial connection to him all along, and kills him by remote. poor clem.

jack cowboys into thames house with ianto. he's going to confront the 456 and show ianto how he'll fight back. and then he kills ianto. he doesn't actually murder the lad, but when jack rashly threatens the 456 with war if they try to take earth's children, the alien responds by locking down thames house and releasing a deadly virus, killing all the panicked cockroaches of government trapped inside (except for dekker, who somehow makes it into a decon suit without breathing the air).

why didn't jack just do something more useful, like examine clem to find out how the 456 control the children? that's what the doctor would have done.

so maybe there's supposed to be something tragically romantic about ianto marching bright-eyed to his death by his lover's side. but mostly it's infuriatingly pointless. also, i knew it was coming, and not 'cause i was spoiled, b/c i wasn't. it was just ... obvious. so many references to TW agents dying young = someone's gonna get it. and RTD is the joss whedon of brit tv: if a couple is happy, one of them must die (or get trapped in an alternate universe or fly back to their own time or whatever).

after his starry-eyed convo with his sister about jack, i knew for sure we were going to lose our lovely ianto, he of the dry wit, sharp outfits, strong coffee, insane detail-mongering, and wickedly clever schemes. i mean, it's no doubt impossible for anyone to resist those 51st-century pheromones and that flashy immortality, but, although one of the things i've loved about torchwood is its delight in unapologetic boy love, it's clear that ianto did struggle with his feelings for jack. he seemed to have strictly liked girls up to that point and even had a fiancee when we first met him ... a fiancee who was turning into a cyberman and nearly destroyed everyone, but poor ianto still loved her.

so maybe ianto also had a fatal need to be needed. in any case, jack's willing playmate crumples to the floor while the captain cries that it's all his fault. ianto weeps and says, "i love you." jack moans, "don't." then he begs ianto to stay with him. (mixed messages to the mofugging end!) "don't forget me," pleads ianto. jack says he never could -- not even in 1,000 years' time. he promises! ianto dies, and jack begs, "don't leave me, please."

this is the part of loving humans that the doctor can't deal with: watching them die. but jack always plunges right in -- we know he had at least two serious relationships in the 20th century, and probably more -- the pain be damned. it is hard not to think that, on some level, the allegation that he doesn't care is true. people are shiny good fun, and adoration is fantastic, but ultimately they're just so much tissue paper to jack.

anyway. the 456 win. jack sobs and kisses ianto one last time. then he slumps dead beside his dead lover, his hand on ianto's shoulder.

the cabinet watch it all in horror. denise says they have to surrender. 35 million children, says the PM. or 6.7 billion people, counters denise. (the needs of the many, yada yada ... .) the PM tells red-eyed frobisher to put the plan into action.

in a makeshift morgue, gwen walks forward, alone, to ID the bodies. she uncovers jack and looks at him, the tiniest smile playing around her lips. then she steels herself and pulls back ianto's shroud. jack wakes up and remembers. gwen cries and tenderly straightens ianto's tie. (sob!) jack hugs her as she whispers words of sorrow and defeat.

"there's nothing we can do."

stuck in the middle with you

2009-07-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

GOOD EVENING AND WELCOME TO MY REVIEW OF TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH "DAY THREE." BBC AMERICA WILL BE SHOWING IT TOMORROW NIGHT (WEDNESDAY) AT 9ET/PT. SPOILERS FOLLOW, SO DON'T READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

yesterday, torchwood regrouped as the world prepared for the 456's arrival. today, tension mounts around the globe and inside the british government, as the secret of 1965 threatens to blow up big. meanwhile, jack and co. get back to work with a renewed sense of camaraderie. but this is torchwood, so you know that's not gonna last.

gwen, jack, ianto, and rhys set up the hub2, as rhys christens their new HQ in an abandoned warehouse. it's dank and has no electricity, and jack has to wear tracksuit bottoms and no coat. he still manages to be all inspirational leader-y ... then accidentally reveals he knew gwen was pregnant before rhys did. the man-fur flies, and rhys flounces out.

but this is no time to pout. torchwood's assets are down to a couple of guns, a now-dead laptop, some contact lenses, and not much else. the software's still on the server ... if only they had some computer equipment. and power. and proper trousers.

ever-resourceful gwen suggests a crime spree: cue slightly slapstick montage of the quartet staging fights and posing as waiters to score credit cards, laptops, even a car. (fancy wheels are essential.) ianto brings back other necessities: coffee, new clothes, and ... perhaps most implausibly of all ... for jack, a new coat, just like the old one. jack is back!

and he really ought to call alice, whose nervous attempts to contact him finally attract johnson's peeps. they soon work out who she is. her mom was a torchwood agent too, who died of old age. ("rare for torchwood," observes johnson. word.) that means alice gets to be all kickass when johnson's minions come around. she tells steven to do like they used to in granny's games. granny torchwood, that is. they flee ... and alice BELTS one dude with a cutting board, then takes his gun. go, alice! but johnson, though impressed, has them surrounded. then steven freezes, pointing to the sky.

it's the same around the world, kids all frozen and pointing. steven. frobisher's daughters. and all the children at rhiannon and johnny's impromptu day-care center, set up because parents gotta work, the schools are closed, and johnny needs the extra cash.

also pointing, of course, is clem -- who's just been sprung from the camden clink by gwen (with a little help from pc andy), who continues to be the get-it-done star of this show.

she not only retrieves the tearfully grateful clem, who's been having increasingly intense 1965 flashbacks, but also talks lois into wearing the contact lenses ... the special torchwood contacts with camera lenses, lipreading software so monitors can "hear" what's happening, and texting capability for communicating with the wearer.

lois is impressed, but scared to help torchwood again. it's treason! she can't do this -- it puts her right on the front line. anyway, frobisher doesn't take her into the 456 room. only bridget. gwen says please help us, lois habiba. you're our only remaining hope. lois can't. sorry. but she takes the lenses.

earlier, at the hub2, ianto wants to know if jack will ever stop not-dying. jack's pretty sure the can't-die thing is forever. so someday jack will see ianto die, "of old age," and just keep going? yeah, says jack. well, says ianto impishly, better make the most of it! they try to get some alone time, but rhys won't leave. rats. instead, they review clem's case: 1965, scotland orphanage, yada yada. jack's remembering something. and after he sees 40-year-old pictures of his fellow assassinees, he totally knows them. he just never knew their names. who were they, asks ianto. but jack just grabs his coat and runs out. typical.

all the children in the world (and clem) are pointing at thames house, as a ball of fire stabs down from the clouds, straight through the roof. ianto and rhys watch from atop the hub2.

frobisher dashes into the 456 room; dekker's already there. they watch the fire flow into the glass enclosure, boiling up inside. and now something, dimly visible, is in there.

"we are here," say the kids, and go back to playing. clem tells gwen they're back. she takes him to torchwood.

at thames house, frobisher makes bug-eyed but resolute first contact. the 456 speaks in an almost hypnotic low baritone ... and also makes weird, animal-like howls and roars. it thrashes wildly at regular intervals, causing a giant, vaguely vulture-like head to hit the glass and yellowish brown goop to be flung against the windows. super-gross.

scared though he is, frobisher has to get this 1965 stuff sorted out for boss and country. it's his duty, you know. he asks the alien to keep the previous encounter with britain off the record ... and the 456 says ok. phew! then frobisher and dekker bail, looking at each other like, that was freeeeeaky!

but frobisher scarcely has time to re-rack his nerves before the PM calls to say, guess what? you get to stay our point man on this.

that's how the PM placates UNIT colonel oduya (charles abomeli) and american general pierce (colin mcfarlane), who are very unhappy about an alien ambassador being on british soil ... and suspicious that the landing was clearly planned, without their input. the PM says well, the 456 came to us, what could we do? and he craftily suggests letting the civil service handle dealings with the 456. this sitch calls for a middleman. and who better than frobisher, since he's already spoken to the 456? plus, mwahaha, he's expendable.

pierce demands the PM guarantee he won't enter the negotiation room. yeah, not a problem. ok, deal.

meanwhile, jack steals mrs. frobisher's mobile, then calls froby and threatens to expose everything if he doesn't let jack talk to the 456. but frobisher has alice and steven, nyah! so jack needs to keep it zipped. jack threatens frobisher's family, but frobisher knows it's a bluff. and he's gotta go, because he has a date with a goop-spewing alien.

at thames house for the first official negotiation, everyone's in place -- including lois, who bluffs her way in by implying there's something "private" between her and frobisher. bridget seems to have heard this sort of thing before. "don't go thinking you're the first," she sniffs. lois is wearing the contacts. torchwood's in!

gwen, ianto, rhys, and clem watch via laptop as frobisher requests that the 456 stop using their children for communication (it agrees). then he takes a question from the audience (aka general pierce): why did it come to britain? the 456, keeping its part of the bargain, basically says oh, no reason. gwen and ianto realize the government got the 456 to lie ... but now the thing says they want a gift -- your children. ten percent will do nicely, thanks. clem freaks and says they want to take them, like they did before, like "the man" did. the man's coming back too -- in fact, he's here! and according to clem's flashback, he's ... jack. say what?

jack stands there, accused and guilty. we flash back to 1965, and now jack's there too, in his coat, telling the children to walk into the light.

loyal gwen says no, jack fights aliens. right, jack? no, says jack, "i gave them the kids." ianto looks stricken. in 1965, jack gave them 12 children. what for? "as a gift."

baby's on fire

2009-07-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

LOOKEE HERE, IT'S A REVIEW OF TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH, DAY TWO, AIRING TOMORROW NIGHT (TUESDAY) ON BBC AMERICA. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS -- SPOILERS AHEAD!!

yesterday's review/recap of day one was rather out-of-hand, lengthwise. this one's shorter, hurray!

ok, so. torchwood's down but not out ... not while the heart is still beating. better yet, said heart, aka gwen cooper, is blasting away two-fisted. look out, haters!

when gwen comes to after the explosion, choking on the smoke and temporarily deafened, the hub's just a fiery crater. two EMTs arrive -- but they're really assassins! the people who blew up her workplace and hurt, maybe killed, her friends? gwen so kicks their asses, taking their guns and the ambulance, then questioning one lackey, who screams (b/c she shoots him in the leg) that he works for the government and was only following orders.

pc andy (tom price, yay!) overhears johnson tell her minions that gwen and ianto are terrorists. he protests, but later directs her crew to gwen's place, still insisting she's not dangerous. gwen, having rushed home to collect rhys and get the hell out of there, pops up and blasts the black ops' SUV ... but only the tires. some terrorist, smirks pc andy.

dekker tells frobisher that the 456's message is instructions for building something. which they're doing, on the top floor of thames house, aka the HQ of british secret service MI5. frobisher says how come the 456 can communicate with such detail but still uses the children? dekker says it's to scare the humans, duh.

frobisher chats with the PM, asking whether any other country has been contacted besides britain. seems not. still worried about repercussions if the world learns their secret, froby wonders how long they can keep the previous visit quiet. then he actually thanks the PM for trusting him with all this responsibility. what a tool. the PM loftily informs frobisher that all he's done is put him on the front line -- the first to fall. indeed.

alice isn't really in this episode, except for repeated scenes trying to call jack. but he can't come to the phone right now, b/c he's having the worst. day. EVAR.

johnson's minions find an arm, shoulder, and part of a head at the hub site. they whisk it all off in a body bag, watched from afar by a grim-faced, still bloody and dusty ianto.

jack's body parts go to a government facility, where the bag's put in a cell with camera surveillance. pretty soon it starts to fill out, so johnson has the bloody skeleton chained to the cell wall. apparently they found the back of his head; otherwise, wouldn't we see part of jack's face instead of just a gory skull?

most of this ep is about running and rescue (and regeneration ... not just of jack but of TW itself), but we get some of the nicest character moments here too, amid all the chaos. especially lovely is how rhys learns of gwen's pregnancy, a surprisingly light scene that wonderfully demonstrates how tuned-in these two lovers are. (nice work, writer john fay.) they're bumping along in the back of a lorry loaded with potatoes -- their stealth transport to london.

gwen says she feels sick, even though she never gets travel sick, and then flumfers a bit, asking rhys, you know how some announcements go better in your head? and he's like, whattaya mean, announcements? and she just kinda smiles and looks away for a sec, and he totally gets it without her even saying. in spite of the dire situation and uncertain future, they're sooo delighted. sweet.

it's back to business when they meet up with lois, who's proving to be as tenacious and one-step-ahead savvy as any torchwood operative. she overhears when johnson calls froby to report jack's revival, then bugs him about the torchwood thing, risking bridget's wrath. lois intercepts gwen's call to frobisher's office and meets the fugitives at a cafe. while handing them cash for a meal, the floor plan to jack's prison, and the salt, brown sauce, and sugar, she fills them in on the blank-page assassinations. she doesn't even lose her cool when gwen huffs where's frobisher (torchwood's usual government liaison)? she just says he's the one who ok'd the bombing.

all the while, lois works out her own moral confusion -- if TW are the bad guys, why doesn't their file say so? and if TW are the good guys, why's the government trying to kill them, and who is lois working for, exactly?

rhiannon's husband, johnny (rhodri lewis), steps up too. soldiers ransack their house in the middle of the night, searching for ianto, who later sneaks a message to his sis inside the morning paper. it says meet him at the place where their dad broke ianto's leg, and bring a laptop. rhiannon's upset that he's put them in the middle of all this, but johnny insists they're the only family ianto's got. so he's not a total homophobic oaf, after all. he may change his mind about helping when he finds out ianto took his car, though.

in london, we see the scary traffic circle not once but TWICE. eyiieeee!

fleshed-out now, all white and nekkid, jack yanks on his chains and yells a challenge. johnson appears through a portal high above him, snarks, then pours gallons and gallons of concrete into the cell. now, that's containment!

lois, gwen, and rhys hatch a crazy scheme to rescue jack: gwen and rhys will pose as undertakers picking up rupesh's body. the ruse holds, even after the escorting soldier flirts hard with gwen, and rhys loses it. the grunt narrows his eyes and accuses them: "you're a COUPLE, aren't you?" ahaha.

but of course they can't rescue jack b/c he's drowned in concrete. plus, johnson and crew tip to the plan and bring on the firepower. (gwen's only got two hands, after all.) they're nicked -- but then there's a huge CRASH! it's ianto. and he's driving a forklift truck ... which he uses to extract jack's entire cell. gwen and rhys hop on, and they're away. it's totally ridiculous -- and totally awesome!

ianto drops the block of jack into (what else?) a quarry, and it breaks apart. jack awakens as the trio drive to the bottom to retrieve him. he stands in the rubble, still naked, with an indecipherable look on his face. then he says, "told you i'd be back!" irrepressible. gwen, averting her eyes, hands him a jacket and says get in, we've got work to do.

back at thames house, frobisher, dekker, and bridget -- an odd mirror image of ianto, gwen, and rhys -- check out the finished construction job. it's a big room, dominated by a glass chamber being filled with a prescribed combination of gases -- poison to humans. dekker says perhaps the room is an ambassadorial suite. or a throne room. or maybe a slaughterhouse.

they muse how the 456 will arrive inside this sealed glass chamber. no clue, but whoever they are, they're coming for britain. bridget wants to know why. dekker says indeed: why, mr. frobisher? the bureaucrat just walks away, leaving dekker to approach the now fog-filled chamber. he breathes on the outside of the glass and adds some fog of his own.

tick tick boom

2009-07-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

the 21st century is when everything changes, and torchwood is ready.

and torchwood fans are ready too -- ready for series 3 of this hit doctor who spin-off to begin, after well more than a year's gone by since the heartbreaking end of series 2. the new season consists of only five episodes, already shown july 6-10 in the UK and debuting tomorrow night on BBC america. torchwood: children of earth will usher in the new BBCA HD channel and be aired from 9 to 10:15 pm ET/PT -- thus, without the usual slash-and-burn edits required to make most british series fit US tv length standards.

i'll post daily review/recaps of each episode, so here's the first one. but first, the obligatory spoiler warning. YES, THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 1 OF TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH. DON'T READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANNA KNOW. 'K? THX.

this installment plunges in with a creepy flashback, followed by a string of spooky incidents and surprising reveals that jet-propel us to the mind-blowing cliffhanger. creator/writer/exec producer russell t. davies sketches in backstory along the way, which is great for anyone new to torchwood. but longtime fans might be disappointed that we only get a passing nod to dearly departed team members tosh and owen, who died horribly last season. they sacrificed themselves in the line of duty -- something that happens a lot with the titular secret alien-fighting organization. which didn't make the pair's departure any easier for me to take, but clearly, surviving leader captain jack harkness (john barrowman) and his team, gwen cooper (eve myles) and ianto jones (gareth david-lloyd) -- all pictured above -- have moved on.

a brief prologue in 1965 scotland shows adorable children getting off a bus in the middle of the night ... and getting swallowed up by a blinding light. then it's just another morning in present-day cardiff, where the underground torchwood base is hidden by the bay. gwen's at an ATM, wearing a cool leather jacket with yet another awesome bag slung over her shoulder. a mom bustles about her kitchen, reassuring her kids that that bully won't bother them again. a dad with a briefcase dashes past his daughters at breakfast, promising to text his wife later. another mom warns her son not to let the cats in. and gwen's hubby, rhys williams (kai owen), drives his delivery truck through a neighborhood.

all around these adults, children are all just stopped dead in their tracks. it's a reliably creepy sci-fi trope that builds up unease as it recurs and expands throughout the episode ... turns out it's happening everywhere in the world. at first the frustrated adults think it's some kind of a put-on. but ALL those kids in the crosswalk, frozen in place? not. normal.

not normal is par for the course on torchwood, usually bullet-pointed as the darker, sexier, more morally complex offspring of british sci-fi institution doctor who (which was revived in 2005 by UK tv guru davies). yet, while entertaining and at times thought-provoking, the show has been pretty uneven, not always as challenging or emotionally affecting as who has been. TW is an echo, with captain jack himself serving as RTD's own version of the doctor, a time lord with multiple lifespans and seemingly endless knowledge of the universe, who has a knack for showing up to avert a crisis or at least lessen the damage.

thanks to a cosmic accident of sorts, jack, originally an ex-time agent and con man from the 51st century (uhm ... probably), can't die. he's lived for ages and really isn't quite human anymore, so he's kind of like a time lord, except he has sex. the doctor inspired jack to do better, and eventually he decided to remake torchwood, previously a lethally reactionary government organization, in the doctor's honor. jack's crew has faced some bad, ugly, menacing stuff, but usually they're only defending some people or cardiff or the UK ... not the entire world (with exceptions). children of earth ups the ante with a sweeping tale that pits torchwood against not only a relentless global alien menace but also the horrors of bureaucracy and plausible deniability (shudder).

director euros lyn balances the epic and the intimate in RTD's rumination on secrets, lies, and conspiracies. gorgeous panoramas of such settings as cardiff and london and pell-mell action sequences complement the tight two-shots, close-ups on small gestures, and subtle, slowly revealed connections among the characters. there are so many parallels here b/w individual and collective lying, and the lengths to which the characters will go to maintain their lies. just like we all tell lies to ourselves and others, whether big or small, whether just to coworkers and loved ones or the whole world. here the fabrications, designed to conceal everything from innocuous facts to horrifying truths, may be an integral part of who certain characters are ... which is never the whole picture, of course. maybe we don't see some of these supporting players at their best, but the lies the main characters tell begin to alter some fundamental perceptions about themselves. even jack, who we know is a bloody born liar.

but this ain't a philosophy lecture; it's torchwood, with all the rapid-fire sniping, snarky quips, unabashed boy love, and full-tilt running you'd expect. still, episode 1 is a romp compared to the the devastation awaiting us down the line -- much of which revolves around how sometimes what we lie about can be incredibly destructive, in ways we never intended and could not have foreseen.

what kind of stuff could jack be hiding from his peeps? where do i start? OK, he has a daughter. (only one?)

that's her, above. her name's alice (lucy cohu, totally awesome), and we saw her before, telling her young son, steven, not to let the cats in. jack lies that he wants to take the kid out, but alice says no way. she knows what he's up to -- she's his daughter, after all, even though she keeps away from him b/c he doesn't age and she does, and that's freaky. steven doesn't even know that "uncle jack" is really grandpa.

turns out ianto has family too -- his sister, rhiannon (the charming katy wix), who we also saw before, talking to her kids about the bully. and no, ianto cannot take them out today. besides, they need to talk. by which she means, is he gay or what? a friend spotted him and jack having dinner. ianto first, you guessed it, lies, saying that's his boss. but rhiannon guilt-trips him about not being around since their dad died, so he confesses. moony-eyed ianto says it's not men, it's just him. only him. and he's definitely not lying now. sigh. then his beefy bro-in-law comes in, looking like a giant hobbit, and brays, "i hear you're taking it up the ass!" great. BTW, says bro-in-law, your car's been nicked. triple-deadlocked or not, the torchwood SUV is gone baby gone.

earlier, at a hospital, jack and ianto banter about whether they're a "couple" while conning dr. rupesh patanjali (rik makarem) into letting them see a dead man ... from whom they extract an alien entity. rupesh catches them -- he's heard about torchwood (like half of cardiff, despite its alleged secret status) and seems interested in joining. but i say let rhys join instead, since he's the one who figures the weird kid thing is timed to a british schedule -- right before school, and then at break, for example.

yes, well. the government is way ahead of rhys. earlier, in london, briefcase dad -- aka home office bureaucrat john frobisher (peter capaldi, above) -- fakes a pleasant chat with a colonel from global alien-defense task force UNIT when a young woman arrives with the tea. the colonel is actually filling frobisher in on the weird kid thing, but mustn't discusss such formidable things around the new assistant.

her name's lois habiba (cush jumbo), and she answers to someone far more formidable than UNIT: frobisher's right-hand woman, bridget spears (susan brown):

rupesh is hanging around outside the hub, so gwen goes to chat with him while jack and ianto argue more about the couple thing. both agree they hate that word ... and both are totally, yes, lying. gwen gets in some exposition for those who've never seen TW before. rupesh earnestly blathers about how some people can't deal with knowing aliens exist now ... like the christian lady, his first case, who killed herself b/c this revelation made her feel insignificant. "it's like science has won," he quotes her as saying. haha, RTD, you naughty atheist, you!

but this is no time for reflection, b/c the kids are going off again. they stop. and then they start screaming!

that noise ceases, and then they chant, "we we we we we we we we are we are we are we are coming. we are coming. we are coming. we are coming. we are coming." OMG, says gwen, while ianto videos it all. cut to a mental hospital, where an older man is doing the same thing. the staff is mystified. they also video.

when it stops, the kids are normal again. but the man falls to his knees and cries, "they've found me!"

frobisher's office is inundated with calls ... including one from jack. but lois doesn't know him or torchwood ("how do you spell it?" hee!). however, resourceful and curious lois (as plucky and nosy as another lois, superman's main squeeze ms. lane) does some research on the down-low. meanwhile, mr. dekker (ian gelder) comes to tell frobisher that, as dekker warned, the 456 are back -- referring, it seems, to whatever's going on with the children. frobisher looks scared.

cut to frobisher's car going around a big-ass traffic circle. now, THAT'S scary!

frobisher is going to tell the prime minister (nicholas farrell, all supercilious) the 456 are back. dekker scoffs that elected officials come and go, but the 456 were there before him and will be there long after ... as will they, the civil service. "the cockroaches of government," dekker declares. later, the PM, who knows about the 456, tells frobisher to erase the historical record ... but the PM doesn't know anything about it, capish? time to issue a blank page -- a nice little euphemism for deleting said historical event. and anyone associated with it.

