They’ve been doing Tess of the D’Urbervilles the last two weeks, which I missed, though apparently they’re now putting the episodes online, in a limited-time-only kind of way.  So that one is still available, though it’s also four hours long.  I read Tess a few years ago, in the quiet evenings of my summer in New Hampshire.  I remember being captivated by it, and then somewhat frustrated by the ending.

This week and next are Wuthering Heights (clocking in at a total of a mere two and a half hours).  That was one of my big reads this summer, so I’m interested to see what they did with it.  I’m a little confused about how the book makes it onto lists of “greatest love stories of all time” when the main characters seem to resist all attempts at being made likable.  He’s a brute, she’s neurotic, everyone’s miserable.  Amusingly, in some ways it was the inverse of Tess, in that I liked the way it ended.

After that, MT is running the Sense and Sensibility that they used as part of the Jane Austen love fest of last year.  My preferred adaptation is still the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet one, but this one’s good too.

And we’re getting Dickens adaptations for the rest of the spring!  Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, and The Old Curiosity Shop.  I’ve seen Oliver! (the movie musical) and I’ve been to the “Old Curiosity Shop,” but otherwise this is all new to me.

Looks like when the show turns back into Mystery! for the summer, we’re getting a few more Miss Marple stories, too.  I always enjoy those — the little old lady sleuth is so delightfully unexpected.

It’s sunny and gorgeous here in the lovely southwest — cool enough to pull out jackets and maybe some sweaters, but warm enough to enjoy the outdoors.  This is great.  I love cute jackets.

Since late September, I’ve had a freelance writing/editing gig going with a company that produces vacation planning materials.  I’m still hoping for a local, full-time publishing niche to open up, but having this for the time being is very nice.  It keeps me from sitting here bored, it keeps me from getting rusty, and of course the pay is appreciated as well.

Wedding planning is moving along smoothly.  In addition to the ceremony location and the reception location, we now also have a minister and a pair of classical guitarists to play at the ceremony.  I have my dress, shoes, and veil in my closet, and Poke even has her bridesmaid dress.  (We settled on a shade of burgundy that the dressmaker decided to call “wine.”  It’s pretty.)  Next up are tux rentals and invitations, and after that, we’ll get to flowers and cake.

Pug and I are continuing our leisurely re-watch of the ever genius Babylon 5, in which we’re ready to start season 3.  We’ve also been watching the season 1 DVDs of The Big Bang Theory, which were a Christmas gift — his parents’ way of insisting that he really would enjoy it (and, of course, he does).  And one of these days I’m going to get him caught up on the current season of How I Met Your Mother.  I’m not usually much for sitcoms, but those two I like a lot.

Speaking of which, I have been “moonlighting on another blog,” as Courtney sneakily pointed out on my last post.  Courtney, my Boston roommate, has been keeping a TV review blog called Raked for about a year and a half, and I sometimes get in on the fun through ridiculously long comments on the Heroes posts and guest-blogging about How I Met Your Mother.  We enjoy it, and apparently other people out there read it too!  Amazing. I don’t use the same handles I use here, but you’d recognize me.

On the literary front, once I finished the pile of various vampire books, I moved into a category of “other people’s extra copies” — many thanks to the generosity of my friends!  I finally went back to Dune, which I  started (barely) months ago, read on the plane at Christmas time, and finally finished shortly after getting back.  It’s a neat book and I enjoyed it a great deal, but the story didn’t really start to move for me until Stilgar and his group find Paul and Jessica in the desert.  From there to the end, I was hooked.   I would ask those of you who’ve read the book, though: is it just my preference for micro over macro, or did you find Herbert’s descriptions of hand-to-hand combat more effective than his large battle scenes?  It was clear to me from the first description of training exercises in the early chapters that Herbert could write a duel, and I thought the later, higher stakes ones were captivating. Regardless, I enjoyed the subtle machinations throughout, and was very impressed by the …unique-ness of the world Herbert created.

After Dune, I flew through The Eyre Affair, a book-lover’s sci-fi mystery madness, if there ever was one!  Set in the England of an alternate universe in which the Crimean War has lasted over 130 years and French revisionists seem to be altering not just the history but the actual past, a woman named Thursday Next works for a branch of detectives who solve literary crimes and briefly gets trapped inside the story of Jane Eyre.  Hilariously good fun! I figured out the parallel between an aspect of Thursday’s life and of Jane’s well before Thursday did, which I enjoyed.  Perhaps the only weak spot in the book is that the bad guys (an unsophisticated term, but utterly appropriate) are far less intersting than the good guys.

