Category: Television & Movies

Categories
Funny Stuff Television & Movies

…and you will obey me.

I was watching the Doctor Who DVD Time-Flight this morning while feeding Evan, and listening to the commentary, in which Peter Davison points out a background extra who, in 1982, bore an extraordinary resemblance to our current Vice President:

The Master and friend

As Davison puts it, “So that’s why Iraq is such a mess! Dick Cheney is in league with the Master!” And now we know. 😆 The resemblance is beyond uncanny – and I didn’t photoshop that frame one little bit except to crop and border it. Since I was watching the region 2 release, I found myself wondering if this portion of the same title as released in the U.S. has that comment intact, or perhaps an awkward silence…… Read more

Categories
Home Base Television & Movies

No time for the killin’ floor

Astute (or, for that matter, even semi-conscious) readers might’ve noticed by now that I’ve pretty much given up the practice of cross-posting my bloggification to MySpace. LiveJournal is easy – there’s a WordPress plugin to auto-cross-post stuff there. There used to be such a plugin for MySpace, but somewhere along the way, someone changed their API, changed their mind or changed their underwear, and in that change the plugin stopped working and nobody seems to have revived the idea. Those on MySpace who want to keep up can visit my profile, where there’s a little widget there which automatically shows the latest entries – or excerpts thereof – from the blog. I also jumped ship, somewhat regrettably, from a MySpace-esque social networking site called cre8buzz, for the same reason: lack of time. (I had a few reservations about cre8buzz’s tendency to ask everyone to rate everything, from other users to their photos to their links to their blog entries…sheesh. It hadn’t quite become a popularity-contest nightmare when I left, because the invitation-only userbase was largely adult, but just the basic idea there left me a bit unnerved – I had, to coin a phrase, a bad feeling about this. My apologies to those wondering where I went. If indeed such people exist. 😆 ) When I logged into MySpace for the first time since the weekend tonight, I had a zillion private messages…from accounts that had already been deleted because they were spammers who wanted to be my friend. I just don’t have the time to do that kind of housecleaning. Good thing I’ve never even bothered with Facebook, eh? … Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

I kinda had a feeling this might be the case

What's it to be, Tennant? Love and/or Monsters?Possible big Doctor Who spoilers from a BBC chat show. Call it a gut feeling, but I had a strong hunch this would be the case. Maybe it’s just me being tired, or more narrowly focused on other things (can’t imagine what those might be), but what really bugs me is that I’m not sure how I feel about this news. If, in fact, it’s really news.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base Television & Movies

How I fed your mother

Man, I’m getting domestic in my old age. Not only did I feed Evan and change him all day, and not sleep a lot, but I whipped up some dinner for Jan before she got home (a rather tasty white cheddar rotini with broccoli and chicken thingie that I kinda hammered together) and some dessert (extreme chocolate brownies for her, chocolate-peanut-butter brownies for me). For my dinner, I finished off a pasta salad concoction that I threw together around lunchtime. Nobody’s starving in this house on my watch.

In the past 24 hours, Jan’s only had to worry about one feeding and one diaper change while I napped at around 9:30 tonight. I got up at about half past midnight to find that Evan’s mom had snuck off to her bed with him, but when he woke up for a bottle, she was strangely happy to hand him back over to me. 😆 He’s back in his crib now, with an Obi cat keeping his feet warm. The roaring winds have cooled things off drastically, so I have the little guy under a couple of layers of blankets, which he kept kicking off until Obi helpfully laid a single arm across his feet. (I tried to get a picture of this with the night vision setting on my camera, but it just didn’t turn out.) News flash: Evan smiles for daddy, and smiles for mommy, and smiles really big for Obi. He wuvs his kitty. I’d bet a substantial amount of money that his first word will be “Obi”.

I’m not sure what to do about Xena’s adopted kitten. I didn’t see that coming at all. We’re expecting a hard freeze tomorrow night, so I’m not sure how this is going to work out…Xena may like the little white and grey kitty, but the supreme council of housecats hasn’t signed off on the interloper.

