Can I say "hiatus" on TV?

Well, kiddos, the time has come for me to shut this big ol' blog down. You see, between work, and the press, and the press' blog, and updating my myspace page alla freakin' time, and finding a better place to obsess about Doctor Who, Monkey has finally finished the taco.

I'll leave the blog up for a little while, at least until I archive everything.

So thanks to everyone who posted comments and read my nerdy ramblings. It was... fun.*



*You KNOW I had to work in a nerdy ending reference, right?

A nerd with a life. It's like a talking dog.

One of the downsides of being addicted to British TV is that I only get to watch what BBC America lets me watch.

This leads to some severe programming frustration. For instance, take this weekend. Eight million Brits got to watch the premiere of season 3 of Doctor Who on Saturday. But I won’t get to watch it until July. So instead of sitting in my dim living room in rumpled pj’s, watching David Tennant snog the new companion, I was having a fantastic dinner with a group of fun new friends, in a hip restaurant down the street.

Okay, bad example. But still, it’s frustrating.

UPDATE: I finally broke down and watched it on youtube. It was good. Thanks to the bloke who took pity on us yanks and posted it in ten-minute installments. If I ever get back to England, first pint's on me.

Kind of a gyp.

The other day, we brought our older dog in for a vet visit. She developed a wart between the toes of her foot, which she decided to treat on her own through a vigorous regimen of licking it over and over, usually at around 4 a.m. This not being effective, we decided a little trip to the vet to get it taken care of was in order.

When Dan brought her in, the vet took one look at the wart and decided it was not serious enough to warrant being removed. Our dog is maybe twelve or so years old, and unnecessary anesthesia is not something dogs need at that age.

But the vet was very nice, and really marveled at how healthy the dog is for her age. Apparently our strict routine of not walking the dog at all and basically letting her do whatever the hell she wants is working. The vet took some blood work, just in case, and sent us on our way with a bill for $75.

We were so proud that she was such a healthy dog that it took a little while for what had happened to sink in: we had basically just paid $75 for the privilege of having the vet compliment our dog.

Not that we begrudge our dog going to the vet, or paying for it. But still, for $75, I would hope that our dog would get something more out of it than unnecessary blood work, an excuse to keep licking her foot, and a doggie treat. Maybe they could have clipped her nails or something, or brushed her teeth. Cripes.

This one goes to eleven.

I don’t go to the movies very often. This surprises a lot of people, as if frequent theater attendance was some kind of moral obligation. But no, I only tend to go a few times a year, if that.

I have a very good reason for not going to the movies very often: I cry at EVERYTHING.* This makes going to the movies not so fun:

• Serenity? Bawled, even though I had never seen Firefly. (I have now, of course. I mean, duh.)
• Elf? I can’t remember why, but I did!
• Chronicles of Narnia? What, are you kidding? I was on a plane for that one.
• Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace? Cried. No joke. When the kid left his mommy.
• Return of the King? Folks, I cried just THINKING about going to this movie. I cried at the opening credit music, I cried at the part with the signal fires, basically I never stopped for the entire three hours.

Now, before everyone rushes in to offer me their leftover Zoloft, please bear in mind it goes the other way as well. Things that are just “eh” funny to other people make me pee my pants. For instance, the new Taco Bell commercial, where the lion says “Ricardo Montalban” actually makes me laugh, out loud, full belly laugh, each and every time I see it.

The problem is, my susceptibility to the ol’ Hollywood Mel-O-Drama is permanently set to 11. Sad things are sadder, funny things are funnier, shitty things are shittier. Seriously, it’s like the emotional content of most movies that I actually want to see (i.e. vampire movies; movies about books I read; movies with robots, dragons, and/or robotic dragons) is completely too much – everything is over the top. Even the soundtrack slams you over the head with emotional cues every second. This is especially annoying to me – because I attended music school, I can see right through every godawful note than John Williams steals, I mean, composes. Yet he still gets to me, the bastard. I hate that guy.

Anyway, I don’t go to movies about robotic vampire dragons because I want to get in touch with my sappy side – I go to see some asses kicked, some clichés re-hashed, and some fantastic CGI flames spurting out of the robotic dragon’s mouth. If I want to watch a movie which will make me think or have an emotional reaction other than “Woo-hoo!”, I will rent a DVD and buy a box of tissues. The problem is, these days, I can’t tell the difference.

The point is, if you ask me and Dan to the movies, please don’t be offended if only Dan shows up. There’s only so much pent-up sniffling and surreptitious eye-dabbing I can take.

*And when I cry, you know it. My nose gets all red, my face gets all blotchy, and my eyes get super-bloodshot. No hiding that mess.

Questions, questions, too many questions...

The other day I was watching a movie about zombies - I think it was a Resident Evil incarnation. I know, I usually watch only vampire movies, but there were none on at the time. Also, I have come to the realization that I will watch basically anything that Milla Jovovich is in, not because I particularly like her as an actress, but because I can't seem to look away. It's like the Puppy Bowl. She's just so cute - standing around, looking confused, kicking ass.

ANYWAY, getting off topic here, the point is that I began to ponder the central tenet of zombie movies. Please keep in mind that I don't watch many, so I could be way off here. As I understand it, (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, my good fellow nerds) zombies seek out the living and eat them. So far, so good.