which includes, we learn after lois snoops some more, three people to off ... plus captain jack! whoa. so maybe jack, despite his protests to the contrary, has seen this sort of thing before.

gwen visits the man in the asylum, timothy white (paul copley):

she learns he had a scottish accent when he first entered care, as a child. she talks to him about "we are coming." he looks scared but denies aliens exist. then he sniffs her and says she's smelling, i mean telling, the truth, so he talks. (psychic sense of smell? ahaha!) he was one of the kids on that bus in 1965. a light took his friends, but he ran. occasionally, tim stutters something over his shoulder, as though talking to someone who isn't there. he says there were people too, but he can't remember. and, he says, they're coming back.

before gwen leaves, tim tells her his original name: clement mcdonald. he adds, almost casually, that she's pregnant. congratulations! whoa.

jack goes to the hospital to sweet-talk a kid out of rupesh. but the doc is no eager-beaver potential new recruit after all. he's a lying bastard, in fact, who shoots jack and lets in some black-clad commando types with guns, along with their boss, the hardass johnson (liz may brice).

she orders her minions to bring in timothy white and shoots jack when he revives, then tells rupesh they think jack's immortality is connected to the torchwood hub (wrong!), which makes it a target (uh-oh!). then they rummage about in jack's abdomen. gross.

at the asylum, clem smells trouble. he splits mere moments before the fake cops come to take him away. at the hub, ianto has the deets on clem gwen wanted, but she's not listening -- she's staring at a high-tech scanner image confirming she's preggers.

jack pelts in: he woke up with rupesh dead beside him (shot by johnson). then he sees the scan. gwen's stunned, but happy. so is jack: "ianto, we're having a baby!" he rests his hand on the scanner, and an alarm goes off. there's a bomb inside him OMG! jack shoves his team toward the exit, over their horrified protests.

above ground, the "we are coming" starts again, and everyone freaks out. at the hub, jack drags ianto away from his post. "there'll be nothing left of you," ianto cries plaintively. "i can survive anything," jack blusters. really? the red emergency lights flash, the music swells, and OMG nooooo! jack kisses his boy, maybe for the last time, before ianto takes the water tower lift to outta there. "i'll come back," jack says. "i always do." it's not all that convincing. jack has died a lot of ways, but never by gut bomb. he watches the countdown's final seconds and closes his eyes. outside, gwen runs along the dock.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!! she falls, as flames blaze around her.

and the children say, "we are coming ... back."

our house

2009-07-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

so last week was the big family reunion of my mom's people -- held at my uncle ara's palatial home in rochester, NY. (pictured above is the view of the pool and hot tub from the deck of the house ... the yard beyond is huge, and the house behind dwarfs all others in this nice suburb.) synchronistically enough, the weekend celebration incorporated not only my big brother's birthday -- we busted out the two cakes (one chocolate, one lemon, both delicious) after midnight on friday, when all the little kids were asleep, ahaha! -- but also the tenth anniversary of my mother's death. in fact, the last time i saw most of the family was at her funeral and wake.

this was a much happier occasion, of course. our part of the clan converged on the estate on friday afternoon; my younger sister and i drove from erie in a borrowed '96 mustang convertible (sweet!), following my dad in his honda minivan to the rochester airport to pick up my eldest sister, affectionately known as the squirrel. the airport is reached via a sharp, short ramp off the highway ... the place is so small that i almost didn't see it at first, ahaha. which made collecting our human package quite a lot easier than picking up someone at LAX. when we arrived at the house, my niece was already there, and my bro and his wife soon turned up.

this is the armenian side of the family, so the theme of the weekend was "would you like something else to eat?" shortly after arriving, i was introduced to buffalo chicken wing dip -- an alarmingly delicious concoction of all-melted-together chicken, buffalo wing sauce, cheese, and maybe some other stuff, which we scooped up with those fritos that are shaped like spoon bowls. omg, get it away from me! wait, maybe just a little more.

the first night was a casual feast of burgers and hot dogs, macaroni salad, green salad, fruit, and other sides i've now forgotten. my uncle and wife cheryl had stocked many coolers with beer, soda, and tons of varieties of mike's hard lemonade, a not-very-alcoholic drink that's pretty pleasant when consumed sparingly. (pomegranate lemonade, ftw!) i started drinking kind of early and felt pretty tapped out by around 10:30 -- lame, but oh well. i had to catch up on the new torchwood anyway.

bedrooms were handed out according to age, so my dad, who was the oldest one there, got a room, which he shared with my bro. but i got to camp out in my uncle's huge RV in the driveway with my two sisters, sister-in-law, and niece, which meant we all got a slice of bed -- a rare privilege when many attendees were sleeping on the floor, some of them in the giant closets. (the advantage of closet-sleeping became apparent on saturday, when those who were thus situated slept in a lot more, isolated from the hubbub, than those who were not.)

mornings brought coffee, danish, croissants, cereal, and baked egg 'n' meat dishes galore. the whole weekend seemed like one big long meal, but technically the main armenian family dinner was on saturday. my brother and niece cooked a giant vat of delicious rice pilaf, shown here in progress:

my bro brought along his own pan and other tools, plus something like 6,000 pounds of butter for this dish. my niece did a stellar job ... we're all so proud of her for carrying on this family tradition. and my sis-in-law made TDF stuffed cabbages and green peppers, which went FAST when the feast was finally laid out.

another tradition, trickier to reproduce, was my grandmother's version of kata, an armenian flatbread. not like a cracker, but a round, low loaf ... i've heard it called other things, but that's what they always called it, so hey. grandma's kata was legendary and fiercely prized. whenever she showed up for holiday dinners or family get-togethers, we always looked for the greasy brown paper grocery bags containing the magical stuff. (and when i was in college, she would make it for me to take back to the dorms, oh yeah!) but of course she didn't have a written recipe, so reproducing hers has been a challenge, to say the least. one big joke is always that the secret ingredient is cigarette ashes -- i don't think anybody actually added them, although several family members took up the kata gauntlet.

here are the bags with the golden booty, awaiting unveiling:

the greasy spots mean they've done something right. here's the treasure on the plate:

note the generous supply of butter alongside, just in case you need some more on top of what's already in there. btw, not everyone in the family likes this stuff. some say it "tastes like cardboard." that's ok, heretics -- more for us!

earlier, we had some lovely homemade hummus and baba ghanoush with pita, and a nice healthy veggie platter:

the main course included kebobs grilled to perfection by my cousin kara's husband, who also made blender drinks all weekend. he was the mixmaster and the grillmaster.

also we had the aforementioned stuffed cabbage and green peppers, plus baked beans, another family fave:

on the lighter side were tasty bean salad and fruit:

the dining room table was also covered with plates of cookies and other sweets, including loads of different baklava from an armenian bakery ... but kara made some of her own. i shared a piece with cousin sandy while we were making our nearly triumphant comeback at trivial pursuit (or maybe it was when i was helping her win at scrabble?) ... omg, soooo good. almost as good as grandma's, and i mean really, almost as good. as in, totally awesomely delicious.

in spite of the endless amounts of fantastic food and the gorgeous surroundings -- plus a bonus thunderstorm that was pretty thrilling to behold and didn't dampen our saturday all that much, as it eventually moved on -- the best part of the weekend was being with the family. as a child and even a teenager, i loved gatherings on my mom's side, b/c there was always so much boisterous fun and delicious food. this was a return to that sort of thing, except now i was one of the older people, along with the aunts and uncles and first-gen cousins, surrounded by teeming hordes of young second cousins ... some of whom are all grown up and have kids of their own, others of whom are teens, preteens, and younger.

the logistics required to pull this off must have been very complicated -- kudos to ara and cheryl, cousin sallie, and everyone else who planned this thing. (how many store runs did ara make in just one day? i dunno, but i think wegman's loves him now.) we even all got gift bags with family reunion t-shirts. i don't know how they did it, but i definitely enjoyed being part of it. my own contribution was burning many copies of an interview i did with grandma 25 years ago while a student at penn state, with her talking about escaping the turkish massacre in armenia and coming to the states as a child.

i spent a fair amount of time with my immediate family, whom i don't get to see very often. part of that was passed being soundly trounced at backgammon (tradition!) by the squirrel, who was clearly channeling mom when she rolled double fours, double fives, and double sixes all in a row. but also, i discussed the merits of majoring in photojournalism with my cousin jenna, who's going to penn state (another big fam trad ... the reunion t-shirts were penn state blue and white). and two of the teenagers of kara and sandy entertained me well into the night on saturday (after the fiercely fought scrabble and trivial pursuit games were done), spinning 'round the menus on their ipods and asking if knew this artist, and this one and this one, and check out this AWESOME drum part, and aren't that guy's vocals just the best? diana and TJ, you rule.

we reminisced, caught up, teased, laughed, played games, snapped photos, jumped into the pool, relaxed in the hot tub, watched auto racing, snagged free diagnoses from the family's doctor, took walks, napped, drank, snacked, noshed, nibbled, scarfed, and dined in a huge, ever-changing swirl of relative bliss. at any given moment, lots of people were doing stuff -- eating, cooking, drink-making, gaming, hacky-sacking -- while lots of other people looked on. it was like being at a golf tournament, except with a lot more noise and talking. and no clubs.

my younger sister's husband drove up on sunday morning, so i had the mustang to myself when i took off for erie later that afternoon -- stomach full of delicious pulled pork sandwich, grilled steak, leftover pilaf and kata, bean salad, etc., etc., and head full of family. being plunged into the middle of all those people and automatically belonging felt kind of great -- a sensation i've never really thought i missed, but it was surprisingly comforting. along with simply loving the kids and being happy just watching them conduct their own party-within-a-party, i was especially glad to have spent time talking to my mom's sister, aunt rosebud, on saturday. plus sandy and i, who are the same age and hung out a lot in certain summers of our youth, totally rebonded, and i was sad to have to leave her. especially since we would've totally kicked ass on the '90s version of trivial pursuit.

i got gas and headed for the thruway (what we californians call the freeway), as i had to make a dinner date (hahaha) back in erie that night. i was thinking about how much mom would've loved the weekend -- she used to hold big family parties sometimes, back when we were kids -- and just how long it has been since she's been gone. some snow patrol song came on the car stereo i had hooked up to my ipod, and i got kinda sniffly for a while. good thing nobody saw that.

try it again

2009-07-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

rumors have been swirling for a while now that when doctor who star david tennant (pictured above) and showrunner russell t. davies appear on a panel later this month at the san diego comic-con with director euros lyn, they will announce a big-screen who project starring DT, written by RTD, and directed by lyn.

well ... maybe. but my first reaction was "no fucking way." first off, let's not forget that RTD was supposed to appear at the con last year, and he canceled at the last minute, which bummed me out b/c i bought a one-day ticket mainly to hear him speak. it turned out ok, b/c the panels that did happen (one for torchwood, one for DW) were pretty great, with exec producer julie gardner, writer and incoming showrunner steven moffat, and some of the TW stars.

but anyway. a who movie? announced at comic-con, when one might imagine that bbc america would be more focused on basking in the glow of the newly broadcast series 3 of TW (starting july 20 on BBCA and ushering in the brand-new BBCA HD) and promoting the last three DW specials starring DT as the 10th doctor, which will air sometime later this year or maybe early next? i dunno.

aside from the logic problems, the whole idea gives me a bad feeling. it would be great to have a big-screen who flick, but OTOH, it feels really weird that they would do it this way. with 11th doctor matt smith already in the chute, as filming supposedly begins next week on series 5, for broadcast next year, it seems strange that they'd use this opportunity to hype a flick starring the guy who quit, even if he is the most popular doctor EVAR.

and, even if the film falls between smith series, i don't get why they would sign matt smith (above) to a multi-year contract to be the doctor, and then make a movie, allegedly slated to come out the year after only his first series has aired, with the previous actor to play the doctor. (yes, they made a doctor who movie in 1965 with a different actor, peter cushing, while william hartnell was the doctor on TV. but that's different, for obvious reasons.)

i mean, i can't flat-out say a movie with DT won't happen. and to quote the doctor, i'd love it! but i still think that DT, RTD, and lyn will be at the con to promote 10's final eps. lyn directed them, so that fits, and they won't air here until ... uh, well, whenever. also, it's like, if this movie has been a possibility (the only official statement from the beeb has been that "a script is in development" ... which doesn't mean it's even close to being in production or even pre-production), why would tennant quit being the doctor, then do specials, then leave? why not end at series 4 and then make the movie, have that, and then have matt smith?

also, i'm kind of ready for this chapter of who to end, despite how much i love 10. i want to see what the fantastic steven moffat is going to do with the doctor, and matt smith too. i watched "the empty child"/"the doctor dances" the other night (moffat-penned, starring christopher eccleston as the 9th doctor ... pictured below), and just kinda fell in love again with the mixture of emotional nuance, darkness, humor, romance, and crazy broad gesture that moffat can do.

OTOH, what with every sci-fi/fantasy franchise in existence cashing in right now, it's the perfect time to plan a big-screen who adventure. and with RTD supposedly moving to the u.s., plus julie gardner (who also works on spin-offs torchwood and the sarah jane adventures) joining the l.a.-based bbc worldwide america, doctor who is closer to hollywood than, well, ever. it would make RTD's moving-on-now stance a pose, but that wouldn't be terribly surprising. and, while DT seemed to be shifting toward more "serious" projects (hosting PBS's masterpiece classics starting in the fall and having a part in UK WWII drama glorious 39), then the announcement came that he will play a villain in the latest installment of the british st. trinian's franchise, apparently involving pirate gold and naughty schoolgirls. (hey, a guy's gotta eat ... not to mention: naughty schoolgirls!) but anyway, in one recent interview DT did sorta cryptically mention the possibility of being in an unnamed big-deal sci-fi project in the future, so it very well could all happen just as the rumors say it will.

but, as much as i love doctor who and have since childhood, i dunno if the average american idiot will. (yes, i'm assuming it would be made at least partially with the US market in mind, like the '96 tv movie ... otherwise, why bother making the announcement at an american industry event?) DW has a higher profile than ever here, but it's still a cult jam. which is rather how i prefer it, but that's another story.

whatevs. if there is a movie, i'll definitely see it!

anyway, not that matt smith needs MY sympathy, but i'm starting to feel sorry for the dude. he's not even been seen in the show yet and already he's being shoved to the side by DT. ahaha. oh well. i suppose he'll be in the relentless spotlight soon enough.

life begins at the hop

2009-07-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

remember when you could just get fucked up and dance away your problems?

that's what the kids on UK teensploitation drama skins do ... which is one of the reasons it's my latest shameless UK tee-vee fascination. it's all tender young things (see most of the series 1-2 cast, above) trying to sort out life while they drink, drug, party, shag, snog, mope, fight, cry, and accessorize -- you know, the usual dressing up in costumes and playing silly games that youth is heir to.

most of them are in college, which is sort of like high school here, but different. in the first two series, the alpha male is the kid in the lime green shirt at the top of the above photo; his name's tony, and the redhead pressed against his chest is michelle, his GF, with whom tony's BFF sid, the kid in the watch cap and specs, is also in love.

but sid's real soul mate is cassie, the blond girl at far right, a zany free spirit with a bunch of problems, mainly an eating disorder. (the actress, hannah murray, is pretty great ... she was one of the many rumored to be the next doctor who companion, but that gig went to scottish lovely karen gillan ... and that's OK, 'cause i think hannah would be better suited to playing a time lord -- specifically, romana -- instead.) the topless boy pressed against her is maxie, the prettiest gay boy dancer you ever did see, who's one of the more sensible characters. but he and his beffie anwar (to the left of tony) struggle to remain friends b/c anwar's muslim and thinks homosexuality is wrong. the girl in the orange shirt is jal -- a talented musician who's quick to lend a sympathetic ear to everyone's drama, even though her own troubles get shoved to the side. (not pictured is chris, a fun-loving fuck-up who forms a surprising bond with jal ... and has a fling with his psych teacher.)

on the downside, there's way too much puking, and, while some of the music is great, a lot of it is relentlessly emo. especially in series 3, which has a different cast:

i liked the first two series better, partly b/c tony was more a charming, conniving borderline sociopath, where the latest alpha male, cook, is a psychopath with anger-management issues -- and, while different episodes focus on different characters, the alpha male does tend to be in a lot of them. as alpha males will do. cook (third from left above) really got on my nerves, and most of the boys in S3 were rubbish, although the girls were pretty cool.

anyway. i'm not really one of those people who thinks that life is high school over'n'over again (lawd forbid!), but something about skins does resonate. yes, i kind of love living vicariously through the crazy party scenes where they drink and down whatever they can get their hands on, then dance in a gang at the discotheque, and never suffer a hangover ('cause those days are gone). but i think what attracts me the most is the ... fronting. they all act like they know what they're doing but often haven't got a clue. i feel like that a lot. still.

the man comes around

2009-06-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

finished watching HBO's generation kill the other night. it was a pretty big deal when first broadcast almost a year ago, but i just didn't catch up with it till now, mainly b/c the dvd fairy handed us a copy a while back.

you can read about it at the link above, or on wikipedia, but in a nutshell, it's a seven-part drama about the early days of the iraq war, as seen through members of bravo company, part of the marine corps' 1st reconnaissance battalion. based on embedded journalist evan wright's book of the same name, it was co-created and -written by the guys who made the wire, david simon and ed burns. remember embedded journalists? remember shock and awe? remember when the war was going to pay for itself and be over in a few weeks, months at the most? remember when you were considered a traitor for speaking out against it?

yeah, good times.

the miniseries brooks no sentiment, of course. and it is definitely a sibling of the wire, with that same hyper-verité vibe -- all clipped scenes, terse dialogue, semi-impenetrable lexicon, and deepening resignation.

the characters are many (28, wiki informs me ... no wonder it's hard to keep everybody straight), but probably the main guy is sgt. brad "iceman" colbert (alexander skarsgard), whose humvee squad hosts the fictional version of evan wright, usually just referred to as "reporter." (that's them in the picture above, brad in the middle and reporter with the camera.) scribe gets up-close and personal with both the war and the rest of the humvee squad, which also includes utterly insane driver ray (james ransone) and crazy deadshot mofo trombley (billy lush).

their platoon commander, lt. fick (stark sands), is richie cunningham-esque with his round baby face (although the actor was about 30 when he filmed this), so it kind of follows that fick is a stand-up guy. a little too idealistic for his own good, considering, but devoted to keeping the shit from rolling onto his guys, which is what a good leader does. he is totally outnumbered, however, by idiots.

b/c, just like at any job, the bosses are largely incompetents, often taking self-glorification into account as much as, if not more than, reaching the objective. but, unlike most jobs, the idiot bosses can quite literally get you killed. however, the grunts take this in stride ... i mean, they hate it, and they bitch about the morons in charge all the time -- and at one point, one even tells an officer to his face that he's incompetent. (actually, that was the corpsman, the navy medical personnel assigned to the group, but still.) but they just kind of roll their eyes, shrug, down more ripped fuel, and keep right on videoing everything while dealing with the crazy orders, not to mention the blind firefights, lack of proper equipment, endless waiting, food shortages, primitive conditions, health afflictions, and confusing local populace (who's the enemy? who's not?).

the videotaping leads to the marine-made movie that figures into the finale, accompanied by johnny cash singing his appropriately grim judgment-day ballad "the man comes around" (the title track from his 2002 album american iv: the man comes around), complete with quotations from the book of revelation and packed with biblical metaphors.

the show itself displays little patience with religion, and the dialogue is filled more with what mr. spock might call colorful banter: routine racist jibes, misogynist slurs, and homophobia. so, you've been warned. yeah, sure, that's what it's "really like," but i'm just sayin' -- some people might find that stuff a turnoff. for me, it was worth watching, but the constant objectification of women did feel like verbal battery at times. when the guys are tossing slurs at each other, at least it's a (usually goodnatured) battle of words. but there are no women around to give as bad as they got.

however, the irony is that it quickly becomes clear, as protocols are broken and the marines are forced to do things like abandon men they should've taken prisoner (men who will later be slaughtered by saddam's republican guard for surrendering), that the grunts are the ones who grasp the total fucked-ness of the situation, and who in their own way see the moral quagmire to come, long before anyone in charge could even admit there was a problem. so let's hear it for crude motherfuckers who know what time it is.

watching this series while the fucked-up situation unfolded (and continues) in iran added an extra layer of irony. we stomped into iraq and murdered the locals ostensibly to set them "free," and now we're helpless bystanders as the citizens of iran fight for their own freedom. i don't mean to suggest we should do something military, but there's been such intense debate even about what president obama should say and how he should say it. we're walking softly and keeping the big stick in the closet -- a far cry from the swaggering that helped bring this newfound sense of cautious conscientiousness into vogue.

still, for all its matter-of-fact toughness, generation kill has unexpectedly emotional moments that spring from the characters being rubbed raw at times. the lack of sentimentality in the story, and the way the viewer becomes absorbed into this world, give these moments an unbearably poignant intensity. you're pulled in -- partly b/c of the writing, with the characters revealed mostly through endless, often seemingly trivial or routine conversations and group sings while rolling in the humvees. partly b/c of how it is shot, with lots of tight inside-the-vehicle views, closeups on men and their weapons, tense two- and three-shots ... as well as sweeping vistas of the landscape and sky, and driveby views of the displaced people, the destroyed cities and villages. but also, for me, having to pay attention to the slanguage and acronomicon made it kind of like reading a tv show, which was pretty cool.

bravo company's mission does end -- well, not so much end as close the loop of an endless cycle -- and the series doesn't deal directly with the clusterfuck to come (one darkly wry recurring phrase is that the war's almost over). but it certainly foreshadows the oncoming mess, mainly as the troops connect the dots while they just keep sucking it up -- leaving prisoners behind, seeing civilians blown up, capturing foreign jihadists who entered the country after the u.s. invasion. the pattern is just forming for the grunts, but we see the all-too-familiar origins of what's been a dire, expensive, and seemingly never-ending part of our history for the last six years. and, all apologies to mr. cash, i don't see any justice on the horizon.

hello birmingham

2009-05-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

a bullet came to visit a doctor
in his one safe place ...

today dr. george tiller was murdered while serving as an usher at his church in wichita, kansas. an unapologetic abortion provider, he was one of the few u.s. physicians to perform late-term abortions. (the photo above, taken from the AP story at link in previous sentence, is of his body being removed from the church.) as a medical professional who had been doing this since the 1973 roe v. wade supreme court decision, he was, of course, used to threats. and indeed, dr. tiller had been shot before, in both arms, in 1993 by an anti-choice hater. (it was the same year that david gunn became the first u.s. abortion doctor to be shot dead, in pensacola, florida.) tiller usually had a bodyguard when going to/from his clinic -- which was bombed in 1986 and often the target of vandalism. but he didn't have a bodyguard in church ... b/c church is supposed to be safe.

as it turns out -- and as ani difranco underscored in her 1999 song "hello birmingham" (quoted above) -- nowhere is safe from these fanatics.

ever since president barack obama spoke at notre dame's commencement, i've been thinking about barnett slepian. until today, he was the most recent medical professional to have been killed by an anti-choice activist: in 1998, slepian was murdered by james charles kopp, shot at through his kitchen window while making dinner in his home in amherst, near buffalo, new york. the crime inspired difranco to write "hello birmingham," which is a thoughtful yet rawly emotional song. it's very moving, especially when heard in concert.

