You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

- Ugh, is it November yet? Honestly, Facebook for me is becoming what the HP Fandom was in the fall of 2004. A really uncomfortable place to be, and you wish there was a way to just filter out all the political stuff so that you could still be friends with your friends. Or still look your family members in the face at Thanksgiving. (While I'd love to be able to see my parents at Thanksgiving, I'm more glad than ever that there's no way for me to go see the rest of the family for Thanksgiving in Mississippi, particularly as this year it will come just after the election. They're my family and I love them, but I'd foresee a hell of a lot of dramatic getting up and leaving the room when talk turns to politics.)

- I went to see Lawless this past weekend. It was good, but not quite as amazing as I hoped it would be. Shia LaBeouf was rather serendipitously cast, and the be-cardiganed Tom Hardy is the best thing about the whole endeavor (which is nearly always the case with whatever he's in). Gary Oldman is underused, but enjoyable, Jessica Chastain is awesome as always, and the setting and look of the film is really fantastic. I couldn't help but see how the studio must have interfered and kept the movie from being what it was trying to be. I was also disappointed in myself for not thinking to get an MP3 of George Jones's "White Lightning" in time to get myself in the mood for a movie about moonshiners. :P

- I got inordinately excited to run into someone I knew at a random place in the city the other day. That almost never happens to me. Bonus points for it being someone who hasn't seen me in probably over a year, maybe two, and who only knows me from the occasional temp gig where they usually only saw me as I came and left. Go me, making impressions on people. :P

- About six weeks until the application process begins for That Thing. I shall call it That Thing for now, because after not getting in last year I have become super-superstitious and neurotic about it. The good thing is that I am still planning to go to Austin, regardless, and if That Thing is yet again not to be, at least I can have a good time chilling out in QuirkyTown and hopefully running into other people who are in town for That Thing. For that is half the fun.

- I AM READY FOR COOLER WEATHER, PLEASETHANKYOU! I bought some chili fixins the other day, but I just can't bring myself to cook chili while it's still so dang hot! I also have some delicious Land-O-Lakes premium hot chocolate (Irish Cream, whatwhat!) and a lovely TARDIS-shaped mug that angua9 and wahlee_98 bestowed on me for my birthday, but it's just too darn hot for cocoa right now.

- Speaking of food that's inappropriate in certain seasons, I hate that I found this amazing website at the end of summer. It really makes me want to buy an ice cream maker, but ... waaah, it's getting too late in the year for ice cream! My life is a tragedy!

- What else is going on? Oh, Mark Watches has gotten to the final season of Buffy and Season 4 of Angel. This rewatch is bringing out SO MANY SPUFFY FEELS in me. The "chermistry" is "mind-boogling," as some folks used to say. And ugh, whatever at this whole Cordelia-as-a-higher-being thing on Angel. It seems like there's literally no purpose for it except to set up the wackadoo stuff that happens later with Jasmine and everything. I liked Cordy so much better when she was on Buffy and wasn't a lead character. Also, I skipped ahead and watched "Smile Time," which may in fact be the best episode of television in the history of everything. ("I DO NOT HAVE PUPPET CANCER!")

- Speaking of Mark Watches, I am suddenly very prepared for the West Wing watch next year. Amazon.com had the series box set for 70% off on Labor Day and I snapped it up. I *had* found a site that had all the episodes online, but legit watching just feels better, and this way I know the pirate police won't zap the site out of existence.

- I should do a proper post on the new Doctor Who episode, but we probably all know what's going to happen with that. :P Loved it, and I'm so glad it's back. And was anything more awesome than Chris Hardwicke's "Whovian" commercial?

- Oh, speaking of all things Whovian, Harry Knowles has been plowing through NuWho and absolutely loving it. Per suggestions from friends, he started off by watching "Blink," which everyone assured him was a perfect one-off and a good indicator of the level of writing, and then went back to "Rose" to go through the whole thing. The last he updated, he was about to tackle the pre-Season-5 Tennant specials.

The Short Version:



The Long Version:

( What sort of time do you call this? )

Christmas has never seemed so far away! I've fallen hard for this show. Can you tell?

I just had to link these, because they made my day. Doctor Who opening credits, by way of...

