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Wow, I got a week behind. Beans.

Day 17 - Favorite Mini Series
Dead Set Contestants filming a Big Brother-type reality show are cut off from outside contact and don't know there's a zombie apocalypse happening. Charlie Brooker wrote this with lots of subtext about human interaction and society, but, whatever, I've got seven more of these to get through. This is a great zombie story.

Day 18 - Favorite Title Sequence
X-Files Beautiful, creepy, a perfectly condensed introduction to the show. And sometimes the words at the end would change and it would make me excited/nervous because I was really into that show for years and I tend to over-analyze. See also: Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Day 19 - Best Cast
Firefly In my heart of hearts, when I watch a show I want to believe that the cast get along and everyone, cast and crew, is working together because they love the show like I do. The Firefly cast looooved that show. Had the show been on the air for five years, who knows what would've happened. But the fact that they still like each other 10 years later says volumes. See also: Farscape.

Day 20 - Favorite Kiss
Breaking it down...
Favorite Bad Boy Kiss: Jack and Capt. John, Torchwood
Favorite off screen kiss: Scully and Mulder, X-Files (we were robbed!)
Favorite That's So Wrong Kiss: Buffy and Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Favorite No Way kiss: Veronica and Logan, Veronica Mars
Favorite cursed kiss: Bobby and Crowley, Supernatural
Favorite life saving kiss: Nine and Rose, Doctor Who
Favorite psychopath kiss: Beecher and Keller, Oz

Day 21 - Favorite Ship
Brideshead Revisited When I was a wee nerd girl, Charles and Sebastian were the first characters that I realized had a lot more going on than was being shown on the TV. And I really wanted to know what that was. This set the stage for a lifetime of happily pairing boy characters who obviously love each other even if the writers won't relent and let them have at it already. Also set the stage for me loving all things British.

Day 22 - Favorite Series Finale
Six Feet Under Seeing a show end properly and not just stop is practically unheard of today. Even if a show manages to avoid cancellation, often times by the end it's just a mess (I'm looking at you, Alias). Six Feet Under had its weaknesses over the years, but the finale was beautiful. The audience is shown the fate of every main character and the show went out on an artistic high. I watched the ending montage on You Tube not long ago and it still makes me cry.

Day 23 - Most Annoying Character
Kim Bauer, 24 Usually, if there's a character I dislike it's because they're poorly realized or are just a tool the writers use to move the story in a particular direction. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kim Bauer. She's introduced as the pissy teenage daughter of Jack Bauer, the badass CTU counter-terrorism agent who can drive from point A to point B in any city at any time in about 15 minutes, because he's some sort of wizard (dammit!!). While Jack is trying to save the world without benefit of ever taking a bathroom break(dammit!!), his whiny daughter is stupidly getting into strange vans, getting abducted and eventually being menaced by cougars. The animal kind, not the ladies of a certain age. In a few seasons, Kim is working at CTU (???) and she still manages to be a talent suck AND she does stuff that makes zero sense. She's only around to give Jack one more thing to worry about (dammit!!) while he's trying to shoot 10,000 bad guys and deal with a nasty smack addiction. I may be referencing different seasons because that shit tends to blend together. I remember the cougar, the shooting and Jack says "dammit!!" quite a bit. The point is Kim Bauer deserved to be cougar kibble and I was denied her bloody, deserved death because she was a weak writer's tool. HATE!!

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Ancient Aliens
This is on The History Channel and it's a hot mess. It's a bunch of alien theorists talking about how historical sites, ancient technologies and arts, and human evolution have been influenced by some alien people visiting earth. Even with my limited knowledge of history, I can debunk half of their theories in each episode on my own. With a quick tour around the internets I can find plausible answers for the rest of their crazy.

There are forty-seven episodes of this. FORTY-SEVEN!!

