Who knew there was so much coffee drinking in Call of Duty?

If you have any interest in hearing me make an ass of myself while watching me make an ass of myself trying to play video games, please check out the videos below, plucked from my husband's YouTube channel. As you'll see, there is absolutely no chance anyone will ever make a documentary about my gaming skills, but I do sneak in a mention of Maru, so there's that.



And with zombies!



If you want to see someone play video games well without being slowed down by his wife and hear him say interesting things at the same time, then please stop by my hubby's channel anytime for some quality material.

In the meantime, I plan to write about my fear of hobbits later in the week.

Another stupid thing I worry about

Lately, I've found myself DVR'ing a lot more shows about homes and house buying. A particular favorite is House Hunters International, where couples looking to move to other countries get shown three prospective houses and have to choose one to rent or buy. I spend the majority of each episode eating potato chips, drinking energy drinks and yelling at the couple on the TV for bitching about  having to walk 15 steps to a subway located in the shadow of the Alps. The Alps, people! How these prospective buyers manage to find something to complain about when they're moving to Switzerland or the Bahamas or Morocco is beyond me. And I hate them for it.

But that's neither here nor there. My point in mentioning House Hunters and its brethren is that no one ever asks the really big question on those shows, which is obviously, "Is my new 16th century converted farmhouse loft space haunted?" Call me old fashioned, but I think that's important to know. I know it's something I've been thinking about -- and by thinking, I mean, chronically worried about -- as we shop for our own new house. And yes, if it's haunted, I'm calling it a deal breaker.

A while back, a friend tried to get me to rent her house, which was gorgeous. I was tempted until she made the mistake of telling me how cool it was that the kitchen cupboard doors opened and closed by themselves at night and how sometimes they could hear footsteps and how once all the contents of their living room got rearranged...not by them. How she thought any of those incidents were selling points is beyond me. I have enough trouble just finding time to put away the clean dishes, let alone battle unseen forces in my home.

About ten years ago, when my husband and I were shopping for our first house (not in Switzerland, by the way, WHERE I WOULD NOT HAVE COMPLAINED ABOUT ANYTHING), we were ready to buy a place until the inspector told us the back end was falling off the foundation. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing we avoided that mess, then was even more relieved to find out from a neighbor that we had just avoided buying a house in which the previous owner had passed away in the bathtub, a fact which would not have made that tub conducive to bubble baths. Yikes.

I am a big sissy when it comes to that kind of stuff. If I get a weird vibe in a place, I turn into a scared rabbit. I used to work in a big, 100-year-old house that I and half the other employees were convinced was haunted, what with people seeing free-floating apparitions -- to steal a term from "Ghostbusters" -- in the various offices. Whenever I had to come to the office on a weekend to pick up a file, I would start out walking confidently through the front door only to start freaking out about 10 seconds in, to the point where I would be bolting at a full sprint down the hall, into my office and out again, making like Usain Bolt on the way out back to my car. Needless to say, I tried to finish all my work during prescribed office hours.

So now that we're shopping for a new place, I can't help but fret about paranormal possibilities and wonder if I should be asking the big question myself or simply rely on my spidey sense to avoid any Sixth Sense situations. Not that I would trust anyone to tell me the truth. That kind of news must just cripple resale values.

At the very least, "Paranormal Paranoia Property Inquiries" or PPPI as fans will call it, would make a great half-hour series on the Home and Garden channel.

Sigh. Maybe we'll just move next year.

A Completely Uninformed Analysis of Tonight's Best Picture Race

Since my son arrived, I have seen exactly two movies in a theater. The first one was Joss Whedon’s Avengers, which lived up to every single insane and unnatural expectation I had for it AND had Robert Downey Jr. The second was Les Miserables, which lived up to its name in that it made me very miserable. But we’ll get to that in a second.

Never one to let a complete lack of knowledge and experience slow me down, I would like to offer up my assessments of tonight’s Oscar races, based solely on hearsay and fabrication, which should give you some idea of why I never went into the practice of law.

Here we go:

Several times now, I’ve driven by the theater where Amour is playing and based on the empty parking lot, I’m giving this one less than half a percent chance of winning Best Picture. I heard this movie is super depressing so I’m guessing it's only been nominated because the Academy feels guilty for wishing they could have nominated Avengers. This is their cinematic penance for secretly loving when Hulk smash things.

I heard a review of Argo and 10 minutes of a Ben Affleck interview with Terry Gross on NPR, so I feel pretty solid with my assessment of the picture. Terry Gross and the NPR critic both seemed close to wetting themselves in enthusiasm over this movie, so I think it's got a really got shot at winning. Plus, Affleck gave Alan Arkin a role in a movie, and should win based on that alone. 

I know nothing about Beasts of the Southern Wild aside from the fact that the title makes me think of The Lion King, although I am 100 percent certain it does not feature a humorous performance by Nathan Lane. The art house theater where this movie played had a very full parking lot during its run, so I’m thinking it will finish well ahead of Amour in the voting. There was, however, a new restaurant that opened next to the theater during the run, so I may be giving it too much credit.

I so wanted Django Unchained to be about legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt turning into a giant King Kong-like monster who gets accidentally unchained and let loose on Bonnaroo. It is not about this at all apparently. I do look forward to seeing it and being equal parts entertained and horrified as I am with any Quentin Tarantino movie. But I don't think he'll pull out the win tonight. Maybe if he'd listened to my original idea...