Dynasty (LOL love the "soap opera" touch of including the Doctor's daughter),
Dallas (my personal fave, mostly because it includes pretty much everyone - oh, and I heart Dallas),
Friends ("Featuring 'The TARDIS'"),
and The Odd Couple (inspired by "The Lodger").

There are TONS more, as you'll see if you follow any of those links. I like the idea of the Scooby-Doo one, but it suffers from lack of K-9. Man, I miss when shows had big, grandiose opening credits like they did in the '80s.

Oh gosh, I haven't posted about "Closing Time," have I? ( Take it away, Stormageddon! )

Last week my MagSafe adapter for my Mac died. *sadface* So I bought a new one ($79 - ouch!) and it worked at first, then it didn't. I changed outlets, rebooted, etc. but still nothing. So I exchanged it for another, thinking it was just defective, but the new one didn't work either. So I made an appointment with a "Genius" at the UWS Apple Store and found the problem. I hadn't downloaded the firmware update that would have allowed my computer to recognize the newly redesigned adapter. Which I guess explains why it worked at first and then my computer basically went "wait, what?".

I really loved this week's Doctor Who, but it brought something I've been feeling lately into sharper relief. ( Spoilers, natch. )

Saw Contagion this weekend, which is excellent. Very methodical and precise, but covers all the ground you could ever want and more of what would happen if an epidemic like that ever struck our world. Not a whole lot of emotion, but what's there is really lovely. Matt Damon, Jennifer Ehle, and Kate WInslet get some especially lovely moments. And you can just tell that Jude Law is having the most fun of anyone playing an utter bastard of a character. In other movie news, OMG I CAN'T WAIT FOR DRIVE THIS WEEKEND!

In semi-social news, my Rifftrax meetup group is, errr, meeting up to watch Abraxas this weekend. Haven't been to one of these in a while, so I'm terribly excited. And then *next* weekend Cinematic Titanic is coming to town! It's Riff-A-Palooza!

I quite liked Saturday's Who, and even watched a couple of themey movies afterwards. Nightmare on Elm Street was a rewatch and wonderful as always, but Dolls was new (to me) and RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME. Killer dolls with tiny knives and saws brutally murdering jerky adults - WINTASTIC!

Anyway, while "Night Terrors" was a cool stand-alone episode, the order change-up puts a weird spin on a couple of things and I noticed something else interesting in "The Impossible Astronaut." ( Spoilers for both episodes, plus Curse of the Black Spot )

OMG New Who!

I had to wait TWO WHOLE DAYS! :P BBC America was running all the S6 eps so far, plus a bunch of the "best of" shows (WHY are all those Whovians third-rate American celebs?!). It's weird watching it on actual tellie with commercial breaks (and ugh, the weird Amy voice-over intro that reminds me of early run Buffy). I also don't like how they pretend that Eleven is the only Doctor ever. I get that they're trying to catch people up on this Doctor and that it's probably too much to ask for people to do what I did and burn through Nine and Ten, much less the Entire History of Doctor Who Ever. But they should clarify that's what they're doing and call it "Best of Eleven" or something.

( Spoilers. )

Okay, so last time we talked, where was I? Ah yes, end of Series 5. ( Spoilers, naturalmente. )


And now all that's left is to really hope the power holds out until the new episode downloads. :P

Finished with Series 5 now, and as I wait for the Series 6 to download from iTunes, I need to give a shout-out to what may prove to be my favorite Doctor Who episode and one of my favorite hours of television, period. If you've never watched an episode of the show, I'd highly recommend Vincent and the Doctor as a one-off. It's on Netflix Instant in HD, and it doesn't spoil anything (there are a couple of little references that would require more context, but they don't affect the story much at all).

There have been a few previous episodes that focused on artists, all of the writerly variety - Dickens, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie - and they all seem to need to say something about the legacy of each of their subjects. Probably my favorite part of the Dickens episode is when Simon Callow's Dickens hopefully asks the Doctor how long his books last and the Doctor answers "Forever." And Ten showing Donna the copy of Christie's Death in the Clouds with the print date 5,000,000,000 AD was a similar moment. But neither of those compared to the end of Vincent and the Doctor, written by Richard Curtis (of Love, Actually fame).

( They did not listen, they did not know how ... perhaps they'll listen now. )