MissE’s TV Dancecard
What I’m watching Right Now – because I know you’re all dying to know.
Community
I generally hate sitcoms – Scrubs aside, and even then, I find the half-hour format irritating and like being given half a cookie – but I can’t hate this one. It co-stars Chevy Chase, and I can’t hate it. It’s spent it’s first five episodes setting up a random and unnecessary URST situation, and I still can’t hate it. Why? Because it’s cute and funny and and completely random. Also – Abed is most awesome.
Modern Family
On the internets, there’s a lot of Community v Modern Family discussion, which is actually kind of stupid because they’re nothing alike. They’re also not airing at the same time, so I don’t really get it. That said – Community is better because it’s heart-warming moments are always a little weird and still funny, whereas this is, at it’s heart, a family comedy, so it makes me want to throw up at least once an episode. It’s still funny though, so it’s on the dance card for now.
White Collar
So, you know how you watch Chuck (you do watch Chuck, don’t you? Because if you don’t, I don’t think we can be interwebs friends any more, so go watch it now and report back) and every now and then you think ‘Wow, that Bryce Larkin, he’s really pretty!’ and then you feel bad for thinking that because he’s always getting in the way of Chuck and Sarah and Chuck would be really hurt if you thought his love rival was pretty if he ever found out? Well, feel bad no longer, because Bryce Larkin is on his very own show! And he’s so very pretty, and he’s all Rat Pack style and the pretty just oozes out of those pretty pretty blue eyes … Ahem. Anyway, only the pilot is out but this show is awesome. It’s a bit cheesy and you have to suspend disbelief a wee bit, but it’s so much fun. And did I mention Matt Bomer is pretty?
Survivor: Samoa
I usually catch a mid-season episode of Survivor by accident and have to follow the rest of the season because I’m a sucker like that. There has only been one season I’ve tried to watch from the beginning and I failed miserably because for some reason I only care if I stumble upon it halfway through, and not if I know what’s going on from the start. Also – Reality TV and I were through the second that Penny made it through to the top ten on last years SYTYCD, so I had no plans to be watching this. Except that MrE and I went to Samoa earlier this year and everyone was asking if we were there for Survivor and we accidentally found one of the camps they were setting up but didn’t get there because the road ended and then our car got stuck in the mud and we had to walk up the hill and a tree fell down in the mountains above us and a dude with a huge earthmover had to get the car out for us and it was a bit of an adventure, so I kind of felt obligated. And it’s fun, in the usual way that Survivor is: you either like it or you don’t.
Gossip Girl
Oh, Josh Schwartz – my big hope is that you’re throwing all your energy into Season Three of Chuck and that’s why this show feels so … flat this year. My big fear is that you can’t do third seasons, and that Chuck will also suck, but I’m praying that’s not the case because after all we went through to get it renewed and the fact that it’s likely not going to be back on the air until March, Chuck absolutely has to be awesome this season …Aaaaand we were talking about Gossip Girl. It’s still good. And Nate is still very very pretty, except for when he reverts to Pilot hair and I weep for the loss of the manbangs (look – I’m not proud of it, but this is one guy who looks so much prettier with an emo fringe), and apparently there’s going to be a threesome soon so things are looking up.
Dollhouse
Dear Fox, please cancel this show already so I can stop watching it? I want to like it so so so much but it’s just so not-that-good that I actually don’t know why I’m still bothering to sit through it.
Law & Order
So you might think that Law & Order is boring and predictable and totally uncool – and that’s fine. It just means we can no longer be friends, because you’re so clearly wrong. And sure, it did get a little crappy there for a few years, what with that guy who tried to run for president and Serena ‘Is it because I’m a lesbian?’ Southerlyn stinking up the place, but they’re gone now and it’s back to being awesome. And – Jeremy Sisto: The guy was in Clueless. Even if he wasn’t taking scruffy to a whole new level of gorgeous – which he so totally is – the Clueless thing should be enough.
Dudes, I know what you’re thinking: that’s only six hours of TV a week. And I’m thinking it too, don’t worry. I’m really concerned about what’s going to happen once a couple of these shows fall off the schedule, as they are bound to do soon *cough*Dollhouse*cough*. I don’t think I’ve watched this little TV in my entire life, and it’s kind of scary.
What do people do when they’re not watching TV?
Filed under: TV | Leave a Comment
Tags: Abed, Bryce Larkin, Pretty
It Was Aliens What Did It*
Pandaemonium
Christopher Brookmyre
Let me begin by saying that I love Christopher Brookmyre. He’s like the writer that Ben Elton could have been if he was Scottish and had bigger balls. And was also funny. Brookmyre is Elton on crack and then some, but unlike Elton I don’t get the feeling he’s trying really really hard to be edgy. He is edgy, sometimes. And I probably wouldn’t want to met him in a dark alley, because he seems a little mad, but none of it seems put on – he’s just an insane Scottish guy with fifteen opinions on everything and a gift for ranting. He’s also amazingly adept at creating very believable female and adolescent characters and inserting them into these crazy situations without letting them turn into voiceboxes for his ideas.
