I've been randomly watching "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood" over the last couple of weeks. (Actually, I watched "Torchwood" Season 1 over the course of two nights last week. Good times.) But, there's one "Doctor Who" thing that I've watched a lot. I mean, a whole heck of a lot. It's on my not-iPod, I've got it streaming from my laptop to the Xbox, and I've favorited it on YouTube.

In fact, I love it so much that I'm *gasp* embedding it here, which is something I just don't. do. It's just that awesome.



Seriously, it's just utterly and completely charming. I love watching it. I've never seen any of the original "Doctor Who" series, but, solely based on this, I think I want to watch at least the Fifth Doctor episodes, 'cause, to quote the Doctor, "not a lot of men could carry off a decorative vegetable." Or, at the very least, I think I have to knit this hat.

Anyway, back to the laundry I have to do so I can go hang with the sis for a couple days, and then the bro for a couple of weeks. Oh, and copying my Xbox profile stuff so I can get achievements or something.

And by "still," I mean properly mentioning it.

I just rewatched Goblet of Fire, and I have to say, while I really enjoy the movie, I think there's a place where they really missed an opportunity to do something cool.

Remember in the book, at the moment of Priori Incantatem, the golden cage... thingy formed around Harry and Voldemort and Harry hears this music, which lightened his spirits while seeming to damper Voldemort's? It's because both wands share cores — feathers from Fawkes the phoenix. The music is a phoenix song, presumably Fawkes's.

With that in mind, how great would it have been, in the movie, for them to echo Fawkes's theme from Chamber of Secrets? It would have been a way to keep that thread from the books alive in the movie without having to spend any time on it. It's not the sort of thing that would need explained, and it would be a sort of Easter egg for book fans (who happen to remember the movie music).

I know, I know, nitpick much? Still, I think it would have been awesome. Of course, Fawkes's theme is one of my favorites from the series (along with the "Double Trouble" and "A Window to the Past" from Prisoner of Azkaban, and I've got a certain fondness for the "Hogwarts March" from Goblet of Fire); it's all lovely and soaring. Here, have a listen:

Fawkes the Phoenix

Pretty, huh?

OMG, y'all, there's gonna be a Lego Rock Band game! I love the Lego games, I love Rock Band, and this combines the two? How awesome is that?

Seriously, this news makes me all giddy. I think it's because it came after I discusses the ghost characters in Lego Star Wars and that they can't get killed (except by falling off of stuff) and can still, like, use light sabers and the Force and stuff. Ghost Obi-Wan is so much fun; I love him, even if he cost most of my moneys (yes, I like to call the studs moneys; it's more fun that way). His way of wielding his light saber is different than others, and I like that. Mace Windu is also very awesome, not surprisingly.

You know, if they made a Lego Harry Potter game, I'd be in the middle of a Lego trifecta of awesome. Please, Lego video game people, make a Potterverse verion; it would rock.

Look, zardi, I'm doing this in a timely-ish fashion! Whoo!

From cassandrathevil:

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

( Blathering about icons, whee! )

(Just a little something to pass the time as the DVD burner chugs along so I can clear some room on my hard drive.)

That was such a good episode, oh my goodness. I was reminded again how much I would love a sitcom featuring John Locke and Benjamin Linus sharing a tiny apartment in the city and all the antics that would inevitably ensue. I was also reminded how awesome Locke is. I really liked the calm and confident Locke. Ben was also great, but Locke's wave to Sun? Fabulous. Except that I already have two "hi" icons, I'd totally try to icon that.

In other news, Neil Gaiman listed His Girl Friday first in a short list of favorite movie contenders. Yay. I should watch that again; it's been a long time since I did. Though, I am reminded that I keep forgetting I have a good DVD copy of it, simply because the set it's in is behind a stack of other Lew Ayres DVDs. (No, Lew wasn't in HGF, but he was in Holiday, which is also featured in the set.)

Also? Apparently Adam Savage of "Mythbusters" fame has a Twitter. Apparently, he enjoys "Once More, With Feeling." And "30 Rock." So, you know, something for everyone.