dr. slepian has been on my mind for a couple of weeks, because i wanted to blog about obama's speech but i was just too angry about what he said. before he went to notre dame, some had denounced the university for inviting obama -- a dirty, abortion-rights-supporting bastard -- to address the graduating class. so obama decided to directly address the controversial issue. and it was just too much to see the president, who is supposed to be pro-choice, using the opportunity to continue the democrats' mealy-mouthed campaign to appease the opposition by (a) acting as though people who think women don't have human rights have any sort of point and (b) implying that each "side" in this conflict is equally guilty of lacking fair-mindedness and of "demonizing" the other.

but angry rants are just so 20th century, so ... no post. still it bugged me, the idea that we who believe in abortion on demand, without apology, somehow need to be more open-minded about those who think they have some moral right to run women's lives. that we need to watch our language and not call such people "right-wing idealogues" -- b/c that's not "fair-minded."

i looked up "idealogue" in webster's. here's what it says:

1 : an impractical idealist: THEORIST
2 : an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology

considering that pro-lifers tend to think there's no circumstance under which abortion is justifiable, and that this means they believe women should be forced to give birth even if they don't want to, it actually sounds like a totally accurate word to me.

in the days that followed the president's speech, the pro-life camp lived up to our unfair characterizations, with lots of letters to the editor and web comments declaring endless variations on the assertion that no common ground was possible with people who don't believe abortion is murdering baybeez. the crazy was going off to such an extent that i started wondering if perhaps obama's comments had been some kind of twisted rahm emmanuel ploy to expose the anti-choicers' true colors.

a nice dream, but the truth is that obama belongs to the sadly misguided "let's compromise to show how reasonable we are" crowd (of which hillary clinton is also a member). the ones who have fallen into the trap of letting fetuses and debates about when life begins trump defending women's rights. who never fail to cede ground when accused of being too liberal on abortion. who yak on about reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and assure the haters that they, too, understand how abortion is a "moral," "ethical" issue. bollocks to that. it's a personal, medical issue ... and if morality (aka religion in this scenario) comes into it, then it's between the woman and her god or representative thereof.

while browsing the news links after the speech, i read an editorial (which i didn't bookmark and now cannot find for the life of me) that discussed obama's notion about the two sides finding ways to come together. the piece mentioned his statement about each side demonizing the other and noted (paraphrasing) that pro-lifers had bombed clinics and killed doctors, while pro-choicers had called the opposition really bad names.

after the slepian killing, pro-life forces rallied and protested at clinics in buffalo and rochester. an operation rescue rep mocked calls for nonviolence and warned that more blood would be spilled. today, after tiller was murdered (some would say assassinated, and i would agree), the wichita-based operation rescue claimed to be shocked by the killing (for which a suspect, reported anti-choice "fanatic" scott roeder, was arrested this afternoon) ... even though its website ran a "tiller watch" page (no longer available for viewing) and labeled him a murderer. i know i'm paranoid and suspicious, but i just don't think they were really that shocked.

i think i preferred it when such groups were open with their hate, rather than this hypocritical PR speak. (not that there wasn't plenty of faux hand-wringing back in 1998, too.) the lip service paid to the doctor's killing was quickly followed by operation rescue founder randall terry fretting that obama would somehow use this act of terrorism to persecute those who oppose abortion rights. (this came somewhere after his claim that it was tragic how the doctor had died before he had a chance to get right with god. how the hell would randall terry know what state of grace, or not, dr. tiller was in?)

yes, let's show how reasonable we are to people who can turn the cold-blooded murder of a doctor who saved lives into a threat to their existence. let's play nice with fanatics who would rather see our viewpoint eradicated (a viewpoint, by the way, that is still the rule of law in this land) than live and let live.

of course obama condemned tiller's killing today. i'm sure HE actually was shocked by it. and i'm certainly not suggesting that the president is somehow responsible for this. i'm just saying that we've suddenly been brutally reminded that this fluffy dream of everyone coming to the table ... or at least coming to an agree-to-disagree type of understanding ... is disingenuous and naive. it has been and always will be the anti-choice camp that takes things too far -- too far to tolerate.

it's people who support a woman's right to choose who are bombed, who are harassed, who are killed for doing what's right. obama and his ilk only undermine the position they're supposed to defend by making it seem like pro-choicers aren't doing enough to find common ground. i find it hard to believe they don't get that nothing but total surrender will ever be enough for the haters. so why perpetuate the illusion that the so-called pro-life movement is reasonable? it isn't. and it's because of THEM, not us, that true accord will never happen.

fire of love

2009-05-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

a friend of mine has a "bucket list" -- a la the jack nicholson/morgan freeman terminal-illness dramedy the bucket list -- although she, unlike the characters in the flick, is not dying. one of the things on her list was firing a gun, and monday was the day for her to tick that item off -- and i got to join the shooting party, as part of my birthday present from JD.

on monday night, i picked up JD at her k-town pad and pointed the beast east on 6th street, all the way to the los angeles gun club. it's a boxy building inside a small warehouse compound, with a small parking lot right in front. inside it's very bright and spare, with display cases full of weaponry marking out an l-shaped space from which employees hand out rental guns and sell boxes of ammo. on the walls above are a wide variety of targets -- everything from your standard silhouettes and circle targets to bottles and cans on a fence to photos of menacing guys in hoodies and other thuggish types -- posted on the walls so you can choose. the south wall is windows looking into the range, with entry doors on either side.

the name of the place brought to mind legendary l.a. band the gun club, fronted by the late jeffrey lee pierce. a group beloved by many but not well known to me. thus i was forced to learn, and discovered on wikipedia (confirmed by 00soul) that keith morris of the circle jerks named the band, but not after this particular gun club. still, it is a synchronicitous musical link, with the bonus that "fire of love," a 1982 single by TGC (and also the title of the band's debut album), was originally done by jody reynolds in 1958, the year jeffrey lee pierce was born. (also, they both suffered from liver ailments.)

a lot of different l.a. music scene figures and other famous folk passed through or worked with the gun club: this very detailed article gets into that. jeffrey lee died in 1996 at the way-too-young age of 37 -- not of a gunshot wound (that would be TOO horribly synchronicitous), but a brain hemorrhage. i remember when 00soul went to the memorial. he told me a story about him and JLP drunkenly singing doo-wop on the sidewalk outside the music machine one night years before ... one of those rock 'n' roll moments that takes on a life of its own, fleeting and yet eternal. like a shot through the heart (at least if you're an ashes to ashes fan).

one of our party actually did fret that she would accidentally shoot someone, but of course there were no casualties. JD and i paired up in lane 3, after getting the rundown from alonzo, a cheerful man in a gun club jacket. you must carry your unloaded gun, clip, bullets, etc. into the range in a plastic carrier box, and wear your protective headphones and eyeshields. unless you rent a rifle, which JD did -- as it doesn't fit in the carrier, you just hold the unloaded gun straight up and transport it that way.

to her disappointment, they did not have an M-16. "too much," said alonzo. (she was in the army for seven years and is a very good shot, BTW.)

we started with a military 9mm, a very nice gun that didn't kick much but seemed a little too big and heavy for my hands.

i did hit the target -- many times even in vital areas (head, heart). but my aim drifted left in a wicked way. which helped later on, when we got a glock and JD came back with a target, "tactical situation no. 3," depicting a gunman with a woman hostage, him standing to her left. i totally blew that mofo away and DID NOT hit the hostage! i was chuffed.

the glock was a lot lighter but had much more kick, although that didn't bother me. (there i am with it at the top of this post.) but most awkward for me was the rifle, a winchester copy i am told, which i only fired maybe 10 times. while i did hit the target (bottles and cans, clap your hands), it was hard to master the gun. i've never fired a long gun while standing, so it was challenging to hold it against my shoulder, sight it, fire, etc.

it was fun to try, though. we all seemed to really get into the experience. one guy rented an ancient, WWI russian rifle with a bolt action that was, like, so loud. we're standing there, innocently blasting away with our pistols, when allasudden there's this BOOOOOOOM! right next to us. WTF? even with plugs in and headphones on (i needed earplugs too because the noise in general is very bad for already abused ears like mine), it was sonic.

at last we returned our gear to alonzo, cashed out, and said thanks. "we'll be back," we vowed, like ahhnold. and trundled off to seven grand, a downtown whiskey bar where JD ordered a sour with bulleit bourbon, just to keep the theme alive.

shooting definitely got my adrenaline going, and burned off a lot of nervous, anxious energy. it has a certain allure as stress relief. but i need to try more guns to find which is best. i want to shoot a revolver. and i gotta work on my breathing, and my aim. (tough b/c i cannot see the sights without my reading glasses ... kids, don't let anyone tell you differently: aging sucks.) and i probably should have taken off my rings, but ... oh well. next time.

heavenly

2009-05-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

so yesterday was my birthday, and we had a small party here. just nine people (including us) -- the love shack ain't that big, see? but it was all pretty comfortable, with the porch set up to accommodate smokers, candles burning for that essential flattering light, good music, and lots of entertaining talk. in short, it was all love. which is, as jackie deshannon sang, what the world needs more of.

00soul cooked a whole awesome meal, but, as the photo-taking was left to me, visual documentation is made of fail. i mean, what documentation exists is fine ... but there's not much of it. b/c i was too busy getting drunk and having fun to snap photos, oops! so just think of this as "stunt cooking: behind the scenes edition." we've got before and after but no during.

he made spanish tapas, paella, and some kind of spanish-style chocolate almond cake. one layer, no frosting, just sprinkled with sugar and cocoa. here's what it looked after it was cooled and removed from the springform pan what birthed it, but before that final application:

the tapas, pronounced "authentic" by the divine ms. m, were basically delicious things on thin slices of lightly toasted french bread (00soul did the slicing AND the toasting). one variety was garlic, tomato, and olive oil all rubbed into the bread. another was canned tuna and pieces of green olive (he sliced the olives himself, after removing the pimentos, b/c couldn't find any already sliced). and finally there was serrano ham and manchego cheese. oh, and we also had bowls of marcona almonds and whole green olives.

sadly, i don't have ANY pictures of the tapas! they were eagerly consumed by the ravenous horde, most of whom contributed bottles of cava and champagne to make it all go down smoothly. (see the body count at the top of this post.) the paella also turned out amazing: it had chicken, shrimp, scallops, mussels, ham, and of course the usual rice, pimentos, and peas. and probably other stuff i'm forgetting. 00soul used his paella pan, which was a christmas present from me some years ago, and you can see how it has been weathered with use, as this photo is of the last bit left many hours after we fell upon it like wolverines:

i think it was somewhere around this time that JD and i attacked the remnants with our fingers and a spoon.

in the gift department, i received a cache of awesome barrettes and haircolor-saving shampoo and conditioner from ms. m, and this super-cool hot wheels model of the enterprise 1701-A from the chief:

pretty excellent, right? (this isn't my photo; i stole it from amazon.com.) it nicely complements the set of four "star trek" movie glasses JD gave me last week.

it all ended with 00soul playing 45s till he fell over and JD asleep on the couch, while antonym and i kept talking till some time after 2. then i stayed up till around 4 and drank water. which sorta helped stave off a really gnarly hangover, but i haven't been too ambitious today (understatement).

so big thanks to my main man, who worked himself nearly to death to give me a really fabulous birthday. b/c that's what he's like. and that's why i love him.

it was a very good year

2009-05-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

let us now praise famous 78-year-olds in beloved sci-fi franchises:

* the new star trek movie has lots to enjoy, but my favorite part was getting to see leonard nimoy (born march 26, 1931) play spock one more time. he reflects on the role and trek in an l.a. times article that's actually pretty decent.

* the UK's daily mail has a big feature on (WARNING: IF YOU CLICK OR EVEN ROLL OVER THIS LINK YOU WILL BE SPOILED ABOUT A CHARACTER IN ONE OF THE UPCOMING DOCTOR WHO SPECIALS) the actress claire bloom (b. february 15, 1931), who will help usher out david tennant as the doctor. the article mostly focuses on her tumultuous romantic life -- her first time ever was with richard burton, wowee -- but it's pretty interesting stuff. (the above gorgeous vintage photo of her is nicked from the article.)

* william shatner (b. march 22, 1931), the original captain james t. kirk, didn't get to be in the new trek, but writers roberto orci and alex kurtzman did work out a way to include him. it didn't pan out, but at least they tried.

bonus! another awesome sci-fi icon born in 1931: james earl jones (the original voice of darth vader).

a very good year, indeed. "sing" it, bill (click title link above for a shatnerific take on the sinatra classic)!

swingin'

2009-05-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

today is mother's day, so happy mother's day to all the moms. it's kind of a weird day when you don't have a mother anymore. nowadays it mostly makes me think of how long my mom's been dead -- which i guess might seem morbid to some, but it's just life, really. in july, she'll have been gone a whole decade already. ten years! it doesn't seem possible, but there you have it.

all tragedy becomes just another story if you manage to live through it and get over it, and, although my mother's death was of course a huge, life-ripping event, the distance of time has allowed the sadness to fade. these days i mostly ponder things like, the last time i saw her alive was on my 34th birthday, before flying back home to l.a. from my parents' florida winter home.

the plan was for me to come stay for a few days in may while my dad attended a reunion of his WWII shipmates, but when the time rolled around, she wasn't well enough to be at home anymore, and had to stay in the hospital. my brother and my niece were also around, which was both good and stressful b/c, well, you know ... terminal illness is stressful for everyone, and even families who basically get along can be rubbed raw by it. it was very strange uncharted territory, and at times tough to keep our bearings.

i've always liked to drive and find i do my best thinking in the car, like a lot of people. you're just in your own bubble, and during that time in florida i really needed those intervals behind the wheel alone. riding shotgun was tom petty, whose album echo had come out the month before. he's one of my favorite musicians, and this collection had totally the right head -- by turns uplifting and melancholy, with moments of reflection and moments of release. during the course of my ramblings around that part of central florida, the ballad "swingin'" became irrevocably linked to my mom in my mind.

not so much the story part of the song, which is a typical petty tale of a loser-yet-winner. it's more how the minimal refrain ("...she went down/swingin'...) made me think of how my mom would not go down without a fight.

like i said, she was in the hospital in florida, but she wanted to go back home to pennsylvania. they told her she was too sick to ever leave, and she just wasn't having that. through what i truly believe was sheer force of will, she did improve enough to be allowed out so my dad could drive her back north, where she scored a few weeks' reprieve before dying in mid-july. "swingin'" features this gorgeous guitar bridge/solo by the inimitable mike campbell (an underrated genius rock guitarist IMO), which kind of bursts out from behind the refrain and soars briefly ... like a woman delightedly, defiantly, heading home one last time.

i had a complicated relationship with my mother, and she with me. it could be contentious, to put it mildly. we didn't see eye-to-eye on most things. and she was quite stubborn and infuriating. she was also a big inspiration ... in some ways as a "how not to live your life" model, but i also learned valuable stuff from her, like impeccable manners -- and how to be a scary bitch on wheels.

among my mementos of her is a spectacular diamond cocktail ring (she loved her rocks, and all of us girl family members got pieces of her bling) that i had to have my jeweler uncle (mom's fave little bro) size for me. it's still a little too big, but that's ok, b/c i don't wear it often. mainly b/c it really is for a fancy party. ok, my mom wore it to the frickin' grocery store, but that's not me. back in the day when 00soul and i were fab, i had more occasions to take it out on the town, and i liked to wear it to places and events that were fantastic and lush and sparkly -- things she would have loved.

and sometimes when i travel, i see something i know she'd have liked, like the chandeliers at the assembly rooms in bath during my UK trip last year, or the beautiful stained glass windows at notre dame in paris and in the shakespeare church in stratford-upon-avon.

my mother's name was rose, and that was her signature flower, so often roses remind me of mom. i took the shot at the top of this post in paris last year, at the rodin museum, b/c they were so pretty on a miserable cloudy day. red ones were plentiful in her garden and on special occasions, but when i was a kid, she grew some yellow/pink multicolor ones like this too, called peace roses. so i thought of her when i photographed these parisian roses.

anyway, at times after she died, another line from "swingin'" would run through my head: "i wish ma could see me now/she'd be so proud of me." like when i got my first big magazine article assignment, just days after she died. i took it b/c i knew i had to, and she'd have been proud. these days i'm not sure mom has a lot to be proud of, but knowing her she'd probably find something.

so here's to rose ... thorns and all. sometimes i really miss you.

sabotage

2009-05-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

THE FOLLOWING IS MY REVIEW OF THE NEW MOVIE STAR TREK. AS IT DISCUSSES THE FILM AT LENGTH, THERE ARE SPOILERS. AND I MEAN BIG ONES. BEEEEEEG ONES!! SO PLEASE DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED. THANKS!

well, hurray! star trek the reboot movie was nowhere near as disappointing as i thought it would be. (now, that's some damning with faint praise!)

but seriously, folks ... j.j. abrams's big-screen reimagining of the vaunted franchise (now in theaters) was a lot of fun for this lifelong trekkie (call me a trekker if you must, i don't mind; just don't call me lost in a transporter accident). which perhaps makes "sabotage" an odd title for this post, but i have my reasons. anyway, i saw it last friday at a screening with world-famous film critic andy klein, so i've had a lot of time to think about it. and will now dissect it at length. with SPOILERS!

the main thing to ponder about star trek -- which revisits the 23rd-century era of the original 1960s tv series (aka TOS), telling how the first crew of the starship enterprise came together -- is: is this star trek? well, yes. it has optimism, bravery, self-sacrifice, rationality, compassion, curiosity, and a finely tuned sense of when to follow the rules and when to break them. but that's not much of a feat, as these are the core values of gene roddenberry's creation. so, what abrams has made here is a super-expensive piece of fanfic (except he wasn't ever that big of a fan, according to interviews). not that there's anything wrong with that.

unlike the best trek (from across all permutations), the movie is only about an inch deep, not offering much beyond how everyone must strive to be their very best and work together, and that friends can help you be a better you. ok, sure, there's some stuff about alternate timelines and whatnot, but that's definitely territory to which much trek has gone before. (and anyone who's watching abrams's lost won't even be phasered ... er, fazed.)

eh, but so what? star trek jumps to life immediately with a screen-sweeping battle between the federation starship kelvin and a massive, spiny romulan ship that looks like it was grown, not built. the kelvin, under the command of future hero james t. kirk's soon-to-be-martyred dad, george, gets the worst of that:

the action mostly moves right along, as befits this revved-up take on trek aimed straight at the modern viewer, though it's not as emo as i expected and certainly no gossip girl in space (thank your deity of choice, or none). and yet it wisely leans on and draws from the franchise's history, specifically the parts where star trek most successfully intersected with the mainstream. ("it's not just for geeks anymore" indeed, entertainment weekly.) it has all the things the best and most popular of the previous 10 trek flicks have had -- awesome space sequences, crazy stunts, cool fights, alien sex, brooding villains, campy performances, beloved catch-phrases -- but with a younger, hotter cast.

it also, inevitably, has stuff that's highly likely to make some trekkies/ers go WTF or even WTFF?

hey, i said that a few times myself, but a nice timey-wimey twist sets it up so that this here star trek does not erase anything that came before. so just relax and enjoy, b/c it's only another string ... an alternate universe, in which the characters we know experience their lives differently than they did in the place where spock comes from.

that would be leonard nimoy's spock (aka "spock prime"), whose actions in the far-flung future set in motion a chain of events that allows the bad guy, tattooed romulan mofo nero (eric bana), to exact his revenge on zachary quinto's spock in the now (the now of the movie, that is).

which is all a bit wrath of khan, but that's ok. nimoy-spock explains it all after meeting new kirk (blandly pretty chris pine, who turned out to be quite entertaining) on an icy moon of vulcan (following a sequence that pays obvious homage to abrams's first franchise love, star wars). new kirk and quinto-spock aren't friends yet -- in fact, kirk is in this godforsaken beast-infested place b/c freshly minted captain spock booted the uppity earthling right off his bridge after they clashed. still, despite the freedom to do new stuff, the same-old, same-old happens: spock prime saves kirk's ass. haha!

speaking of kirk's ass, it gets kicked but good several times in this flick: by soon-to-be-fellow starfleet cadets, by snow beasties, by spock (w00t!), by mofo ... i mean, nero ... . even uhura (zoe saldana) gets in her licks.

which brings us to that EW cover shot of chris pine and zoe saldana lookin' all steamy.

guess what? it's a fakeout. kirk doesn't make ANY time with uhura, because SHE'S HOOKING UP WITH SPOCK!!!!

dude. i was totally not spoiled for that, and wowee! my head about exploded for a second. then i sort of liked it ... and sort of didn't. here's kirk, the unstoppable sweet-talking womanizing bastard of legend, getting cut out of the action by a frickin' vulcan. amusing as that is -- and as exciting as the concept of sexay spock is -- i'm disappointed that uhura gets to be more of a person here, but the tradeoff is she has to be romantically hooked up with someone. in the 1960s, uhura wasn't defined by being someone's squeeze. in this movie, her feelings for spock are a big part of who she is. (and of course it isn't the same for spock -- his thing for uhura is part of a bigger personal drama that has nothing to do with her. meanwhile, she runs around going "tell me what you need" and stroking his alien neck soothingly with her lithe, black-fingernailed hands ... an au courant update of the original's flawless french manicure.) so that aspect of it kind of sucks, and makes 1960s uhura MORE FEMINIST than 2009 uhura ... which is, i suppose, just another sad sign of the times.