Pandaemonium is a strange one though. It’s really more horror than crime – which to those of us who were reading Stephen King at 11 isn’t really a bad thing – and for most of the book you have to wonder where Brookmyre, who comes across in everything else he’s ever written as a World Champion Athiest, is actually going with his story of crusty-skinned, pointy-horned demons who manage to escape they super-secret joint-government-church research facility and wreak havoc on a bunch of schoolkids away on camp. Having read Brookmyre’s take on religion and the supernatural in his other books – it’s a favourite topic – it’s hard not to spend the entirety of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Which, of course, it does. Without giving too much away, I don’t know that the ‘rational explanation’ we get is all that convincing, but I guess part of his argument is that if we can believe so readily in God and the Devil and Heaven and Hell, why not _____, which actually has some semblance of scientific backing.
This book is slow to get going, and a little bit too derivative of some of his earlier novels – it feels at times like a cross between Be My Enemy and A Tale Etched In Blood and Hard Balck Pencil, but with priests and demons – to be considered among his best, but I read the (extremely gory) second half of it in one go while I was supposed to be sleeping, and then had some extremely gory dreams, so it definitely sucked me in. A delightful romp.
* Not really. Or was it?
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Tags: Brookmyre, World Champion Athiests
In Which I Fix A Broken TV Show
Ok, writers of FlashForward, listen up! Your show is not really as good as it should be – which is, in part, to say that it’s not as good as people keep telling you it is; you have great concept and that is buying you lots and lots of points, and people are ignoring the sloppy execution in order to see the concept play out, but a great concept is not enough. So as a viewer of way more television than is healthy, I have written up some pointers on how you can make your show actually good (yes, yes, you can pay me later …) – behold:
- Quit it with the flashbacks. Ok, maybe it’s just that The Wire spoiled me by making it so that I actually had to pay attention in order to follow the story, but not even the dumbest of all dopey, one-eyed, not-really-paying-attention viewers needs to see that same flashback to something that we saw in the last episode FIVE TIMES. We get it, and you know what, even if we missed the last episode, that’s what the Previouslies are for. And no, it’s still not acceptable if you tell me that you’re not doing it to remind us because you think we’re stupid, but rather it’s a device to show that your characters keep thinking back to these particular moments. You can do that without the flashbacks. In fact, you can be a bit more subtle about it and we’ll still get it. Especially when they SAY ‘I just keep thinking about blah!’ And yes, I get that ’show, don’t tell’ is what we fans keep asking you to do, but showing the same thing over and over and over again? Just as bad as telling. Really.
- Back off on the marital problems of Shakespeare (who is uniformly awful, by the way) and his wife. This is a global catastrophe with massive consequences for everyone on the fricking planet, and five minutes in my main concern is supposed to be for the marriage of a terrible actor and his wife who doesn’t seem to do any work despite the fact that she is an ER doctor in the aftermath of a global catastrophe? No. Again, I hear you: you can’t just show everything that’s going on in the whole world. You need to create personal stories to illustrate the havoc this event has caused – that’s the way TV works. But these people are boring and I’ve not yet been given any reason to care about them, so maybe give half their screentime to some of your other characters (I could personally stand for a bigger dose of Courtney B. Vance – but I have a soft spot for his voice) and ease us into their story a little more slowly.
- Fire yourselves and get in some people who can write dialogue that isn’t so trite. Real people don’t talk that way. Even TV people don’t talk that way. And while you’re at it – the score is overwrought and painful, except when it’s the ‘this bit is funny and light so laugh now’ music – and then it’s just painful. Fire the music people too.
- Sit down for a little while and figure out your time-travel mechanics. Because you’ve had all these people get a glimpse of a very specific date and time in their future, and NONE of them are sitting there with a list of the lotto numbers for the past six months? Not one? I feel like you can’t seem to decide if the future-people are aware of the flashforward happening (and Shakespeare studying the event seems to indicate that they are) or not (I’m not sure that anyone who knew the event was going to happen would chose to spend it on the toilet). And you kind of have to pick one and stick to it – and you have to decide what the consequences of picking that one are. Is this flashforward event going to alter the future, or did it create it? Maybe watch a bit of Back To The Future – for a cheesy 80’s film series, they did fairly well with the paradoxes of time travel.
- Drop the odd-for-odds-sake stuff. A kangaroo hopping down the street may well have escaped from the local zoo, or it may well just be there so we all go ‘ooh! A kangaroo! In the streets of LA! What could THAT possibly mean!’ but unless you plan on actually explaining it – in the show, not online – don’t do stuff like that. It’s annoying and makes you look like you’re trying too hard.