And now the DVD burner is done. As am I. :D

Hey, are you fan of Flight of the Conchords and/or free music?

Well, if you are, and you're in the US and can handle a small proprietary downloader, for a limited time you can get a Flight of the Conchords song from the second season for free! You can get the song on its own (5MB), or a whole sampler album with other bands. Your choice.

Also, Amazon has a bunch of free mp3 downloads all the time. They rotate the top things out about every week or so. I've got a bunch of stuff from them so far. Their Free Songs and Special Deals section is where they put their "Friday Fives" (five albums for $5 a pop), their deal of the day (an album that's usually $2 or $3 for the day), and their free songs.

So, yeah, check it out. At least get the Conchords song; it's good.

Tonight Last night, whatever forces of good will and fun descended upon our house, and my mother, my father, my sister and I all played Rock Band together. First time this has happened. The other day, I talked my mom into creating a Rock Band character, and a few weeks ago, I got my dad to create a Rock Band 2 character. Mom, I've only seen her do vocals; Dad, he spent a while that first day working on guitar, not getting very far, and a bit of time with the drums.

So, we did some quick play (all of us on easy, because we are wusses), Dad on drums, Mom on vocal, and Amanda and me on guitar (me on main guitar, Amanda on bass). It went okay. Dad and Amanda switched, and Dad had to figure out the guitar again. We started playing, and Dad failed out once or twice, but he started getting the hang of it. Like, going from a 40% to an 85% in half a dozen songs. Mom didn't know a lot of the songs, but we pointed out that, in easy mode, you don't have to sing the songs that accurately in order for the game to think you're in the general vicinity. She ended up as a modern day Helen Kane, boop-boop-ba-dooing her way through most everything.

We got to the point of five-starring a lot of the songs, which was pretty great, and even earned an achievement — deploying an 8x multiplier in a song. So, sweet, right?

It was awesome and fun until the end, which was when Mom got evil.

Let me 'splain. There's this song you can get for the game, "Still Alive," which comes from a game I haven't actually played. But, I like singing it, in part because of the cleverness of the lyrics, the peppiness of the tune, and it's a frakkin' Rock Band song that's in my range! Ahem.

Anyway. We did the song earlier in the evening. Dad was all, "One more song." And Mom was all, "It's not Rock Band without Nancy singing 'Still Alive.'" So I'm all, "What, you wanna play guitar?" Her response? "No, I'm gonna hold the mike for you, and you're gonna sing and do the guitar."

Evil.

So, here I am, still rockin' out on easy 'cause I'm a wuss and suck at anything above that (seriously, I started the hard vocal tour the other day, and hard is hard), trying to sing and remember all the words and not lose my place with the guitar part and... and.... I DON'T ACTUALLY PLAY GUITAR OR ANY ACCOMPANYING INSTRUMENT, SO THIS ISN'T SOMETHING I'M USED TO!!

That said, I did manage to get a 97% on vocals and 94% on guitar, which isn't too shabby. (I'm bragging about my lame easy self; pathetic, really. *g*)

But, seriously? My mother is evil.

From a comment on Whedonesque:

"The Firefly Crew travel back in time to the present day and advertise for a new crew member. Tobias, thinking it's a acting job, comes aboard ... and forms a special relationship with Jayne (who, in a shocking twist, is also a never-nude.)"

Also? If you have some spare time to read stuff, I recommend checking out cleolinda's Secret Life of Dolls. There are quite a few, but she's got a wiki with good pullquotes and some basic explanations, and each entry's page links to the original journal entry. It's really fun and funny, and there are all sorts of plot twists and stuff. I think every single one has made me giggle.

For example, from the latest entry in the saga, here's Cleo's rules for The Littlest Edward:

"No biting people. Or elves. Or any bipedal beings of a vaguely humanoid nature. Or daemons. Or any stuffed animals not specifically designated for explushination. Or my dogs. You can bite the cat if you want, good luck catching him."

Beware, though, if you head to the wiki and start reading stuff there; it's very easy to get sucked in and not leave for hours. :D

...to me, anyway.