OTOH, it makes total sense that spock would fall for a human. (and why not uhura? she's smart, tough, and cute.) like father, like son. zachary "sylar from heroes" quinto had some big shoes (ears?) to fill, but he handles both sides of spock pretty well, showing him to also be his father's son in his fierce intelligence and mastery of vulcan science/culture. but he gets to delve into spock's human aspect (an immutable part of him, after all) in ways nimoy certainly never got to do. and quinto's the only one who has to go up against his original incarnation -- an icon of the franchise, for many fans the most fascinating character of all. anyway, zach does have the look of spock, although he's a bit rounder at the edges than the angular nimoy, and not as elegant. his voice seemed a bit squeaky at times -- not the deep, soothing mr. spock voice i love -- but he held his own against nimoy, who was just a joy to behold.

let's face it -- a big reason i rolled with this movie was b/c it's a total spockfest. we even get to see our human/vulcan half-breed as a grade-schooler, who endures a bunch of insults from his pureblood peers ... then beats the shit out of one who's twice his size. go, spocklet!

spock's pop, sarek (ben cross, a fine substitute for the late mark lenard), lectures the lad kindly -- this sarek is somewhat less of an asshole to spock, and i liked his compassion for his son. spock's mom, amanda, is played by winona ryder -- i didn't even recognize her. she was understanding and self-sacrificing, like a good mommy should be (blech) ... and sacrifice was truly the nature of her character, since j.j. killed her off later in the story. which led to my head exploding again, b/c spock the motherless babe-in-the-identity-woods is just so frakkin' disney-esque: his mommy dies so he can finally embrace his humanity. PUKE!! i mean, fuck off. seriously. (yes, her death is the result of a way more cataclysmic event ... which is also very OMFGWTF? ... but his central self-revelation revolves around him processing the loss of his mother.)

meanwhile (or whatever), kirk gets to be a badass tween, stealing his stepdad's antique bitchen corvette (like, 1960s-era) and escaping in a billowing cloud of iowa farm-road dust while the stepdad (voiced by greg grunberg, currently starring in tv's heroes but a longtime actor-touchstone/pal of abrams) threatens him over the comm (this was the most blatant product placement i noticed ... uh, not grunberg, but the name on the phone). but jimmy the kid just punches on the tunes, and out blares the beastie boys' "sabotage." hahaHA! talk about classic rock!

then comes the first of many scenes of kirk dangling above a dizzyingly steep drop, yowling and hanging on for dear life before scrambling determinedly back on top. this is as close as the movie gets to a motif, and i'm not sure it really is one.

backstories dispatched, we're plunged into the main drama, starting with life at starfleet academy, where spock is already an established hotshot (and looks damn hot in his uniform).

kirk joins pretty much on a dare from captain christopher pike (the noble bruce greenwood) -- who studied and admired the short-but-heroic career of george kirk -- but if this movie was ever supposed to be about kirk's journey from brawling punk to dashing officer, it doesn't show much; he just follows the trail, growing up and stepping up as needed. 'cause, as noted, this is really spock's flick. his conflict is more interesting, his experiences are more tragic, his struggle to define himself is harder, and his angst is more ... angsty.

uh, yeah. anyway ...

the supporting perfs ranged from angling toward reinvention to totally reveling in caricature/imitation, which was a bit head-spinning. anton yelchin as chekov was almost painfully adorable and probably the most OTT (seriously, his chekov accent was even more exaggerated than walter koenig's), but simon "shaun of the dead" pegg's scotty and karl "eomer" urban's mccoy were wonderful close seconds. john "harold" cho's sulu was more subtle, but he did get to do some fierce close combat with romulans alongside kirk, after a heart-stopping plunge out of a shuttle, which they're gearing up for here:

yeah, the razzle-dazzle was fantastic, but star trek did not lodge itself firmly in the culture because of its awesome special effects. while i did feel a twinge of wanting something more thoughtful, i appreciated some of the smaller touches (which were thoughtful in their own meta way), like the bleepy-bloopy sounds recalling the ambience of TOS woven into the soundtrack. there's a red-shirt moment, kirk gets to use his awesome powers of persuasion, and the movie is just shamelessly campy at points. but, hey, that's trek.

it made me want to see what they'll do with the next one, and it also got me thinking about star trek in the same way that james cawley and jack marshall's fanvid undertaking new voyages (now known as phase II) did. the success of that labor of fankind love proved how much devotees want to keep the story alive, and how many stories there are left to tell. on a way bigger scale, the reboot has also proven how star trek's mythology endures through the generations. what is happening now has happened before and will happen again. oh, sorry. wrong franchise!

do yourself a mischief

2009-04-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

AT LAST he's back: tonight on lost, daniel faraday -- american tv's current best substitute for a time lord -- was in full return (as opposed to just arriving on the island via submarine last ep, right before the end screen went black and logo-y). it was a frickin' mindblower of an hour, in which my favorite time-traveling physicist totally rocked inna doctor who stylee, right down to the "i'll explain later" (if not in those exact words).

all right. you know the drill. i'm about to talk a lot about this episode, so if you haven't seen it, LOOK AWAY! DO NOT READ ON! MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!

... i'm not fooling. beeg spoilers coming up, right now ...

first off, sawyer was totally ON this week, dubbing faraday both "twitchy" and "h.g. wells." and he also brought the angst when realizing they all had to leave ... he finally finds a place to belong, to be respected and useful (escaping his past -- in the past), and it's cruelly ripped from him by ... JACK! the dirty bastard.

anyway, sacrifice -- big and small -- was pretty much a theme this week. not least for us faraday fans, who've impatiently awaited his return, rejoiced at same, and now perhaps had him cruelly ripped from us by ... his own mother?? holy hell!

i didn't like faraday's mom, eloise hawking, making tiny tinsel-teethed daniel quit piano b/c he had to become a brilliant scientist. not b/c it was mean, although it was, but b/c ... there is an element of mathematics to music, and what better way to expand one's mind than to learn that language, as well as the art of improvisation (aka thinking outside the box)?

but i suppose it's a small thing to make him give up, since she knows she is grooming him to ultimately give up his entire life (uh, maybe -- not sure about that yet). ironically, eloise pushes young dan to his "destiny," seemingly believing it can't be changed. but faraday comes to realize/believe that the constants aren't the important part of the equation; it's the variables -- ie, humans -- that matter. so if he does certain things, he CAN change what happens in 1977, and keep the flight 815 accident from ever happening. (which actually raises a whole bunch of other questions, like, if jack, kate, and the rest of the oceanic 6 -- except sun -- were still in 1977 when faraday changed events, would they stay in 1977 or vanish back to their original timeline? that's just one.)

and so, as dan tells jack, it turns out one's existence in the future is no guarantee of one's survival in the past ... in effect, they have become the butterfly.

when eloise (who's a hostile OMG!) shoots daniel in 1977, she doesn't know what she's doing, even though he accuses her of doing everything she did, despite knowing what would happen to him (to everyone, maybe). daniel is speaking to the mother he knows, not the woman she is when she shoots him.

this stuff makes my head hurt, but i LOVE IT. or, as jack puts it, "i'm getting kind of used to the insane."

faraday's not really INSANE in the scenes where we finally see more about him weeping while watching that tv report on the fake 815 crash (pictured above). he's damaged, from the time-travel experiments at oxford, with a sort of memory impairment that widmore (his secret daddy, wowee!) tells him the island will cure. what dan says about trying it on himself first (again, the experiment) and never wanting to hurt theresa (his assistant/subject) was kind of chilling. so faraday feels guilty for not being able to save people (like charlotte). but he's a little bit reckless with their lives. just like ... the doctor!

sigh. poor charlotte. they could've been so good together.

anyway, this backstory makes me want to rewatch the eps where we first met faraday ... was he acting a little more squirrelly in the very beginning, due to slowly recovering as he spent more time on the island? i want to say yes, but maybe i'm just impressionable.

i love how in lost we get to see different events from different points of view, and how sometimes when the timeline expands to show us something we've only heard about, or seen a fragment of, the picture totally shifts and we understand events more completely. other times the revelation is more about a deepening of the emotional background. we heard charlotte tell daniel, before she died, about when he frightened her as a child. and tonight, the actual scene of him with little charlotte was really intense and desperate. you could see why she said, as an adult, that he'd scared her. it was a sad, heavy-duty moment. not least b/c he tells her he tried not to have to tell her what he's telling her, but he couldn't avoid doing it. which isn't so good for that changing-the-past theory, IMO.

see? head hurts!

but i wonder if faraday will survive the gunshot? the teaser for next week carefully conceals his fate, of course. i've been trying to avoid lost spoilers (as i am gorging on DW shooting spoilers, i really can't take any more than that), so i don't know whether he's going to live. of course, i'm not optimistic. and, as time lord-y as faraday can be, i doubt he'll regenerate. darn it.

safe from harm

2009-04-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

today's l.a. times has a front-page feature by robin abcarian, about this ucla student named lila rose (pictured above, from the article), who lies to planned parenthood staffers that she's a 13/14-year-old girl impregnated by her 31-year-old BF and reluctant to reveal his identity (as naming him will open him up to criminal charges). lila and pals videotape these encounters so that she can catch PP employees flouting laws about reporting statutory rape.

these videos have been posted on youtube and have resulted in some repercussions for planned parenthood. if people in the organization really aren't reporting suspected child abuse/statutory rape, then they're violating PP's rules as well as the law. which is fucking wrong and needs to stop. i can't really say what might motivate a PP staffer to do something like that, but i will bet it would have more to do with a perhaps misguided attempt to help, rather than a hunger to suck out one more innocent baybee omg. but it's hard to really know, since the videos she posts on youtube are edits of the longer encounters (footage of which is supposedly also available), leaving out the parts where the faux-underage girl cries and begs and otherwise plays on people's sympathies ... or whatever. yeah, real cinema verite.

abcarian notes that accusing PP of not reporting suspected statutory rapes is an old tactic with a new twist (that would be the vaunted "new media" element), but doesn't tell us how well the tactic has worked thus far (as PP is still in existence and abortion is still legal, i'm thinking not so well). also, admittedly i'm not too bright, but i don't even understand why exposing some PP staffers' possible wrongdoing WRT statutory-rape reportage will return us to a world where abortion is illegal.

but the bigger question that was never addressed, surprisingly, is did lila and her partners in crime ever try this tactic and it didn't work? if so, how many times? as ms. rose would only deign to answer questions via e-mail, she may not have answered that question. but i don't think it was even asked, b/c if it WAS, then abcarian could have said she didn't answer it. i mean ... am i the only one who wants to know that?

speaking of answers, i don't get why this story was granted such big play when the girl wouldn't even do a proper interview. she's got all this time to go around the country playing pregnant teenager, but she insisted on answering questions via e-mail. why, so the PR company that gives her "guidance" (the same folks who brought you the swift boaters) could help her with her homework? e-mail interviews are for eccentric authors and famous recluses, not able-bodied 20-year-old activists who think it's ok to ambush people but heaven forfend anyone get an unscripted shot at HER.

there is also a boosterific blog item about this feature on the times's "top of the ticket" blog, described as "politics, coast to coast ... ." the writer of that item, andrew malcolm, actually uses the phrase "antiabortion struggle" -- that's a rather loaded phrase, unlike, say, "antiabortion campaign," perhaps? (also note the description of the article in the link: "antiabortion-crusader-ucla-lat.html" -- "crusader," indeed!) andrew also parrots a quote from one of the pro-forced-birthers in the article, claiming that "the videos of an attractive, reasonable young woman also play against the anti-abortion stereotypes of angry, older men imposing their moral will on females ..."

that's a little more wildly stated than the original (see below), but no less confusing. in these videos, lila rose plays a 14-year-old girl impregnated by a much older man. this is a "reasonable young woman"? furthermore, the anti-choice movement is hardly populated only by men or even stereotyped that way, so i call strawman on that.

the actual quote from the article is:

"'There is this stereotype of who we pro-life leaders are, and for the most part it would be white middle-aged religious men trying to impose their will on women,' said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition." (who, haha!, is a white middle-aged religious man.) "'So now with Lila, you bring this young, fresh college student that completely blows any stereotypes away. No one is going to accuse Lila of being mean, vindictive and harsh.'"

perhaps not, but i WILL accuse her of being a tool of said "stereotypes." (also, having argued with plenty of anti-choice "young, fresh college students" in my distant days of being a college student, i call b.s. on the entire alleged newness of lila as a type of antiabortion activist.)

as the article notes WRT lila (emphasis and bracket comments mine):

* "In February, she was awarded $50,000 from the Gerard Health Foundation, a Massachusetts-based charity founded by a Catholic businessman [named Raymond B. Ruddy, a white middle-aged religious man] that funds antiabortion and abstinence-only sex education efforts."

* "David French [a W M-A R M], an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, gave her free advice when Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles threatened action, and appeared at her side during an interview with conservative TV talk-show host Bill O'Reilly."

* "She also receives guidance from CRC Public Relations, a Washington-area firm [owned by a W M-A M ... not sure if he's R] that represents conservative clients and had a hand in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that targeted Democrat John F. Kerry during the 2004 presidential race."

toward the end of the article, lila's partner in crime james o'keefe mumbles something about how they justify lying and setting people up in the name of, uh, whatever it is they stand for. and also asserts that ...

"The videos are not supposed to necessarily show people breaking laws. They are supposed to change hearts and minds."

y'know, like in vietnam, when we won the hearts and minds of the people. uh ... right?

crawl

2009-04-20T23:17:00.000-07:00

someone tell my brother not to look at this post b/c ... SNAKE!

i spotted this rather amazing specimen (no idea what it is, but isn't it BIG?) on the ground below my office window this afternoon -- a nice, far-off 4-5 feet down. i think it might've been disturbed by the guys with weedwhackers who came to finish cutting the brush out back. and it was HOT enough today that even a cold-blooded critter would seek some shade. wowee, it's big. did i mention? (i'm not really afraid of snakes in a girly-screamy way ... unlike my bro, ahaha ... i like watching them, and gawked at this one quite a bit before it finally slithered off. but they definitely weird me out on some primal level.)

anyway, yeah. it's spring in the canyon. perhaps most spectacularly, we've had bees swarming and swirling in the air currents and tree branches high above the street. but also there's been the cheeky red squirrel on the patio. lizard poop on the windowsill. critters scuttling about the chimney. and now the snake. all that's missing is a midnight teenage coyote chorus!

moving away from the pulsebeat

2009-04-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

april is a cruel month for many, and i'm among that number ... which is my excuse for not posting anything this month. after having dreaded the day and then actually forked over much of my fortune to uncle sam, i've just been hanging around the loveshack depressed, working when possible, and wandering the internet obsessively following doctor who set reports and watching sci-fi/fantasy movie trailers (omg, harry potter and the half-blood prince ftw!).

the easter who special, "planet of the dead," was an entertaining diversion that managed to be ultra-modern and action-y yet still flaunt the spirit of the old school ... but it wasn't my fave ep ever. (i'd give it a B.) the next special won't air until "novemberish" (according to still-in-charge showrunner russell t. davies). so we won't get any new tales from the whoniverse until this summer's torchwood: children of earth, the five-part miniseries airing all in one week (which amounts to TW S3). it looks pretty cool -- as does the BBC promo posted above, no? ianto and gwen wear older-and-wiser well, imo.

during my internet meanderings, i've learned some surprising things:

* the multiverse of slash fic includes transformers. ok, i saw the movie, but i was already grown up when the toys appeared, so i don't know much about the transformers. they always seemed kind of asexual to me, but obviously i'm missing something, b/c clearly there are people who get off on seeing optimus prime turned on -- IN THAT WAY.

* someone expanded the game of rock paper scissors to rock paper scissors spock lizard. the things i learn browsing geek t-shirt sites! what an awes improvement on the original. it almost makes me wish i worked in an office again, so i could play it with coworkers.

* you can spend hours picking out the perfect habitat for your alien race from the planetary society's catalog of exoplanets.

* twittervision is horrifyingly hypnotic ... (and, no doubt, so last week).

if you add all this to the large quantity of broadcast and recorded TV i've been watching lately, it's a lot of evidence pointing to the possibility that i need to get out more. but i've actually been out more than usual, including a recent tequila-soaked night at el chavito ... a nice afternoon spent hanging with an old friend ... dinner out with 00soul ... a trip to my friends' fetching echo park bookstore, stories ... and a hang w/a new friend and her creative, lively pals at the brewery artwalk just yesterday.

see? i'm not COMPLETELY webheaded. i haven't even watched the susan boyle clip yet. (she's from west lothian, just like david tennant!) but speaking of middle-aged sensations, you'd BETTER click the title link above so you can check out the buzzcocks in 2008, totally bringing it for one of my fave classics.

life itself

2009-03-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

back home in l.a. after a short visit to florida to see my dad. the whole trip was a synchronicitous mixture of routine and remarkable, of the sort i've come to expect (in a weird way) out of life. but yesterday on the plane ride home, something happened that was uniquely horrible and amazing at once.

the plane took off exactly on time from orlando, and the cabin crew had just finished doing the whole snack/beverage thing. i was sipping my OJ and reading my thriller novel when a commotion arose two rows behind me. something was going on with the young family back there; the father started wailing, and someone shouted something about the baby. seconds later, a flight attendant announced over the intercom "CODE RED! we have a medical emergency! is there a doctor on board? we have a CODE RED, a baby is choking!"

so everyone gasped at once and turned to look. flight attendants rushed down the aisle, and again the announcement pleaded for a doctor or EMT. time seemed to stand still while we all waited, and no one seemed to respond. i remember thinking, "really? there's NO doctor on board? OMG!" then suddenly a guy came rushing down the aisle, and then two more, and i looked back just in time to see the baby be handed out to the flight attendants and this man. the baby, a boy, was rigid and turning gray, a sight that was alarming beyond belief to simply witness as a stranger, let alone have to endure as a parent. and so the father started ... i don't know what you'd call it. howling and sobbing all at once, a sound i've never heard another human being make and hope never to hear again.

the crew was shouting to get the medical kit, get the oxygen, make room, etc. there were people in the aisle, not really rubbernecking -- i mean, of course they were watching, but mainly there was just nowhere to go. it's kind of hard to get of the way on an airplane when there's not a lot of room to move anywhere. even when one flight attendant ran up with the requested kits, she couldn't quite get people out of the way enough to hand the stuff back. so i jumped up out of my aisle seat and said, "here!" she flung herself toward my seat and passed back the necessary equipment, leaving the rest of the stuff on my seat. so then i was standing in the aisle, holding my orange juice and fretting, while everyone else in the area started murmuring and looking wild-eyed at each other, like "OMG! no!" the father continued to wail, the mother cried quietly and said "my baby," and the group of medical professionals (a doctor and two disney EMTs) disappeared into the last row of seats with the child.

it couldn't have been more than a minute, maybe less, while we all held our breath. the couple had an older child, a little girl of about 3 or 4, who was right in the middle of all this chaos and crying of course. a black lady in a pink track suit with a gorgeous cascade of reddish braids stood up and said, "JESUS!" the adrenaline was blasting through me, and i thought i was going to cry. it was so awful to hear these poor people in such distress, and there was nothing any of us could do but watch and wait. and of course my mind went straight to the bad place: OMG PLEASE DON'T LET THE BABY DIE! as horrible and sad and scary as the situation was, we all knew how much worse it could get.

so we watched and we waited, and some of us prayed. some ladies near me said they had kids too, and explained that's why the were so upset. i thought, damn, i don't have kids but i'm totally freaking out! across the aisle from me was a young couple with a baby girl, and the mom just held onto that kid and looked both grateful and worried. (her baby didn't even cry during all this commotion but just sucked her pacifer and gazed out placidly.) someone shouted again for oxygen, and a man hurried up with a little tank and mask, and we passed it up to the medics. again, hundreds of years seemed to pass while we waited. i started thinking the worst again, wondering how any one of us would bear it, not really daring to imagine what it would be like to be onboard this aircraft with a dead baby and a devastated family. and definitely not wanting to find out.

and then ... the baby started crying. and the dad started wailing again, and then the mom finally really lost it b/c the crisis had ... if not passed, at least lessened. i've never been so happy to hear a baby cry in my life.

"we're landing!" a flight attendant barked, and seconds later the captain was on the com, telling us there was a medical emergency and we were going to land in new orleans, where paramedics would meet the plane. luckily we were just east of NOLA, and we were on the ground in about 20 minutes. EMTs came on board, swooped up the baby and the family, and rushed off again. then we had to wait to refuel and re-file the flight plan, but nobody even cared. we all saw the baby being carried out, alert and awake and breathing, and we were all shaking and grinning.

it turned out that the child hadn't choked but had actually had a seizure. the doctor/EMTs seemed to think he'd be all right. and for the rest of the flight (we were back in the air 30 minutes later), everyone was just totally cool to each other. it was all excuse-me-please, and let-me-pick-that-up-for-you, and no-please-go-ahead. cuz, yknow, it was like this near-death experience that we'd all had, even though we weren't really involved at all.

even when we landed and the captain asked those of us who were at our final destinations to wait for the people making connections to deplane, we totally did it! it was pretty kind of wonderful. the humans had been tested, and they aced it. this warm, fuzzy feeling lasted all the way until i got onto the people-mover to the baggage claim at LAX. walking along the left side in a column with the rest of my fellow passengers, i felt this brushing to my left, and this dickhead in an ed hardy blazer (not from our plane) cut me off, and the women in front of me too. i mean, we were mere feet from the exit. i said, "REALLY?" and he just turned to look at me like he hadn't even seen me.

and so i was rudely reminded that in reality, people totally suck -- unless they've been on a plane where a baby almost died.

do you believe in magic?

2009-01-28T00:03:00.000-08:00

a while back i threatened to write more about yet another hit off the british-tv crackpipe, merlin, which i like to think of as camelot 90210. the first series is now over, and there'll be a second one of this HIGHLY revised and emo-fied tale of the legendary arthurian wizard, starring colin morgan (above) in the title role. he played jethro the goth teen rebel in last year's creepy doctor who ep "midnight" -- and recently it was announced that michelle ryan, who plays an evil sorceress in merlin, will be the doctor's companion for the next special, "planet of the dead" (not to be confused with "planet of the ood" or "forest of the dead").

aight, that covers the obligatory doctor who degrees of separation. so what happens is, teenage merlin's mom sends him from their small village to camelot b/c he's just so magical he can't even control his magic. and magic is totally forbidden in the kingdom ruled by uther pendragon, father of the soon-to-be-legendary arthur (blond hottie bradley james). so, court physician gaius (the awesome richard wilson) takes merlin in and vows to keep an eye out for any of that magic-makin' stuff. (he's uniquely qualified to do that, b/c he seems to be a recovering magician himself, plus he apparently helped uther put away some of the magical folk during the great purge or whatever ... .)

pretty soon merlin meets snotty-jock-with-a-heart-of-gold/king-to-be arthur, pictured below ... is he not adorable in his chainmail hoodie?

naturally, merlin becomes the future king's servant, whereupon royal high jinks and many visits to a cryptic and very cranky dragon ensue. but uther (anthony "giles from buffy" head) is dead serious about the no-magic thing: as in, anybody who uses magic (or even seems to) is put to death. nice guy, right? (acting must be so weird. tony head used to play a badass warlock, and now he plays a king who chops off badass warlocks' heads. oh, well, all in a day's work!)

the catchphrase for this show is "keep the magic secret," and boy do the characters go through some contortions to do that. seemingly every week, someone is laid low with a magical illness that merlin must cure w/o revealing he is a sorcerer. even in a world without cameraphones, that's not easy! also in the mix are morgana (katie mcgrath), who here is uther's ward and has prophetic dreams that practically make HER a sorcerer too (hence they're also kept ... you guessed it, secret), and guinevere (angel coulby), morgana's handmaiden (yes, she's a commoner; i don't get it, either). plus the aforementioned last dragon, chained up in the basement caves and voiced by john hurt. naturally, uther has a lot of witch/warlock enemies, one of whom is the aforementioned michelle ryan, the lush-lipped chick who played the new bionic woman (oh, yeah, and gwen from torchwood had a guest spot on it too ... and dr. bashir from deep space nine).

so, in only 13 episodes, they've abused a good chunk of the arthurian canon, including avalon, excalibur, mordred, and even sir lancelot. i confess i thoroughly enjoyed it, but it's definitely a cheesetastic trifle. merlin, however, is sheer television brilliance compared to the abomination that is demons.

i wanted to watch ITV's new supernatural drama b/c philip glenister is in it, but it's a total waste of him. i thought that i could watch it for amusement after the first ep, but it was tough to make it through the second, and i couldn't even face the third. sadly, glenister's accent is terrible, and the whole thing quickly proved to be not even campy entertainment but just clunky and bad, from the dialogue to the monsters to the drama. ugh. next!

ulysses

2009-01-27T14:07:00.000-08:00

i have received an ACTUAL COMPLAINT about interruption of service on this here blog. apparently at least one person in the universe wants to read my published opinions on stuff like the latest episodes of lost and battlestar galactica ... and has let me know about it, you betcha.

there's no real reason behind my lack of posting, other than a general sense of who-gives-a-fuck? but now let me shake off my torpor to talk a little bit about my new favorite character on lost: daniel faraday.

played by jeremy davies, this time-traveling physicist (pictured above) arrived on the mysterious island with a freighter full of scientists and mercenaries hired by the apparently evil charles widmore to wipe out everyone on the island and capture ben linus. faraday's eccentric tics, impatience-bordering-on-arrogance with explaining highly technical stuff to mere dudes like sawyer, generally rumpled appearance, and humble, sometimes even apologetic, demeanor make him american tv's current best substitute for a time lord. i mean, he HAS been doing pretty well at figuring out the weird-ass shit that's been happening on the island since ben moved it ... although i am beginning to suspect it hasn't moved physically at all, but only, shall we say, quantum-physically.