That is all. I doubt you can fix all these problems in the one more episode I plan on giving you before I drop you from my TV dance card, but who knows? Good luck!
Filed under: TV | 3 Comments
Tags: Back To The Future, shakespeare
So I joined a gym. And I do have to say, that it’s been an eye-opening experience: not so much the actual gym-going part of it, but the way that other people react to you when you start getting fitter and – yes – thinner, and you mention why.
When I first did this thing that apparently makes my body everyone’s business but mine, I told a couple of close friends about it. And since then, I’ve continued to chat to them about my progress and how I’m doing. Some of them are also gym-goers, so we compare Body Pump horror stories. Others not so much, but it’s important to me and I like to share the important stuff with some people. I don’t have any issue talking to these friends about how it’s going – I actually actively chose to do so, in fact, because they are my friends. Funnily enough, these people don’t find it necessary to poke and pry and question my motives – and as friends, they could, if they so chose, and I would talk to them honestly and openly. It’s the people who I haven’t chose to share with – work colleagues, aquaintances, friends-of-friends -who have suddenly decided my life is their business. And it’s to them that I dedicate this post.
First off, I’m not doing it ‘for the wedding’. I started going to the gym months before I got engaged and I have no plans to make any additional effort in the lead-up to my ‘big day’ (date not set, by the way, so y’all can stop asking). And I’m not even doing it to lose weight – I have lost weight as a result of doing it, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about that, but it was never the aim – so I can’t say how much more I plan to lose, or how much I have lost, because I actually hadn’t weighed myself in years until a little while ago so I don’t know where I started. And if you would stop grabbing my arm any time I wear something sleeveless and commenting on how ’skinny’ it is – that would also be great. In fact, here’s the thing: it’s not actually your business WHY I started going to the gym. It’s also none of your business how much weight I’ve lost. And I don’t actually understand why people who don’t know anything about my life other than what I do between 9 and 5.30 see it as their god-given right to get the scoop on my fitness levels. It’s obnoxious. It’s especially obnoxious when you accost me in front of a group of people and demand to know what’s ‘going on’ with me.
Further to that, if, as a result of losing some weight and being fitter, I have the confidence to wear, say, tight jeans, or a minidress, then that is not a sign that my relationship is in trouble. It is not actually a sign of anything – except that I lost some weight and had to go buy some clothes that weren’t falling off me all baggy-like and I liked these jeans. And again – bringing that up in front of a group – nay, yelling at me across the office to explain myself – is really uncalled for.
And here’s a little secret: I know I look good. I also know I’ve lost weight. I have a mirror. But thank you for telling me, again. I’m not actually ‘half the woman I used to be’. And you’ll admit, when I give you a look after you say that, that I was ‘never that big’, as though that isn’t patronising in the slightest. If, perhaps you could refrain from telling me how ‘lovely and thin and healthy’ I look when I come into work with the flu, flush-faced and barely able to stand up, that would also demonstrate an understanding of common decency. Just trying to make me feel better? Well make me some damn chicken soup instead of spouting on about how healthy a 40-degree fever makes me look.
But that’s just one side of it.
I would also like to take this opportunity to announce to all the weight-obsessed women out there that I am not, in fact, one of you. I will still eat chips whenever I want to, and I refuse to beat myself up if I have a cookie. I have no idea how many calories I consume in a day, or how many grams of fat were in that donut, and you know what? I don’t care. If and when I eat salad, it’s because I actually like salad, especially when it has cheese in it. And maybe bacon. Just because I worship the treadmill and crave the runners high, does not mean I am suddenly going to stop eating ice-cream. In fact, I may even eat more ice-cream. Because I can.
On the flipside, I would like to reassure the blue stockings among us that my decision to get fit and healthy is not a betrayal of the sisterhood. I am not suddenly buying into any beauty myths and I still don’t think that Kate Moss is the height of attractiveness just because she’s a size zero. I’m not doing this because my fiance wants me to (and, quite frankly, I’m shocked at the number of you who freely admit that your boyfriends or husbands have told you you should lose weight if you want to keep them happy, and that you have listened to them, and that they have said this despite being nowhere near peak physical condition themselves … but it’s your body and your choice and your life, and I don’t know what’s really going on there, so I won’t say any more), or because society wants me to, or because I believe I can only be beautiful if I am thin. I believe, if anything, that being strong and healthy is empowering – and if that offends your feminist sensibilities, then maybe we’re not the same kinds of feminists.