I've spent the last few... hours... going through stuff I've got archived on disc and in my email, mostly related to HOL, and I find myself hilarious. There's stuff that I barely remember doing, stuff that's just silly, and stuff I absolutely, positively cannot remember at all. Like, stuff I wrote. Creative stuff, even. Absolutely no memory jogging going on. Which is a shame, 'cause it was some sort of mystery/treasure hunt story that could have been pretty great.

And, oh, those discs with iddy biddy 320 pixel wide videos, 'cause that was pretty awesome in what I could find then. And the big, hi-res videos I downloaded that I couldn't play on the computer we had at the time, but I downloaded them for posterity (or something).

I really should sort through some of this stuff... eventually. In the meantime, up it goes, back on the shelf.

Seriously, I find the old, archived me so amusing at times.

"PS: Thou dost be knowing the things of which I meanteth, so again, as I spake unto thee before, I say unto thee again: Neener neener."

I decided to take that embroidery class. I'm oddly excited about it, though I'm not sure why. We went out yesterday, and I bought most everything I need. Except for black thread. I thought I picked some up, but I missed it. But, I'm working on a way to get it (and a few other colors) inexpensively without having to leave the house. So... *crosses fingers*

My brain is also feeling very knitty (though my socks are slow-going). Actually, I really should try to finish my socks tonight, so I can mentally move on. I want to start working on a thing, but I don't want to really start it, full-throttle, until these darn socks are finished. So... hopefully it won't take too long to do the short row heels. At the very least, at least I don't like my socks to have long legs.

I should probably go eat something-ish before dinner. I don't remember if I'm supposed to cook tonight or not. I ought to find out, shouldn't I?

Neil Gaiman tweeted this, and, oh, boy, did it make me laugh.

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24*

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama expressed frustration Wednesday after members of his cabinet failed to recognize his allusion to the 24th issue of the comic series Savage Sword Of Conan during their first major meeting together.
...
"If my inner circle of advisers can't even communicate about the most basic issues, how are we going to tackle the massive problems our nation faces?" Obama said during a press conference. "When I tell my cabinet that getting bipartisan support is exactly like the time Conan got Taurus to help him steal Yara's jewel, they need to understand what I mean."
...
When asked by the press corps if this week's hiccup has caused him to rethink any of his appointments, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton interrupted the president to assert that she and her colleagues have already begun educating themselves about comic books, and will soon be "an invincible team of Supermen and Wonder Women working to save America."

"Wonder Woman? That's not even Marvel," Obama responded before storming out of the press room. "Who are you people?"

*Just in case anyone missed the link, this is from The Onion; it's parody. Though, the president is apparently a collector of Spider-Man and Conan comics. Which just makes it that much funnier.

So, I'm sitting here, waiting for the Super Bowl postmortem to hurry up and finish so we can get to "The Office," and the world revolves around my needs and wants and.... Oh, it doesn't? Darn.

Anyway, I'm trying to decide on which HOL class to take as my fourth one. (I could do five, except not really; I'd end up not doing one of the classes, so I stick with four.) I'm sorely tempted to sign up for Ronja's Magical Embroidery class, but I want to see about getting all the supplies before committing. Maybe I can do that tomorrow.

I've also been looking at a lot of knitting patterns yesterday and today. Even though I rarely do anything there, I'm finding Ravelry very handy, what with the free pattern downloads and the centralized nature of it all. Like, if I'm not careful, I could get addicted.

Like I'm sort of addicted to Twitter. I like the quick, random updates from people. It's fun, and folks get really creative in their 140 characters. I also like how it's streamlined when compared to Facebook, which is too bells-and-whistley for me, I think. Though, I should probably see if there's a way to send Twitter updates to Facebook or something. Or LJ posts. Or both. Not that I do a ton of either, but still.

Oh, look, "The Office" is on. Yay!

Blargh, I woke up, like, half an hour ago. Though, I did use my phone in a valiant effort not to sleep so late; three alarms set, each with its own 10-minute auto-snooze thing. Still didn't help (much).