anyway, unlike the doctor, daniel doesn't have a TARDIS or even a sonic screwdriver -- just a frakkin' notebook. his life's work on time travel. and he also, apparently, has a mom at oxford who knows her shit ... and who will soon be encountering desmond, it seems. can't wait to meet HER.

everything old is new again

2009-01-03T20:08:00.000-08:00

he's not paterson joseph, nor black at all, but doctor who IS going emo. behold the 11th doctor, matt smith (above; photo nicked from this article in the times online). he's 26. the youngest ever to play the part, as we've heard about 15 million times already. at first i thought it was weird that the BBC was going to announce this so soon, but ... hm, i think it makes sense, b/c now people have lots of time to discuss the choice and analyze it and cheer it or protest it or whatev, well before he's actually seen in the role.

anyway, he's just funny-looking enough to work, but i haven't seen him perform in anything except an episode of secret diary of a call girl, so i don't have much impression of his acting. it cannot be worse than colin baker's, i'm sure.

tonight i watched the first ep of this new ITV series called demons, mostly b/c philip glenister is in it. it's basically another emo-teen-fantasy drama (from the makers of hex, and i think someone from merlin has something to do with it too), about the latest van helsing in a long line of "smiters" -- the show's word for demon-slayers. the hero, luke, is played by hunky christian cooke, who was ross the doomed UNIT soldier in the two-part S4 DW sontaran story. mina harker is a blind psychic singer played by zoe tapper (young doctor anya in survivors). and philip g plays luke's AMERICAN godfather, who witnessed his BFF/luke's dad's death at the hands of "freaks" (aka demons).

there is a giant hidden underground library where they get knowledge and weapons, and did i mention that PG's character's name is RUPERT galvin? how many americans are called rupert? yes, it's all very scooby-ishly buffy, complete with luke having super-reflexes and a destiny. (he also looks good shirtless.) toss in a couple of lamecore star wars refs, some truly loltastic dialogue, totally OTT demons, and sexual tension provided by mina vs luke's bestie, the totally adorable ruby (holly grainger) ... and you've got one seriously cracked-out legend update. it's terrible, and i'll probably watch it all.

fever

2009-01-02T12:26:00.001-08:00

new year, new hope ... new who!!

reports all over the intertubes say that the BBC will announce the actor who will be playing the 11th doctor tomorrow, during a special episode of doctor who confidential (now titled "the eleventh doctor," previously known as "the ten doctors"). ohboyohboyohboy. i can't wait to find out who it is.

so many names have been bandied about, including david morrissey, who figured prominently in the fantastic 2008 christmas special, "the next doctor." (but, IMO, isn't.)

anyway, i'm gonna guess paterson joseph (pictured above, at right). he's a front-running contender, and he worked with incoming showrunner steven moffat in jekyll (as did james nesbitt, another contender and highly acceptable candidate, but speculation seems off him, too bad). i just watched PJ in the "reboot" of survivors (a series about a tiny number of people who live through a mega-flu epidemic that nearly wipes out humanity), and i really liked him. i could totes see him as the doctor. there's been a lot of buzz about having the "first black doctor" -- which is exciting, and quite a leap, since they only even showed a black gallifreyan for the first time in a flashback during "the sound of drums" (or one of those series 3 eps with the master; i think it was that one).

wellllll, we'll just have to wait ... one more day.

the christmas song

2008-12-24T23:14:00.000-08:00

no, it's not a reindeer, but our christmas eve day did start out with a visit from some antlered critters: a pair of young bucks grazing on the backyard hill. but i could only get a picture of this one (and then had to close-up the hell out of it on the camera to show anything here). thanks to the rain, we now have lots of tasty green stuff out back, and so i've been seeing more deer again lately.

then it was just last-minute errands, and a verrrry long drive to the south bay to spend the evening with 00soul's family (tacos for christmas eve! yum!) -- 90 minutes, urgh. they had lots of pictures of polar bears from their recent trip to canada to see those creatures, and a video that one of their trip-mates had put together, which were pretty cool. they even had a fleeting shot of a snowy white arctic fox (fleeting cuz it was running away).

after a few hours, we beat it back home in MUCH lighter traffic, and were safely ensconsed in the LC love shack by the time it started raining. my main man is knocked out from all the tacos he ate (haha), so i'm rattling around the christmas tree (metaphorically speaking) alone. but i'm excited about tomorrow, b/c as old as i ever get, i'll always be excited by christmas. anyway, i still have to wrap a couple of presents. sconser is crashed out under the desk lamp next to me, warm as a kitty can be. otherwise, not a creature is stirring ... .

and so, like nat king cole sings it: merry christmas to you.

human

2008-12-05T13:50:00.001-08:00

i just realized that andrea riseborough, star of the devil's whore (subject of previous entry), also played adorable ghost girl annie in the BBC three pilot being human, a really fantastic one-off supernatural drama that aired earlier this year and then scored a six-part series commission last spring.

it was the story of a young werewolf and a young(-looking) vampire who are trying to lead normal lives. lord knows why, but the show kind of had me at hello, b/c the opening sequence -- intercutting scenes of the werewolf (george) retreating to the wilderness to go through his change and the vampire (mitchell) having a date with a coworker (which ends, shall we say, badly) -- was set to snow patrol's "chasing cars." anyway, they have jobs at the local hospital, and they rent a house together to keep themselves honest or whatev. but the house is haunted by annie, who died in an accident of unknown determination. and of course the three of them form an unlikely trio of misfit weirdo freaks trying to get by in the modern world. the werewolf was played by russell tovey, who played midshipman frame in the doctor who christmas special "voyage of the damned" and was recently briefly caught up in the who-will-be-the-11th-doctor frenzy thanks to an offhand remark made by showrunner russell t. davies. and the vamp was played by guy flanagan, who had the right skinny-pale weird hotness but also had a knack for exuding disaffection as the rebel vamp whose deep alienation from his kind is severely irritating to the defenders of the bloodsucker status quo.

written by toby whithouse, who penned the fantastic who ep "school reunion" (where the doctor is reunited with sarah jane smith and k-9) and the torchwood ep "greeks bearing gifts" (where tosh gets the ability to read minds and predictably learns it's not all it's cracked up to be), the series is still a go, according to this report, and supposed to air some time in early 2009. but, sadly, annie and mitchell have been recast. it's still worth checking out, as the new actors seem to be quality, but the original three (pictured above) had the kind of chemistry that's not so easily reproduced. and i'm especially bummed about annie, who was such a charming chatterbox and had the best accent ever. still, i'll give it a chance, whenever it comes around.

runnin' with the devil

2008-12-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

how have i been spending the hours i haven't been blogging lo these last few weeks? why, by watching way too much british TV, of course. like the second series of the sarah jane adventures, which has been pretty fun, and my new favorite hit off the TV crackpipe, merlin ... but more on merlin later. and probs on sarah jane smith too, b/c i've been obsessing over her lately.

for now, howev, let's just stick to another thing that's been getting me through till the doctor who christmas special (less than a month away, w00t!): this miniseries called the devil's whore, a channel 4 historical drama about the 17th-century english civil war that focuses on a fictional aristocratic woman named angelica fanshawe (andrea riseborough). it has dominic west as oliver cromwell, michael fassbender as thomas rainsborough, and john simm as edward sexby (pictured at the top of this entry). john simm -- aka the master, aka DI sam tyler, aka cal mccaffrey, aka totes awes -- looks quite great with long hair and a beard, and a jaunty hat and a gnarly scar around his eye that you can't see in this photo. he gets totally beat up and disheveled in this show, and it's excellent.

everyone has wonderful hair, all wavy and messy curls and flowing, or even kinda greasy and gnarly, it still looks cool. the costumes are great, with lots of little buttons and many parts, and the fighting is excellent, a combination of swordplay and primitive guns. (although the indiscriminate slaughtering's not so great.)

the historical elements, however, have forced me to go to wikipedia and look stuff up, usually resulting in more time lost in the bowels of entries on sexby, cromwell, the new model army, charles I, the putney debates, and blah blah blah. if i'm not careful, i might actually learn something. but the show is mainly concerned with the incredibly pale angelica, who as a child got pissed off at god b/c her mother decided to go become a nun in france, and in a fit of pique demanded god strike her down if he really exists. you know, typical kids' stuff. anyway, angelica sees the devil up in a tree, lolling his tongue out at her. and this vision or whatever kind of sticks with her ... . it's some asshole man, of course, who labels her the devil's whore, but she's really just a human being who wants to be her own person. which as we know is a terrible crime for a woman to commit.

i just finished watching the third of four episodes, and angelica is shaping up to be quite the feminist. she's outspoken and independent, and one of her biggest early disappointments is how her beloved cousin and childhood friend, whom she marries, turns into this total macho asshole after the wedding. like he wants her to be silent during sex and obey her without question, and he scoffs at her for wanting her best friend back. (happily, he meets a bad end, and he deserves it.) she is often cornered by the patriarchal rule of the day, but she never goes down without a fight, which changes her, but she always does what she has to do and never loses her sense of self. even when she faces execution, she won't apologize for her alleged crimes, giving a speech to her tormenter about how HE'S the whore -- brilliant.

but angelica's drama shares the stage with the drama of the times, including cromwell being a bastard and the army riding about arresting the king and suchlike. in any case, john simm plays this mercenary type who kind of pines for angelica, but she's usually hooked up with some other dude. i can't really say they're made for each other, but he does fall in love with her while still seeing her as a person, and ultimately he manages to be OK with her being her own woman ... even though it's not easy for him. they're both outsiders who keep trying to find a place in the world. the real sexby seems to have been, well, much different, but whatev. it's tv. on the war side of things, he sees so much killing that he actually gets sick of it, even though in the beginning it's all he lives for, is the fight.

anyway, a couple of my fave moments so far are when sexby laughs after telling angelica that charles thought he could flee to scotland and find refuge, but the scots sold him to parliament. she doesn't think it's funny, but it is! another cool scene is after a battle, when the wounded sexby is lying there in the misty night, and he sees all the dead men's souls stand up and walk away. this show isn't very supernatural at all, but that little touch was niftily surreal. and the way angelica escapes execution is fairly spectacular too. it all wraps up next week, and i'm looking forward to it.

set the fire to the third dalek ... er, bar

2008-11-28T17:10:00.000-08:00

i am a slug. i have done almost nothing today (except a little work and a lot of hanging around the outpost gallifrey message board), and i don't feel arsed to. i blame the turkey.

00soul and i had a low-key thanksgiving for two. i still set the table nice (see above; all food in this post by 00soul, all photos by moi), but various snafus resulted in us being by our lonesome. which we actually rather liked. we deep-fried a turkey, which came out great:

we had some favorite sides, including bacon & clam stuffing; sliced roasted sweet potatoes drizzle with olive oil, garlic, sage, and lemon; cranberry sauce with tart cherries; steamed asparagus; and pan gravy. while prepping the food and table, i played snow patrol's eyes open ... for some reason i am currently in love with the song "set the fire to the third bar," which is sort of a morose tune to be playing on thanksgiving, but it made me think of loved ones far away, which most of them are. during dinner, i played joe henry's civilians, which has taken on a much different feel since obama won the presidency, i must say. interesting.

we were thankful for each other, and for our furry friend sconser (who hid under the bedcovers while we played music, b/c music freaks her out), and for having a better year than expected due to our own personal bringer of hope, barak (with no "c"). and we were thankful that it didn't rain, since one cannot deep-fry a turkey on the patio in the rain. and of course we were also thankful for barack WITH a "c," b/c it is nice to look forward with hope rather than dread for once (despite the rough days to come).

after eating dinner, we immediately went into a food coma, and had to recover for an hour or so before having dessert: walnut-raisin pie with homemade whipped cream. THAT was pretty fantastic too:

oops, forgot to take a shot with the whipped cream on it. (i had a piece for second breakfast today; ohboy, good.) anyway, then we finished off the wine, and 00soul played some of the vintage 45s he bought off ebay this year. he never did manage to snag "impeach the president," and now it seems rather beside the point, doesn't it? (not to be confused with neil young's "let's impeach the president," BTW.)

anyway ... after he crashed, i watched a doctor who episode featuring the third doctor, called "death to the daleks." three wears a bombass ensemble of red-trimmed black jacket and grey ruffled shirt as he and sarah jane smith stumble around a quarry avoiding some creepy aliens and some rather naff-looking recycled daleks (which at least do blow up real good) while trying to figure out how to restore power to the seemingly dead TARDIS. SJS does a lot of that tough-while-quivering thing that i just love, and there's a nice moment where three tells her that if he doesn't come back, she has to go with the other humans. but of course they both kick ass, so no need for that.

stay positive

2008-11-26T18:24:00.000-08:00

wowee, i wrote a live review. it's of the hold steady (pictured above) and drive-by truckers last night at the wiltern, and you can read it on kevin bronson's buzzbands blog, baby!

join together

2008-11-09T11:15:00.000-08:00

you can give a journalist a camera, but you can't make her work it properly. hence, i don't have many even half-decent shots of last night's prop. 8 protest in silver lake, but there's one above.

the divine ms. m and i were hanging out at her house, then decided to go to her place el chavo for dinner. she mentioned there was a protest going on near the site of the recently designated gay-rights landmark the black cat, and on the drive to chavo we saw that sunset was indeed packed with people. got into the restaurant, which was fairly quiet, had a drink and ordered some food. a sense of excitement kept building, b/c we could see people streaming east on sunset toward a throng amassed somewhere around santa monica. we were eating our meals and chatting when someone opened the front door, and through it i saw a rainbow flag passing, and a slew of signs and a big crowd. the protest was going by right out front!

so, we ran to the sidewalk, where police cars and motorcycles were blocking out the route, and thousands of people marched past with signs protesting proposition "h8" and demanding marriage equality now! a truck that seemed to be carrying the march leaders or organizers passed by, with a woman shouting through a megaphone. but almost everyone carried some sort of sign, and folks were chanting, and cops were everywhere, but it was peaceful as far as we could see.

this shot is blurry, but you can get a sense of how many people were in the street at the five points intersection:

they'd been marching for a while at that point, so while we were standing with the door to el chavo propped open, people started pouring inside. pretty soon the place was filled up. so, we went back in to decamp from our table, and then went out to the parking lot to watch the parade from there. again, this shot isn't great, but you can sorta see what's goin' on:

and here's another impression of the crowd:

we watched the march until it had all passed by, with the rear guard followed by a line of mounted police, a handful of bicycle patrol, and one lone truck loaded with riot police who were clearly not gonna see any action. then we went back inside and had a drink on the chavito side, talked with a few people who'd been out there, and headed back to ms. m's place. we hung out for another good hour or so, and then i headed home ... only to run into ANOTHER protest in hollywood, which i mostly avoided by dropping down to sunset instead of taking franklin (which was gridlocked starting about a block before cahuenga). sunset was pretty busy too, but the traffic thinned out after la brea. this was around 11:30-midnight. it took me more than 45 minutes to get home, which is a pretty long time.

anyway, this morning i read details about the silver lake protest in the l.a. times (with much better pix, ahaha), and also that there were other protests in san diego, sacramento, and modesto. the paper also said that, although there are still ballots to be counted, prop. 8 is probably going to pass. which means, i'll guess, that protests are probably going to continue. yeah!

a change is gonna come

2008-11-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

so, it's another morning (or early afternoon) in america, and the post-election glee continues. one big topic of discussion right now is obama's selection of congressman rahm emanuel (shown above with the prez-elect in a photo nicked from latimes.com) as his new chief of staff. the man's reputation as an uncompromising partisan who likes to say "fuck" a lot has excited many people who say obama needs a hatchet man behind the scenes -- someone who can wield the power while barack stays on the bridge-building tip. you know, someone like dick cheney. mwahaha.

a (bill) clintonite who was the director of BC's presidential campaign finance committee and then a senior adviser to clinton throughout the '90s, emanuel is known as a tough guy who hates republicans and bullies members of his own party. (oh, hurray! a macho asshole. THAT'S different.) others say there is more to him than this, and i'm sure there is, but whatever.

mainly what fascinates me is that, while some dems are looking a bit askance at this appointment, a chorus of democrats and their supporters are using emanuel's new position to scoff at the notion that obama will be approaching his presidency with an eye toward bipartisan cooperation. "that's just rhetoric," they say, pumping their fists and going "yeah! mow the bastards down! revenge, revenge, REVENGE!!"

and that's fine. the republicans have ground us into the dirt for so long, a certain amount of death-to-them-all fantasizing is to be expected. a lot of it's hyperbolic clowning -- yesterday i went for a walk and saw an SUV parked at the curb on little laurel, with two bumper stickers: one reading "i don't discriminate -- i hate everyone," and the other the shepard fairey obama "hope" portrait. (ahaha -- cynics are always the most romantic.) but this anticipation of bloodletting does remind me that hate's not only the province of the right. i mean, i can get my hate on with the best of them. fuck, i'm with the bumper-sticker person -- i hate humans. but i suppose i'm disappointed, though not surprised, that there isn't a little more occupation of the high ground, since it's ours to take. why stoop to revenge, when obama's win and the clear democratic majority in congress mean we have an opportunity to finally see justice served? justice for the guantanamo detainees. justice for those who've been labeled traitors for objecting to bush & co.'s methods. justice for the troops who are lionized in public and short-changed behind the scenes. justice for the average people, whose lives have been made tougher and bleaker while the republican fat cats get fatter. and justice that will go on past obama's term, in the form of supreme court appointments.

so much evil has been stopped in its tracks just by virtue of the fact that obama got elected. for all the bullshit about "morality" that we've had to put up with these last eight years, here is a true moral victory. and yet instead people chortle with glee and plot to push their enemies down like petty children on the playground -- reminding me so much of the assholes at mccain's concession speech, who booed obama like the sore losers they are. it's disheartening.

and i can already hear the bloody-minded calling me a bleeding heart, but y'know what? fuck you too. i don't dispute that obama's bipartisan rap is at least partly rhetorical, but i also don't think he just hollowly invoked the words of martin luther king jr. (or sam cooke). throughout his campaign, he demonstrated an admirable ability to rise above, to take the shit slung at him, to answer his critics when an answer was warranted or needed simply to stop the bullshit, and to not retaliate in kind. i believe christians call that turning the other cheek. others may simply call it class. (which is not to say i don't have issues with obama, b/c i do, but there's plenty of time for that.) if what we really want is change, well. change starts with YOU.

i am all for seeing the republicans who engineered the damn-near downfall of this country be held accountable for their actions, and made to pay whatever price they will have to pay. (and that includes opportunistic bastards like joe lieberman.) lord knows that would definitely be a change. and i frankly don't think justice will be as well served as it should be, either. but the tyranny of the majority cuts both ways. i am well aware, and preach it often, that "they" don't want to live and let live -- they want to wipe us out. i am, however, not sure that gives us license to wipe THEM out. (hmm. unless they actually start shooting. then, all bets are off.)

we are the one

2008-11-04T20:18:00.001-08:00

mccain just conceded (nice speech, too -- very gracious). that is all.

hooray for hope!

the last ride

2008-10-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

sitting in a lounge at heathrow, waiting to find out the gate number for my flight back to l.a. the gate opens in about an hour, so they should announce it soon. as i have a lot to tell about my last day in the UK, i'll try to use the time productively.

i did end up driving to hay-on-wye, which is famous for having tons of bookstores (29, i was told), despite its small size. brendan was in town visiting his old pal michael, who's irish originally (brendan is scottish, btw, but he lives in l.a.).

the drive wound up into the black mountains -- and there was snow on the peaks, which was pretty fantastic. the countryside was pretty, with rolling vistas and trees decked out with multicolored leaves, and i saw a lotta backpackers in and around the brecon national park (and signs for youth hostels, natch). right before i left the B&B, i checked my cousin mark's blog and learned that my beloved aunt fannie had passed away, at age 88 (she'd have been 89 on saturday). she'd been ill and was going downhill, but it was still sad. i shouldn't have looked, but i wanted to know; i'd had a feeling she was on her way out after talking to the squirrel the day i left. anyway, the countryside was so lovely, and reminded me so much of pennsylvania, that i ended up drivin' and cryin' for a while. i'm so glad i went to see her when i was in erie for my younger sister's wedding last november.

sigh. anyway. it took me about an hour and a half to get to hay. although at least half the drive, maybe more, was through rugged countryside, the road was smooth and well-maintained. once in hay, i got kind of lost, but the place is small, so i just phoned michael and quickly got oriented. he has a complex of a big house, plus a coach house and stables and suchlike that he rents out long-term. so i was able to park off the street in his lot. the three of us made our introductions and greetings, and then we had coffee by the fireplace in the big kitchen. it was pretty cold out, probs in the 40s. brendan complained more than i did, though; i think i'm getting used to it? (just in time to go home to the tail end of a heat wave.)

so, they listened to me blather on about hamlet and love's labour's lost and david tennant and my various adventures, and we had a nice chat. a little later, we walked to a pub called the blue boar, where i had some hard cider (good stuff, but dangerously drinkable), and we ate a late lunch/early dinner. i had welsh lamb chops in mint gravy with tasty potatoes and veggies. we chatted some more about arts and politics and the housing market and music and our families -- it was a very welcome change from my self-imposed isolation (although i wasn't ever lonely during this solo excursion). the fire was warm, and the pub was charming and cozy.

it started raining while we were in there, and when we left it was pretty friggin' cold, so i didn't feel much like touring the town or book-shopping. michael did show me the bookshop that's at a castle, explaining it was owned by one richard booth, apparently the architect of hay as a book town, who declared himself king of hay in the '70s. the picture at the top of this entry is of hay castle, but you can't see the bookcases that sit in the courtyard, open to the air and elements.

back at michael's, we sat by another fire in the living room, had more coffee, and chatted more about music, l.a., the clash of the sexes, and brendan's latest projects, about which he was anxiously awaiting word from new york. then michael talked about his own project called jump4timbuktu. hay is twinned with the west african city, and michael and his friends started this organization to help the people there "trade their way out of poverty," like the website says.

i want to write a separate entry about this endeavor, but suffice to say that michael showed us his short film about the project, which showed the tradespeople at work on their jewelry and was really interesting. there's more to the place than jewelry, but i'll get to that later. he gave me some info, and then showed us some examples of the jewelry. i took a few pix, but the light was very orangey-yellow, as you can see. still, nice stuff, like this bracelet:

and some earrings:

and lovely pendants:

(this stone is agate, i think michael said.)

i stayed as late as i dared. they'd invited me to stay there, but i kept thinking about the long drive to heathrow in the morning, and that leaving from hay would add at least 90 minutes, if not more. in any case, all my stuff was still at the B&B in cardiff. so i left around 8 pm, and it was still raining. the way back was easily found but, as i went up into the mountains, the rain got harder -- and then it started snowing! i mean, seriously storming, even whiteout time at points.

luckily, after a while i came up behind a car that was driving veeerrry slowly. so, keeping a safe distance, just enough to have their taillights in view, i tracked on that car, which helped to guide me. as previously noted, the road was well-maintained, and i could see the center line b/c it was made of an endless row of reflective dots. but it would've been 10 times scarier if i hadn't had those red lights ahead of me and been able to follow the car's tracks in the snowy roadway. i was glad i'd had that coffee after our meal, too. driving in snow is a skill i learned as a teenager, but i haven't used it in a while ... i guess it snowed a little bit last year when i was in erie. still, it was nerve-wracking to the max to keep peering forward into this dark-white barrage of blowing, icy particles, like a constantly shifting curtain dropping and rising in front of me, brrr.

eventually i came down out of the mountains and onto the motorway, where it was merely raining hard. i was well relieved to get back to the B&B, just before 10. i still had to pack, but first i needed to relax. so i turned on the laptop and checked my e-mail, which was stuffed with google alerts about david tennant leaving doctor who. thus ensued a frenzy of IM-ing, e-mailing, and texting my friends and sister about this regrettable but not unforeseen turn of events.

anyway, i got packed and managed to fall asleep at a decent hour. got up at 7 this morning, loaded the car, paid the bill, and pointed myself toward london. on the way out of town, i passed BBC wales, w00t! back at the airport, i even managed to find the rental-car return without once getting lost, hurray. then i dropped my bags off, checked in, and kicked around the duty-free shops for a while. got a starbucks coffee -- it's not as paint-strippingly strong here as it is back home -- and decided to try to get this entry done before boarding.

i had a fantastic time and feel like i did a lot in a week, despite not doing too much. the shakespeare was probs the most amazing part, but the exotic world of bath and my unexpected journey to hay were also delightful (and i am chuffed to have survived the snowstorm, even though it was a wee bit terrifying at the time). as usual, i'm still processing everything and may have more to say about all this at some future time. i would definitely travel halfway around the world to see david tennant do shakespeare again ... i'm betting i'll get another chance before too many years have passed.

