Warf!

Many people think basset hounds are lazy. And that's true. Sebastian sleeps a good 18 hours a day, and since I've been at home more, unemployed and working on my thesis, I've been able to observe him closely.

About three or four times a day, he dreams -- chasing bunnies, I expect, but I'm never quite sure. His paws wiggle, and his nose wrinkles up and you can see his eyes moving under his lids.

But at least once a day when he does this, he growls and yelps and wakes himself up. He looks around, confused -- you can see him trying to work it out. Then he gives me a suspicious glare stretches, and goes back to sleep.

Bristol: The Channel, The Cathedral, The Chart

I don't know why, but I find this endlessly fascinating:

























It's one of those things one finds accidentally on Wikipedia. I guess I simply don't have the kind of rapport with my poop that the creator of this medical chart has.

It does, however, fall well into the category of "distraction from my train-wreck of a life".

.... And then you open a Hotel

So what do you do when your whole world ends?

Travel shows, apparently.
Globe Trekker (on PBS and the Travel Channel), Samantha Brown's Passport series on the Travel Channel, Smart Travels with Rudy Maxa, Rick Steves , Anthony Bourdain, John Ratzenberger, Fred Willard, Burt Wolf or the guy from Have Fork, Will Travel.

I've started watching them all. I've even started watching reruns of Star Trek: Voyager on Spike without retching too much.
Is it a last ditch effort to imbue myself with exoticism before I leave New York? Very probably, I think. Sad, I know.

Life, now, with the ending of all the things I've fought so hard to achieve seems so pointless...
I mean, what's the point of soldiering on when even your dog is going to be taken away from you? My parents aren't young; they deserve a break -- they don't need me sponging off them, but where else have I to go?

I had such dreams for myself.

What Surrounds Us

What I wish...

I wish he would have killed me, instead -- stuck a gun to my head and blew out my brains, stuck a knife through my heart, or poured poison down my throat.

But he didn't.

Okay Cable, ENOUGH ALREADY!

Those of you who don't live in New York probably don't have to sit through 1.800.okaycable's mind-searingly tedious ads. They apparently dig up local bands and pay them enough to shill.

The first one wasn't /so/ bad... It was a group called Early Edison singing about the wonders of one bill for digital cable, internet and long-distance. The lead singer was also passingly cute, so I wasn't grossly offended when it came on 18 times during my People's Court episode each day, and the bassist looked so OTT that I usually giggled.

Here, for your viewing pleasure:


But take a minute and consider the subtext. Apparently, this girl doesn't ever leave the house, and needs to talk to her mother, thousands of miles away, nigh-constantly. She clearly has some psychological issues. The lead singer of the band -- who admits to paying all of these expenses for her -- eyeballs her constantly the way Sebastian the dog eyes a ham, then turns her into a muse of cable advertising. Again, we see some weird obsessive action going on there.

And then there's the guitarist playing like he's trying to save his life.

Were it not for the lively Top 40 Pop/Rock music, it could be a play by Samuel Beckett. But given the music, I'd say it's clearly a verfremsdungeffekt on the part of the singer/actors and this is a modern-day attempt at Brecht.

Now, one would think -- and having been in such bands, written for such bands and played such bands on teh radios, I would consider myself one -- that they may just want to distance themselves from such crass commercialism. But no. Apparently (again, one hopes under the influence of something fun) they do this live:

Here, for your schadenfreude pleasure:


But this ad's run is over. Pseudo-sniff.
Fortunately for those who like local bands, but not enough to go see them or enough to hear their own unadulterated music, 1.800.okay.cable struck again.
This time it was Astoria's own Future86. (And to think, I could have been their neighbour!)

This one, a mid-tempo little ballad that speeds up to a ska-sound didn't exactly have the bizarrely sincere charm of the Early Edison stalkers and their agoraphobic fixation.
In fact, there was no little plot to tell us quite why this chick and her band were in a warehouse (or possibly a very empty cathouse) singing about digital cable.
When the tempo changes, the chick starts caterwauling about wanting it all and doing some third-tier Madonna-esque*posing in a wind tunnel that has suddenly sprung up (insert your own joke about sucking here) and the band doesn't even have the dignity not to look vaguely distasteful. Then, thankfully, the 30-second spot ends.