You should know this about me and Les Miserables. I love the book – I’ve read the unabridged version twice and cried each time at Jean Valjean’s demise (sorry, spoilers). I’ve seen the stage version twice in Detroit, once in New York and once in London. Loved them all, so you can imagine how excited I was to see the movie version, directed by the man who helmed another favorite of mine, The King’s Speech. So I settled into my seat a few weeks ago, popcorn in hand, ready to be dazzled – and of course, I hated it with a fiery passion. Hugh Jackman was a terrible, whiny, Lifetime Channel version of Jean Valjean and I wanted Anne Hathaway’s Fantine to die before she even opened her mouth. Even the production quality was terrible – why was every extra made up to look like they’d wandered off the set of The Walking Dead? (Poverty makes you poor; it doesn't give you leprosy.) And why was Sacha Baron Cohen the only actor to French it up with his accent? Shouldn’t they all have gotten on the same page with that one before production started? As someone who has seen Manos: The Hands of Fate multiple times, I have sat through (and exited) worse movies but few have been as disappointing to me as this one.

That said, I’m putting my money on it to win Best Picture because in my heart, I know this is Shakespeare in Love versus Saving Private Ryan all over again.

My husband owned a paperback of Life of Pi but lost it in a move before either of us had a chance to read it. Based on the commercials, though, it looks pretty cool. How is the guy in the boat going to feed that tiger? How?? I am intrigued but obviously not enough to go to the trouble of seeing it. I give this low odds of Best Picture success.

Wow, did I want to see Lincoln but I chose Les Miz that day instead. I read the book upon which Lincoln is based, though, and can say with absolute certaintly that it should win the Oscar for Best Writing of a Book That Spielberg Will Totally Want To Turn Into a Movie. Seriously, if you haven’t read Team of Rivals and if you have even modest interest in government and the Civil War, go read this book. Right now. And then let me know if you end up having just the slightest crush on William Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, or if that’s just a weird thing I’ll have to cope with on my own. As great as the book is, I don’t think Lincoln will win Best Picture because I have a feeling Hollywood is all like, “Yeah, Spielberg, we know you’re great. Just shut up about it already.” I hope I’m wrong though.

Everyone I know who has seen Silver Linings Playbook says this is an amazing movie, and I’m willing to believe those high marks despite the presence of Bradley Cooper, who has baffled me in his popularity since the first days of Alias. I’d love to see a movie like this take the big trophy home, if only to reward what sounds like a pretty original idea.

I keep getting Zero Dark Thirty confused with the new Anthony Edwards/X-Files rip-off on ABC that likely will be canceled by the time I finish this sentence. (No? Maybe tomorrow.) My husband was supposed to go see Zero Dark Thirty but it never plays during nap time so he couldn't go and now I don’t have a reliable opinion on this entry. I heard it was fairly brutal, possibly inaccurate, has enraged at least one Navy SEAL and features an actress who has been contracted to play the lead in apparently every Hollywood movie made from here on out. All of which makes it too controversial, I think, to win the big enchilada.

So there it is. I predict Les Miz as Best Picture and also predict that Seth McFarlane will make penis jokes. I’m only going for sure things here… 

Abrams Over Lucas: Why Ford Will Have the Greatest Star Wars Experience Of His Life

"I swear I used pressure-treated wood on those cabinets."

You may recall last week a rumor surfaced that Harrison Ford will be involved in the next Star Wars movie as Han Solo and not as Han Solo's older grizzled neighbor shooing Ewoks off his lawn. Personally, I think this is great news, although I can understand others whose adolescence was not officially launched by the sight of Harrison Ford shooting stormtroopers being less than thrilled with the news because hey, now there's an old guy cluttering up my J.J. Abrams movie. However the audience ends up feeling about this, though, Harrison Ford should be feeling extremely lucky that it's Abrams and Disney and not George Lucas resurrecting this behemoth of a franchise.

Why? Oh, because:

1) Ford will get to go to a set and interact with other humans and enjoy the bounty of craft service rather than calling in his lines over a dodgy cell phone line and being CGI'd onto the body of a make-believe Ryan Reynolds. This would absolutely happen with a Lucas version. He does it every Christmas with his family gatherings. FACT. (Not really.)

2) Abrams and Disney will spring for real live screenwriters (like Lawrence Kasdan) who can write with words and such. George Lucas would hire himself again. But George Lucas cannot write. To be more specific, he cannot write dialogue that does not make you wish for the return of silent film. The most common expression on the face of past Star Wars actors is one of shame. Ford likely won't have to be embarrassed cashing in on this payday. He'll still be angry and crazy, but not embarrassed.

3) Ford will experience the shining glory of a lens flare. As my brilliant friend Mickie once said, "Harrison Ford was a carpenter. Just like Jesus." So true. And now he'll have the lighting to match.

4) Ford won't have to hear about how his carpentry work has gone to hell. To whit:
Lucas: Remember that cabinet you built for me in 1974? The one next to the fridge? It creaks like a Jawa Sandcrawler. Every single time I reach for the peanut butter.
Ford: George, I'm in the middle of riding a Taunton.
Lucas: I think you should have used pressure-treated wood. Did you use pressure-treated wood?
Ford: I don't remember.
Lucas: Did you keep the receipt?
Ford: I don't think...
Lucas: Can you check with your accountant?
Production assistant trying to hold Taunton head bursts an abdominal hernia. And scene...

5) If all goes well, Abrams and Disney also will hire Carrie Fisher to reprise her role as Princess Leia. Fisher will score Ford the greatest prescription narcotics known to man. Harrison Ford will never feel better and will give the greatest performance of his career. Oscar = in the bag.  

These movies are going to be awesome.