... and there's the gate announcement. off i go ... .

countdown

2008-10-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

we interrupt this trip report to say that, sadly, i was right in my prediction that david tennant won't return as the doctor for 2010. much as i hoped i wasn't.

dear mr. fantasy

2008-10-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

dare i enter? why, yes, since the doctor who up-close exhibition at the red dragon centre was one of the reasons i wanted to go to cardiff. i wished i had been able to get ahold of nick griffiths's brand-new book, who goes there, which is a travelogue of UK sites where the show has been shot, but i couldn't find it in two bookstores in bath, and i think it may only be sold online. oh, well.

the drive to cardiff was uneventful and even sunny. i paid 5 pounds 30 pence to go over the really cool-looking second severn crossing, the big modern bridge that takes the M4 into wales (where the road signs are all in welsh and english, a la scotland being in gaelic and english). but the fee is only one-way, phew. once in town, i experienced the same hapless luck and slight confusion in the neighborhood that i had in bath, but after getting oriented along cathedral road, i found my B&B, the town house, and parked in their back lot. signs everywhere admonish people not to leave ANY valuables in their cars, so, although i had planned to leave my suit bag, with all the theatre clothes i no longer needed, in the car's boot (as i had in bath), i decided to haul everything upstairs to my room. this was a single, but it was fine, with a good-sized bathroom, tv, tea/coffee tray -- the usual amenities.

my friend brendan found out via facebook that i'm in the UK; he's in wales right now, visiting an old pal in hay-on-wye, a town about 60 miles from here. we decided to try to meet up, and that idea really appealed to me after nearly a week of touristing, and not really having anyone to talk to. so, i figured i would do all my half-assed touristy who/torchwood stuff today, since it was pretty early when i got here. i took a coffee break (all hail the coffee tray) and got myself together -- then, just as was about to step out, the sky darkened and it started hailing. fuckin' hell!

i waited a couple of minutes, and it subsided to mere rain, so i ventured out with my umbrella, following the path along the river taff as my hostess had suggested. cardiff bay was about 2.5 miles away, but i decided to walk, b/c i didn't want to deal with the bus. whatevs, i wanted to be in the city, among the people -- but not too close; i of course had my ipod. emerging from the leafy path, i crossed the river and passed by millennium stadium. right in front of cardiff castle, i turned down the high street, which becomes st. mary street, which i followed to callaghan square, then headed east to lloyd george avenue, a long, long stretch lined on one side by apartment buildings (one called silurian house, a perfect name to notice on my who quest, as the silurians are old foes of the doctor).

i ambled along in a fairly steady rain, although the sky was clearing to the west. it was coooold. i saw a black-and-white cat running along the sidewalk in the opposite direction, but it was on a mission and had no time for me.

finally, i got close enough to see the millennium centre (which i later learned is nicknamed "the armadillo" by some locals) and the inscription on the front:

(although i actually took this shot later, from the opposite side of my approach.)

according to wikipedia, the inscription is taken from welsh poet gwyneth lewis: "creu gwir fel gwydr o ffwrnais awen" means "creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration." in english it means "in these stones horizons sing" -- and she has a whole explanation of that, which you can read at the wiki link, so please you.

i toddled about the freezing-cold plaza, taking pictures of the weird pillar fountain that's so famous in torchwood:

and this red building, which it turns out i was mightily confused about. i thought it was a church, but it's actually called the pierhead building, and it was the HQ of the cardiff railway company. ok, then. anyway, it's cool, and whenever i saw the opening credits of torchwood, i was so curious about what it was, standing out like a red thumb on the mostly beige waterside:

i also walked along mermaid quay, a touristy seaside area with restaurants and a starbucks, where i took another picture of the pierhead building:

it really is cool.

here's one more shot of the millennium centre:

but i didn't go in (and i totally missed the roald dahl plass, too -- sorry, anthony! ETA: der. i was actually STANDING RIGHT ON IT -- ahaha!). the afternoon was wearing on, and i wanted to check out the who exhibition. had to prioritize. maybe next time -- although if i ever come back to cardiff, it will be in the summer!

ok, so. the red dragon centre sounds like it might be groovy, but it's really just a small mall next to the millennium centre, with several restaurants, a movie theater (showing high school musical 3, yikes), and a bowling alley called hollywood bowl, ahaha. i could hear the cacophony of recorded sounds -- the theme song, various crashes and crackles, and shouts of "exterminate!" -- as i was paying my 5 pounds at the entrance to the exhibit. it reminded me a lot of the rock 'n' roll hall of fame, which when i visited many years ago was a riot of overlapping, clashing sounds as you moved from one display case to the next. it was hard to get good pix inside the exhibit, thanks to all the flashing strobes and different colored lights.

but who cares, b/c ... daleks!

there's another one, look out!

when you push the button on this interactive exhibit, the supreme dalek rises from the back of the stage, going "elevate! elevate! elevate!" brill!

the mirrors make it look like there are three, but there's only one.

also there were cybermen -- eyieee!

and a tick-tock man from "the girl in the fireplace":

i had a hard time getting shots of the costumes that were right inside the entry, but this is probs the best one, showing the tenth doctor's jim-jams from after his regeneration and his blue martha-era suit:

martha's costume of jeans and oxblood leather jacket is right next to the blue suit, but that shot's cut off, rats.

right around the corner was the ol' familiar blue box:

i had a grand time wandering around looking at all the stuff, including lots of costumes, like jack's trenchcoat, donna's jacket and jeans from when she had the spider on her back (in "turn left"), and astrid's waitress outfit from last year's christmas special, "voyage of the damned." they had a cool display of the hath from "the doctor's daughter," and the donna-faced info-bot from "silence in the library," but my pix suck. one centerpiece was the whole lazarus machine from "the lazarus experiment," and there were a couple of the weeping angels from "blink," but they were high atop the walls, and i couldn't shoot them. plus sontarans, w00t!

i think my favorite things were the smaller props in the cases, including river song's TARDIS-esque journal and her future-doctor sonic screwdriver, harriet jones's ID card, the adipose capsule from "partners in crime," the dimension-jumping discs that rose, mickey, and jackie used in the last series finale, and even the osterhagen key, among other cool pieces. i managed to get a good clear shot of john smith's journal from "human nature"/"the family of blood" -- if you embiggen it, you can read the text and everything:

and not forgetting a lovely sight at the end of the exhibit: k-9, yay!

i wandered through it and then doubled back to look more closely at the smaller items, and finally made my way to the little shop. it didn't have as much stuff as i had expected, but i got a nice haul of easily packable/portable stuff, including dalek party napkins (should've bought the tablecloth too, oh well), a TARDIS-decorated soft pencil case that will make a great makeup bag, some other stuff as gifts, and the best thing EVAR: an ice cube tray with shapes of k-9, daleks, cybermen heads, TARDISes, and DW logos. the lady at the checkout said the molds also work great for chocolates and mentioned she'd made a white cake with brown chocolates stuck all over -- wowee! the mind boggles. now i can have a dalek cake for christmas, or a TARDIS cake for my birthday -- whee!

ahem. ok, so i escaped with my haul and started the long hike back to the B&B in the deepening twilight. stopped and got yet another chicken sandwich (on wheat bread with mango-chutney mayo and mixed greens, OMG delish) and some wine and crisps. it was fully dark by the time i reached the river path, but tons of people were jogging, walking their dogs, and riding their bikes along it, so i wasn't worried. it started to rain while i was about a half-block from home, so my timing was good. now back in my warm room, i'm starting to realize just how frickin' cold i've been all day. in the morning i'll call brendan and sort out the last details of the drive to hay-on-wye -- it's supposed to rain tomorrow, and it looks like part of this drive goes on mountain roads, but i'm up for it -- but right now i think i'm gonna finally watch (some of) kenneth branagh's hamlet and unwind. hmmm, maybe i'll do a little stretching first. yeah.

roman gods

2008-10-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

so, bath. i came here b/c the doc said it was something to see -- and indeed it was. i didn't really have much of a plan of action: i knew i wanted to go to the roman baths and the fashion museum, plus see such architectural marvels as the royal crescent and the circus, but otherwise i figured it would be whatever came up.

i have pretty much not used the garmin nuvi satellite device that my older sisters gave me. i tried to use it on the way from heathrow to stratford (having already mapped out my route via google and using the directions on the RSC's website), but i had to turn it off, because it kept telling me to get off on every single frickin' exit i passed on the M40, which was extremely annoying. it's more useful for me to write my route out on post-its and tear them off as i go. that may seem laughably primitive, but it's hard enough to drive on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road without having to listen to a stupid machine and peer at a tiny fucking screen that doesn't really show you anything anyway. i much preferred to look over the route on google the night before and trust my memory.

there were flaws in that plan too, however. although i now feel like an old hand at roundabouts, they confounded me horribly at first, and my confusion created one long delay in getting to stratford, the less said about the better. as for my trip to bath, everything went smoothly until i actually got into town -- google says follow this numbered road, but there aren't any signs saying this is the numbered road. so i was wheeling through the town of bath, blinding following along what seemed to be the main route but totally lost, looking for a place to pull over and get my bearings. (cuz the streets are narrow and not conducive to parking in a lot of places.) i finally emerged from the winding bits onto a slightly wider street where cars were parked on one side, so i pulled up behind the last one (in a space that was a bus stop, of course). i had phoned the B&B from a turnout on the road a few miles outside of bath, and been told that the place was right in front of a red signal post. so, i'm sitting in the car, peering around, and i see this red post right across the street! NO WAY! i had to pull forward a little bit more to see the sign, but wowee! it was my destination. somehow i had stumbled upon it -- amazing.

and so i arrived at number 30 on sunday around noon, and was greeted by a woman named jean, who checked me in, helped me with my bag, and gave me a map of town and a five-minute lowdown on the sites, a daily walking tour, area restaurants, and other incredibly useful info. i had the john wood room on the second floor, which faced the street and was very cozy, with a double bed, good-sized bathroom, tea tray, tv, and even a portable stereo. john wood (the younger) was the architect of the royal crescent and, i was happy to learn, had a thing for occult symbolism. here's my only shot of (part of) it (for obvious reasons, it's hard to get a good picture):

see the man and his dog there at the left? you have to be a resident to go on the nice green grass. i wonder if it's considered, like, a cool place to live? like, in l.a., when people ask me where i live, and i say "laurel canyon," there's this "oh cool" type reaction. maybe it's the same for the royal crescent ... . anyway, i thought it was cool.

i considered taking the walking tour, but it started at 2, and i needed to get settled in and have a coffee break (hurray for the tea/coffee tray). jean had told me what things i shouldn't miss even if i ended up walking around by myself, so i took the map and my ipod and ventured out, heading first up the woody hill behind the B&B to the royal crescent, then continuing east toward the center of town. i just kind of rambled and randomly took pictures -- the one at the top of this entry is of the parade gardens (i'm pretty sure), which are behind bath abbey near the river avon.

these are some buildings along the steep hill of marlborough lane leading up to the royal crescent:

the day started out sunny, if bracing (in the mid-50s), but as the afternoon went on the sky got cloudier. i walked through the circus without even realizing where i was (der), then headed toward the main part of town. i pretty much stumbled upon bath abbey, and it was hard to get a good shot of it b/c it was half in shadow, half in light, but here y'go:

you can see the entrance to the roman baths at the right of the photo.

here's the back of the abbey, where tour buses seemed to congregate:

just around the bend to the north of the abbey is pulteney bridge, which looks like a bridge from this angle ...

... but it's also a shopping street. you could walk right across it and never know you were on a bridge. after taking this picture, i did indeed walk across the bridge to a convenience store and got a half-bottle of wine for later, having decided to pick up something for dinner and eat in my room (partly to save money, and partly b/c it was sunday, and a lot of restaurants were closed).

my attempts to take pictures of the hillsides covered with georgian buildings weren't entirely successful, but this gives some sense of the totally cool views one could see pretty much by just looking around:

yet also there were pretty natural vistas, like these fall-foliage-festooned trees on the other side of the avon:

i rambled some more and listened to the street musicians -- a guy was playing didgeridoo along one of the main drags as i walked toward the abbey, and he was later joined by someone playing some sorta flute, so there was this curious aboriginal note in the air. stopped at a sandwich shop and picked up some sorta totally delicious chicken salad with lemon-y mayo and rocket, plus some chedder-red onion crisps and a slice of lemon-poppy seed cake for my dinner. it was getting dark as i made my way back to the B&B, which took longer than expected b/c i detoured the long way along royal avenue, to the south of the royal crescent, when i could've just walked back the way i'd driven into town. oh, well, it was a pretty path, anyway.

day two in bath started with breakfast, which was delicious but maybe not quite as good as the one at ambleside. the weather was colder but sunny, so i stupidly decided not to take the horrible turquoise-colored umbrella the B&B had loaned me, figuring i'd pick up a new black one later in the day.

i headed out, remembering to take a photo of (part of) the circus on my way:

see how nice and blue the sky is? yeah. anyway, then it was off to the assembly rooms and fashion museum. i mostly wanted to see the punk exhibit, called 1977, which was just a series of 20 black-and-white photographs. of course the actual clothing wouldn't have survived 30 years ... . anyway, the shots were interesting. naturally, it was pointless to try to take pictures of pictures, but here's a good one of the clash, by caroline coon, from the FM's website:

it was cool to peruse all the rockers in their DIY finery, harking back to the days when one had to invent one's own punk costume instead of buying it at hot topic, ahaha. debbie harry at a surplus store in fatigues and a bomber jacket, the jam all cool in their moddy-boy outfits with blazingly white shoes, ari up of the slits in her shredded black top, stockings, and white panties, hair flying wildly. fine stuff.

the museum had lots of other things to look at, including a fab collection of 17th-century gloves that i found impossible to photograph. the exhibit explained that these ornaments were more for ceremonial use, at the most, and often simply given as opulent gifts. they were lavishly embroidered with animals, people, plants, etc., in metallic threads and fine leathers.

the display cases were filled with gorgeous outfits, like this beautiful formal evening gown:

and this cool chinoiserie gown:

you can see the backs of some of the other things in the display case, like the fancy fur-trimmed coat at the right.

there were also a lot of cool men's suits, but all my pix of them came out blurry. wtf, it was dark in there, and i had to shoot through the glass, ok?

then there was the dresses from history section, which included many fantastical garments, including this victorian number:

there was also a big exhibit devoted to '70s-era UK designer bill gibb, who clothed david bowie and other rock icons and was apparently quite the pioneer of knitwear (lots of colorful and cleverly patterned dresses and sweaters) and had a flair for lavish, extravagant ensembles. not my taste of what to wear, but truly gorgeous and fantastical, unique items.

after studying the clothing for a while, i emerged back upstairs to wander around the assembly rooms (also designed by john wood the younger), which were basically public areas for big balls and card games and other amusements for the townsfolk in the georgian era (of a certain status, i assume). i pretty much failed to take any good pix of these rooms, but here you can get a sense of them all. the chandeliers were amazing, and i couldn't help thinking my mom would've loved them.

now it was time to head to the roman baths, so i popped out of the assembly rooms for the short walk over there ... and into the pissing rain! rats! i wrapped my scarf around my head and hurried to the baths, not getting too wet, but cursing my decision to leave the umbrella behind.

i had purchased a two-fer ticket for the fashion museum and baths, so i just waltzed on into the baths, which were really cool and interesting. i even took the little hand-held recording device so i could learn more about the place (instead of just putting on my ipod and wandering around staring at stuff like i usually do in these situations ... but, then again, i didn't have the squirrel there to download everything she learned into my head at day's end). however, i am not going to recount all the info here, b/c you can learn for yourself on the website if you wanna.

the main thing is that these baths date back to before roman times, and they were built on the natural hot springs that the celts used as a shrine to the goddess sulis (bath was called aquae sulis by the romans). as is traditional with religion, sulis got absorbed into roman culture due to being similar to minerva, the goddess of wisdom (aka the greeks' athena). the worshippers of sulis didn't bathe in the waters b/c they were considered sacred, but the romans combined the holiness and the bathing, clever bastards.

the museum is an awesome subterranean maze of ruins and partially restored sections, including the altar where they did sacrifices (pick your own goat at the marketplace), and the old temple steps. the sacrifice part had me shaking my head at the stupidity of religion. there were tombstones and sections of the waterways, mosaics and bits of the temple, plus tons of smaller artifacts, from sandals and pots and tools to coins and (my favorite) curses thrown into the water for good luck or granting of said diabolical wishes (usually having to do with wanting revenge on someone for stealing something or suchlike).

you may recognize the gorgon's head, which was on the temple of sulis minerva:

it's a pretty tough guardian and basically means "don't mess with this place."

anyway, the centerpiece of the joint is the big bath itself, which of course you can't actually go into (but you can plunge into the thermae spa next door, which i had thought about doing but ended up not, b/c i spent so much money in stratford). here it is from one side:

and the other (with bath abbey in the background):

the museum had two guys in roman dress standing by the pool, calling each other "citizen" and greeting people in latin. ahaha, how very disneyland.

i went into the little shop and picked up a couple of refrigerator magnets as souvenirs, then headed to the pump room for tea. the same couple in stratford who recommended the thai place had said that the scones with clotted cream at the pump house were fantastic, so i ordered some tea and the scones and ... the lady wasn't lyin'! mmmmm.

the rain had stopped by then, but it was getting dark (and colder, brrr), so i went back to the same sandwich shop and got another chicken variation. i walked a couple of blocks to marks & spencer and got more wine and a teeny-tiny umbrella, then hoofed it back to no. 30, taking the shorter route this time. i did pass by the jane austen museum both yesterday and today, but didn't really feel like going in, so didn't. again, it wasn't all that late when i settled in for the night, but i'd done a lot of walking and was pretty tired. i had plenty of blogging to do, and, after a while i had my sandwich-dinner, read for a while, downloaded the new sarah jane adventures (re-watched most of the two-part finale of the last doctor who series before it was done), and am about to watch it before i go to sleep. tomorrow it's back to pop culture as i wheel off to cardiff to visit the DW exhibit and the millennium centre (aka the torchwood hub). the weather is supposed to continue on the cold side, so i'm really glad i brought that extra sweater and my overcoat, not to mention the warm scarf that coiledsoul made me.

all you need is love

2008-10-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

here i am in bath, for the first of two nights of a history break before i trundle over the bridge to wales and continue my sci-fi geek tour. it already seems like days ago, but it was just this morning that i left stratford in the rain -- and realized just before packing the car that i'd left my umbrella in the very crowded dirty duck pub last night. it wasn't raining when i walked out with a couple of cool chicks i'd met at the bar, so i didn't notice at the time. anyway, i walked over there before driving off today, hoping it might have been turned in, but all they had was a very large black-and-red-striped brolly -- definitely not mine. oh, well. the B&B here (called number 30) loaned me one for today, and i'll get a new one of my own tomorrow.

am tired but feel great, though am about shakespeare'd out. mostly b/c i feel like i could spend weeks processing and pondering the two plays i saw. last night it was DT and most of the rest of the hamlet cast in love's labour's lost -- a MUCH different experience to hamlet, natch. not just b/c it was an hour shorter and, duh, a comedy, but even the way the audience behaved was very different. for hamlet, everyone just sat attentively, never applauding b/w scenes or making any sort of comments or anything. but for LLL, different little vignettes -- like a don armado comedic bit or a really cool, percussive dance that the "commoners" did at one point -- were met with applause and cheers. the play wasn't really interrupted due to audience reaction; there seemed to be pauses built in, and/or the players were good at holding for that extra beat. but i was surprised b/c i didn't expect that. though for all i know it's standard ... i'm no expert on theater or seeing shakespeare performed live.

anyway, the stage was dominated by a giant tree festooned with "leaves" of translucent, mostly green glass, which looked very cool and impressive. this time DT was more of an ensemble member, although he still was made to stand out in his role as berowne -- one of three young noblemen who vow to study with the king of navarre, fasting, sleeping little, and not seeing any women for three years -- since his costume was the only blue in a sea of cream (above are the hapless lads, w/king holding a letter, in a photo nicked from the royal shakespeare company's website).

needless to say, hilarity ensues, since pretty much right after the boys make their vow, the princess of france shows up with some of her galpals, on official business from her father the king. each guy falls for one of the ladies, and the king for the princess.

like i said, DT was more part of the ensemble, but for us fans he also stood out b/c he spoke in his native scottish accent (he used an english one in hamlet). and berowne does stand apart as the pragmatist, the skeptic, who tries to weasel out of the vow right away and seems to have not wanted to make it in the first place. he's also the one who figures out how to extricate them all from the vow without losing their honor ... and his loss of love at the end feels very poignant, b/c he argues with himself about falling in love in the first place, then goes for it, and totally gets crushed. sorry, dude.

berowne's love is rosaline, played by nina sosanya, who was in the doctor who episode "fear her" and also played bellino, a lover for david tennant's casanova in the 2005 british miniseries. her dress was spectacular -- this photo shows a little of it but doesn't do it justice.

and sosanya was more than a match for DT's rapid-fire banter ... in fact, this piece in general is seriously high-octane with the wordplay, which was such a delight and made me VERY happy i'd read the play beforehand. otherwise, i'd have been completely lost at times. as it was, i followed along with a big grin on my face.

the actors also seemed to be having the best time -- and, as with hamlet, all of them were great. ricky champ, who played costard, the clown, was especially fun and really reveled in his part. joe dixon totally hammed it up as armado and got a lotta laughs, and the young woman who played armado's page (moth), zoe thorne, was spectacular. (she also has a who connection, playing a toclafane in the master storyline and the gelth in the 9 ep "the unquiet dead"). i have to admit i actually thought she was a child actor, b/c she is so small, but she's really about 24. oliver ford davies as the pedant holofernes was brilliant, and mark hadfield was smirkingly delicious as the ladies' keeper, boyet.