And so did the ad's campaign.

But wait! There's more! Just this week 1.800.okay.cable's come back with a /60/ second version. The first one caused an apartment-wide leap onto the Tivo remote -- Sebastian the dog not excluded -- to fast forward through the ad. This one causes the same, but... more. It makes me afraid to watch TV at all -- you never know when it's going to be put on the air, or what network. It lurks, like an evil shark, behind the pixels ready to jump whenever you're weak or unready. When you go for a pee during the commercials, there it is. Up for a snack? Its notes reverberate on your turned back. It will consume you. Fear Future86. Fear their love of package internet deals. Fear Spangly cami-tops and Leopard-print guitar straps. Fear Her.**

When the Doctor Could Still Smack People Around

People ask me, "Why is Jon Pertwee your favourite Doctor Who?" and use about as much disdain as possible. It isn't just the fab wardrobe or the gadgets or vehicles, oh no.
It's the karate:



Sorry, but it's been an awful day and I'm too tired to be properly amusing.

Chomp!

So, Sebastian bit me. Again.
Right on the face -- in fact, he managed to bite inside and outside my mouth, ripping a nasty gash inside my cheek.

I called a cab and bled. We went to the emergency room at this hospital.
And waited for the next eight hours. And bled.
When the low-rent version of the ER Indie-Rock Doctor finally showed up, he looked at me and said
we don't give people stitches inside their mouth and wrote a prescription for antibiotics.
It maybe took three minutes.
I hate him.
(He also promised to give me some bandage strips for the outside wounds. He never bothered to come back to give those.)

We got into a cab at 4.30 in the morning and rode home.

You'll notice there's a link above. Go there. Bitch.

--Jaylemurph

Final Gilmore Ruminations

So... last night. Last Gilmore Girls. It was better than I expected. I was even a little sad at the end. I couldn't make up my mind, though, if the episode was shot /knowing/ it was the series finale.

This one guy pointed out that it went to great lengths to feature everyone from Stars Hollow (except it didn't -- Mrs Kim and the Troubadour at least were missing). And of course Luke and Lorelei got back together. And the last shot, the girls eating at a closed Luke's Diner, mirrored the last shot of the first episode.

I think they were hedging their bets, filming something that could work as a finale, but could also work fine as a season ender -- just a little too much was set up that could have been explored in a new season...

My final word? I was right. In the previous weeks' episode, they got Emily to singing. In complete opposition to everything ever established about her character.

Pointless Complexity

Ever have a complex relationship with someone with whom you have virtually /no/ relationship, or is it just me?

One of this one guy's friends is this person who elicits strong reactions from me. Now, I have met this person exactly once -- he and his boyfriend came over one evening. He promptly drank some Scotch and fell asleep on our couch.
For several hours.
His boyfriend was more game; He, some other guy, my friend Emily and I all played Katamari Damacy and drank heavily til late in the night. All told, it was a nice night. And there was some bother about this person switching from all-night to daytime work, and him suffering from insomnia, blah blah blah.
I was not amused.

Which is a shame because, truth be told, he isn't a bad person. He's smart and witty, and nice to look at, to boot. I read his livejournal often even though I probably oughtn't to; it's friends only but I can use this one guy's cookies to bypass that. Generally speaking, I don't hate him. Anything but.

Except on the rare occasion when I do. Something he'll write something or this one guy will mention about him will absolutely convince me he's scum. Really low-down, awful and hideous.
A strange amount of negative passion for someone I've met once.

I've noticed it before and sort of shrugged it off as either some personality quirk or some odd factor in him.

...but then yesterday, it hit me. He also looks like someone, someone I could never quite figure out. I remembered yesterday.
He's a dead ringer for the first boy I ever asked out. It's remarkable.
I had a massive crush on this other boy turned me down -- terribly. It was June and when I asked him out -- for an inoffensive coffee no less, not a seedy trip Legends or a tres cher French dinner -- he told me he had to study for his exams. I was humiliated and angry. And while I can't remember his name any more (it's probably floating around this site somewhere, but I can't be arsed), I remember exactly what he looked like.