The "experts" featured are trying to interpret the logic and intelligence of primitive cultures through the filter of modern technology and reasoning. The experts on this show are also about 99% white dudes. Thinking that folks in the past, mostly brown folks, couldn't figure out how to build stuff in ways they haven't figured out yet without help from another species is not only condescending, it's racist.

But, I still watch because the visuals are wonderful. They feature new footage from antiquities (Tiahuanaco!) and introduce sites I hadn't heard of, like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. They were part of the Indus Valley Cililization located in what is now Pakistan. About 3,000 BC it was a thriving culture with several cities and Harappa alone having a population estimated at 23,000. They left no monoliths, but they had it going on with the agriculture and sound city planning that included a quality sewage system and indoor plumbing. After about 1,000 years the area was abandoned. What actually happened was it probably stopped raining enough to support the crops and folks either left or died. Some talking heads on Ancient Aliens put forth the theory that Mohenjo-Daro was destroyed in a nuclear explosion because of some rumor that skeletons found at the site exhibited high levels of radiation. This is horse shit, but they don't let facts get in the way of a good story. But I do have to thank them because without that show I wouldn't have learned about a lost culture.

Sad tru fax: the site of Harappa was significantly damaged under the British Raj when building bricks from the site were used as track ballast when building a railroad. Props to any culture that made bricks so well they could be re-purposed 4,000 years later.

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This is tough. So many ways to go, but I chose....

Torchwood's Gwen Cooper.
Gwen discovered Torchwood, twice, and became the yin to Captain Jack's yang. She didn't have any super powers and didn't have special knowledge. She's pragmatic and practical and she worked the case, whether the case was a murder or monsters in the sewers. She was human and screwed up, but she tried her best and she never gave up on her team, or on the belief she could have a normal home life. I want to be her friend.

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Well, I got behind on this so it's time for the lightning round!

Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Veronica Mars: Seemed too good to be true in theory, but was amazing in writing and execution. Kristin Bell did great work and we got to meet the world's best dad - Keith Mars.

Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Bones: Went off the rails after about three seasons. I tried to hang in there but the writing went down the tubes and the show became a parody of itself. A waste of good characters and good actors.

Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace: Only six episodes of this British comedy were made and I've seen them dozens of times. Darkplace is a hospital were supernatural things happen and the doctors carry guns and talk like they're in an 80's cop show. The effects are cheesy, the writing is bad and the acting is atrocious - all on purpose. It's one of those shows that grows on you and becomes brilliant. Also included in this category for me: Season three of Buffy, Series three of Blackadder, all of Mighty Boosh.

Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Captain Kangaroo: lovely children's show about the Captain and his friends. There's the reading of books, song and dance numbers, learning about animals, the puppets Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit, and good life lessons. The best part is when Mr. Green Jeans shows the Captain his latest invention and Captain Kangaroo always manages to mess it up. Hee!

Day 14 - Favorite male character
Farscape's John Crichton. Ben Browder plays an American astronaut sucked through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy, and it's all pretty much down hill from there. The show turns the trope of the White American Male Savior on it's head because John usually has no idea what's going on, all his relationships are messy, none of his plans really work and over the course of the show he goes crazy. Still, the show is an amazingly well written drama that is also funny and poignant. Crichton never stops trying to get home, no matter what the universe throws at him. Added bonus: Crichton really rocks some leather pants!

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Torchwood- Captain Jack Harkness

THE scene. The scene that gave the majority of the viewing audience the vapors. One of the most romantic, lovely and heartbreaking things ever filmed. The two Captain Jacks share a kiss. *swoon*

After Jack and Tosh have been sent back in time to WWII era London, Jack meets his cover identity, the real Captain Jack Harkness! They spend the episode flirting around each other at a dance hall but aren't able to find a quiet place to totally make out because of an air raid (bummer!) but they eventually share a dance because Jack 1.0 doesn't care who sees them anymore. As the portal opens for Jack 2.0 and Tosh to return home, the two Jacks share a kiss that could melt stainless steel. It. Is. Awesome.