Five Best Toddler Shows

There was a time when I was knowledgable about film and television and even knew who approximately 50 percent of the people were on the Grammys. Those days are long gone and instead, my brain is filled with characters, theme songs and potential plush tie-ins from the Sprout channel line-up. Created by PBS, Sprout is designed specifically for toddlers and pre-schoolers. That doesn't mean it's not weird though, as evidenced by an Icelandic show called Lazy Town which features nightmare- inducing puppets and a former gymnast. But we'll get to that later. For any moms out there or anyone that just wants to take a trip into the toddler's version of HBO, here are my top Sprout shows.

1) Justin Time
Premise: Young Canadian* boy daydreams of traveling through time with his imaginary friend Olive and a shamwow named Squidgy.
Rating: 5 out of five sippy cups

Seriously, I'd probably watch this show even if I didn't have a child. The animation is gorgeous with kind of a retro Jetsons look that I love. Justin is a nice kid with no horrible habits, Olive is cute as a button and strong and capable to boot. I'm kind of hoping her example is being rooted in my son's subconscious because I would love for him to bring a girl like that home one day. And honestly, the little dishrag character is super cute too. Each episode teaches something about a past era or a different country. One episode even had the main characters rescuing a space chimp! NBC wishes they had a show this good in their prime time lineup.

2) Fireman Sam
Premise: In the Welsh town of Pontypandy, there is one competent fire fighter and his name is Sam. Each episode, he rescues one of the apparently six members of the town, most frequently, the incredibly annoying Norman who I can't help but wish gets plucked from the hillside by an eagle.
Rating: 4 1/2 out of five sippy cups
Fireman Sam kicks ass. The animation is great and the Welsh accents allow me to pretend I'm watching the tamest episode of Torchwood ever produced. Oh and my son loves the action, but I'm pretty sure he hates Norman too.

3) Caillou
Premise: Four year old Canadian boy learns life lessons as he grows - yet weirdly enough remains four. He's had like three Christmases in one year...
Rating: 4 1/2 out of five sippy cups
Poor Caillou takes a lot of flack because the character purportedly whines a lot but I've never had a problem with it because they always explain the reasons he's upset. I really think the show is well-done and has good lessons about patience and kindness. Plus it features my all-time favorite episode of any Sprout show, which I like to call "The Emasculation of Caillou's Father," in which the family car breaks down and Caillou, his little sister and dad are forced to spend time in the local garage where Caillou's dad is subtly berated for not being able to fix a radiator with his bare hands by the side of the road. Meanwhile, Caillou's mom is flirting with the waiter and drinking wine waiting for her erstwhile family to arrive - and hoping they take their own sweet time. Some communications major should be writing their thesis on this thing.

4) 64 Zoo Lane
Premise: A little girl named Lucy is kidnapped each night, Lindbergh-style, by a giraffe and taken to a zoo where she hears stories of life in the wild, as told by different, now-caged animals. It becomes really sad if you think about it too much.
Rating: 4 out of five sippy cups
The animals are cute and the stories teach good lessons about friendship and kindness. And did I mention the animals were cute? Main character could be replaced by a sack of flower and the show would be none the worse for wear.

5) Kipper
Premise: English dog Kipper and his friends do incredibly innocuous things during what could only be termed their extended retirement.
Rating: 5 out of five stars from Mom; 2 1/2 out of five from the actual toddler in the house.
No one in our house likes this show but me and I LOVE IT!! It soothes me in a deeply existential way, which probably means I have some deep and profound issues, given that the show is about a bunch of hyper-literate talking animals. Here's an episode, so you can see for yourself:

Honorable mention: Dinosaur Train because someone had the brains to go into a pitch meeting and say, "Dinosaurs! And trains! And we put 'em together!" Brilliant, because there is nothing little kids love more than dinosaurs and trains AND THEY ARE TOGETHER IN THE SAME MOVING PICTURE!

And now that we've done the best, let's take a look at a few that will make any rational adult pray for thorazine-filled rain to fall from the skies...

1) Angelina Ballerina
Premise: Pretentious, self-absorbed, slightly bitchy mouse goes to arts school and dances...on my last nerve.
Rating: Negative 1 1/2 out of five sippy cups
If there is a hell, it involves me being just out of reach of a box of Oreos and being forced to watch "Angelina Ballerina" on an eternal loop. Oh my God, do I hate this show. It has no redeeming qualities and sends just chronically bad messages to children. And every episode seems to involve the arrival of a new kid at school who knows hip hop and teaches the ballerinas a little something about themselves -- inevitably leaving out the part where they're horrible.

2) Chloe's Closet
Premise: Small, weirdly shaped Australian children play dress-up and are transported to different made up lands. And they have a duck blanky that talks.
Rating: 1 out of five sippy cups
I've never dropped acid so I don't know if this is true, but I'm pretty sure Chloe's Closet is what a trip gone bad would look like. The animation is horrifying and the speech is so cloying and cutesy it makes you hate two-dimensional big-eyed characters. (Sorry all of anime! Blame it on Chloe.) I'm so sad that my son seems to be getting into this show. Just to be clear, I have no problem with him liking a show about little girls and dressing up -- great premise, nice tales of friendship. It's just skin-crawlingly weird.

3) Barney
Premise: You know what Barney is. Please don't make me explain it. Too. Painful. To. Contemplate.
Rating: Negative 5 out of five sippy cups
I have no words for Barney. I hate everything about him, and am so glad it's out of production. Luckily, my little guy seems to loathe the talking purple dinosaur as much as I do.