Here's where I get confused. If the zombies are eating the living, as you often see in the popular aerial shot of a crowd of the undead converging on a hapless victim/martyr with only three bullets left, then how come said victims are always seen later in the film, themselves shambling zombies, missing exactly ZERO body parts?

What, exactly, are the zombies eating? If fifty zombies attacked a single human, you'd think that the end result would be fifty temporarily satiated zombies picking their teeth with finger bones, possibly wondering if they had any Tums left back at Zombie HQ.

But in the movies what you end up with is fifty-one zombies, with the victim often not even featuring any bite marks.

And I don't get the eating brains argument either. I thought that the only way to kill zombies was to shoot them in the head, thereby stopping whatever brain function they have. But if they EAT brains, and the person whose brain they ate ALSO becomes a zombie, then you'd have a zombie with no brain, no? And how do they get the brains out? A straw? Egyptian nose hook? Kind of complicated procedure for a zombie with no fine motor skills.

Please folks, fill me in. I am genuinely confused by this. That's why I stick to vampires.

She lives!

Hola amigos, I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I've been pretty busy. What with the one job and the other job and the hey hey hey. Also, nothing interesting has been happening of late which would warrant a post to this, your favorite self-indulgent blog.

However, a topic has arisen which, given my personal background (nerd), I would be remiss not to address: the new BBC-produced Robin Hood show.

I know, I know, you're probably wondering what has taken me so long to get to it, given that the debut was two days ago. You might even be amazed that I didn't live-blog it. Well, there is a good reason for the delay: I didn't watch it.

(I'll just pause so you can get over your shock. Take as long as you like.)

Now, to be honest, I did tune in to the first few minutes, and I kind of flipped around too, so I did catch some of it. But I have two very good reasons for not watching the whole thing:

1. If I watch any more British TV shows, the BBC will officially have a majority share of my remaining neurons.

2. I was forever ruined for Robin Hood shows by the Showtime series Robin Hood the Legend. By "ruined", I mean, "I loved the show with an unholy passion and I would have married the show if possible and so consequently no Robin Hood portrayal will ever live up to that standard."

If you were a nerd with Showtime who lived through the 1980's, you will remember this show. It featured Michael Praed (and later Jason Connery, son of Sean) as Robin Hood (or, as the soundtrack identified him: "Rooo-bin..... the hooded man...) I believe there was also a man who wore a deerhead mask, Maid Marion wore lots of mauve sparkly 80's eyeshadow, and the mood music was primarily comprised of electronic drums fed through a reverb.

So, clearly, no contemporary show could even approach the bar set by this masterpiece. But, let's be honest, I'll probably end up watching the show anyway. I'm a sucker for anything with bows and arrows in it. I should have been a fletcher.

I don't really hate children. Really I don't.

I know I’ve spoke before (at length, most likely) about the building in which I work. About how the landlady doesn’t really have her shit together, business-wise, and fails to understand that the relationship between an office tenant and the building owner should be purely professional. No, to her we are more like nieces and nephews crashing at her house for a few months. So she rules with an iron fist, in the way that only a rich, new-age, neohippie who’s never worked a day in her life can.

When she was choosing tenants for the building, she wanted to get a mix of non-profits and for-profits that were “like-minded”, so that together the building could “become a little community.” But she really doesn’t seem to have any idea that these two operations might have different standards for how office buildings should be run. The non-profits are so grateful to have clean, well-lit, spacious offices at a good price that they really don’t give a crap what happens.

Well, guess what? Those of us in it to make a few bucks (and who are paying market value for rent) aren’t so forgiving.

For example: every third Thursday, there is a mandatory “brown bag” lunch meeting that at least one person in every office must attend. We used to skip these, under the assumption that our lunch time is well, out time, but no. My bosses got yelled at, or more accurately, “had a sit-down discussion” with the owner. She was “concerned” that we didn’t “care” enough about what happens with our “neighbors” to take what little free time we have to go to these goddamn meetings.

I went to one today. The topic (I am not making this up): a slideshow of photos of an Ethiopian orphanage. Yes, the kids were cute and all, but seriously. I mean, I might have been interested at looking at five, maybe six photos. It’s a good cause, after all. But 100 pictures? 200? Let’s just say that any chance I had of caring was completely washed away by the thrilling narrative:

“Okay, now here’s the kids getting their hair washed.... Here’s my friend Jennifer putting some water on this girl’s head. They wash their hair with soap.... Okay, here’s the library... Here’s a girl who lives in Seattle now, reading a book... Here’s another girl who wants to read the book too... She’s waiting for the first girl to finish.... Now, here’s a little boy with a different book. He’s looking at the first page…” GAAAAAAH!

And it goes without saying that it was all accompanied by winsome, treacly, lonesome-singer-with-a-guitar soundtrack. Please, people. I’m glad this woman is interested in the plight of orphans in Ethiopia. That is her thing. And it’s a good thing. But it’s not my thing. Is it crazy of me to resent the landlady for forcing me to listen to people talk about their own personal interests during my free time?

No. No it is not. If it ever gets to be my turn to talk at one of these little get-togethers, I’m going to show a slide show of me going to the dog pound and looking at the dogs.

“Okay, here’s a pit bull mix. His name is Terry... Here he is going to poop. Looks like a good one... Now he’s sniffing another dog... That one’s a corgi-beagle mix. His name is Sinjin... Now Sinjin’s sniffing Terry…”