The talk shows have hushed up with the advent of the WGA strike; soaps’ll be next, and then weekly shows. For those wondering what the writers are really demanding, J. Michael Straczynski explains it all for you. Granted, he simplifies things a great deal, but it’s about eight cents, folks. Not eight cents on the dollar, but eight cents per unit, which is a much smaller figure in the end. His post doesn’t address the internet/new media end of things, but I’m hoping he’ll tackle that one soon.

Hopefully no one’s put off by this week’s truncated update to the site; we may have to figure out “something else” with the episode guides, which are normally weekly bread and butter, if I can’t do better than this. One thought that has occurred to me is to present episode guides like not-every-week features – present them only when the season is completed. I’m not too sure about that though. theLogBook isn’t grinding to a halt just because I’ve got a giggling bundle of joy, but obviously there’s going to be a little bit of rearrangement of priorities here and there, and him keeping me up with hours and hours of binky blasts – which, by the great big grin on his face I see when I go to fix it, I’m convinced are absolutely intentional – instead of sleeping sure doesn’t help. 😆 … Read more

Categories
Serious Stuff Television & Movies

Full of Grace…or…well…full of something

My wife, bless her heart, became a lot less picky in her viewing habits while she was pregnant and in the first six weeks after our son was born, while she was at home recovering. I’ve already mentioned her propensity for watching E!, but another viewing habit she’s picked up that drives me up the wall is Nancy Grace. Oh. My. God. I can’t stand Nancy Grace. I know she’s got a fan base that would no doubt argue that she’s just dealing with the issues in a straight-talk, shoot-from-the-hip style (which seems to be the defense of any ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal media figures these day – “you just don’t like it because I’m telling it like it is!”). I’m not saying that any of the cases she discusses on her show deal with completely innocent, blameless people, but whatever happened to assuming that innocence until guilt is proven? Some of the topics discussed tonight dealt with folks who seem pretty reprehensible, but all the same, they’re still awaiting trial, and there’s Nancy, going off with little gems like “Who knows what else this guy has done?” Who knows indeed, Nancy? Nobody on your show does. But in the meantime you, a TV host who supposedly has a legal background, are speculating wildly in a nationally broadcast forum in a way that’d get your butt chucked out of any court in the land. (I was about to say that she ought to know better, but oh, look, maybe she doesn’t.) What all of that worst-possible-case-scenario gossipmongering is doing to the jury pool, I have no idea….but apparently there’s nothing to stop us from speculating a bit, is there, Nancy?

I know she’s all about victims’ rights, and that’s fine. Let’s not forget that until a jury hands down a verdict, the accused have rights too. And once again – and this is a fight I had to fight numerous producers, reporters and even news directors on during my years in the teevee news biz – it’s not the media’s place to do the prosecuting. Someone please yank this appeal-to-the-lowest-denominator lunatic off the air, and don’t let her go back to trying to pass herself off as some kind of journalist without reminding her that her job in that role is not to throw people to the lions and wait for the faithful to send up a cheer.… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

So…ahem…the, uh…Sontarans.

Exciting pictures of Doctor Who’s new Sontarans from the BBC. (Hey, they said it, not me.) Apparently the main Sontaran is played by Christopher Ryan of The Young Ones fame, who also played a different critter in The Trail Of A Time Lord in 1986. I just dunno, for the first time a new series “update” of an original series creature has me kinda scratching my head and wondering if they’ve missed the mark. We’ll see how he looks on the screen.… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

Well…I hope you like reality shows

…because that’s probably all you’ll be seeing after Thanksgiving and well into next year at this rate.

It’s kinda funny, everyone who’s still trapped in teevee land is going into November sweeps, and here the Writer’s Guild of America is, going on strike for the first time since 1988. I remember that year, and I was “into” the behind-the-scenes machinations of TV enough at the time to be aware of the strike. That probably says more about the state of my life at that point than it does about the state of TV, but I remember the glut of oddball specials and dismal variety shows that the networks had to fall back on during that summer, and it was a mess. We didn’t have “reality TV” as such back then (and with a few shining exceptions, I think our cultural lives were richer for it; this was back before more people were interested in voting on the next American Idol than there were interested in voting for the next President of the United States).

