Time

The problem with feeling obligated to go to work, go to class, get school work done, pay proper attention to my cat, maintain a romantic relationship, go to the gym very occasionally, clean my apartment equally occasionally, reply to email, eat food that requires a degree of preparation beyond "unwrapping", and pay bills, is that it leaves precious little time to split between my two favorite activities: watching TV and sleeping. Quit blogging, you suggest? But then who would I complain to?

Apparently you don't stop an exploding man

Okay. Finished the first season of Heroes. Awesome. The only issue I have is that I felt like there was sexual tension between Claire and Peter. Milo Ventimiglio and Hayden Panettiere (could they have chosen stars with more complicated names? I hope Chiwetel Ejiofor and Djimon Hounsou are guest starring next year, with a cameo by Jarrod Saltalamacchia.), anyway, they have some great chemistry. And it kind of is a sibling type of chemistry (yes, I know they're technically uncle/niece) but it's kind of romantic too. Or maybe Milo Ventimiglio doesn't know how to look at anyone without looking at them lovingly. That would explain why I feel weird about Peter's relationship with Nathan too. And he was kind of that way with Isaac. Okay, I guess it's a Milo thing.

Also, I love Claire's dad. And I'll be really upset if Matt Parkman is dead. Greg Grunberg has a hard time keeping a job on non JJ Abrams shows. And if he has to go, I'd like him to just give up the Hero-ing game and go home to his wife, rather than die. I'm also disappointed by the death's of a lot of characters throughout the season. I really liked Charlie, Eden, Isaac and Ted. Especially Ted.

And I guess next year's threat is whoever Molly Walker is scared of. That's cool. Speaking of Molly Walker, will she be adopted by Niki & DL or will she go live with Mohinder? Does the show really need two "wise beyond their years" kids?

Well, needless to say, I can't wait for next year.

FIDO

I really want to see this movie. There's just nothing better than a zombie comedy.

12 Episodes In

So, I'm 12 episodes into Heroes. How in the world was I not watching this show before? Obviously I knew I'd be interested since I Tivoed the whole season. Actually, it might be better this way, getting to watch all of the episodes back to back. It's easier to remember what's going on. Particularly when there are weeks when you don't see certain characters. Kinda like Lost, in many many ways. I guess that's the idea though.

I was trying to come up with a character to character correlation between Heroes and Lost, but it didn't really work out. But why does every show need a kid that their parent has to spend all of their time freaking out about and yelling for? Half the time when Niki's yelling for Micah I'm expecting her to say "Walt."

So, at the moment, I think I like this better than Lost. But I can't remember how I felt 12 episodes into the first season of Lost. This post is pretty much pointless, except to remind myself that this is when I started watching Heroes. If Bionic Woman and Sarah Connor Chronicles are any good, I'm going to have way too much TV to watch this fall.

An agreeable sense of the macabre to any delirium

Now that I've seen Pirates a second time, I feel ready to make detailed comments.

How much drunkenness and boredom on the trip to Singapore do you suppose was necessary to get Will's ear pierced?

Elizabeth is the only main character who, over the course of the series, has not been dead at some point. This "death isn't permanent" thing makes it a whole lot like Buffy.

When Jack and Barbossa are yelling at each other while both trying to command the Pearl, Jack is yelling "What are you doing?" while Barbossa is yelling "What arrr you doing?". It's weird.

It took me a while to realize that the main musical theme in this one is that song sung at the beginning. I like it quite a bit. I also like the variations on Davy Jones' theme.

There was a weird feminist/anti-feminist thing going on with Elizabeth and Calypso. Elizabeth got to be the strong, capable woman by being the King and giving the Braveheart speech and Calypso got to be a bitch. Hopefully the Braveheart-speech-giving resonates more strongly than the maelstrom-causing-man-hate.

Once Will was Davy Jones-ified he looked a lot like an extra in an Enrique Iglesias video, or maybe the lead in a Latin soap, what with the hair and the shirt and the facial hair and the glistening golden skin...and the sexiness.

The dog, the parrot and the monkey need they're own spinoff movie.

My main issue with the movie is the bit at the end, post credits. Does Elizabeth Swann really seem like the kind of girl who would stay on one island for ten years waiting around for her man to return? It seems unlikely. I'm kind of doubting whether that kid is even Will's. I feel like she's been off cavorting on pirate ships for ten years and just made sure she was back to the sex island in time for him to come back again. Or maybe leading an army of pirates against the British Navy in the midst of a goddess created storm was all the adventure she needed in her lifetime and she was ready to settle down and sit around waiting for Will. It just seems out of character. She's a pirate as much as Jack or Will. Possibly even more than Will.

I feel like I have other stuff to say about it, but this is all I'm in the mood for now.

The heat makes people boring

So right out of the gate Taylor Handley is not even remotely believable as a math geek. Also, the guy playing his dad was really unconvincing as a drunk.