My next read is Bleak House, by Dickens, because January seems the right time of year to read it.  (I intended to last year, but there was the whole grad school plus full-time job madness going on at the time.)  I picked up a second-hand copy a couple of years ago and it’s been calling to me to read it…  I haven’t read any Dickens except for picking up A Tale of Two Cities in high school (I’ve never even actually read A Christmas Carol) so it’s high time I started filling in some of those gaps.

– Impressive, disturbing, and a dark sort of tribute to American capitalism:  we present the Wal-Mart virus.

– By this point, I think most of you have seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  (And if not, it’s still available on iTunes; DVD to come out sometime soon.)  Shockingly, Pug and I thought it was fantastic, and still go about humming about freeze rays and Bad Horse.  Goodness knows it got a ton of media coverage, but I offer a couple of my favorites:  The Dr. Horrible oral history, because it amuses me, and the NPR piece, because I’m impressed that they picked it up.

– The fourth book in the Twilight series, which has been enjoying popularity among those inclined towards YA vampire-romances, came out this weekend to Potter-like midnight release parties.  I know that at least a couple of you have read the books and enjoyed them — and that at least a couple of you have read the books and offered your critiques on them.  I haven’t read any of them, but I thought this Salon article offered what seems to me like some particularly insightful commentary on them.  (And while we’re at Salon, the same writer had some worthwhile notes on Harry Potter 7.  Naturally, it’s an article from a year ago, but I just finished re-reading Deathly Hallows, so I enjoyed that one as well.  I think she’s pretty fair about Rowling’s strengths and weaknesses.)

– And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (remember A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ?) passed away this weekend.

Later: Woah!  They’re making a Gatchaman movie?  Carmen, did we know about this?  I don’t really expect this to be what you would call… good, but Cartoon Network ran a dubbed version called G-Force that my brothers and I enjoyed when I was nine or ten, so it might get a few nostalgia points.

Well, now that’s six unrelated topics.  Or five.  Oh well; the title sounds better as it is.

Donna Noble! Brainy specs! Ancient Rome! Giant bees! Robotic claw! The Ood! Martha in green slime! SO excited!

Season 4 of Doctor Who comes to the SciFi Channel on April 18 at 8:30 p.m. EST. They’re starting (as usual) with the hour and a half Christmas special from this year, and in subsequent weeks it’ll be one hour at 9:00 p.m.

I literally saw something like this on a science fiction show two weeks ago and though, “Hmm, pretty clever! That seems feasible in the near future.” I mean, not special goggles or bionic eyes or anything, just contact lenses.

Apparently that’s true for all values of “near future.”

Either that or someone at Torchwood is leaking alien technology into mainstream research firms again.

(Yeah, it really was ten years. Elf, didn’t we go see at least one of them together? I could be mis-remembering, but it sounds plausible for ten years ago.)

Next item, let’s look forward to the next opportunity to see Star Trek on the big screen! I’m talking about the potentially spoiler-icious link posted on Nodwick yesterday. Yes, ladies and gents, behind the cut is Spoiler City…assuming, of course, that the source is actually in the know. Which we don’t know. But just in case, you’ve been warned.

Down the rabbit hole we go. Potential spoilers…

Yup. If you must tell a Starfleet Academy story, it’s gotta be how Kirk beat the no-win scenario. However, I don’t think this is an Academy story because they’ve cast the entire Enterprise deck crew. And to reveal that all these people happened to know each other at the Academy (and, moreover, were all there at the same time, which just doesn’t work) starts to sound like a Trek version of A Pup Named Scooby Doo or Muppet Babies (”All the same relationships, but cute and little!” I exaggerate. And for note, I adored Muppet Babies when I was about five. But that isn’t the point. Moving on…).

I’m also skeptical that the actors who have been cast would have been chosen if the characters are supposed to be Academy-age. I know these things are fluid in Hollywood, but that’s my hunch.

So I suppose there could be a part of the movie that involves the Academy and the Kobayashi Maru, but I think most of the story will take place on the Enterprise.

