It Started with a Journal

Mad Men is a fantastic show, one of my favorites. I finished S4 last night. ( WTF just happened???? )

Academy Award nominations are out! I'm going to do a poll in the next few days so we can see who amongst us is the best guesser. :D Jade is ridiculously good at these games, so she's going to be the one to beat. Looks like there are some surprises in the nominations, especially in the acting categories. Also, I'm not a fan of the expanded 10-film Best Picture category. That is just WAY too many, and it's pathetically obvious which ones aren't actually in contention. It's great that they wanted to acknowledge more good films, but you know what, that could be said of just about any category, so why just expand this one? Either expand them all or keep them all short and sweet, just the cream of the crop.

It's strange that it's only Tuesday but I keep thinking the weekend is coming right up (and then being disappointed when I realize I'm wrong). :/

D/G gals -- Feb. 19 is the potential date thrown out for our next get together, but a few of you haven't responded. Why aren't you showing us the love? Why?

Meanwhile, I've seen the pilot episode of Being Human (British version) and was less than enthralled. It felt like every mediocre show/movie ever done about vampires/werewolves/ghosts put together. Don't find any of the main leads compelling, nor their storylines. However, I will give it a few more episodes before I decide if it's a show I can continue on with.

There are three reasons I haven't been watching The Vampire Diaries:

1) I rarely watch ANY television during its original airing. I usually watch TV on DVD, so I'm almost always a season or two behind. Shows I love like Mad Men, House, Lost, Arrested Development, Gilmore Girls, Prison Break, Rome, How I Met Your Mother, etc., I watch/watched on DVD. There are a few rare shows that I try to keep up with in real time, like Glee and S4 of Dexter, but that requires watching on Hulu or downloading a torrent, which I am too lazy to do for most shows. It sucks because this means I am more sensitive to spoilers (an entire season could be spoiled), but it's also nice because I can skip commercials AND watch episode after episode of one show and watch events unfold in a less disjointed way.

2) I hate Twilight and am resistant to anything that appears to try and win audiences over because it's trying to take advantage of the 'hot new thing.' I am skeptical there could be quality there for that reason, particularly because the 'hot new thing' it's trying to take advantage of is so low quality to begin with that it's obviously not aiming toward discerning audiences.

3) I LOVED the L.J. Smith book series. I read them as a teenage girl, before Buffy came along and made vampires cool, and it was one of my favorite series. So I was even more resistant to the show based on my skepticism that they would be able to do it well (given point #2) and my fear that they'd ruin something I had really loved. (And my fear that the series itself wouldn't stand up to the test of time.)

However, I've read and seen enough about the show at this point that I think I'm ready to give it a shot. I'm #8 in my library queue for the first season, but I think it's going to take awhile as there's only 1 copy available. Still, I thought it was going to be a show that I'd never watch, so the fact that I will do so eventually is a big step!

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I'm also going to start watching The Shield. I don't actually know anyone who watches this show, but I've heard/read enough critical acclaim about it that I'd like to see it. I've gotten the complete series on DVD; it's kind of cool-looking, actually. It's like a big hardcover book, with little inserts for the discs.

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My BSG Blu-Rays have come! I don't know now whether to start rewatching those or starting The Shield.

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I'm on S7 of XF. It wasn't a bad season but I DREAD what's coming. Why did they attempt to do XF w/o DD?! Greedy fuckers. I mean, XF just isn't XF w/o Mulder and Scully. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.

The Samantha resolution though, wtf? (The end of Closure is beautiful, however.)

Mulder constantly breaks my heart.

I'm interested in rereading my favorite fanfics from way back when, but I suspect a lot of them won't be available anymore. A lot of people took down their stories after they finally realized that having their real names associated with fanfic might not be such a good idea. I've already gone back to reread a couple, and those unfortunately did not pass the test of time.

I want to go back and rewatch S6. Again. Other than Agua Mala and Trevor it was pretty a much a perfect season, imho. Freaking Agua Mala, I spit on it.