Somebody's friend.

Odd bit of passion and anger solved, then.

Addenda

Two other things:

1) It took about two days for this post to germinate.
I must have been thinking about it before I fell asleep last night because I had a GG-tangential dream. In it, Paris Gellar was a friend of mine who owed me a favour. Whilst staying at my Grandmother's, my contact lenses became so dirty they wouldn't adhere to my eyes.
I convinced Paris to drive me home to get new ones... Only to be stopped by the dastardly forces of Civil War Re-Enactors. We fled through a series of leaps several hundred feet high.
What does it mean? The answer frightens even me.

2) The cancellation of GG brings an end to my prophecies concerning the show. Which is a right pain. For the sake of posterity, here they are:

In Season 8:
A) Luke and Lorelei get back together, ultimately marrying. Or at least moving in with
each other. Jovial and intolerable bickering ensues.
B) April joins them to become the new, young, Gilmore Girl. They will, upon occasion,
be joined by Rory who married Logan, got a newspaper job and moved to the West Coast. Her return probably comes during Sweeps.
C) Richard finally kicks the bucket, leaving Emily free to star in a sit-com spin-off, where she
goes into business with Mrs. Kim and travels the country in a trailor selling antiques to
rubes.
D) Related to C: The writers, tempted beyond control by Kelly Bishop's musical theatre
background, will write an all-musical episode.

Gil Me No More

So I heard the other day that the New CW is cancelling Gilmore Girls.

I wasn't surprised.
And I wasn't very upset. That /did/ surprise me. After all, Gilmore Girls has been my favourite American television show for years.
But let's face it: it jumped the shark a while ago. This season has really been driving that home. For the first half of this season, 4 or 5 episodes would pile up on the Tivo before this one guy or I could be bothered to watch them; even then, it was more out of commitment to the Remembrance of Things Past* than actual pleasure.

So what went wrong?
Well, you can't blame the CW, its new network this season, which formed from the unlikely merge of the WB and UPN...
Can you blame the leaving of Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show's creator at the end of last season? Well, probably. Quite frankly a lot of the problems cropping up in the show look a lot like actors getting to much head and writers without much self-control.

The biggest single issue, I think, is (was?) the show's growing lack of respect for its viewers. Early on, the show hummed with energy; the dialogue was lighting fast and its references -- to pop culture and to more, umm, obscure areas of culture -- were just as fast.
And unexplained. The show just assumed you got it. And it assumed you could put the parts of a plot together without being babied.

Now? Hah!
The scenes of the show this season, virtually every one of every episode drag. Drag like a bad SNL skit with Derek Jeter. Too long. Too obvious. Everyone says exactly what they mean, means exactly what they say and go to almost absurd lengths to make sure you at home get it, too.
That'd be the end of oh, say, complexity and subtlety.

Concomitant with that was the lack of discipline on the part of the writers. Luke and Lorelei's romance was built up over the course of years. It was defined by its complexity and depth.
And then it was essentially over in a night and the two acted like children for a year.

...and then Lorelei took up with Christopher. Which had all the cleverness of a divorced six-year old*. And then that ended, too.
It seems a lot like a group of writers sitting around and saying "What'd be fun?" rather than "What will develop our characters?" or "What would be really interesting drama?"
"Fuck it," says they, "A marriage in Paris would be pretty!"

What really told me things were going down was Logan. Flimsiest pre-text of a character he is -- and oh, so perfect for Matt Czuchry as an actor -- they were pretty stalwart about not showing his flesh. Much to my chagrin.
Fortunately and tellingly, a recent episode went to pains to show him in bed, in his boxers, discussing (slowly, natch) his need to be dressed in front of Lorelei.

...and then it hits me. Shark jumped = the time Rory picked Logan over Marty.
Saw him nude his first time on camera. Rory always was a smart girl.

*1) Nice little season 1/2 present for you there.

*2) Another little sly joke there for you.

Hi. Again.


I've decided to start this up (again).
Unfortunately, I've made this decision the same day that I'm leaving for the week-end.

Here's a neat little widget to tide you over.

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