Meanwhile, I'm trying to do a quick check of LJ and Twitter, see what's happening in the world. It's probably just me, but it feels like the servers for both (well, more Twitter than here) are being particularly robust right now.

I'm finding it annoying (because the internet exists to serve me, didn't you know).

Anyway, back to reading.

No, really. I actually made three of 'em.

See, ever since Barack Obama was elected president (yay!), I've had this in mind, but... well, I suck and never got around to them. Until tonight, for who knows what reason.

All right, backstory time.

Back in the day, there was this SNL sketch featuring a retelling of the New Testament. Except it was improvised. There ended up being this guy named Barry who becomes the main guy, getting betrayed by Jesus, and the like. The sketch ends with him proclaiming, "Barry power!"

Now, keeping in mind that President Obama went by the name "Barry" as a young'in, and, well, you can see where this is going, right?



I was going to make another one, but it was being fiddly. I did, however, make a serious (and simple) President Obama icon.



President Obama. I still like the sound of that. :)

I've got "Brand New Day" from "Dr. Horrible" running through my head at the moment. And not just because I went to sleep to it. Most of it definitely doesn't fit in with the occasion.

Still.

It's a brand new day, y'all.

I'm working on the "Doctor Who" lesson from Anya's class right now, and I've just amused myself. More than I'm sure anyone else might be amused by this, but that's okay. I'm having a good time.

Okay, back to writing.

I was just browsing the on demand stuff, 'cause I'm procrastinating my HOL homework, looking for something to watching. In the run-up to the inauguration, they've got a bunch of Obama's speeches, mostly from last year.

One speech that wasn't from 2008 is his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In all this time, I hadn't actually seen or listened to it. Sure, I've seen the highlights, but never the whole thing.

So, I watched it. My immediate reaction?

"That was lovely."

(Yes, I said that out loud. To the cat and dogs, I guess.)

How many days is it until he's president?

I keep trying to, really, but it's just not happening.

So far this week, I've twice tried to nap (once even setting an alarm), and both times I've not woken up until at least six hours later.

In the meantime, my days and nights are all screwy, and I don't know if I'm coming or go. That said, it does mean I'm up to see "Knitty Gritty" on the DIY Network; it's always good for some knitting inspiration.

It also means I'm up to see parts of weird musical remakes of It Happened One Night with June Allyson and Jack Lemmon. Actually, I wish I'd been recording this; I'm strangely fascinated with classic Hollywood musical remakes. Sometimes they work really well. Other times, they don't. This seems to fall into the latter category, though, so maybe it's for the best that I've missed most of it.

So, I finally got around to ripping "Commentary! The Musical" so I can listen to it and learn it off by heart ('cause it's what I do). I thought I might try transcribing the lyrics today ('cause that's also what I do; plus, when I transcribe lyrics, I seem to remember them better), but it turns out I don't have to: the lyrics were posted!

Seriously, this is exciting for me, because I now have song titles to put into the mp3s. Right now, I'm doing the song version, which is the banter tacked onto the beginning and/or ends of songs in ways to make it not seem out of the blue. But, I also have it subdivided, keeping the songs as banter-free as possible and having the dialogue as individual tracks. And, of course, O also have the easiest mp3 to tag, which is all 42 minutes unsplit.
If anyone doesn't want to rip their DVD on their own but would still like to listen to "Commentary!" on their mp3 player of choice, let me know. *wink*

Yes, I am a "huge f#!king nerd," as the song suggests.

Yes, folks, I've gotten sucked into yet another TV show. (Several, actually, but that's beside the point.) At least this time it's still on the air.

I'm... now a fan of new version of "Doctor Who."

( There, I said it. )

Anyway. Today (the 28th) is Lew Ayres's 100th birthday. I think I should watch Johnny Belinda or a Dr. Kildare movie. Ooh, or the episode of "I Spy" he guest-starred in, since my dad has the DVDs of the first season. Sadly, I am lame and have nothing else commemorative to do or put out in the world, which had been my plan. Oh, well. Who says there can't be a big to-do in order to commemorate his 101st birthday, eh?