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I still haven't seen Lost S6. Or the latest season of House. Or of course Mad Men S4. OMG so much to catch up on! I have tons of vacation, maybe I should take some time off and just watch TV the whole time. Hey, that'd be a pretty darn relaxing vacation.

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I also want to rewatch Buffy again. Also Firefly, which I also just got on Blu-Ray. Maybe I'll do a Whedon binge after I've watched everything else mentioned here.

Does anyone want a Dreamwidth code? I have lots to give away. I always post at DW and just crosspost to LJ, makes it pretty easy.

A Clockwork Angel arrived from Amazon yesterday. Am pretty excited about that one. I still haven't read Mockingjay yet, though. Can't decide which one I want to start first.

I guess Mad Men won the best drama Emmy on Sunday (I'm so out of touch I didn't even know the Emmys had come and gone) and people are starting to grumble because they've had a lock on it for the past 3 years. I would probably be grumbling too, except that I LOVE that show and things I love so rarely get that kind of love and attention. Though as Jade points out, I would have been OK with Dexter winning, particularly after the last doozy of a season.

TV Show Meme, Day 28 - First TV show obsession: Quantum Leap. It was the first show I ever got so into that I begged my mom to push my bedtime out one hour so I could watch it. I loved Sam Beckett and Al and the crazy adventures they'd go on. It's funny because I've never considered myself to be a fan of science fiction (growing up, I was like, that's a boy thing), yet if I think about it, even at the very start I was a big science fiction fan. I just didn't know what it was. In my mind, sci-fi had to do with aliens/spaceships (a la Star Trek/Star Wars, neither of which I liked) and weird scientists and scary Twilight Zone music. Yet shows like Quantum Leap (and fave movies like Back to the Future) were science fiction. I just didn't have my definitions right. But now I know better. I'm a sci-fi geek!

Making little improvements every day. Still have the sniffles and a cough, but I have to do less of each now. Yay. My sense of smell/taste is mostly all back though, so big cheer for that.

I think today I am going to attempt to make cream of broccoli soup for the first time (that wasn't from a can). When done well it's one of my all-time favorite soups, so I hope the recipe I'm planning to use is a winner. The best broccoli soup I've ever had was one they served at Kerckhoff Hall in the coffee shop while I was at UCLA. It came in a bread bowl, which is always a plus, but the soup itself was so. freaking. good. I don't know what supplier they bought it from or what was in it, but I've never had broccoli soup that good before or since.

I have some obvious TV show recommendations to make. Sorry they're so obvious but it's all I've got.

1) Mad Men - Mentioned this in my last post but now I've watched all 3 available seasons and I've solidified my opinion that it's a must-watch show. It's authentic, it's interesting, the characters are rich, etc. The bulk of S3 wasn't as good as the first two seasons, but by the end I was sold and am excited for what's coming next.

2) Glee - I've always had a soft spot for amateur singing groups/show choir type things, possibly because I can't carry a tune and have forever wished that if I could have any talent, it would be to sing. The show is so super fun, even if I find a lot of the characters annoying and/or useless (with the exception of Jane Lynch, who is a comedic goddess). I know that sounds weird. As a whole though, it just works. I've watched all 13 available eps now and miss being able to watch it; I looked forward to every episode.

I also just finished S5 of Lost, which... I enjoyed, but thought was the weakest season. I don't care what they say, some of the stuff that's happened in the past was so not part of some overarching plan. When you have characters going, "Oh yeah, I did that but it was fake/I lied," it's like, okay, yeah, that's them going, we didn't know what we were doing then and this is how we're going to retrofix it. I've also started, at long last, Battlestar Galactica. I'm totally years behind the bandwagon on this one. I avoided it at first because I've just never been into Star Wars/Star Trek-type things, and BSG seemed to be of that ilk. I'm enjoying it so far, so either I've grown more tolerant or it's different somehow. It helps that it's more science fiction than fantasy (more robots, less creatures with prosthetics and purple skin).