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First choice: Frontline

In depth news reporting on PBS since 1983. Since serious investigative reporting has been deemed "not cost effective" by the 24-hour news channels and print journalism is fading fast, this show is one of the few that delves deeper into topics as varied as high school dropout rates to the war in Syria. Always thought provoking.

Second choice: NOVA

Also PBS. Nova was created in 1974, inspired by the BBC 2 television series Horizon. The show covers a vast array of topics in the sciences, technology and history. It's won a metric ton of Peabody and Emmy Awards. Trust me, you will be entertained and you'll learn something.

Third choice: The Muppet Show

The Muppet Show is made of all the best things ever. Period.

Now I want a new incarnation of the show just so people like Cumberbatch can guest host. And Henry Rollins. and Hillary Clinton. This needs to happen!

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With Buffy, there're episodes that make the majority of fandom testy and many of those include the season six and seven flavor of Spike. I'm giving those a wide berth. I was thinking of choosing the season one episode I Robot...You Jane but it was the first season and the show was finding its feet, so I give that weak tea a pass. Then there's Amends and the magic snow and shmoopiness, but I feel Boreanaz did some solid work so again I give it a pass (though I do wish we'd never, ever had to deal with the First Evil again, ugh.)

Worst episode of Buffy - the finale Chosen.

Why? Because every main actor was done and had pretty much checked out.

On paper, this episode had so many great ideas including the payoff of the Potentials, Faith in the mix, everyone fighting together, some cute banter and, yes, Spike doing something noble for the right reasons. But the entire season was a series of good ideas (but a terrible Big Bad) joined by tenuous, half-hearted storytelling performed by actors whose passion had waned months before. Even the lighting, blocking and editing were weak. And I do believe that's on Joss. He ditched the date he'd brought to the dance for the fling that was Firefly and that ended badly, and Buffy suffered. Most of the final episode felt like fan fiction performed by actors who'd seen the original and tried to emulate the original cast chemistry, and failed.

A few years after the original airing, I saw the finale again and it really hit me that that thing, the "greater than the sum of its parts" magic, was missing from the episode. I imagined that the cast had already cleaned out their trailers and the sets were torn down and everyone was ready to get out of Dodge. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended not with a bang, but with a "meh". That's a crying shame.

Full Disclosure: I do love Firefly, and all the Whedon shows and movies. But during the last season of Buffy, Joss was one overworked and angry man, and that fed into the shows. Give the man a large check and stay out of his way and what do you get? The Avengers. Suck on that, Fox television execs.

OH, OH, and during this whole thing I managed not to bring up the name "Noxon" and shake my fist at the heavens. OOPS! I just did.

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For Buffy, I'm going with Graduation Day Parts One and Two.

There are many great episodes of Buffy, some not so good ones and a few that are cringe-worthy. My favorite season of Buffy is season three (hello Faith!) and the Graduation Day arc is stellar television that pays off a great season. Choices are made, differences are set aside for the greater good, and the fight scenes are amazing. And everyone fights! All the kids at Sunnydale High stand up and refuse to be victims and it's glorious. Not all of them survive, but they all try. Plus, the Mayor! Mayor Wilkins gets my vote for the best Big Bad of the series.

I missed posting yesterday, so first of all...

My Favorite Show Ever

Man, that's tough. For the most time, energy and thought I've given to any show, I'd have to pick Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A Show I Hate

Easy, Reality Television. Any, all.

Until recently, the only reality show I watched was Project Runway but this season the dynamic of the show changed and I don't enjoy it any more. I liked watching it because it was fun to watch people create and interesting to see the path they took from concept to final product. Now it's as much about the interaction between the contestants as the creation of clothes and with that they lost me.

I don't understand the entertainment value of watching people be embarrassed or fail or act crazy or generally be cruel. I don't understand the arbitrary judgements, the manufactured drama or annoying, rich people becoming famous for being rich and annoying.