I also think a storyline that depends on the assumption that Kirk’s absence would change Federation history would have to be handled very, very carefully — (A) it sounds too much like things that were said in Enterprise about Archer and it got old, and (B) worshiping your main character is just kind of tacky. I don’t deny that his absence would change Federation history — I’ll spare you the list; you can make your own — but that’s entirely beside the point.

However. Incorporating the Guardian of Forever would be awesome. Brilliant! Fantastic!

Futher movie news: Appearing at some point in the movie are Kirk’s father and Spock’s mother… played by actors who are about the same age as those who are playing Kirk and Spock, so maybe we’re flitting all over time. Huh.

	Ignore the brooding vampire in the foreground for a minute and check out the crosshatch-y bookcases at the left.
	Here’s a closer look.

I imagine this wouldn’t hold as many books as a conventional bookcase of the same dimensions, but it is visually appealing and seems like a good way to group books into small-ish categories.

But can the same be said of the genre shows that have premiered this week? Here’s a sampling:

Bionic Woman. She isn’t Seven of Nine until they put her in a catsuit.

Journeyman. I can’t make the comparisons to Quantum Leap because I never watched that.

Moonlight. Referred to in some corners of the internet as “the show that isn’t Angel.”

BIONIC WOMAN.
I know nothing about the old Bionic Woman, so this is all new to me — the young woman (Jamie Sommers) who is in a car crash with her surgeon/professor/bionics expert boyfriend. He is largely unscathed, but she is dying — at least until he has her taken to the Top Secret Government Lab and replaces both legs, an arm, an eye, and an ear with bionic parts. Of course, she wakes up and freaks out. Meanwhile, the Top Secret Government people are freaking out that Boyfriend has abused his position as one of them to save Jamie’s life. They are very much interested in a bionic person, but for military purposes, and of course, she’s a civilian. The question of what to do with her goes around in circles for a while while she grows frustrated with being kept in the underground facility (SG-1 is probably next door). Boyfriend helps her escape and she runs home on her bionic legs, but not before he impresses upon her the importance of keeping her new strengths a total secret. Of course — which leads us to the age-old struggle of the superhero to keep her family and friends from knowing about her powers. In Jamie’s case, that means her sister. Buffy-style, mom is dead and dad’s a deadbeat, and we are shown early on that there’s a lot of tension in the sisters’ relationship. Naturally, lying about where she’s been for several days is a great addition. I’m tired of this angst already. The end of the episodes shows Jamie, in her night job as a bartender, encountering Rogue Bionic Woman (who, coincidentally, caused Jamie’s car crash in the first place), following her, and fighting. On a rooftop. In the rain.

Boys, have fun with this. Call me if it improves.

Seriously, though, the ideas and issues behind the show are interesting and worth considering, but I’ll probably wait and see if this matures or fizzles before trying to get invested in these characters. I want more from character interaction than just angst or exposition.
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JOURNEYMAN.
If the Bionic Woman has a minimum of personal connections, the Journeyman (Dan) has a veritable spider’s web of them. He has an estranged brother (Jack), who used to date his wife (Katie), back when he was engaged to another woman (Livia), who has since died in a plane crash. He also has a boss (his editor at the San Francisco Chronicle) who knows the ins and outs of his personal life — apparently this marriage has been on the rocks at least once. And oh yeah, there’s a kid, a boy of about seven who takes piano lessons.

The point of all this seems to be that when Dan suddenly wakes up in 1987 and doesn’t reappear in 2007 for two days, lots of people worry. In fact, the 2007 plotline — in just the pilot, mind you — includes an anniversary, a twice-missed deadline, a car crash, accusations of drug-use, an intervention, a piano recital, and upgrading his wife’s wedding ring. Meanwhile, in the past Dan keeps running into two people. One is a man who also has some serious relationship problems, and the other is Livia, the dead fiancee (and how do you like the moral issue of almost cheating on your wife in the past with your dead girlfriend?). Like Dan, we have no time to breathe in this episode.