The thing is, my wife and I were talking tonight, and we were really able to count on one hand the number of scripted shows we follow that will be affected by this strike. Now, let me say this – in principle, I’m behind the WGA on this one. The studios are putting the screws to union writers any way they can, whether it’s in the area of new media (i.e. webisodes), residuals for DVD and paid download (i.e. iTunes) usage of scripted shows, or just forgoing scripted shows altogether, even when the “non-scripted” stuff is just as scripted (just not by folks whose paychecks have to cover residuals and pension). But the number of shows we follow that would actually be affected by the strike is pretty small – Heroes, Lost, The 4400, Dead Zone…maybe Stargate Atlantis (though my enthusiasm for that show hasn’t just bottomed out, it’s hit rock bottom hard enough to leave a crater)…and then…after that…oh, wait. We’re already in the process of getting over network TV as we know it. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Music Television & Movies

Time Crash. Awesomeness.

David Tennant + Peter Davison? Sign me the heck up. Already got a DVD cover on hot standby:

Time Crash DVD cover

Grab your own copy of the cover here if you’re so inclined (or just want to gawk at my insomnia-and-E.S.-Posthumus-fueled Paint Shop Pro dabblings). I literally used the only still photo the BBC has provided so far (and then that one from the Sun too), so design greatness it ain’t, but it’s just a tad more epic than the original “two guys standing there” publicity shot. 😆 I’m really looking forward to this. If they’d managed to shoehorn Sylvester McCoy into the same little special, I’d be happy beyond belief. But this’ll do nicely. Davison and McCoy were my favorites among the original Doctors, and I don’t care if he has put on a bit of weight, Davison looks great. (I wish that when people looked at me and said “you’ve put on a bit of weight,” I was looking like that guy instead of the fella in the mirror.)

It’s official: despite the glut of CDs I’ve played for him, from Scott Joplin to Vangelis to Moody Blues, Evan’s officially approved darn-near-guaranteed-to-work sleepytime CD is a “baby mix” I assembled for him, whose playlist goes thusly:

  1. “Lullaby” – Raymond Scott
  2. “Radio Sheffield” – BBC Radiophonic Workshop
  3. “Popcorn” – Hot Butter
  4. “Sleepy Time” – Raymond Scott
  5. “Sea Sports” – BBC Radiophonic Workshop
  6. “Apache” – Hot Butter
  7. “The Music Box” – Raymond Scott
  8. “Milky Way” – BBC Radiophonic Workshop
  9. “Telstar” – Hot Butter
  10. “Nursery Rhyme” – Raymond Scott
  11. “P.I.G.S.” – BBC Radiophonic Workshop
  12. “Syncopated Clock” – Hot Butter
  13. “Tic Toc” – Raymond Scott
  14. “Wheels” – Hot Butter
  15. “Summer Intro” – Neil Finn

(The Raymond Scott tracks are basically the entirety of Soothing Sounds For Baby Volume 1, the Hot Butter tracks are all from Popcorn, and the Radiophonic Workshop stuff is all from BBC Radiophonic Music. The Neil Finn track is from the Rain soundtrack.)

So…in other words…Evan’s got a thing for kinda trippy experimental electronic music from the 1960s and ’70s. But man, does that mix knock him out like a tranquilizer dart. Now, I know that he’s not gonna remember any of this stuff, and that these early “preferences” of his will wind up in my memory only, but that music is now inextricably linked with my son in my mind. I also donated the little light apparatus to his room that once powered my glowin’ Dalek; it simply projects its patterns straight onto the ceiling above his crib now. And he seems to dig it – until the colors shifting and the music lull him to sleep.

If he was older than, say, a month, I’d say it’s time to break out some Floyd.… Read more