Since I’ve finished what I have of Babylon 5 and school is wrapping up for the moment, the obsession d’jour has become Doctor Who. I watched enough on SciFi last fall to be a bit disappointed when the new season started on BBC without my having access to it, but it wasn’t until I ran across the clip of Harry Potter references (which I told you about a few posts ago) that it occurred to me to check online…

The Harry Potter jokes come from the episode broadcast on April 7, the title of which grabbed my attention: “The Shakespeare Code.” Definately a fun romp through Elizabethan England, with several scenes filmed at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London, whee! Besides the HP amusement, there are no less than six instances in which the Doctor quotes Shakespeare to Shakespeare (though Will comes up with “to be or not to be” on his own), as well as other references to the Macbeth witches and their “blasted heath,” the “Dark Lady” of the sonnets, and the scholarly debate concerning Shakespeare’s sexuality (”Ooh, fifty-seven academics just punched the air…”).

I particularly appreciated that the episode revolved around a Shakespeare play that is not Romeo and Juliet! Instead, they used the less known Love’s Labors Lost, playing on the fact that there may have been a sequal, now lost, called Love’s Labors Won. [Tangent: Now I want to read Love's Labors Lost next month, it's one I don't know.]

After so much Renaissance lit in college, though, a few things jumped out at me as odd.

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Categories: Doctor Who, Shakespeare, mmm, London!, television
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When Loreena McKennitt’s latest album, An Ancient Muse, came out last Novemer, it was the first new material she had released in nine years. I don’t think she’s done a real tour in that time, either, so happening to be on the tour route has pretty much made my month! A singer, instrumentalist, composer, and lyricist who records under her own label, Loreena is a real inspiration and I admire her a great deal. So take any criticism that slips in with that in mind.

An Ancient Muse is perhaps not her strongest album to date (mind you, I have three candidates for that title), but it does have many lovely pieces. The style and sound are the Loreena we know and love, mixing the Middle Eastern influences she has explored since 1994’s The Mask and Mirror with the expressive Celtic palatte that marks all of her music. Muse reminds me of Mask and Mirror in that it seems to be set in a more Eastern atmosphere than recordings like 1997’s The Book of Secrets, which stays mostly in western Europe (”The Mummers’ Dance,” “Skellig,” “The Highwayman,” “Dante’s Prayer,” etc.), but looks to the East a few times along the way. Muse seems to live in Greece, Turkey, Arabia: the first track is called “Incantation,” but it seems also to be an invocation in the Homeric sense of calling for guidance from the album’s eponymous muse. Homer is more directly referenced later in the album through “Penelope’s Song,” a haunting call from Odysseus’s patient queen, and in between we visit “The Gates of Istanbul,” walk “Beneath a Phrygian Sky,” and water our camels at a “Caravanserai.” We only leave that space a couple of times, going to the Scottish border in “The English Ladye and the Knight” and putting on our yarmulkes to dance a “Sacred Shabbat.”

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Categories: life in the big city, music
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I realized that I have posted almost no actual news in the last month! It’s all been a bit mad.

My roommate and spent the middle of March apartment hunting, under the impression that we would have to move when our lease ran out on June 1. Our current building is gradually being rennovated and sold as condos, but as it turns out, that process is going more slowly than the owners anticipated (as I understand it, real estate is a buyer’s market right now), so they’re letting us renew the lease for another year. So that means I don’t get to be rid of our stained carpets, stained countertops, and finicky shower, but I am very glad to not have to move. Besides, I love the area around us, so I’m glad not to leave just yet.

School is almost finished for the spring — my last class is next Tuesday. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Research Paper Land, Group Presentation Land, and Final Project Land, but the end is in sight. Of course, there’s still a last paper, project revisions, and poetry revisions to do in the next week, but still — light, tunnel, yeah.

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Categories: Doctor Who, bag stories, grad school, life in the big city, movies, music, television
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Some HP love on Doctor Who: here are a couple of short clips, posted on The Leaky Cauldron. It’s from a third season episode that must have just aired in the UK. Maybe it’s airing on BBC America, too — dunno because BBC America is too high into the cable atmosphere for me to have it. I assume SciFi will start season three this fall, and I’m looking forward to meeting the new companion.

(And if that weren’t enough fandoms for one post: I turned on the TV this afternoon and hey look! There’s Inara — or rather, Morena Baccarin — on Stargate SG1, wearing a very Inara sort of costume, just with funny-colored contacts. No idea how old this episode is, only that it’s post-Richard Dean Anderson. But yay for Firefly cast.)

Later: Evil Dead: The Musical. What the hell??

Categories: Doctor Who, Firefly, Harry Potter, television
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Directly from the most recent copy of Food Allergy News, a newsletter I get from the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network:

“A representative of Tropicana wants you to know that their Healthy Heart Orange Juice now contains Omega-3 fatty acids which are sourced from fish. The presence of fish is clearly indicated on the package ingredient statement.”

…if it ever occured to you to check orange juice labels when you have a fish allergy.

Yes, I’m posting this because it cracks me up. And yes, I’m all for heart-healthy (and I don’t mean to put anyone off Tropicana. There’s a bottle in our fridge as I type). But it’s also true that food allergies get more complicated the more manufacturers meddle with foods. Checks and balances, always checks and balances.

Categories: allergy
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“We just got a nice new fish tank…the angelfish are in HEAVEN.”
-Poke

“Do you have Cher-e-o-kee blood?”
-C., asking about the bag my cousing made for me that has the Cherokee alphabet on it. I think it’s hilarious — there should be a Native American rock band called Chereeokee, the Singin’ Indians.

“You’re not a Jedi for fun. That’s like your job.”
-L., my classmate. We were looking at an article that compared a young fisherman and his mentor to Luke and Obi-Wan.

“Christina, you can’t bring your author back from the dead…even though he may be from Transylvania.”
-G., my prof, reassuring my classmate. We were writing promotion plans for the manuscripts we are hypothetically publishing. Obviously her author can’t go on book tours, but his point was that she has the translators.

“I thought you were going to say ‘Oh, it’s in Rhode Island!’”
-R., my classmate, after I reveal (following considerable debate) that the house I have described in a poem is entirely metaphorical.

And on the Babylon 5 front, Sheridan has declared independance. A great episode — I love when Delenn gets to be a badass. Also just saw the two-parter that deals with the B4 timetravel storyline from season 1, which was several kinds of cool. My heart went out to Garibaldi, though. He’s in a coma when Sinclair gets reassigned, and now the guy comes through the station and all Michael gets is a last-minute note.

Categories: grad school, life in the big city, television
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Dumbledore’s triumphant resurrection is magically delicious!

Happy April 1st, everyone.

Categories: Harry Potter
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