And finally, if I’m talking to you about your plans for the weekend, and you tell me you’re going camping, I don’t wrinkle up my face and say ‘ew! I HATE camping!’ because that would be rude. I may have expressed my hatred for camping to my close friends, when the topic has come up, but as someone who has never been I’m hardly an authority on what actually goes on out in those woods, and it may well be flowers and sunshine and not just deliberate discomfort, so I leave it at that and tell you to have fun. So when I tell you that I have been to the gym, why exactly do you deem it perfectly acceptable to state that you HATE the gym, and give me a run-down on what, exactly, it is you hate about the gym, before admitting, five minutes in, that you’ve only been once. Or you’ve only ever walked past one. Or that you only know what you’ve seen on TV. Are you afraid I’m going to try and recruit you? Because I’m not. I’m happy to share what I’m getting out of it and if that encourages you to check it out, then great, but I don’t actually work for Fitness First, so I don’t care whether people join up or not. In fact, I like it better when there are less people at the gym, so if anything I’m all about encouraging people to stay away. But I’d also ask that you keep your opinions to yourself, especially when they weren’t asked for.
Now, I get that for the most part people are just trying to be nice, or make conversation, or find common ground. But isn’t there a way of doing that that doesn’t involve getting all up in my business? Can’t we just keep talking about television? Or bitching about that odd guy from sales? It’s almost enough to make me resume spending 15 hours a day on the couch and using this site to plan my meals.
Mmmm … cheese.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: cheese, nosy parkers, this is why you're fat
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers
Quite frankly, I wanted to hate this book. I meet very few Dave’s that don’t end up pissing me off in one way or another, and, let’s face it: the title. I don’t care if it’s tongue-in-cheek. I bought this book in order to read it and then throw it against a wall in exasperation, swearing at yet-another Dave with a massively over-inflated sense of his own awesomeness.
(Er. Sorry to any Dave’s who are reading this. I take you on a case-by-case basis. I have, in fact, met a few Dave’s lately who have been quite pleasant, and I don’t hold the sins of Other Dave’s I Have Known against them.)
Anyway, this book did not suck. In fact, it wasn’t even mediocre. The introduction and acknowledgements and stupid ‘guide to enjoying this book’ were a bit much – self-conscious and trying way too hard to be hip and cool and irreverent – but once I started the actual story I was hooked. The damn thing very nearly made me cry, and books never, ever, ever make me cry. I am a heartless wench of a bookreader but this book nearly made actual tears come out of my eyes – in public, no less. Halfway through I was forced to admit that it was, annoyingly, pretty damn awesome.
The good news, though, is that the second half wavered a little, and the ending felt kind of like Dave just got bored and wrapped it up, so I get to downgrade my overall score from ‘pretty damn awesome’ to just ‘really good’. Which makes me a little bit happy.
Filed under: Books | 2 Comments
So how ’bout that dust, eh?
I was hoping it was the zombie apocalypse – because that would actually have been worth talking about for days and days and days. Well, for those of use whose brains didn’t get eaten, anyway, and mine is big and succulent and full of smart stuff so I obviously would have been gone by 9am.
Sadly, it was just a dust storm. It’s given me a stupid cough, because I walked home from the gym in it and I have the asthma, but other than that, and a few hilariously dirty cars (and hilarously stupid people at the carwash, getting their cars washed during the dust storm) … eh.
Incidentally, I’ve decided I’m actually against a zombie apocalypse. It sounds good in theory – and god knows there are a few people I know who really deserve to have their brains eaten (why have something if you’re never going to use it?) – but in practice, it’s just going to make the population stupider, because any zombie with half a brain (heh) will be looking for signs of intelligence before they start randomly nomming away. Why fill up on shrivelled, underworked, half-dead brain matter when there is the good, firm, succulent stuff out there?
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I Read Books, Too
The Sleepwalkers Introduction to Flight
Sian Scott-Wilson
I was talking to a friend at work the other day about David Mitchell’s Number9Dream – a book I started off enjoying but got really annoyed with about halfway through when it went all crazy on my arse. I liked it better when it was the sweet story of an imaginative young man searching for his father, and I didn’t get why it couldn’t stay that story.
This book is sort of the same: The story of the boy who can’t sleep and his relationship with his drug-crazed next-door neighbour could be quite interesting, but it’s as though partway through writing that story, the author watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and decided it should be a witty crime caper with gangsters and double-crosses instead. And there’s some stuff about people selling babies, too.
I usually carry whatever book I’m reading around with me everywhere, but how often I pull it out to read tends to be an indication of how much I like it. This book stayed in my bag and got read only at night, which is a sign that it wasn’t really grabbing me, but also means that I was mostly reading it half-asleep, so some of the nuances of the plot went over my head, and I was often confused about who all the secondary characters were and how they tied into the plot.
It’s not that it was bad, because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t as good as I thought it could have been, and I didn’t care enough in the end to really bother keeping up with it.
Filed under: Books | Leave a Comment
Tags: meh, when good books go bad
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