4) Dora the Explorer
Premise: Little girl travels around with a monkey named Boots and a talking backpack and they do stuff or something. To be honest, I've never watched a whole episode because there's too much shouting. Use your indoor voices, kids! Learn a lesson from Jack Bauer. Seriously.
Rating: 1 1/2 out of five sippy cups
I'm sure this show is fine and I know people love it but it just grates on me. Unfortunately, my kid is nuts for Dora right now. I've had to learn to draw her on his Etch-a-Sketch or else he loses his mind at bedtime. I'm hoping it's just a phase and we can stop shouting about backpacks in the near future.

5) Bob the Builder
Premise: A contractor and his talking machinery fix and build things.
Rating: 2 1/2 out of five sippy cups
Bob the Builder isn't actually that bad. I just wanted to point out the uncanny resemblance between Farmer Pickles and Toby Ziegler from The West Wing. I'm always thinking, wow, look at that steamroller building a driveway for Toby. It's kind of fun, although I keep wishing Josh would show up and yell about something. Anyway, here is photographic evidence:

Right? Uncanny.

These are the things you notice when you go down the toddler TV rabbit hole.

* I'm hoping the fact that all of my boy's favorite shows are either Canadian or British will ensure he becomes a maple-syrup loving, tree-hugging hippie with a great accent. 

So Tired: Feats of Exhaustion-Fueled Confusion, Clumsiness and Near Self-Immolation

I don't understand why people think they need alcohol to become uninhibited and stupid. All you need is to stop sleeping for 10 months straight and boom, it's like you've got a Woodchuck Cider buzz going 24/7. I know this for a fact because one, I love nothing more than a Woodchuck Cider buzz and two, as the new mother of a toddler, I've been chronically exhausted for almost a year now and it has made me painfully dumb. To whit:

• The other night, I told my two-year-old in a very stern voice that he had better finish his spinach or he'd get a timeout. Yeah, um, we were eating chili.
• At work, I spent three hours writing a document...that I had already written the day before.   
• At a recent staff meeting, I laughed and shouted "hello!" when someone used the phrase "penetrating our market." I then tried to pretend it had just been a sneeze.  
• On multiple occasions, I have tried to open my office with my house key and my house with my office key. It takes me a lot longer to get through doors than it used to.
• A couple weeks back, I got furious because I couldn't get my coat on, only to look down and discover I had crammed my arm into my son's jacket. His gaze told me he would never respect me again. It also told me to stop stretching the fabric, fatty.
• In the last year, I have called my son by the cat's name and vice versa approximately one million times. Son now constantly assumes he's being yelled at for climbing the curtains. 
• I have worn two different shoes and two different socks to work, but NOT on the same day. #smallvictories
• While making hot chocolate and thinking about marshmallows, I nearly lit my bathrobe on fire.
• Tried repeatedly to open my car door only to realize it was not my car door and was not even my kind of car. Also not the same color. 
• I've gotten my Paxtons and Pullmans mixed up. (For you younger kids, that's like getting your Reynolds and Goslings mixed up.) THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO ANYONE.

Have these kinds of things happened to anyone else? What are your worst exhaustion-induced incidents? 

Fiction, schmiction, he's still a man, isn't he?

I stumbled on this item (via @GrantaMag) this morning from Slate Magazine, listing the most attractive men in novels and poems. (The ladies are here.) And I realized, for all my susceptibility toward fictional film and TV characters, I'd never really thought about the fellows on the page. Which is probably a good thing, but still, not a bad notion to consider on a Thursday morning.

The Slate writer has a couple of good ones on the list, including Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird and Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby. The others I've never heard of or simply don't agree with. I would, though, like to add a couple of my own:

Hector from The Iliad because poor Hector tried to do all the right things and that egomaniacal, heel-susceptible jerk Achilles still did him in and then dragged him around the city walls for good measure. *Shakes fist* I will always hate you Achilles!

Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. Okay, probably not a popular choice because he really is a jerk, too, given that he has his former wife locked up in the attic. So, poor choice in real life but on the page, well, I just can't help it. He's got the dark and broody, riding on horses, hunting with hounds, being all decisive yet conflicted thing going on. I don't know what's wrong with me, but there it is.

Jean Valjean from Les Miserables. Let me underscore that this is the Jean Valjean from the pages of a really long but really great book with a whole unnecessary 100 page interlude on the lives of 19th century French nuns. This is not the Jean Valjean of the Hugh Jackman vintage. (Yes, I hated the movie. Sorry.) True story: I cried for 20 minutes after reading Valjean's death scene. I didn't want him to go. Damn books, making me feel things...

And finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, Thomas Cromwell from Hilary Mantel's historical novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, about Henry VIII. Now, everything I've read about Cromwell says he was likely not a nice dude. At all. But the way Mantel writes him, you can't resist. He's lonely, he's driven, he's kind (okay, except to Anne Boleyn and a half dozen other characters). Most of all, though, he's hilarious. I would totally want to spend an afternoon drinking Woodchucks with the Mantel version of Cromwell. In fact, I don't know if I'll be able to read the third book in the sequel because I'm pretty sure he dies. History has the worst spoilers!

So who are your picks for attractive fictional gentlemen or ladies?

30 Rock, How I Will Miss You

Since it was the debut of 30 Rock that first inspired this blog, it seems only right to post about its end. Before 30 Rock and Liz Lemon, I never knew there were other women out there like me, who loved Star Wars and ham, who often didn't know which part of the dress was "front" and who would much rather stay home and watch "Mad Men" than go to any weird parties where people talked to each other.   What a relief to discover I was not alone.

And then to find out that this show was not just a great piece of news for my self-esteem but also ridiculously inventive, brilliant and breathtakingly funny -- well, how fabulous was that?