Obviously, there’s a lot of relationship angst in this show too, and the burden of secrecy weighs pretty heavily as well. I was pleased that he did try to confide in his wife (did I mention the accusations of drug-use and the intervention?), and the final scene with the ring saved the show for me. I’m interested in how the implications of that promise will affect the next few episodes. What I’m not interested in watching is the train wreck of an adulterous relationship develop (with the adorable kid caught in the middle), and that’s a direction that would be all too easy for the writers to take.
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MOONLIGHT.
Oddly enough, the vampire show is the most light-hearted of these three, which I thought was a nice relief. The opening was shot as if it were an interview with the vampire (go ahead and groan, Anne Rice fans), which (a) felt very contrived (and out of universe — who is supposedly interviewing him?), and (b) felt like a deliberate attempt to distance the show from BuffyandAngel and all the other vampire stories out there. Which is to say that he answered all the questions like “do you sleep in a coffin?” (no, in a freezer), “how can you kill a vampire?” (fire and decapitation; no stakes in this show), “what about garlic and sunlight” (garlic tastes good on a pizza and sunlight, conveniently, just gives him a headache or something). It’s also made clear later in the episode that our hero, Mick St. John is not a vampire-with-a-soul — in fact, souls don’t seem to be the issue, and vampires seem to be more human than monster (I suppose taking the view that humans can be plenty monstrous as it is). He’s merely a vampire with a conscience. Less Angel, more Highlander. Maybe the vampire equivalent of a vegan (because of course our hero doesn’t feed on live humans — he’s got a change-of-heart story in his past). He’s not out to cleanse L.A. of demons, nor is he sponsored by the Powers the Be: he’s just a private investigator. And he’s got an actual license.

And characterwise, Mick is very much not Angel — he’s more like the suave guy Xander so desperately wants to be. He’s contrasted with his vampire friend Josef, a paranoid hedonist whose redeeming characteristic seems to be his very dry sense of humor. The last part of the equation is Beth, a reporter who has the look and feel of police detective Kate Lockley from Angel. There’s clearly a friendship and a partnership in the works here. The writing didn’t have any Whedon-esque spark to it, but wasn’t painful, and though the mystery of the week was on the lame end of the spectrum, Mick and Beth are likable. It could be fun.

What worries me about the future of this show was that they showed a montage of stuff to come for which they used a Celine Dion song and hinted strongly at the possibility of a relationship between Mick and Beth. I love the idea of a Mulder/Scully partnership (though what I really mean is Monday/Frankley for the Mathnet nerds out there), but I’m not interested in the schmoopiness: partly because he rescued her from another vamp when she was about seven, which casts him as a father figure; partly because he’s been watching over her ever since, which casts him as a stalker. So double eww. But until they go there, I’m in.
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Well, when last heard from, I was with the family, nose deep in Harry Potter. Since then, I’m back in the city, back in school, and on the hunt for the elusive full-time job.

In the last month, I’ve interviewed for four positions, and the first two have already given me the “thanks, but no thanks.” The other two were both last week, so I’m waiting to hear back from those. One is a company that publishes books on religion (especially Buddhism and Hinduism), Eastern philosophies and also some fiction, poetry, and history. I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at the other one (a very well-respected medical journal), but I’m especially excited about the first one.

I have two evening classes, same as last fall. One is magazine ethics, and the other is book publicity. My ethics prof has turned out to be hilarious, so a class that was not one of my first choices looks like it will turn out well.

When I got back in August, I let my roommate talk me into helping out with a production of Crimes of the Heart that she was assistant directing. She was putting together a group of villagers to sort of set the scene before the show and during the two intermissions. Lots of improv, lots of gossiping about the people in the play. Plus, Crimes happens to be set in small town Mississippi in the 1970’s, so this became a fun opportunity to pull out my outrageously fake Southern accent and see how many times I could work in phrases like “bless her heart!” each night (there were five performances in early September). It was a lot of fun, and the cast were a really neat bunch of people.

***

Further evidence of my strange sense of humor:
(I forget how I tripped over these… I had them saved here in a draft post, just waiting to be inflicted on you all.)

Before-they-were-famous celebrity commercials. Yes, the famous person aspect is amusing in some of them (Keanu Reeves, anyone?). But also: why are commercials suddenly hilarious once they reach the ten year age mark?

80’s robots we should have by now (maybe). Check out the “present day equivalent” of Data…

Social stereotypes in cereal mascots. What, you’re still with me? No, seriously, it’s worth a laugh. Or a frown in distress over what society is coming to. Or perhaps a frown over how easy it is to over analyze cartoon characters. Your choice.

And while we’re wandering around Cracked, let’s take a look at the five questions that had better be answered by season two of Heroes. Not bad as a refresher, especially if the show hasn’t crossed your mind all summer. I like it, but the drawback of having about ten “main” characters is that none of them really take on a life of their own.