LLL was last staged by the RSC about 15 years ago, and i can sort of see why. it's a bit of a dog's dinner by the end, with the boys going incognito as caricaturish russians to fool the girls (who are totes NOT fooled and exact a comical revenge), and the pageant of virtues, and the songs of spring and winter, and all. for a comedy, it's got quite the downer ending, when the princess finds out her dad's dead, and nobody actually gets together. although, frankly, everyone acts like such children, they're obvs not ready for marriage anyway, ahaha. but it does feel like there's a big "to be continued" stamped over it ... and i guess there is some case for a love's labour's won, after all, if you can believe wikipedia. (when it was mentioned in the who ep "the shakespeare code," i thought the idea was made up ... but, again, what do i know of such things? not much!)

before my night at the theatre, i did some more wandering around stratford. on saturday morning at breakfast, i met some women who were also there for the plays. one had seen hamlet on friday, like me, and was going to LLL that night. the other two, who sat at my table, were there to see patrick stewart give a talk that morning to his appreciation society (aka fan club) members, and were hoping to get return tickets for LLL that night. our B&B host had said that most of the people who'd stayed with them had had good luck with the returns -- he advised lining up around 4, which is a damn long wait (play started at 7:15), and today was much colder than yesterday.

we had a nice convo about shakespeare and sci-fi, and i bade them good luck and went back upstairs to read for a while. i hadn't gotten much sleep on friday night, and needed to finish reading love's labour's. so i climbed under the covers and started reading, then fell asleep till the early afternoon!

fortunately, i hadn't planned to do a lot, having gotten my touristy thang out of the way on friday. but i did want to explore more of the town, so i got myself together and headed out in the rainy day. i stopped at a shop and got some tea for the divine ms. m, and wandered around a bookstore. i thought about buying RTD's the writer's tale, but it's expensive and heavy, so i decided against it. i figured i'd go across the bridge and walk along the other side of the avon river, and, while crossing, i heard a familiar rumble in the street -- an american muscle car?! by the time i looked, it was headed off to the right through the roundabout ... i think it was a charger, but not sure. wowee.

i ambled past the big theatre that's being built (scheduled to open in 2010) and took a few shots:

this one's on an angle and shows the giant cranes better:

one crane has a big light on it at night, like an artificial moon hanging over all.

continuing along the river, i got a shot of the dirty duck, my stratford hangout:

and a cool one of part of the graveyard around trinity church, where shakespeare's entombed:

it was a very peaceful walk shared with families, couples, and people exercising their dogs (and lots of swans and other waterfowl). i crossed the bridge i'd stood on the day before to take some pix of the river. i'd thought about going to this thai place for dinner, which a couple at the B&B had recommended, but ended up going back to the dirty duck and making another rez for half-five. (then i stayed and had a cup of tea and finished reading the play.) what the heck -- it was close, and i enjoyed my dinner the night before (duck, ahaha). i hiked back to the B&B, got ready, and tripped on back out at about 5:20. ambleside was a great choice for a place to stay -- my room was excellent, the breakfast delish, and it was so close to everything.

at dinner i was greeted by the same servers from the night before, and i ordered the paella special, which they pronounced pie-ella, like nigella, ahaha. it was quite tasty. for dessert i had clotted cream ice cream with chocolate sauce, mmmm. with dinner i had a large glass of wine, and afterward some decaf coffee (not wanting to be awake all night). i got finished a little earlier than i had on friday, but went over to the theatre anyway, bought a program, and found my seat. it was in the same area, the stalls, but a little bit further back and more toward the end of the stage. still a fantastic seat.

at intermission, i went out to the lobby but made no attempt to get a drink. i ran into all the women i'd met at the B&B that morning, including the ladies without tickets, who'd managed to snag returns literally 30 seconds before the play began. they weren't sitting together, of course, but they were just delighted. they were having an ice cream, and they complimented my outfit (black velvet trousers and blue velvet jacket with blue ruffled shirt). i said it was my jon pertwee (third doctor) outfit, and they totally got it. my own private idaho translated to someone, ahaha. anyway, we chatted happily for a little while before going back to our seats for the second half.

after the play was done, i went to the dirty duck again for a drink. it was possibly more crowded than after hamlet -- there was a birthday party going on in the back room, and this night most of the actors stayed in the actor's bar instead of going to the patio for the private party. i stood at the back of the room and just kind of gawked around, a bit overwhelmed by the play and the whole thing of just being there. everyone was really friendly and nice, with lots of "what did you think?"/"oh, it was fantastic!" type exchanges. after about a half hour, these two chicks started talking to me. i quickly realized they were americans. both from new york, although one lives in ireland now (and plays the bagpipes, wowee). we had fun talking about all sorts of sci-fi and music -- they'd gone to a talk given by a couple of the hamlet actors earlier that day, although they hadn't seen the play yet. they were hoping to get return tix for monday.

while in the bar, i was passed by mariah gale, who plays ophelia in hamlet and the princess in LLL, and i did stop her for a sec to say she was really great in both. she said thanks, but i didn't prattle on. i felt sort of shy being around these peope who were just trying to get their pints or whatev (the actors had to wait in line like everybody else). also saw edward bennett, who plays laertes in hamlet and the king in LLL ... wanted to say hey, you were great, but he was deep into a conversation with his (or a?) girl, so it seemed like not a good time.

had such fun talking to the american women that we ended up being among the crowd closing the place down. they walked partway with me back toward our respective hotels, and then i continued to ambleside alone. it was the night the UK turns the clocks back, so i got an extra hour to finish packing (and sleep), which i sorely needed.

the drive to bath was uneventful. i listened to radio 1, where the big topic of discussion was the scandal over russell brand and jonathan ross prank-calling andrew sachs (the now-78-year-old actor of fawlty towers fame, to whom they said brand had fucked his burlesque-dancer granddaughter), in between the DJ playing vintage hip-hop. so, i was tooling through the picturesque countryside, listening to "baby got back" and "white lines" and suchlike. xlnt.

cruel to be kind

2008-10-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

ok ... hamlet at the courtyard theatre (pictured above). it was really wonderful, and i had a fantastic seat. seven rows from the front, two seats away from the aisle. the production was in-the-round, so the actors passed close by me up that aisle many times during the night. the only drag was that at times the actors stood with their backs to me or were slightly blocked by others on the stage, but that never lasted long.

i feel like i could go on at length about it, and i probably will. this was my first live shakespeare experience ever -- what a way to start. DT was really good, but patrick stewart was also fab, and indeed most of the actors were great. oliver ford davies was quite memorable as polonius (maybe not as awes as hume cronyn in 1964/richard burton, but oh well), and mariah gale as ophelia was very good. one of the things i liked about this production was how it managed to convey the way ophelia's madness reflects the escalating insanity of the whole scene while never making her a mere symbol. when we first see her interacting with her brother, laertes (edward bennett), she's really comical and playful, her body language mocking his admonishments to guard her virtue -- he's blathering on about hamlet's dangerous affections, and at one point she lies on the floor on her back and scissors her arms and legs as though her whole body is going "wah wah wah, whatEVER, dude!" yet by the end she's this hollowed-out shell -- the effects of being treated like a commodity by everyone -- from her father to her brother to hamlet to the queen -- having taken a horrible toll. she's all streaked with dirt and blood -- her right hand's even bandaged around the middle as hamlet's left is, 'cause he cuts himself while vowing to avenge his father's death ... a really nifty mirror image, i thought. and her last scene where she's handing out the flowers/herbs and talking about their symbolic meanings is really moving and kind of choked me up.

seeing patrick stewart in this, having watched his portrayal of claudius in the derek jacobi hamlet from 1980, was really eye-opening. the performances are sooo different -- and not just b/c this production is modern-dress. he still doesn't seem as evil as he should seem -- i mean, claudius is a bad dude, what kills his brother for his crown and his wife. but i think he should've been even more despicable. OTOH, stewart does put across the character's elements of ego, cowardice, and oily self-assurance, while giving the king a kind of charm that one could see working on, say, the queen ... and the people.

the production was pretty daring in spots, and in others it seemed like director gregory doran was going, gettit?gettit?gettit?!!!!!! like when ophelia is being lectured by laertes about not entertaining hamlet's overtures, and she retorts that she hopes he's not just telling her to be virtuous while he himself goes down the primrose path, and she digs through his suitcase and yanks out two condoms and waves them around. or just when the play-within-the-play is about to happen, and hamlet asks ophelia "shall i lie in your lap, lady?" and she's all freaked out, and he's like, "i meant my head in your lap. did you think i meant COUNTRY matters?" and tennant falls back and thrusts his hips forward a few times ... yeah. i mean, that IS the pun, but, i dunno. subtle. and when ophelia goes nuts in front of the king and queen, she strips to her underwear, which was just like, goddammit, is no young actress ever allowed to keep her clothes ON anymore?

the cuts didn't bother me that much -- it's true that, while horatio says, "so rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead?" after looking at a letter, we don't hear about how hamlet faked the letter to england that ordered them to be killed, etc. etc. it kind of doesn't matter, but OTOH, the kill-or-be-killed situation that he's in with them does demonstrate that hamlet's not totally incapable of calculated homicide (or whatever ... death by other people, is that still homicide? it was in charlie manson's case, right?). i think maybe that shows that doran wasn't so interested in the whole "a man who couldn't make up his mind" thing. BTW, peter de jersey as horatio was excellent, and i've really come to appreciate horatio as a character -- he's one of the only truly decent ones, a guy who is just doing for hamlet b/c he's his pal. and his reward is he has to stick around and tell everyone else what happened -- he doesn't even get to die, to sleep, to go to heaven.

more surprising was the cut at the end, where fortinbras comes in after "good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," and just removes his helmet and stands there. w/o saying his piece and having hamlet carried off like a soldier. the other sort of political/military parts are left in -- the bit where claudius entreaties norway to keep young fortinbras in line, and the part where hamlet encounters the troops going off to fight the polacks. all the military stuff was staged very modernly -- the latter part involved helicopter and radio noises and guys coming down ropes from on high. (except the king's guards had these old-fashioned uniforms on with crazy helmets ... but i guess that even in modern times, palace guards can be wearing silly hats.) but hamlet was not borne like a soldier from the stage. he just laid there in horatio's arms and looked angelic and dead. maybe the point was that hamlet was NOT a soldier, and to assume he would've become one would be too much ... especially in this day and age when real soldiery is indeed going on, inna seriously deadly stylee. i dunno.

also, tennant said "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in OUR philosophy," and i'm not sure if he misspoke or if that's how they're doing it here. (s/b "your philosophy," said to horatio.) seems a pretty big line to eff up, so i will assume it's intentionally different.

like many reviews said, tennant excels at the physicality, the intensity of emotions like grief and anger, even some of the questioning of the human condition, but he kind of, i don't think fails, but falls curiously short in the existentialism department -- eg, to be or not to be was ... i'd give it a B. (ahaha.) but he was really entertaining to watch, often extremely involving, and certainly he gave it his all. hamlet's scene with his mother, gertrude (penny downie), in her bedroom was really intense and wrenching. all of his interactions with horatio were lovely, and his playing of the calculated madness was breathlessly giddy at times. ophelia's final scenes really mirrored that arms-flailing, brain-babbling pace -- much to gale's credit.

there were some points where little tics of tennant's showed through and recalled the doctor, faintly -- like the way he'd say "weellllllll" and certain mouth movements and gestures. (and i had to laugh when stewart actually did the picard manuever (at the link, the 1st meaning) at one point, yanking at the bottom of his vest to straighten it and readjusting his tie.) but i've seen DT in enough stuff to know that he does have some oft-employed tics. like most actors, i guess.

at the end the whole cast took many bows, and when they left the stage for what seemed like the final time, patrick stewart, david tennant, and the other stars walked out via my aisle. so i got a good look at them all. and just before he would've passed my row, tennant got this little look of one-more-time on his face and ducked back round to go onto the stage again to soak up a last solo wave of adoration. then everyone came back out for yet more bows. my hands hurt from clapping so much!

i really enjoyed the show, but the thing i might have liked best was seeing DT's face at the end. he was just beaming with happiness, like he'd live on the stage if he could, and it was lovely to see such pure, unfettered joy on a person's face. i suppose in part b/c the role is so demanding, and the character of hamlet is so mercurial, and angry and brooding and fake-insane and all, that tennant's glee once he was out of character was such a delight.

anyway, i did not go to the stage door afterward. just seeing it was enough. instead i went to the actor's bar at the dirty duck and had a drink. i ended up talking to this nice young couple (wife a big DT fan), and we had fun spotting all the different actors who came in. pretty much everyone passed through except tennant and stewart -- the wife, vanessa, suggested they might've taken such a back way to the back patio, which was reserved for the actors/friends. we didn't really expect him to come in, but i think we were both hoping a little. the husband, mark, actually got up at one point and told her he'd go do recon and see if he was out in the back. i laughed and said, "now, THAT'S love!"

PS (on mon. nite 10/27): i wish there were more photos in this post, but i'm afraid i might have crashed the B&B's server while trying to add some -- i'm in bath now, more on that soon -- so for now you'll have to deal with words words words. i'll make smaller versions of photos and do a separate photo post later. also, there will be more words. fear not. or do. or something.

timeless melody

2008-10-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

wowee!! i'm in stratford-upon-avon. and in just a few short hours i will be seeing david tennant and patrick stewart in hamlet!

i booked my tickets (for tonite and also for tomorrow night's perf of love's labour's lost, with DT playing berowne) soooo long ago (back in december), and today i finally held them in my hands. but don't let's get ahead of ourselves, yeah?

i flew to london heathrow out of LAX on wednesday night at 6, via virgin atlantic. i had such a horrible experience with american when the squirrel and i flew to paris, i vowed never to use that airline again. friends recommended virgin, and i must say it is definitely better. the economy seats were still small, but nowhere near as horrible as the ones on american when we went to paris. the food was pretty good, and the wine was free (although i only had two glasses). the in-seat entertainment was bitchen -- i watched two episodes of "30 rock" and the iron man movie, which was actually pretty good until the end, which was just your standard CGI battle kind of thing, and a strange sorta letdown. but robert downey jr. was good as tony stark/iron man, and the script up to the end was lively comic-book fun.

anyway. it was a bit of a haul to stratford. i didn't really sleep well on the plane. we got in about 30 minutes late, and it took a long time for the rental car shuttle to come. i managed to stay on the correct side of the road and not kill anyone, but i missed the exit on the roundabout to the M25 (fucking HATE roundabouts ... HATE) and ended up going the wrong way ... for a while before i could turn around. i was pretty tired on the drive to stratford (about 90 minutes once i got going in the right direction), but i managed to get there before dark. people were pouring in for the play that night -- a midsummer night's dream -- and i got lost again, but by chance i happened upon the proper road and found the B&B, which is called ambleside and is on grove road.

the owners, peter and ruth, are very nice, and the place is really comfy. i have a quiet, spacious room with space for all my crap. peter suggested a pub down the road -- something like the old thatched pub, i forget exact name (and no time to look it up b/c jamming this entry out before i gotta get ready). so i walked over there, and it was the picture of english pub-ness -- small bar, cozy bar room with fireplace and rough wooden tables and comfy chairs, plus a small dining room in the back. i sat at a table in the bar area and had the pie of the day -- homemade steak and ale. oh boy was it good!! but i swear it was like six pounds of food. it came with tons of steamed veggies that were delicious and not soggy. i had a tanq & tonic too.

afterward i thought about walking on down to waterside, where the courtyard theatre is, but it was really windy out, and i was pretty tired. there was a funky street carnival going on during the short walk b/w the B&B and the pub. you know -- tilt-a-whirl type rides and throw-the-ball-win-a-stuffed-tiger type thing. with loud kind of dance-music type music, ahaha. it wasn't all that hopping in terms of customers -- probs due to aforementioned wind? i don't have the squirrel's capacity for asking billions of questions ... if she were here she probs would've bombarded the nice young lads behind the bar about the whole street carnival thing, but i was too tired and busy soaking up the atmosphere.

so, i fell asleep around 10:30 last night and woke up at 8. had breakfast at 8:45 -- delish! -- then got showered and dressed and went exploring. the forecast had called for rain, but it was actually a beautiful sunny day (though cold, in the 50s). didn't wear sunscreen and worried i got burned, but we'll see.

first i walked down scholars lane to the theatre and got my tix. i looked in the little shop but decided to buy my program later. then i strolled along the avon river to trinity church, where shakespeare is buried. had to donate 1.50 pounds to see his tomb, but that's ok. my picture of the tomb isn't great, but here's what is engraved in the stone (some call it a curse; i think it might be more like a warning?):

the church had lots of lovely stained glass, and i tried to take some pix -- i think they came out better than i thought at the time. what do you think??

wandered on and down by the water, watched a boat with three boys in it struggling to turn it round (almost shouted advice but figured they would be embarrassed, so didn't). some nice willow trees, yeah?

wandered some more on the nice tarmac pathways -- behind some posher apartment buildings and homes and all. and also past shakespeare's birthplace (pictured at the top of this entry). stratford is very woody and pretty, brick homes and winding roads. picturesque.

then i hiked to anne hathaway's cottage, about a mile from my B&B, along another tarmac alleyway-type path that at one point crosses a huge green field, lovely. i also walked past a long hedge that was humming with bees. anyway, anne was shakespeare's wife, and the cottage was her family home, where, the tour guide said, he would've visited her before they got married. he was 18 and she was 26 (and preggers with their first child) when they got hitched -- wowee, they even had cougars back in willie the shake's day! he was considered a minor still, so he had to get a special license to get married. the neighbors raised the money -- 40 pounds. whoa. that's a lotta dough 400 years ago. not cheap now, even. the tour lady said, in response to someone's question, that bill "knew" anne -- i guess perhaps she meant in the biblical sense, ahaha.

the cottage didn't take long to go through: it's just 12 rooms, most of them upstairs bedrooms. small and narrow (you're not allowed to take pictures inside), but i couldn't help thinking that some L.A. hipster would love to have a funky place like that and put loads of high-tech, high-priced appointments in it. in fact, that would be cool.

one can take pix of the outside, though, and so i did. lovely, yeah?

here's the willow hut where "famous actors" read sonnets. no one was there at the time, of course.

here's an apple tree in the orchard:

i didn't walk around the grounds as much as i could've -- had to save my feet for the hike back. during which i played the clay idols on my ipod and smiled to myself and also sang out loud -- b/c who cares if people think i'm crazy? anyway, i went to the dirty duck, the famous actors' hang, and booked for dinner tonite at 5:30. like the sign says ...

then i had some tea and gazed around and wrote in my journal. i am starting to feel a little fangirl-ish squee-ness for being in the same town as two of my favorite actors. can't really bring myself to entertain the notion of going round to the stage door afterward, but ... we shall see. maybe patrick stewart needs the attention, ahaha.

anyway, i wrote this and posted the photos in like 35 minutes, so excuse the typos or whatevs, cuz no time to reread.

take back the city

2008-10-07T13:47:00.000-07:00

last tuesday i went to a listening party for the new snow patrol album, a hundred million suns, at bar marmont, of the legendary chateau marmont hotel. i got there just in time to grab a drink, meet the publicist, run into a couple of friends, and hear jimmy iovine give a speech about how great the album is and what a fabulous job the band and the producer did, etc.

i was chatting with someone who said the band is in the u.s. associated with grey's anatomy a lot -- i guess b/c "chasing cars" was featured on that show. it's funny to me, b/c i think of snow patrol as a band of torchwood and doctor who, since on different eps i've heard SP songs like "spitting games," "chocolate," and "chasing cars." and maybe others.

anyway. a few days ago i made a playlist of '80s new-wave rock: bow wow wow, madness, greg kihn band, the cars, dave edmunds, rockpile, squeeze, etc. i've been playing it a lot on my ipod on my bitchen new car stereo. so, isn't it funny that snow patrol's new single, "take back the city," totally fits the mood of that playlist? it sounded really good coming out of the speakers super-loud at the bar, and i definitely could hear it blasting in the beast. it reminds me of a cars song, except not as synthy -- but still it's all urban-sleek and kind of bouncy and elastic, and burbly-propulsive, with some really angular guitar moments. and it has a nice blend of romanticism and cynicism while celebrating la vie moderne:

i love the city tonight
i love the city always
it bares its teeth like a light
and spits me out after days

yeah, so that's their flavor-of-the-moment tune, maybe. but the album also has the moodier, more ethereal and pensive numbers they do so well. i liked it as i heard it, but can't wait to get a closer listen. it's out here october 28. and snow patrol will be doing a show in london while i'm in the UK -- on the 27th. i wish i could go! but i'm planning on being in bath that day ... and it's about two hours away from london. that seems like sort of a haul, especially since they'll be in socal later this year. to be honest, i had some issues when i saw them live at the greek in july '07. but i'd still like to see them again.

golden age

2008-10-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

ok, this post is waaaay overdue, but ... on september 24 at USC's annenberg school, i participated in this panel called "death of the critic?" it's not the sort of thing i usually do -- mainly b/c i don't get asked -- but this time i was invited by l.a. times pop music critic ann powers, so i had to say yes. i was kind of freaked out by the thought of doing it. as much as i like to talk, i am not that big a fan of talking to a room full of people. but it turned out to be not so bad -- although i definitely felt like a lightweight amid that bunch of academics, book writers, big-time critics, and a pulitzer prize-winner.

the panel went on for two hours, and the room was packed. afterward there was a lot of conversation, and then 00soul and i and some other friends adjourned to coiledsoul's neighborhood dive frank n hanks to discuss things all over again (and to get into a weird situation with a drunk who claimed to be from norman, oklahoma ... but that's another story). then, when i woke up at 6:30 the next morning, i started thinking about the panel stuff again ... and after 00soul woke up and had his coffee, we started talking about the panel some more.

so it feels a little overwhelming to try to recapture everything that came up during the panel and the ensuing convos. there were 10 people on the panel alone, so it took a fair amount of time just for each person to say their views on the state of music criticism today, and where it might be going.

i managed to make a couple of points and not sound too much like an idiot, but for me what was really exciting about the panel was the meeting of the minds. just that many people in a room, all pondering these questions of what being a critic means, what's our role, how is it changing, how can we adapt -- plus larger points about the state of the culture, the cycles that pop music goes through as an emblem of "youth culture," the role of an authoritative critical voice in today's tower-of-babel marketplace. the music world is more fragmented and niche-driven than ever, but there are certainly still milestone albums or big acts ... even if best-sellers aren't what they used to be.

i liked hearing people's ideas and insights -- ironically, since i actually said, when asked what critics i read regularly, that i don't really care about other people's opinions (which is true, but not universally) -- and discussing things like the hive-mind of every major outlet reviewing the same album as the lead on the week it comes out (the example used was the fine new dear science by tv on the radio (pictured above), mainly b/c it's happening right now). there was some discussion of critical egos (a point brought up by ernest hardy) and how the feeling of not wanting to be out of the loop fuels the hive mentality (not that he exactly put it that way).

ernest also pointed out that the contracting of the marketplace for paid jobs for critics has constricted things even further for writers of color, and how that takes certain viewpoints or concerns out of the public conversation -- although blogs do give anyone with a notion to say something a way to say it, one of the issues we kept returning to was actually being able to make a living as a critic. anyway, ernest also noted the paradigm shift in the culture in general -- the sense, which is not only technology-driven, that we are at a crossroads, nobody knows what's going to happen next, and we're all sort of simultaneously trying to find our footing in that and trying to anticipate where we're headed. while keeping our heads above water.