I will admit with shame that I skipped a season or two somewhere during 30 Rock's run, when it seemed that the humor had become less clever and inventive and more cold and mean...and not funny. Which was kind of a deal breaker. Call me old fashioned but I like my humor funny.

So I've been quietly compiling this last season on my DVR, wondering if I should even jump back into the pool. But then the reviews for the finale started coming in and fueled by nostalgia, I got up at 5 a.m., put on my earphones and watched it in the bathroom where my sleeping son wouldn't sense me playing with what he has clearly decided is his iPhone. (This is how I watch TV now. It takes me six days to watch a whole Castle between brushing my teeth and flossing.)

All of this is my long, out of practice way of saying the 30 Rock finale was perfect in every way imaginable. There was a Brian Williams joke. Great Tracy Jordan jokes. Pitch perfect satirical tear-down of mommy message boards. Lutz finally got his revenge (Blimpies!), Kenneth proved his immortality and even Jenna was funny, as she finally experienced heartbreak with the removal of her dressing room mirror. But best of all, there was my dear Jack Donaghy's shipboard confession of platonic love -- a speech that managed to be poetic, beautiful, charming and still include the phrase "scale bone mountain." Everything I had loved about 30 Rock was perfectly encapsulated in that one short scene.

I will miss you, 30 Rock. But I promise you this -- I will use the word "hogcock" in a sentence (out loud and not just in my head) at least once this year. It's the least I can do for a show that gave me so much.

The Lost Years, Unrelated To The TV Series or Any Ray Milland Movies

You see that post below that says I moved? I didn't. I mean, I did, but then this crazy series of life events happened to me and my well-meaning attempt at launching a new blog disappeared into the ether. But I've missed blogging and so I'm back. (Yeah, we've all heard that one before. But I'm really going to try.)

And here, just to bring you up to date, are a few highlights of the last couple years.

• I shrank 13 pounds through a simple and healthy regimen that involved wisdom tooth surgery and a heretofore unknown allergy to anesthesia. Two days of vomiting followed by ten days of only eating foods that were mushy. Hell yeah, I could sell that diet to a glossy magazine.
• In related news, I gained five pounds back by eating donuts like a vengeful piranha in a SyFy movie.
• Moved to a new house where we are the hillbillies of the neighborhood. This was a relief after previously living next door to a man whose nickname -- painted on the back of his truck -- was Chainsaw. Still, though, am thinking of removing all the wheels from a Matchbox car and putting it up on tiny blocks in the front yard, just to provoke.
• Wrote a novel. A whole novel with pages that turn and everything. 
• Am now the mother of a wonderful little boy who seems to prefer the Star Wars prequels to the real movies. He is young, though, so there's time to correct his egregious error in judgment. 

So yeah, that's where I'm at. The motherhood thing means I'm guaranteed to be at least two weeks behind on any pop culture event that occurs -- although I KNOW for a fact that Iron Man 3 is coming out this spring. I have a special neuron that twitches with delight whenever one of those babies is nigh. So I'm afraid I won't be bringing you much breaking news, but I'll still try to crack a few jokes and give you meaningful insight on the Sprout channel lineup -- whether you want it or not. (You probably won't.)

I've moved!

Hi there! If you happen to be reading this blog, I just wanted to let you know that I've got a new site called Monstrous Little Voices which is pretty much just more of me rambling. I'm leaving The Park Bench up for as long as I can afford it, but if you want to check out any new oddness from me, please come visit MLV. Thanks, and have a great day!

Remembrance of nerdy things past

Seven years ago, my husband and I moved into our house. The move from our apartment was anything but organized and it amounted, on the last day, to us basically throwing things into the trunks of our cars and then throwing those things into closets that we never opened again.

Now we're doing some deep cleaning, and I'm unearthing items long forgotten, including all of the things that offer irrefutable evidence of the fact that I have, actually, been a nerd my entire life. Among the geek-tastic items I've rediscovered:

+ A Star Trek: The Next Generation tricorder, given to me by equally nerdy friends as a gift on my 21st birthday. So yes, while other 21-year-olds were boozing it up on their big nights, I was scanning the sidewalk for dilithium.

+ A poem written by me, as a sixth grader, entitled "Ode on a Grecian Badger." I'll leave the content of that poem to your collective imaginations. Hint: it involves a badger.

+ A box the size of a Subaru filled with Star Trek novels. I pretended to be a literary snob in high school and college and used to force my then-boyfriend to buy the Star Trek novels for me as I stood in line next to him, holding my Times Literary Supplement beard, and shaking my head in mock disgust at his taste in fiction. Yes, I was a jerk.

+ An equally giant box filled with X-Files magazines, which was apparently my equivalent of porn because it was at the bottom of the closet and buried discretely under bank statements.

+ A slightly smaller box filled with Buffy shooting scripts. I'm not apologizing for that one. Instead, I will simply congratulate myself on not putting on my glasses and spending the rest of the night in a script-reading haze.

+ Pictures of Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn from the one and only Star Trek convention I ever attended. Now, I'm a fan of the conventions -- you know that about me -- but seriously, that was a scary crowd. Looking at the photo of Marina and Michael, I'm pretty sure they felt the same way. Of course, they could have just been scared of me, what with my filthy X-Files predilections.

+ Speaking of conventions, there's my "MST3K Conventio-Con Expo Fest-a-rama 1994" t-shirt! And my Satellite of Love pin. I wonder how many staff meetings I can wear that pin to before someone realizes what it is. Note to self: I now have the most awesome secret mission EVER.

+ A G-rated "Remington Steele"/"Black Stallion" crossover fan fiction, proudly signed by my nine-year-old self. Seriously. I signed it. What the hell?

