Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Random Notes

— am enduring Hockey Playoffs. Need I say more?

— took a basic First Aid course with a number of Desperately Cool teenagers. Watched the highly animated instructor leap around and make funny jokes in front of a very tough audience (see note about D.C. teenagers). Eventually everyone warmed up and laughed instead of staring blankly (which, I am informed by reliable sources, is not intended to look blank - it's intended to look casual and hip and super cool). There was one tricky moment when he used me as a Fork Stabbing Model and wrapped my hand so tight it went purple, but that was just a minor blip on an otherwise charming afternoon.

— Woke FDPG up at 2:45 am on the morning of the Royal Wedding and sat through a couple of hours of wildly pleasant royal bonding time. Everything was so beautiful, so exciting, so sweet, so charming, and so very delightful that we both went back to bed around 5am, feeling as though our strenuous efforts to stay awake had been entirely worth it.

— watched the Neil Gaiman-penned episode of Doctor Who. Suranne Jones is very compelling, we all agreed. It was not wildly thrilling. It lacked something.

— watched the Survivor Finale. It was, thankfully, a foregone conclusion that ended as it should have done. Sometimes the Resentful Jury gets a little caught up in jealous subjectivism and votes for the Coattail Hanger-on instead of the Diabolical Mastermind, but this time no one could dispute the perfection of the game Boston Rob played. Well, that and the fact that the only other choices were Phillip, a nut-job of a man if there ever were one, and Natalie, a naive 19 year old "dancer" who clung to Rob like grim death in lieu of actually doing anything of her own volition. By the way, what's a "dancer"? What kind of dancing are we talking about: "dancing" or dancing? And where are we doing it? I remain mystified. The fact that Rob was exceedingly charismatic, tanned, and slim from weeks eating next to nothing added to the thrill of the game, giving FDPG and I the perfect end to the day. "Luckily I'm no ordinary man" is my new favourite phrase.

— previewed an Eminem CD for the teenager and decided that it was best on MY iPod and not his. "Explicit lyrics" is an understatement. One song did not make the cut. Eminem, I like you but that song was just plain gross. Irony my foot.

— watching Jekyll. Oh. My. Goodness. James Nesbitt. Lovely.

— bought a gorgeous new kind of lavender: Otto Quast.

— am gearing up for a Gardening Extravaganza Weekend. Can you spell H-O-L-I-D-A-Y?



I can!




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I quite liked the Gaiman episode of Doctor Who. The whole show is striving for a very different look and feel than in the past. Still deciding if I like the overall mood of the season, but I thought the TARDIS as a woman worked very well.

sheila said...

Mmm, I wasn't feeling it, even though I really liked the actress playing the Tardis. She was so excellent and moody. It seemed too, well, ragged. Unfinished ends everywhere. Mind you, I have the same thoughts on Gaiman as a writer: love some stuff, lukewarm on other stuff.

I was discussing the new Doctor with husband last night. He doesn't have quite the charisma and sex appeal of DT (the new Doctor, I mean, not my husband). He's very funny and cute but not sexy. He doesn't do pathos as well. And he's so young; if he WERE sexy I'd feel pervy having a crush on him. We all universally dislike Amy. Blah on the Pond. Love the Rory, even if they overdo that Die-Every-Episode schtick. And River? Love River.

I think Stephen Moffat has been spreading himself too thin. Russell T-D had a very tight, coherent line going, even considering that he didn't write every episode, with the momentum and the tension building so strongly that by the end of DT's tenure we were all about to burst. This new series has lost that desperateness that I liked so much.

Have you seen Jeckyl? It's Stephen Moffat-penned. And it stars the man I hoped would replace DT as the Doctor: James Nesbit. He's brilliant.