Charloween

All I have to say about Heroes is this: it's a far easier show to watch, now that I've given up any kind of critical or emotional attachment to the characters.

But I have to say: I enjoy any scene with Ma Petrelli and Sylar together 'cause they're my two favourites.

Everyone else we see so briefly that it's hardly worth while showing them on screen. Each character's section is so short that it feels like I'm watching a series of ads. Here's Parkman, there's a commercial for toilet paper, there's Hiro, here's Peter, here's an ad for car insurance. I have more investment in the lives of the people selling me frozen dinners. Watching TV with ads in sucks, man.

amyisyellow is currently my favourite roommate. Why?

Because today she bought a Wii. And she lets us play with it when she's out. The golfing game is hard. Actually, everything except bowling and boxing is iffy in a living room that's about 64 sq ft. But Wii Play? DUCK HUNT! And the cow racing game. And that creepy matching game where your other Miis pop up wandering in crowds. There's a few dozen computer-generated faces, and then suddenly there's your face staring back at you from the crowd. Creepy, but awesome.

I'm SO going to spend the next week making Mii-avatars of the characters from Arrested Development, Doctor Who, Heroes, Firefly, etc... 'cause in the games? You play as the characters you've designed. THAT means I can have Ten boxing, like, Peter Petrelli, or have a bowling team made up of Mal Reynolds, Buster Bluth, Niki Sanders and The Master. :D Can you imagine, though? Mal and The Master together in the same room? Mal wouldn't have voted for Saxon because he wouldn't trust any gorram politician. Or maybe he's got a dramatically convenient war wound that would block the signals. Or maybe Mr. Universe made special tinfoil hats for the crew so they wouldn't get caught up in Saxonmania. Hee.

...I think I may have missed the point of the Wii.

Still. *geek*

I LOVE YOU AMY FOR BUYING THE WII OMG!

EDIT: Thanks to an awkward lj hiccup, half the entry posted and then collapsed in on itself. clamore (in a comment to the vanished partial-entry) suggested a Tobias vs Sylar boxing match. Hee!

Tonight's Heroes was all about the cute little hurt face from Nathan when the kid!Petrellis told him they didn't like the beard. Good job, Pasdar! Also good job with the tousled hair. I approve.

And Mama Petrelli is so my favourite character. ( All the best lines! )

The Big Ones:
- I'm glad that Ugly Betty got recognition. It's a cute, consciously campy show with a good heart and funny characters. Cliche, I know - but I watched it. The Alexis plotline was handled pretty damn well for American prime time TV.

- I'm okay with Heroes getting shafted. It started out with great promise, but then they got scared and boring and the last ten or so episodes (counting from when Christopher Eccleston disappeared finished his guest spot) were dull and almost painful.

- I'm very okay with James Spader winning anything, 'cause he's plainly quite awesome.

- I've never seen an episode of The Sopranos. Still.

- Terry O'Quinn is also great fun. Yay for him winning an acting award.

Proof That All Is Right With the World:
- Dexter won stuff for editing, which is where the show really stands out from anything else on TV. It uses editing to create the show's extraordinary level of identification with the main character.

It's quite hard to replicate a novel's subjectivity on the screen, but Dexter comes close, thanks to the acting, some interesting camera angles and the way those two elements are pieced together in the editing room creates the show's unique look and feel. The costume, lighting, set etc. design all support that project of subjectivity, but it's the editing that makes or breaks the whole thing.

- "Dick in a Box" won for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

- South Park's "Make Love, Not Warcraft" won for Outstanding Animated Program.

What the Eff?
- I don't think that awards shows should be allowed to give other awards shows any awards. The Oscars and the Grammys both won shit. Hello? When have the Oscars ever had Outstanding Musical Direction? And the Grammys: Outstanding Lighting Direction (Electronic, Multi-Camera) For Variety, Music or Comedy Programing?

It sounds like someone's created the categories just for those shows.

The Tony broadcast won an award for some category called Outstanding Special Class Program. Shouldn't all awards shows be nominated ONLY under that category?

Sign number 74 that I'm destined to be a crazy cat lady/academic: while my contemporaries talk about weddings (like, seriously... four different groups in the past two weeks, planning weddings!), I'm here planning what I'm going to take next year and how much fun I'm going to have doing both a directed reading course/independent study and a senior thesis. I'll end up with at least three papers worth publishing! When I went today to talk to one of the professors about the Crazy Directed Reading Plan, I not only got him on side, but he also gave me a fun and wanky title ("Image Hybridities", HEE!), he called my bizarre Cronenberg idea "just fucked up enough to be adorable" and and AND he told me he's working on something himself about an amv. Which means he totally wants to see me work more on writing about fanvids. Thing is, he asked me if I was going to do anything *does happy dance of academic geekery*

I just need to fill out the paperwork and then track down McCullough and get him to agree to the thesis (which is a kind of amorphous blob of "narrative forms on television" and "omg I love Heroes, The Wire and Doctor Who"). Truly, I may be able to build a career on professional fangirling, deconstructing the things I love by applying and/or creating the appropriate theories to explain the parts I've laid bare. Finding out what makes them tick, as it were. (Also, Phil? You left your snowglobe on my desk.)

My meeting with MacKenzie today also included really quite valuable info on grad programs, and where I might be most interested to go. Carleton and Concordia are more traditional, history-based and film-centred programs, whereas places in California (UC BERK!) would give me more freedom to play with "the interaction of images between television screens and computer screens and their mediation through contemporary dialogues". (<-- the probable subtitle for the "Image Hybridities" course.) I like theory more than history (history is fun, but I'm not much of a historian because I don't have the patience), and so the US looks better and better if I can get the funding.

So weddings? Not much on my radar. Now back to African literature. Oh, summer classes. You're so random and barely relevant!

OT: Isn't this song totally a Heroes song? Maybe, maybe not. (Maybe "Lost in the Plot" is a better one... heh.) I made a comment about listening to The Dears, and a friend at work (who's pretty plugged into the indie scene) hadn't heard of them.

Tonight, on Heroes: ( creative ways to cull the characters )

I stole a TV to watch Heroes.

AND I'VE BEEN RIGHT ALL ALONG. SYLAR ACTUALLY IS JUST CUDDLY AND MISUNDERSTOOD.

Not everyone's Hannibal Lecter, you know.

*cuddles Sylar*

Also? There's a kid in my summer class who looks exactly like Peter. *flails*

Holy flipping one-eyed mermaids, Heroes is for sure the good crack. ( Hereos 1x20 )

Things causing stress: ( blah blah moving and term papers blah )

On the upside:
...one of the term papers I turned in a while back has been graded. Even though it was a B paper, I still squeaked through with an A on the class. A very low A. One of those A grades that I'm tempted to dismiss as a pity A. But still: an A.

...from the previews, Heroes is going to have a fun and cracky end of the season. And ( babbling about this week's ep, '0.7'; including inappropriate SW giggles )

I've been trying to make a Heroes fanmix, but the show moves so fast that I can't keep up. Here's a taste, a snippit or teaser of one of the three mixes I've tried to put together for the show. So. Before tonight's episode, these are some of the Peter songs. ( Peter-y songs )

(An a SPN interlude: a cracky conversation ends up in Wee!chester fic. Full credit to xtinethepirate for enabling the Wee!Dean figure skater.)

( Heroes, 'Parasite'; aka Watch out Joss, Tim Kring's challenging you for ownership of my soul. )