And there you have it...The Closet Tour 2010: Full Disclosure. You may now point and mock, if so inclined. Or, you know, if you'd like to buy a case of Star Trek novels, I know someone who can hook you up.

Nimoy and pie! Two delicious things that taste great...no wait, that's creepy.

In honor of Leonard Nimoy, who yesterday announced his retirement from acting, I offer you this link to the Tumblr site "Nimoy Sunset Pie." You know how the title sounds kind of crazy and surreal? The site does not disappoint! For example, we have:

If I could fill my brain with awesome things every day, they would all look like this. I'm trying to think of a way I could get this tramp-stamped on my person.

Also, now I'm hungry...and want to watch "Fringe."

So long, Leonard. You were the most talented and least crazy member of the original "Star Trek" cast, and I always loved you for it. That and you always knew how to fill out a blue velour shirt. Le rowr and prosper, my friend.

Thank you to Ruth for the link!

My approval goes up to Eleven

Ooh, flashy light.

Say, how about this new "Doctor Who" fella? I like him! And, despite only having one episode to base this opinion on, I'm feeling pretty good about the new Moffat era of "Who"-dom.

Yes, I decided to be a good, honest, law-abiding American citizen and wait until this past Saturday to watch "The Eleventh Hour" on BBC America. It was totally worth the wait. Even my husband, who swore he would hate it just to show his allegiance to Tennant, was won over by the end of the episode.

I really loved the whole hour and will go out on a limb here and say I thought it was the best Doctor debut episode in all of new "Who" -- and I say this as a huge fan of Tennant's "Christmas Invasion." I thought "Eleventh Hour" was a rich, heartfelt, full story that went a long way toward establishing the differences between Ten and Eleven.

Right from the start, Matt Smith just owns the Eleventh Doctor. He's quirky and mad and funny in a dry, sophisticated gentleman way. He exudes a maturity that's in full keeping with a 900 plus year old time lord and goes way beyond what I would have expected from a 26 year old actor. His scenes with a young Amy were beautifully done. It wasn't cutesy or schmaltzy or any of the other horrible adjectives you could apply to a scene about a poor abandoned girl and a mysterious alien. Instead, it was sweet and touching...and hilarious. And I got honest-to-goodness teary-eyed when poor little Amy sat down on her suitcase to wait for the Doctor. It touched on every disappointing moment any child has ever suffered through.

Speaking of Amy, I like the grown-up version. I'm not quite 100 percent sold on Karen Gillan the way I am with Smith, but she's got a great energy and a terrific chemistry with Smith. And on my husband's behalf, I'm supposed to say she's hot, too.

I'm liking the new TARDIS too and sincerely hoping we'll actually get to see the swimming pool. And the library. And the library in the swimming pool.

Overall, I give this episode a solid A, and I can't wait for next week.

So what did you guys think?

Alice Forgets What the Dormouse Said

(I'm turning over the blog this afternoon to Brodie H. Brockie, Michigan-based international man of mystery and editor of the Cap'n Wacky's Boatload of Fun site. He's got an insightful review of the "Alice in Wonderland" movie, so enjoy! And be sure to share your thoughts on the flick, too.)

I hated Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" for a wide variety of reasons. I could go on at length (and have to some of my more patient friends) about how it bungles many of the characterizations and ideas in Carroll's two Alice novels, and about how the whole experiment feels like the worst kind of internet fan fiction writ large (creepy sexual tension between characters with no such relationship in the original much?), but I realize I'm in the minority for caring about those things. Instead, allow to me explain why I consider Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" a failure in and of itself, and it's cheap attempts at girl-power sentiment actually a bit counter-feminist.

At the start of the movie, we meet Alice, a teenage girl on the verge of womanhood who lives life in a sort of frustrated stupor. Her father used to support Alice's independent thinking and vivid imagination, but since his death, everyone has been telling her what to do, how to dress, how to behave, what to talk about, and what to think about. All of this is pushing her toward making one terrible mistake: accepting a marriage proposal from a big-nosed, weak-chinned, stuff-shirted twit. At the moment of truth, Alice at least has enough spirit left in her to ask for a moment to consider, runs away, spots the White Rabbit, and falls down a hole into a world she'd dreamed about as a child.

Once there, what happens? Naturally, in this weird, dreamlike funhouse mirror world Alice encounters a twisted version of what was happening above: everyone is telling her what they expect of her, what she should do, how she should behave, how she should dress, and what their society demands of her. Granted, some of the things they're telling her are more positive: she needs to be stronger, more vibrant, and she needs to slay the Jabberwock.

It's her destiny, they tell her.

The problem is, what NO ONE wants her to do, above or below, is the one thing little Alice had been so good at. No one wants Alice to actually think for herself.

So what happens? Incredibly, Alice goes along with the demands of the Wonderland (now - gag - Underland) crowd, suits up in armor far more constricting than the corsets she's complained about previously, and slays the Jabberwock, helping overthrow one monarch with another that she (and the audience) knows pretty much nothing about (if this Wonderland was really the more mature story it wants to be, wouldn't we need to know more about the "good" queen than she wears all white and talks in a lilting voice. Are people really buying white=good as a mature update?).

To reiterate: the story tells us everything that's going to happen as soon as Alice arrives in Wonderland, and then goes through with it just as it laid it out. Not only is that boring storytelling, it's nonsensical (and not in a fun way) as far as Alice's development. How does she gain the internal fortitude to tell the stuffy English to stop bossing her around by ACCEPTING the Underlanders bossing her around?