Ah, the mom in denial. Nice. So far these conversations are all the type in which each character is saying things that are not related to the things any other character is saying. We get it, there's a disconnect. There's also a thing called subtlety.

Nice, the Garden State soundtrack. That is so hip...three years ago. Obviously Kevin Williamson didn't watch any of the shows he's stealing from. If he had, he'd have known that the first thing to do before even writing a pilot was to find a good music supervisor. This is going to be sad. I predict that I will repeatedly be pulled out of the show by rehashed music that was hip several years ago.

All of his neighbors are the type that stand still looking straight ahead and staring blankly as means of introducing themselves. Or the whole neighborhood is obsessed with Hitchcock. That could be good.

Okay. 23 and 24 year olds playing 16-17. Good to know nothing's changed in the world of teen drama. Boy this neighbor kid is weird. In kind of a closeted gay way. (I'll take this moment to mention that Michael Cassidy is so much cuter with this haircut than his old OC look.)

Wow, whole town full of people with severe mood and/or personality disorders.

Oh, my favorite line so far: "It looks like the nose two noses ago." Plastic surgery is fun.

I think in my initial summary of the show I cast the girl across the street as Veronica Mars. Now I can see that I was incorrect and she is, in fact, Joey Potter. Way to move out of your comfort zone, Kev!

Ooo, continuity error. Cliff's collar has gone from popped to unpopped back to popped. Greta doesn't seem too enigmatic so far. She's way to friendly and un-emotionally tormented to be Marisa Cooper.

Honestly, I don't see how our main character emotionally connecting with a past-middle-aged transvestite is going to be what this show needs. Why couldn't it have just been a past-middle-aged Southern woman?

Oh, I see, Greta reads. She's much more enigmatic now.

With Johnny's weird hipster hair I almost feel like I'm watching the Veronica Mars spinoff starring Dick Casablancas that I've been dreaming of all year. But now it's been ruined because that is the worst explanation for being a virgin I've ever heard. Now it's like he's the Dawson in Dick Casablancas' body. Which is bad.

Cliffy has a weird definition of dark. His life must be just candy and puppy dogs for him to think her, with her totally boring and predictable attempt to be...come to think of it, he also thinks she's enigmatic. This seems to make Cliff the most 1 dimensional person ever.

2nd favorite line: "My mom likes to rotate the plants." Despite his complete idiocy, I can tell I'm really going to like Cliff. Until he becomes all angsty when he finally deals with what happened to Eddie. I'm assuming they'll tell us (and Johnny) about his murder towards the very end. I wish this was really a combination of the OC and Lost and we could be theorizing things like "maybe Palm Springs is some kind of purgatory."

These kids do a lot of reading. Is there no TV in Palm Springs? Can this Greta girl move without flipping her hair around? Girl needs a headband.

So far the Greta/Johnny relationship has two main themes: Water and Laughing. I don't feel that these are necessarily the strongest foundations on which to build a relationship. Wow, I don't like Greta at all. She's really annoying.

A party! I knew something'd been missing up to this point. Hmm, no fight so far. Uneventful party.

So, Cliff and Greta killed Eddie? Cliff has kind of a Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor thing going for him.

Okay, one of the main reasons I hate Greta: she blinks really slowly. It's like she's falling asleep all the time.

It seems that I also miscast Cliff's mom as Julie Cooper(-Nichol) when it's actually Johnny's mom who's Julie. I see an attempt at sleeping with Cliff in the future. That'll be fun. I don't know why Johnny hates Bob so much. Bob seems like a nice guy to me.

Dammit. I really wanted to be able to like Cliff. Honestly, did he have to kick a dog? Couldn't he have slapped his mom or something?

I think that really long, unnecessarily loud song at the end with all of those shots was supposed to ramp up the emotional tension or something. It really wasn't working. Also, did this episode have a plot of any kind? If so, I didn't notice it.

Well, maybe the next episode will be better. And Greta won't be so hair-flippy and wierd. I am dreading the moment that Tessa Thompson shows up though. Jackie Cook 2.0 is not really what I'm looking for in this show.

Kristen Wiig!

Okay, so I've seen Knocked Up, and as far as I'm concerned Kristen Wiig is the funniest woman ever. I think SNL could be insanely funny if they got rid of a couple of people (like Amy Poehler, Kenan Thompson & Darrell Hammond), added Jorme and, you know, wrote better. Kristen Wiig has three movies lined up, at least one of which is this summer. Weirdly, Jenna Fischer and David Koechner are both in two of them. Honestly, they all look a little over the top and might not do so well or be so great, but I'm glad to see her out there. Hey, the Two A-Holes need a movie. It'd have to be better than a large portion of the SNL skit movies ever done. Anyway, all hail Kristen Wiig.