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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Paper chain

Two of my friends in my program who I also work with did a great thing two weeks ago.

They created a paper chain counting down the end of school.

One for each week (way less daunting than one for each day).

At the end of the week, they write what they hated about that week and burn it.

I'm going to watch an episode of The Catherine Tate Show and make my own.

13 weeks...

12 if you don't count Spring Break (which I will since I'll be working my way through the "break").

Monday, January 2, 2012

My New Obsession

Doctor Who


Oh, the doctor. I haven't even watched all of it yet, but I still feel it worthy of blogging about. It's been playing on and off for the last forty-something years and the current series started in 2005. I'm really late jumping on the band wagon, but at least I'm on. Not only that, but I'm catching up. I need to before school starts cause I won't have any time after that.

(A few disclaimers before you get into this post. 1- I really like TV. So much so that I blog about it more than once. 2- I'm a nerd and a fangirl and I'm more than a few steps on the obsessive side of the scale. 3- My life while I'm going to school is constant school and work. During the breaks I give my mind a breather and watch a lot of television. If there's anything in these sentences that make you roll your eyes or sigh in a not endearing way, maybe you shouldn't continue reading.)

So let me tell you about how I jumped on the Doctor Who wagon. I vaguely remember seeing a couple episodes of the older series when I was young. However, there are a few things that lead me to believe that these vague memories are false. First, they had to have been reruns because the original series ended two years after I was born. Second, I can't remember where I watched them. Third, my family didn't get satellite TV until I was in high school. Fourth, my mind sometimes makes up things and passes them off on me as memory. Thus, I'm 99% sure I have never seen any of the older episodes. I did, however, know what Doctor Who was. Don't ask me why, but it's probably just in my genes. A love of scifi is pretty engrained into my family (well, at least two-thirds of us). Anyway, I knew that the new series existed, but I never watched it until I saw it on Netflix (and even then it took several months to watch the first episode).

That first episode was not impressive. It was campy (not in a bad way), fun, and I did like the character of The Doctor, but the character of Rose Tyler kind of bugged me and the villains that first episode were really just painful (mannequins came to life in that one). I watched the first episode and put it away for a couple of months. I was still in school and I didn't have a whole lot of time to get into a new show. After that though, it was like Doctor Who was everywhere. I remembered people I knew in the past who loved it, I met new people who loved it, and all of the "geek" boards I followed on Pinterest were constantly pinning things about Doctor Who.

Then Christmas Break came. Oh, glorious month (yes, I get a month off in grad school at the U). I was still working, but work is completely different. I suddenly had copious amounts of free time. I had decided to use that time to watch Breaking Bad. And it did start out that way. I watched the first season (all 7 episodes) and the first half of the first episode of the second season. My dad had been in and out during the first season and he had a question while we were watching 201 that made me pause it and explain pretty much everything that happened in the first season. If you've seen Breaking Bad, you know that explaining the first season (or watching it for that matter) is not clean or pretty. It's full of murder and meth and guts and all that jazz. While I was explaining a particularly gruesome scene (when the acid burns through Jesse's bathtub in case you've seen it), my mom came out of the bathroom where she was getting ready for the day and asked, "is it THIS show you're talking about?" She then proceeded to say how no one should subject themselves to something like that and she really didn't want me to watch it. At the time I figured I'd just watch it when she wasn't around or in my bedroom. I turned Breaking Bad off and played the second episode of Doctor Who. I still haven't finished the second half of that first episode of Breaking Bad. And I probably won't until I'm graduated.

Why wait, do you ask? Why wait to watch things like Doctor Who, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men? It's because of my obsessive nature. When I get into something I GET INTO IT. Hard core. When I discover a new actor I totally love, I watch anything and everything I can that they have been in. Same goes for directors, restaurants, bands, random topics of information... but perhaps the most intense I am with something is with a TV show. A good TV show has the great actors, the great writers, fantastic characters, and it lasts a long time. Even the short-lived 'Wonderfalls' of television last longer than a movie. What's wrong with a book, you may ask? Nothing, but I rarely read fiction these days. I get my fiction from TV and my non-fiction from books. Anyway, I become a little obsessive and I tend to shirk responsibility when I'm in that mode so I tend to wait until I'm not going to school to get into something new.

Anyway, thus began my obsession with Doctor Who. So far in this series, there have been three different doctors. The Doctor, just so you know, is the last of a race of alien called Time Lords and his body regenerates when human beings would die. Making The Doctor over 900 years old and allowing the show to be about the same man over decades and (so far) eleven different actors portraying him. The Doctor in the first season of the new series (Doctor number 9) was played by Christopher Eccleston. He was fine, but nothing really special. Plus I knew that he regenerated after only one season and that the 10th Doctor was considered to be one of the best Doctors in existence so I was excited to move on.

The tenth Doctor is David Tennant (pictured above) and he's The Doctor for seasons 2-4. Not only is David Tennant my newest actor obsession (David Tennant as Benedick or Hamlet, anyone?), David Tennant's Doctor is my new fictional crush. Since I was 16ish it's been Spike from Buffy. He's my favorite character in Buffy, my favorite character in Angel, and his picture was the background on my phone for a long time. My background has recently changed. I'll be the first to admit that "obsessed" would be a fitting word, but as my brother once said, "obsessive is what lazy people call the dedicated." Actually, Spike had a very special place in my fangirl heart for so long and I wondered what it was about David Tennat's Doctor (I have to specify because it isn't any old Doctor - it's David Tennant's Doctor) pushed him out. While trying to figure out what they had in common, I could only come up with a couple of things. First, they're both skinny and British. I've always had a thing for skinny guys in general, but give them an accent, and apparently you're set in my book. Second, they both wear trench coats. Spike stole his off the body of the second Slayer he killed in the late 70s, and The Doctor got his from Janis Joplin. Third, they both have really awesome (albeit slightly weird) hair. Other than that, they are complete opposites. I must be pretty shallow because nothing they have in common has to do with their personality. But I do understand why The Doctor won out in the end. Rebel vampire vs. an eccentric alien (who happens to look fantastic) who takes you traveling through time and space in a little blue box (it's bigger on the inside). Is there really any competition?

I've only seen a few episodes with Matt Smith's version of The Doctor. He's fun so far ("bow ties are cool"), but I still miss David Tennant a lot ("people assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey ...stuff," and "it's my timey-wimey detector. It goes 'ding' when there's stuff"). Wow, those quotes are so much cooler when you say them with a British accent.

To sum up, I LOVE DOCTOR WHO and I'm so sad no one forced me to watch this back it 2005. Oh that's sad. What people have been watching for 6 years I will have caught up in about 3 weeks... Told you - obsessive.