Worse, the script almost stumbles upon a much better idea: early on, Alice encounters the Bandersnatch - he's no Jabberwock, but he's a pretty fierce creature too. Alice is saved from his initial attack by the Dormouse who pokes out the beast's eye. Later, to get by the Bandersnatch, Alice returns the eye, and this act of kindness transforms the monster into an affectionate ally.

This plot point would've been a great micro-version of the encounter with the Jabberwock. A thinking Alice might've had a conversation with the monster, found out what it wanted, killed it with kindness, and turned it into an ally against the Red Queen. Instead, she does the most boring thing possible - the very thing everyone has told her to do - the very thing we were told she would do over an hour before - off with its head! Yawn.

Some hail this as girl-power progress. Sorry: a smart lady turning off her best weapon and picking up a sword instead is no kind of progress at all.

Contrariwise, it's nonsense.

Dr. Horrible as 8-bit RPG game

Found this on Topless Robot -- a site (or a person?) called Doctor Octoroc has redone "Dr. Horrible" as an 8-bit RPG game, complete with awesome Nintendo-style soundtrack. Enjoy!

OUTRAGE! (58 points)

Well, it's official, the world's gone to hell in a handbasket: Mattel announced today that it's changing Scrabble rules for the first time since 1948 and now we can all use proper nouns...like common people! You can use Jay-Z, presumably without the hyphen, and Zeppo and ZZ Top, if you can magically cough up a second "Z."

This annoys me. First, I'm aggravated because I'm old and don't like change. The addition of new Crayola colors squirrels me up for months. Second, throughout my lazy childhood, I tried probably half a million times to convince susceptible opponents that throwing down the "M-A-R-X" tiles was a totally legitimate move. But because I played with a bunch of ninny rule readers, they shot me down every time. So now, two decades later, Mattel gets around to changing its rules to fit my needs. Thanks for nothing, Barbie-pushers! Too little, too late.

I'm hoping protests break out soon, and we'll all figure out some passive-aggressive way to protest this, like holding little bags of noisy tiles and rattling around behind Mattel executives until they break. Of course, the downside to launching a successful protest is that no one will ever be able to legally immortalize your success by using your name to crush an opponent.

D-A-M-N.

ETA: Or this might be some new urban legend. Oops. I'm still going to try and use it to my advantage wherever and whenever possible.

In which I become kind of bitchy and ask disparaging questions about stupid people

(Please note: the fact that I'm writing about stupidity guarantees I've made some sort of ass-hatted typo in this post, so I'm asking your forgiveness in advance. Thank you!)

Every time someone rockets into rush-hour traffic like a happy-go-lucky, dumb-ass Starsky and Hutch or uses the word "anonymous" when they mean "unanimous" or insists that Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt are the same interchangeable person, I ask myself the following question: are stupid people happier? And if so, how do I sign up?

Now, I'm no brainiac. Science makes no sense to me and I'm half convinced that physics is some kind of voodoo magic. The only foreign language I ever mastered was a dead one. And math, in my opinion, was something invented by a cruel man with an overfondness for parentheses. The elitist in me, though, does think I'm smarter than the average bear.

I used to think this was a good thing. Being smart meant I could do crossword puzzles and answer questions on "Jeopardy" with enough accuracy to make Alex Trebek choke on his own mustachioed smugness. It meant I could boast about my SAT verbal scores and secretly nursean esoteric crush on William Seward, way-dead secretary of state for Abraham Lincoln. My smartness made me feel special, different from the rest of the herd. (Moo.)

My brand of braininess, though, has yet to earn me a six-figure salary or the ability to figure out the difference between a stock and a bond. (One's a thing you make soup with and the other's played by Daniel Craig's abs, right?) And it hasn't really made me any happier. In fact, it's just given me more things to worry about. Will an asteroid hit the Earth and annihilate us like the dinosaurs? Stupid people don't worry about this -- mostly because they don't believe in dinosaurs. What if climate change kills our crops but someone forgot to close the door on the Doomsday Seed Vault? What if J.D. Salinger was just sitting on his ass all these years and never, ever wrote another story about the Glasses? Stupid people aren't stressing out about this stuff. They're putting quarters up their noses.

I've observed a lot of stupid people in my time, like the guy across the street who can amuse himself for hours by jumping up and down on his doorless car and then chasing the ice cream truck with a baseball bat. (That really happened, by the way. I'm pretty sure our local ice cream truck driver is some sort of pervert, though, so who knows who the bad guy was in that scenario.) There are people who don't even know the Holocaust happened or that Stalin starved millions during World War II -- their brains are untouched by these downers of reality, leaving more room for memorizing Daughtry lyrics. (Sorry, Daughtry fans. And when I say "sorry," I'm apologizing to your ears on your behalf.) And I have to wonder, are these ill-informed people happier than those of us who pay attention to the world around us?

I'm starting to think they are, and it hardly seems fair. Did I study hard in school and read book after book just so I could learn enough to bum me out by middle age? Would I be a more gleeful bunny if I just stopped paying attention and dumbed down? For example, today I found out that NASA is retiring the space shuttle at the end of this year and after that, anyone who wants to go to the International Space Station has to fly in one of those Russian Soyuz spacecrafts, which I'm pretty sure is like being rocketed into space in a Fiat with the windows open. Now, if I'd just remained ignorant about this fact, I'd still be under the impression that space shuttles were flying around in space like perky ten-ton ponies. But no, now I'm wondering if the Soyuz has seatbelts.

So what do you think? Are stupid people happier? Are we brainy types just making life harder for ourselves?

Motley Miscellany of Something or Other

+ Hey, good news! For the first time in the history of forever, a show starring Nathan Fillion got renewed for a third season. Yep, "Castle" is coming back next year with a full 22-episode season. Finally, the rest of the world gets a clue. Way to go, formerly unobservant TV viewers!!!