i think a lot of the critics had a broader view of all that and expressed it in their opening statements, where for me i saw the question of where's rock criticism at right now as a personal one. i think that's because my career has been more subject to whim than some -- in that, (a) i spent so much of my early days doing whatever i wanted and deciding what got covered based on what i liked, and (b) after i started writing for a mainstream publication, i really became a generalist who was most comfortable being told, "ok, go there, cover that." in fact i liked it that way b/c it was so different from how i started out. it was a challenge to learn to write intelligently and fairly about things i didn't have a natural affinity for, and covering whatever for the l.a. times broadened my critical horizons in ways i probably never would have done on my own.

sure, that meant having to cover NSYNC along with getting to see erykah badu, but even the horrible/excruciating experiences added to my knowledge base. and one of the things that came up was the question of what's the use of expertise in this blog-eat-blog world. i think for readers, it depends on what they want out of a review. are you looking for someone to say whether the record is any good, or do you want to learn more about what you're listening to? some might find themselves intrigued by what a critic tells them, even if they didn't know they wanted to know whatever info's been imparted.

that said, it's doubtless at least in part snobbery that i don't really believe in the democratization of criticism. just b/c there's more people blogging about music, doesn't mean they're saying anything worthwhile or good -- and, just to be clear, i'm certainly not saying all music blogs or any given ones are worthless, b/c a lot of what i find to be really awful music criticism these days is in the mainstream publications. but more is not necessarily better ... and a lot of music blogging is along the lines of it rocked/it sucked, or how this record changed my life, rather than saying anything especially insightful. but consensus isn't that important to me ... i've never cared about being in step or thinking in line with other critics. it might be as simple as not being a baby boomer or boomlet-er -- i'm used to being outnumbered. also, when i was younger, louder, and snottier, i used to tear down boomer icons just for sport, b/c i like to argue and it was fun to enrage people with pure immature snark like saying i hate bob dylan.

hmmm ... but maybe my dylan thing is a good illustration of why critical knowledge is useful. i really didn't get his deal, and to a certain extent i still respect and admire him more than i actually like him (if that makes sense), but (mostly due to repeated beatings from my betters) my youthful knee-jerk against dylan was slowly replaced by a better understanding of him and a real appreciation for his singular contributions. ironically, i never understood some of my punker-than-thou pals who hated the beatles (hello, the ramones loved them!) ... i guess the impulse isn't much different. anyway, so, as both a fan of music and a critic of same, knowing more about a subject can be enlightening in unexpected ways. and learning about something tends to enrich one's opinion -- even if you're just a casual fan and NOT a writer.

but criticism is more than just is this record/concert good or not? it's also about placing things in the broader context of the culture and assessing What It All Means. which is also the place where shit can get pretentious as all hell, oftentimes, but i think there are ways to do it w/o sounding like a total egghead asshole. and wtf, even if you do, it's still important.

anyway, just b/c a certain number of people want to go with the consensus a la rotten tomatoes, doesn't mean criticism shouldn't aim for loftier or even more practical goals. one of my pet peeves when reading reviews is when a critic will go on about how the record isn't so great, but two songs are the bomb, and then give the thing three stars or whatever. b/c most critics don't have to pay for the album, so too often they don't think about the 18 bucks or 11 bucks or whatever someone's gonna drop on a CD with two good songs on it. anyway ... there are fans with opinions, and lord knows they are legion, but criticism isn't just about an opinion. there's also a sense of historical perspective, an inkling of where this stuff is coming from, what else is like it, where its roots might be, and how things fit together.

but none of this is to say that only print publications can provide that. i think good writing about music can be found anywhere -- maybe even in the comments on amazon.com. it's more about the writer than the venue.

speaking of star ratings, the subject came up, and we all agreed we hate them b/c they're so reductive and meaningless. i guess the argument for them is they provide a "service" to readers -- like, the consumer reports version of criticism. on one hand i don't see criticism as a service: it's an art form in itself, a way of interpreting something, just as music is a way of interpreting life or love or brand-new cadillacs or what have you. music criticism is a way of interpreting work that's not strictly verbal, since it has the musical component as well. i'm not saying i see my work as art (ahaha -- funny idea), but i don't think of myself as a consumer reporter. and i HATE ratings. hate them. we never used them at citybeat, and i wouldn't put ratings on my times reviews, except that if i didn't some editor would, and that would be even more excruciating. music isn't a restaurant or a term paper, and putting grades on albums is just stupid.

otoh, in terms of consumer service, i do see criticism as a form of journalism, which is a public trust. it's definitely not as life-or-death as, say, war reporting or writing about social ills, etc. but i do think criticism can and should look at how art reflects, sorry for the cliche, the human condition. and also critics have a responsibility to the truth. they have to assess the quality of something using the sum total of their experience and perceptions and understanding. and NOT, say, whether they'll sound really cool by comparing fall out boy to nina simone, or if they'll really be pissing off some publicist, or if they'll lose an interview with a band b/c they trashed the album. b/c, to use ANOTHER cliche, at the end of the day, i have to look at myself in the mirror, and i don't wanna be telling myself, damn, you really kissed ASS today!

what can be harder for me is to assess something w/o feeling like i am selling out my own principles. what i dislike the most about reviewing something as mainstream as, say, the jonas brothers, is that i really have a hard time just coloring inside the lines of the dominant culture.

the status-quo boy/girl crap, for example, that an act like the jonases (the jonasi?) embrace really bugs me, especially with their stuff, where the girl is seen as somewhat passive and the boy is the actor. (like that line in the song "bb good": "i don't wanna hurt you/i wanna kiss you!" ... which jim derogatis jokingly said sounded like dialogue from a date rape, much to the dismay of some, but i don't see why that's such an inappropriate comment. for one thing, it was funny. for another thing, i also found that line creepy and stalkerish. it's just the same old crap of boy has to talk girl into doing stuff she doesn't wanna do -- b/c everybody knows girls never initiate sex, don't like it anyway, and have to be "convinced" into it. yeah, or maybe she's just not that into you, creepy christian freak.) it's the worst kind of mainstream perpetuating-the-patriarchy b.s., b/c it seems sort of innocuous and plastic, but it just reinforces ideas that i hate. i usually try to say SOMETHING about the ingrained sexism of this sorta stuff, but usually i end up feeling like i'm not saying enough about the underlying propagandistic nature of it all, b/c i only have 200-300 words and have to do the job i'm expected to do (ie, say whether the album is good or bad and put some fuckin' stars on it). yeah -- sellout!

uhm ... anyway. another central point about the death of the critic was the pretty basic survival issue of how to make a living at it these days. it was never a highly paid profession, but lately, as 00soul said, it's hard to compete with free. if rock criticism is devalued now, maybe it's b/c people aren't used to paying for it -- same as music itself. i guess people who have music blogs can put ads on them, and maybe that brings in a few bucks, but i'm guessing it's not much. i refuse to work for free and always have -- one of the things that bugs me the most are the hipster bohemian indie mags that cry poverty and don't pay their writers (while, say, boosting their own brand name by putting on festivals). we want your professional opinion, but we're not willing to pay you for it! whatevs. yet, in the case of people who DO pay, some of them are lowering their already low rates: i got paid less per word for that jonas bros. review in the times than i've EVER been paid for anything i've ever done for them in 12 years.

(hilarious aside: while i was tapping away at this entry, this line ad popped up in my google mail: FreelanceWriters.info - Freelance Writers Needed. We pay $3 per 250 words. Start Now! yeah.)

on the subject of word count, another thing that came up was the shrinking copy hole -- how reviews grow ever shorter, and complaints that one cannot assess an album in 75 words or less, or that readers can't get to know how a critic thinks by reading only short pieces. idk. i agree that in-depth analysis can be important, but, frankly, i don't think the jonas brothers is worth 400 words. and i don't get why, at a time when there's less space to review something that might be artistically interesting, choices are made to devote space to, say, the new rick springfield album. well, actually, i do get why: because increasingly editors don't have the same depth of critical knowledge about the subject they're assigning as the writers do.

anyway, i think long-form criticism has its place, but sometimes you CAN dispatch something in 75 words or less. and even though the internet provides a place for critics to go on for as many words as they want, or feel is necessary, i think it's a special breed of reader who can tolerate that. internet-savvy folks know the shorthand TL/DR (too long, didn't read) -- lord knows this blog is a shining example of that at times, ahaha.

the irony of all this infinite unlimited space is that it's like inversely proportional to the attention span of most people. i know i can't stand to read painfully long reviews. i can certainly WRITE them, however. ahaha.

then came another serious question of, why should someone read a review when they can just hear the track and decide for themselves? well, i think that for a lot of people, that IS what they want: to just decide if they like something and buy or steal it. but others, people who are really engaged with the music and want to know more, will find value in reading someone's assessment of it or more info about the group or whatever (see above, about 5,000 words back). but, i mean, just b/c we have more access to images and sounds and moving pictures doesn't mean the presence of the written word is diminishing. to me it seems like there are more words than ever.

finally, we were asked what places we look (besides our own main publications, of which i don't have one) for great criticism. and, like i said up there somewhere, to be honest, i don't read much criticism. i think a lot of rock criticism is terrible writing, and also i just don't care about other people's opinions. and, since i am copy editing for a living right now, i'm doing a LOT of reading for work. so i tend to troll myspace for bands my friends have told me about, or spend time talking to them about what they like or to 00soul about whatever obscure soul 45s he's bidding for or has just won on ebay. or go out to see something when one of my rock crit pals invites me out -- like seeing cold war kids play the jimmy kimmel show with bronson, good times.

all of that said, these are some writers i like and respect: richard cromelin (late of the l.a. times) is always a good read. edna gundersen and ken barnes at usa today. this cat ben rayner at the toronto star. and the aforementioned kevin bronson, whose local-music-oriented blog buzz bands keeps me caught up.

ok, phew. there's probs more i could say, but this post took me way too long to write, so i'm gonna quit while i'm ahead. i don't think there's a transcript yet, but if one happens i will post a link to it later.

i don't care

2008-09-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

in the l.a. times today, lynell george had a really interesting profile of kathleen norris, whose new book is called acedia and me.

ace-what now? acedia, which apparently means "sloth" (aka one of the seven deadly sins), but it is a latin word that literally means "absence of caring." let lynell explain...

...Since her teens she'd struggled with episodes of inertia that spread into a bleak stretch of anxiousness and eventually spun out into indifference.

The first one started with a single thought that "slithered into my Eden, pulling a string of other thoughts, each one worse than the one before," she writes.

That moment would mark the beginning of a recurrence of "bleak moods," but it wouldn't be until Norris reached her 30s that she ran across a word -- acedia -- in the writings of , a 4th century monk, that precisely described not just the mood but the course it would run and the damage it could do:

"The demon of acedia -- also called the noonday demon -- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. . . . He makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and . . . he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself." ...

hey, i can relate! so, i read the whole article, and it was frankly fascinating. i kind of want to read the book too. i think nihilism might be, like, the little sister of acedia? (like how sleep is the little brother of death or whatev.) at least that's what i was thinking after the ramones' "i don't care" popped into my head while i was deciding what to call this post (excellent live clip on the title link; original album audio here). it's not a perfect fit -- sure, there's a kind of bored quality to the drone of the riff and chord changes, and the lyrics are all, "i don't care about this world." but when joey asserts "i don't care about that girl," you're thinking, "oh yes you DO, dude."

but, anyway. yeah. acedia, not depression. not the same as "carbona not glue" ... but enough with the ramones refs, awreddy.

it takes two

2008-09-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

yesterday the times of london published excerpts from e-mails between doctor who revamper russell t. davies and benjamin cook, his co-author on a book about RTD's experiences with DW. one comment RTD made about young actor russell tovey -- "i think i'd make him the eleventh doctor" -- set the blogosphere and UK press a-buzzing. all on the strength of what seemed to me a passing comment of admiration and interest in this fab thesp, who played midshipman frame in last year's christmas ep, "voyage of the damned," and who i totally lurved in the pilot for being human. (hurry up and make more eps of that, BBC.)

yeah. well. i just read today's installment (or, technically, tomorrow's) of these exchanges, and believe me -- we ain't seen nothin' yet. WARNING: the preceding link contains MAJOR MAJOR spoilers for the upcoming christmas special. and i mean MAJOR. not to mention, RTD says something about the S4 two-fer "silence in the library"/"forest of the dead" that even writer/future showrunner steven moffat had been slightly more coy about. but forget that part. the christmas special: OMFG!!!!!!!

let the UK media feeding frenzy begin.

lost souls

2008-09-10T22:49:00.001-07:00

rumors persist of a doctor who movie. they all seem to originate from one place, howev: reports in the UK's sun tabloid. not, i understand, the most reliable source. supposedly tennant wants to do movies, and he'll return for the 2010 season if they take the doctor big-screen. idk. it's plausible, i suppose.

and also re the 2009 specials (also via the sun), some familiar faces allegedly will be coming back (click to be spoiled). another sun report claims an even more surprising return for next year (again, click for spoilage) ... and that sketchy description makes it sound like a flashback episode ... idk II. this seems plausible too, mainly 'cause i've heard fanboy spec on this before, but somewhat more unlikely.

lots of media fuss about CERN's gigantic particle accelerator, the large hadron collider, which they started up today (super-cool above picture nicked from the CERN site). there's even a torchwood radio episode called "lost souls" that was made as part of the hoopla surrounding CERN. it was unfortunately sort of cheesy and, like, textbooky -- but it had some angst and innuendo ... and martha. so, OK.

...baby one more time

2008-09-03T21:09:00.001-07:00

ohboy. there's so much to catch up on, but i don't feel all that arsed to blab.

or maybe it's more like, i feel i should start thinking about more serious matters (hey, summer's unofficially over, after all). but i don't even know where to start with the whole sarah palin thing. (she's pictured above with running mate john mccain, in a new york times photo by jim wilson.) it really seems to show the repubs' contempt for women -- or, really, for voters. one of my friends said her dad's theory is that mccain doesn't actually WANT to win. wahaha. i read in (i think) the NYT that he would've rather gone with ridge or lieberman (!?! proof of insanity), but the "base" contingent wouldn't let him and wanted palin. so, maybe a better theory is that they twisted his arm, and when she disclosed the pregnant teen daughter, he told 'em, "too bad, i'm running with her anyway!"

sigh. see? it's still summer in my brain: i can't even be serious about serious stuff. i mean, palin is totally unqualified to be vice president, just experience-wise alone. and then you have her ostrich views on global warming, her creationism, her opposition to gay marriage, the possible scandals she's linked to ... not to mention her thing for abstinence-only sex ed (yeah, THAT worked out great). i think the pregnant teen daughter is relevant, given palin's backward views on educating kids about sex, but i guess i'm with lindsay lohan on this: all the blather about it is just distracting us from the real issues.

still. the story i really want more of (assuming it IS a story, and don't you think it is?) is the one about how the palins shotgunned unsuspecting baby daddy levi into marrying their girl (or at least agreeing to act like he will). mwahaha. dude. i bet you REALLY wish you'd used a condom right about now.

the waiting

2008-08-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

guess what, doctor who fans? itunes now has classic eps available for download -- stuff that's NOT EVEN OUT ON DVD!!!

i discovered this the other day and immediately downloaded a third doctor (jon pertwee) serial called "terror of the autons" -- featuring the first appearance of the ever-evil master. (and i must say, roger delgado in the role rules like a ruling thing.)

the list of choices was relatively short (considering that there are, like, 5,284 serials from the show's 400-year history), but it included some fourth doctor (tom baker) ones too. i snagged one called "the sun makers" that featured the wonderful leela and was a totally cracked commentary on the evils of capitalism, yay. (yeah, RTD knows how to yank the heartstrings and up the melodrama, but the tom baker years really brought the subversiveness, baby.)

so i thought, "boy, wouldn't it be awesome if they had 'the deadly assassin'?" you know, the 4th doc one where the master frames him for murdering the lord president of gallifrey? (the above photo, featuring ol' teeth 'n' curls in gallifreyan garb, is taken from said tale.) famed for being the only serial ever to feature the doc w/o companion? i searched for it but didn't find it, and this little link popped up that said "request anything you can't find." so i clicked it and filled out the form.

literally the next day, i went back for another hit of my favorite TV crack. and lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a download offering "the deadly assassin"?!? (interestingly, all three of the serials i just mentioned were written by the prolific robert holmes.) you better believe i clicked that link. haven't watched it yet, but, boy, am i looking forward to it. itunes rocks. the only thing i don't get is why these serials are rated "TV-14." that's just nuts.

have you got it in you?

2008-08-07T00:19:00.000-07:00

when i read last year that david tennant (star of doctor who) was going to play hamlet this summer/fall at the RSC's theater in stratford-upon-avon, i thought, "hmmm, that would be a cool thing to see." but when i read that patrick stewart (captain picard of star trek: the next generation) was also going to be in the play (as claudius/the ghost) ... i knew i had to be there. my TWO fave sci-fi tv heroes (pictured above -- DT at left -- in a rehearsal photo from the RSC) in one shakespeare production?! chance of a lifetime! so, a whole eight months ago, i bought a ticket to that play and to love's labour's lost, also featuring tennant (though, alas, not stewart), as berowne. i figured i might as well get the whole package if i'm traveling that far.

david tennant as the doctor is the most popular ever to play the role -- even leaving longtime champ tom baker in the dust (although, WTF, tom baker will always be MY doctor ...). so naturally, his casting created a sensation -- pretty much anything DT does creates a sensation, as he is a huge star in the UK. it's been a total media frenzy over there for months. (nobody but fellow doctor who fans knows who tennant is on this side of the pond, howev.) tickets are sold out (and allegedly going for up to 500 pounds on ebay). and there was the inevitable backlash, with veteran stage director sir jonathan miller criticizing the stunt casting of celebs in shakespeare (jude law is gonna play hamlet in the west end not long after tennant's done). he pouted that director gregory doran had hired "that man from doctor who" to star in his modern-dress production strictly b/c of star power. there may be some truth to this, but tennant, like stewart of course, has already done some willie the shake for the RSC before (including romeo and juliet). and now they are doin' it together (RSC production photo):

anyway, previews started last week, and the official opening was tuesday. in short, the reviews are in.

the general consensus is, "that man from doctor who" is very good, with caveats. stewart is universally getting high praise for his perf. and director doran is being universally dinged for some of the cuts he's made to the text (charles spencer in the telegraph called the play "sometimes brutally cut"). including, apparently, not revealing the fate of rosencrantz and guildenstern, who are killed by hamlet (c'mon, there can't be spoilers! this is shakespeare!).

benedict nightingale in the times gave the production four out of five stars and said tennant kept him "riveted throughout" -- although he'd seen "bolder hamlets and more moving hamlets." but nightingale was more forgiving of tennant not reaching a certain depth than other critics.

like charles spencer in the telegraph, who had many good things to say -- and also found stewart to be exemplary -- but added that "Tennant isn't in the pantheon of the great Hamlets yet."

"What's lacking, at present, is weight and depth. He delivers the great soliloquies with clarity, but he doesn't always discover their freight of emotion."

spencer gives examples of problems with "to be or not to be" and the "nunnery" speech. but he adds that tennant is best when he does tap into his emotions and has some advice:

"As the run continues, Tennant should trust his feelings, dig deeper, expose more of himself."

giving us a little bit of a feel for what it was like to be in the theater, paul taylor in the independent described the crowd and added that having tennant play hamlet was good for everyone:

"It's a joy to see Stratford's vast Courtyard Theatre packed to the rafters and liberally sprinkled with children who remain rapt throughout."

taylor finds tennant adept at most aspects of the role but notes he "excels when the prince becomes a prankish provocateur." he certainly gives the actor high marks but, similar to spencer, also says he wouldn't "put him in the absolute front rank of contemporary Hamlets" (to taylor, these would include simon russell beale, mark rylance, and stephen dillane). his reservations are in line with spencer's as well:

"In the soliloquies, the finest performers seem to be, partly, laying bare their own souls to us, too and laying us bare to ourselves. At the moment, that strange double-feeling of exposure and spiritual connection is not as strong here as one could wish here."

but he also thinks tennant is capable of getting better at this aspect of the performance.

another four out of five stars from michael billington in the guardian. he seemed especially taken with tennant, calling him "immensely engaging." and yet still ...

"If there is any quality I miss, it is the character's philosophical nature, and here he is not helped by the production."

the major party pooper was quentin letts of the daily mail, who called tennant (with much reluctance, one sensed) "memorable" but "not the greatest Dane" (groan ... oh, yes, he diiiiid). this critic was generally quite snarky about tennant's perf (while also complaining about doran's cuts, and praising stewart). but, frankly, this dude sounded like nothing but an asshole when he said:

"On Monday night I saw about 30 members of the audience leap to their feet at the end to show delight at Mr Tennant's performance. All but two of them were women.

Maybe it's because he's such a TV pin-up or maybe his interpretation of Hamlet (light on power politics, heavier on personal hiatus) is likely to appeal more to the female mind.

so you'll excuse me if -- after a totes sexist and flippin' stupid statement like that -- i don't take his sour words all that seriously.

finally, this mostly descriptive and praiseworthy take from caroline briggs of BBC news also nodded to the notion that tennant has room to improve. (at this link is a clip showing tennant coming to the stage door afterward, signing programs, and there is indeed a mob of people waiting.)

i suppose this is good news for tennant (and i know i'm relieved ... how much would it suck to make plans to travel so far, only to see something crappy?). dunno if he'll read the reviews, or heed the advice. one thing we know for sure, howev, is he still looks good in a tux:

anyway. it certainly seems possible that this notion the critics have of tennant needing to dig deeper could be viewed as a challenge -- something he genuinely seems to relish as an actor. i figure by the time i get there to see it, he'll have it all worked out.

all sparks

2008-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

last night i went with 00soul, coiledsoul, and mimi to the opening of eddie izzard's "stripped" at the kodak theatre, which is there through saturday. what's with the hot tux and skin-flashing in the ad, eddie? you wore faded jeans, a striped shirt, and a tailcoat with a red lining (loved it!) on stage, and didn't take ANYTHING off. and the show wasn't exactly revealing on any other level, either.

whatevs. he performed on a set that was perhaps meant to evoke stone tablets (there was some shtick involving moses), or a prison cell (what with the painted-on small barred window at the back of the set, where the "outside" scene shifted from a sunrise to a big eye peering in to the moon rolling slowly by), and the show basically amounted to eddie izzard's (extremely nonlinear) history of the world, part 1. as learned on wikipedia and the internet -- ahaha.

he was very funny, but the show was pretty loose. i mean, it's long been part of EI's thing to ramble off on a tangent for many minutes and then make a motor-type noise (as though speeding back to the point) and go, "uh, where was i ... OH! noah's ark ... ." so, it wasn't so much the patented meandering, but the not-so-easy-to-hide lack of much depth. we all agreed we'd have liked more focus, not necessarily in the presentation, but in the sense that he didn't have a lot to say. beyond "vote for barack obama" and "humans have a lotta potential" -- which, great, but is that it?

oh, well. much of the nearly two-hour show was hilarious, especially that noah's ark stuff, including some recurring squirrel shtick ... a bit about "jazz chickens" ... the assortment of sound effects he made ... some wordplay involving latin, hannibal, and elephants ... and his routine about the stone age. still, it felt a little bit lazy, with a strong whiff of resting on his laurels about it. like he was content to just be "eddie izzard" and not really push things forward. which, ok -- i guess that happens to everyone. and it's been a long time since i wrote that cover story about him (never mind the mess made of the headlines and subheads in the online presentation) -- nearly five years, in fact. but in it he did speak of wanting to "... really push it, because when you get in a comfort zone, it's bad."

i wouldn't call "stripped" bad, but it's certainly not his best. oh, well. i guess they can't all be "dress to kill." but, then again, why not?