Continuing the 30 Day TV Meme.

I tried Revolution (too predictable) and Last Resort (too cancelled) so the only new show left that I watch is Arrow.

Arrow is ridiculous and silly, but it commits to its crazy with zeal. Following the exploits of Oliver Queen, billionaire playboy, after he and his father were lost in a boating accident. Turns out Ollie survived on an island and using the cheap writing trick of copious flashbacks we discover Ollie learned serious bow and ninja skills because there were bad guys and good guys, but the good guys and bad guys keep switching and its all very confusing. The point is, Ollie gets home and he takes out evil folks by wearing leather, being sneaky, talking in a Batman voice and shooting lots of arrows. Added bonus: John Barrowman being evil!

Continuing the 30 Day TV Meme.

This one is giving me pause. I'd say Fringe, but it's already over (even though I haven't seen the all of the final season so DON'T TELL THE GOOD STUFF!) I wish more people had watched Being Human UK and The Hour, but they've already been cancelled. It's possible I've gotten to the point where I don't allow myself to get very invested in a show because I'm tired of losing them before they come to a natural conclusion.

I'm going to give three examples of shows that should be getting more chatter, but I sure haven't seen it.

1.) The Following - What if Hannibal Lechter had had Internet groupies and he continued his manipulation and murder through them? That's pretty much the premise here, with Kevin Bacon playing the Broken Former FBI Agent to James Purefoy's Brilliant Serial Killer. There's serious talent here and the story moves fast. Three of the main characters from the first episode were already dead or gone by the end of the second episode. Added bonus: boy kissing! Are there fan sites for this show? There should be. It's 20 gallons of crazy in a 10 gallon bucket.

2.) The Americans - Soviet agents posing as a married couple have been embedded in The States for so long they pretty much are married and they have two kids. Set in the 80's, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys follow orders and go on missions under the constant fear that they will be discovered. They worry that their kids will discover the truth and they've decided to keep their son and daughter away from the espionage so they can live their own lives. Thankfully, the audience has been spared much of the bad 80's hair and clothes and the music is pretty good. Added bonus: Russell is actually hardcore KGB and the leader of their cell, and she's an ass-kicker. Where are all the articles about how we never knew Keri Russell could be so menacing?

3.) Continuum - In 70 years, all government has collapsed and corporations run the world. Terrorists trying to bring down the corporations are sentenced to death, but manage to escape into the past before they're executed, because, science. Also sucked into the past is a future cop who was guarding them. She's got to stop the baddies from changing the future. Okay, I know this is a Canadian show and the second season is being broadcast there in May so its not like its dying on the vine. But there are so many interesting points this show brings up about society and relinquishing human rights in exchange for a sense of safety and full belly. I don't think American viewers are grooving on it and given the current climate, this show is the perfect jumping off point for debate about the price of freedom.

I wish more people were watching those shows because they have potential and I want to see where they'll go.

I haven't actually posted in forever, but this meme intrigued me. Let's see how long I last!

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One: Show that should never have been cancelled

My pick is The Middleman.

This show, based on the graphic novel of the same name, aired in 2008 on ABCFamily and only ran for 12 episodes. It starred Matt Keeslar as The Middleman, Natalie Morales as Wendy Watson and Mary Pat Gleason as the cranky robot Ida. Oh, and the recurring Big Bad was played by the man, the myth, the secret toy surprise in every show he's ever been a part of, MR. MARK SHEPPARD!!! I know!

The story focused on The Middleman (no name), a straight arrow and all around good egg, who solved crimes of a strange, supernatural or otherworldly nature using really cool weapons and a set of ethics from the 1940's. Wendy is a struggling artist with a crazy good memory and an unflappable nature tapped to be his sidekick and probable successor. There is only one Middleman at a time and he or she is backed by O2STK (Organization Too Secret to Know). No members of this organization are ever seen and only Ida knows the whole backstory, but she's generally too irritated to bother with much exposition. Both Keeslar and Morales had the ability to recite intricate lines of crazy dialog really fast. They'd give Matt Smith or Cumberbatch a run for their money in the talking department. Also, Keeslar is hot. Also also, Morales is hot.