+ And in a major victory for celluloid cheese, rumors of not just one but TWO sequels to "Independence Day" have hit the internet. Will Smith is rumored to be on board. My love/hate relationship with "ID4" is so strong I'm almost un-ironically excited about this rumor.

+ Hello, Kitty wine? Yes, please. In fact, I may have to build a wine cellar (or at least dig a shallow hole) for my impending collection.

+ It's time to start shopping for your future cyborg self! Check out all these incredible mechanical people parts that will soon become a reality. Thanks to Daven for the link!

+ Want to take a little trip back in time? Check out this video of "Lost"'s Michael Emerson in 1992 prison training video. And yes, he's creepy in it, bless his little heart. When you're done with that, take a few minutes to watch one of David Tennant's earliest (if not the earliest) roles in an anti-smoking film. It's hilarious, like a charming, lung-saving deleted scene from "Gregory's Girl."




+ In preparation for the new "Who" debut this weekend, here's a clip from episode six, and it's totally made me love this new Doctor. I'm not even on the fence anymore. I am over the fence and laying on the ground, no doubt with an ankle injury of some sort. Anyway, check out the hilarity:

"Life on Mars": yes, it makes more sense than the Bowie song

Trust us, we couldn't pull off these fashions if we weren't awesome...

So during my three-month-long non-alcoholic lost weekend, I cheered myself up by finally watching all 16 glorious episodes of "Life on Mars" -- the good version, not the American version starring Michael Imperioli's overpowering mutton chops. And I have to say, holy cow, what a great, weird little show.

For those who haven't seen it, "Life on Mars" is a British TV series starring John Simm as a modern-day Manchester police detective named Sam Tyler who is on the trail of a murderer when he's suddenly struck down by a car. When he wakes up, he finds himself in Manchester...in the year 1973. So, he's either gone crazy, is in a coma or perhaps, is dead. (And dear God, he keeps seeing a creepy little girl with a clown.) As he tries to figure out what the hell has happened to him, he keeps up his police work with the 1973-era Manchester police and has to deal with an entirely different world of detecting, where planting evidence and beating the crap out of a suspect won't necessarily put a guy on the naughty list.

"Life on Mars" is part trippy mind-bending mystery, ala "Lost," and part pure cop story with a weekly case to be solved. It's also a love story and a comedy and an examination of cultural clashes.

If it sounds like a goofy premise, well, it is but the beauty of the show is that it only ran 16 episodes so the series never outgrew the constraints of that goofy premise. Instead, each episode feels like a deliberate, well-crafted piece of a really cool puzzle, building to what I have to say is one of the best endings of a TV series ever.

The acting in this show is first-rate, with John Simm absolutely stellar as the very confused yet still incredibly bull-headed Tyler. As someone who had only ever seen Simm as the Master on "Doctor Who" (and, I'm sorry to say, couldn't stand him in the part), I was shocked at how terrific he is in this role. He does a beautiful job of making you wonder whether Tyler truly is crazy or just a poor man stuck in the middle of a truly bizarre metaphysical accident.

Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt, Tyler's supervisor in 1973, is an absolute scene stealer and a perfect foil to Simm's soulful earnestness. Hunt is a complete bastard but totally dynamic and appealing...and fricking hilarious. The rest of the cast is stellar as well, with special mention going to Liz White as Tyler's love interest, Annie, who's trying to make it as a female officer in a very, very sexist era. Imagine a character equal parts bad-ass and adorable -- that's Annie.

If you haven't seen "Life on Mars," you should. I believe in the quality of this series so much, I've actually made a pact with my husband just to get him to watch it. He refuses to believe that a TV show with such a ridiculous premise can be any good, but he's agreed to watch it if I read at least two volumes of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series -- which I just completed last week -- and if I complete a full "Buffy" rewatch with him. (We're halfway through Season 6.) I've jumped through a lot of hoops so far to get him to watch this show...and he's going to be damn glad I did when he realizes that yes, his wife knows awesomeness the way Barnum knows clowns.

Now if only someone would release "Ashes to Ashes," the "Life on Mars" sequel, on DVD. C'mon, people, mama needs her stories!

Gearing up for the new "Who"

So, I'm dying to know -- what do YOU think of the impending arrival of the new "Doctor Who?" Starring that fellow with the amazingly agile hair aka Matt Smith and that saucy redhead I know nothing but I'm sure she's good aka Karen Gillan, the new series will make its UK debut on April 3 (thanks for catching my typo, folks!) followed immediately by its illegal debut on dodgy servers everywhere...then followed on April 17 with its BBC America debut. Phew, that was a long, poorly constructed sentence.

I gotta say, I'm pretty damn excited about the upcoming season, which is something I never thought I would say given my sadness over David Tennant's departure and my misgivings about Steven Moffat. But seriously, how could anyone -- even cranky old me -- watch these previews and not be at least mildly geeked?

Please note: there be casting spoilers ahoy in these trailers, so if you want to pure as the driven "Who" snow, it'd be best to avoid them.





I mean, wow, the monsters look amazing; the energy level is ramped up to 11; Smith and Gillan seem to have a nice bouncy chemistry going and Smith himself looks like he's going to be the twitchiest, oddest Doctor of them all...and I mean that as a good thing. With my albeit limited Old Who knowledge, the following statement could be totally wrong, but he reminds me a bit of Tom Baker, which should make for some good squirrelly fun. Just from those previews, the show itself definitely has a new feel but again, I mean this as a good thing because it still feels very much connected to the best of the Davies era.

But enough yammering from me -- tell me what you think!