This show was a geek's dream come true. An episode could reference Dune, Escape from New York and the band The Zombies. It had all the nerd references, snappy dialog and genuine heart as a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and MST3K combined. Therefore, it was doomed.

Cancelled after 12 episodes, the series finale 13th episode wasn't shot. It was released as a graphic novel and was actually performed as a table read by the original cast at the 2009 San Diego ComicCon.

The Middleman is on DVD. Selannia says "Check it out."

Oh yeah.

Today there was a 5.8 earthquake centered in a town called Mineral, Virginia. Being a hundred and some miles away, our office only shook for a few seconds. DC offices were evacuated and I heard that there was some damage to the National Cathedral, but we were fine. My boss didn't even know it had happened because he was driving at the time.



I haven't checked the news yet this evening, but I think this was a non-event for most people. I admit I was pretty excited by the whole thing!

I hope you had a lovely day!


I did not make a pretty Adrian photo, but I have got my cloning apparatus up and running and Adrian Clone is just about cooked.
Give it a couple more weeks and he'll be ready.
Adrian at about age 32. I figured that's a good age.

He'll be programmable just for you. But you have to come get him because the shipping would be a nightmare.

I was in the library parking lot after work tonight and I noticed the lady in the minivan parked next to me left it running.  Then I look in the back seat and see a baby in baby seat.  The lady is about twenty feet from her car when I this exchange takes place:

Me: "Ma'am, you left your baby in the car."

Lady: "It's all right. I left the air conditioning on."

Me: "Come and get your baby or I will call the police."

Then I noticed there's a young boy napping in the back of the van.  And there's a seven year old girl sitting in the back seat.

The lady shoots me a look and walks back to the van.  I offer to take her stuff into the library but she has to renew some things and it becomes a whole long story.  She says her kids are very well behaved. I detail some of the worst case scenarios featuring small children left in cars. She says nothing.

I wait a little way off from the van even though she says "thank you" and tries to dismiss me from the scene.

No dice.

I walk a little in front of her and her kids on the way into the library. 

I go about my business in the library until she leaves.  Then I watch her go back to her car from the lobby, because I'm paranoid she's going to key my car.  But my car was safe.  And so were her kids.

The new Kate Bush video is on YouTube. It's good.

Upon reflection, I believe I was born under this moon.

What phase was the moon at on your birthday? Find out at Spacefem.com</div> </div>

In other news, I got my hair colored again, I got new glasses (which suck) and I have full time employment.

I'm letting my hair grow out with the thought that I'll donate it again in the future.  It's past my shoulders now but it's already driving me a wee bit crazy so that plan may fall through.

My glasses are correcting my far vision which is now so poor that the prescription distorts my close vision.  I don't want to hear about bifocals so, no.  Just don't go there.

I'm working for a company of engineers who inspect buildings.  They're the people hired by the owner to inspect the parking garages and construction done by contractors and say whether or not it's been done right. I'm admin with some accounting type stuff and all around handle it person.  The benefits are good and the office is 7 minutes from my home.

I now watch more British TV than American. I know this because when I hear certain words pronounced by news readers, I think "Well, that's not how you say that."   I was heartbroken over the series three finale of Being Human, but Doctor Who is starting soon so that will ameliorate a some of my pain.  I've been watching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Snuff Box and The Mighty Boosh almost on a loop because I'm having serious Richard Ayoade/Matt Berry/ Noel Fielding cravings. Noel is totally winning, but Ayoade is a close second. Actually, Richard  Ayoade is tied with Julian Barratt.  If you'd like to know more about any of these people, please Google them or ask me and I can go on and on about how brilliant they are.  You know, it's probably safer to Google them.

What's new with you?