Blindside

It seems I finally got hooked on a new TV series. It hasn't happened in ages, and I must have really been jonesing for an addiction, because I latched onto a huge, sprawling family drama, of all things. No homo.

Well, kinda. Anyway, it's called Parenthood (ugh), and it's kind of like Brothers and Sisters, except well-cast, -acted and -balanced, and without the ridiculous politicizing or hamfisted pathos. It has Peter Krause doing his best everyman-but-way-cooler and Lauren Graham as a disorganized, wild-ish single mom (shocker!), as well as a whole bunch of other actors I don't really know and that old guy who went ranted on Fox about how when he went on welfare the state didn't help him out (I'm not kidding, he really did.) Oh, and a guy who looks exactly like Zach Braff, so I hate him (the Scrubs trauma runs deep), but according to yssy is actually Kristen Bell's husband. Horrible, horrible mug. All of them have genuine chemistry with each other (even the repugnant Zach Braff clone), and at least some of the dialogue seems improvised - they keep talking over each other, cutting each other off, etc., so the whole thing has a very natural feel to it.

The writing is surprisingly good. I've watched 7 episodes so far, and there were only two unintentionally cringeworthy moments - or one, if you happen to have the stomach for watching slow-mo scenes of the "daddy & son on a bike" variety. And even the seemingly stock characters - like the requisite blond career woman with a big burly stay at home husband - have some depth. Blond career woman is actually my favorite character so far, by the way. She's kind of brusque, offputting and doesn't suffer incompetence lightly, so I totally identify with her and wait for the universe to realign itself and provide me with a big burly appendix of my own.

Hrm. Since I already cut the clip out anyway, I might as well post it (but via yousendit, I'm still wary of the youtube copyright hounds). Here's the aforementioned lawyer + husband teaching us all a valuable lesson about the subtleties of comedic timing and delivery.

Incidentally, the series made me realize that I missed out on absolutely all of the hallmark family experiences (well, American, serialized family experiences anyway). I never underwent a teenage rebellion, never had an embarassing conversation about the birds and the bees with my parents, never brought my significant other home for the first time, never spectacularly failed at group sports... then again, I've never had a son with a behavioral disorder either. And what really sold me on Parenthood, I think, was that I still found myself responding to what was going on onscreen. And pretty strongly, too.

Also, Peter Krause gives great overwhelmed father. Seriously, dude can act.

I hope they don't fuck it up too soon with some melodrama. I really do.

Keeping tabs

He was a good find. I hope he keeps putting out music, because this definitely hits the spot. I actually wanted to post this clip instead of the full song, but it could only be embedded as this huge blob that wouldn't fit into this layout... which is an issue I keep running into, actually. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Abridged

Gonna chuck some quotes at you, as promised. No preface, so just try to keep up with me now (01:23).

Not the first time she's used [the forum] that way. She wonders, really, if she ever uses it any other way. It is the gift of "OT," Off Topic. Anything other than the footage is Off Topic. The world, really. News. Off Topic.

---

Seated, not bothering with the menu, Cayce orders coffee, eggs, and sausage, all in her best bad French.
The girl looks at her in amazed revulsion, as though Cayce were a cat bringing up a particularly repellant hairball.
"All right," says Cayce, under her breath, to the girl's receding back, "be French."

---

Assuming the footage is entirely computer-generated means that your maker eithyer has de-engineered Roswell CGI capacities or a completely secure rendering operation.

Thank you for your attention.

Down for a Jack Move

Here's a small convergence of popculture flotsam that is probably only amusing to me and no one else, BUT each of the individual components is at least a teensy bit noteworthy in and of its own, so...

I'm still reading Gibson's Pattern Recognition. There will be quotes, at a later date, but this is about a chapter title - Jack Moves, Jane Faces. It caught my attention, because I thought it was verb-based (and thus vague in a pretty clever way), and implied a cause and effect thing. Later it was explained that a "Jack move" was actually the main character's ex-boyfriend's name for an unorthodox action, while "Jane faces" belonged in the bedroom.

Part two: Bohdan recently sent me this bit of genius. And today, as I was linking it to someone else, I found out that the best thing about Shortbus  seems to appreciate it as well:

So I listened to it again, this time actually paying some attention to the lyrics, and caught the bit around 0:52. Which gave me a smile. Then I started wondering if it's really kosher to mimic a dead person's lisp, but pretty guy guitar where was I?

The final bit of serendipity happened as I was writing this post and realized I have absolutely no way of working my new favorite photo into it. If you watched the above clip in its entirety you know that is no longer the case (the one I wanted to post originally had no umbrellas in it). So feast your eyes:

The entire glorious buildup can be found here.

Over Indeed

This one's been brewing for a while, but somehow I never found the words. Still haven't, to be honest. Other than Spring is here, and life does not suck.

At around 4:30p.m. the sunset-ish light hits the kitchen windows just right, scattering rectangles of warmth all over my floor.

Mom showed me a peculiar toy store across the street from my apartment. It can only be accessed from the courtyard, and it's filled with really old school teddy bears, hand puppets, caleidoscopes - generally all the stuf that makes you go mushy and nostalgic. And in the back there's this short flight of winding stairs that leads you to a small salon with an old couch, a tea table, a wooden horse, and shelves filled with old, used fairy tale books, music boxes... the decor is so perfectly infused with the essence of childhood it's almost creepy. But it's not. It's wonderful.

I had lunch with Gosia at an Indonesian restaurant nearby. The food was sublime, I'm totally going back. Although the place was deserted - we were the only guests. I hope they don't go out of business or something.

I'm going to Krakow at the end of April, to Berlin towards the end of May, and to a land of comic book make-believe shortly after. Kind of figured out a costume for the last one. Just need white pants.

Yoav's new record is coming out in a few days. Really looking forward to it. After that Natlie Merchant, Sarah McLachlan, Sia and Roisin Murphy. And possibly some others.

The dog days are over.

Bird's Eye

I had a bizarrely unpleasant learning experience recently - namely I came to realize how difficult it is to unequivocally relinquish something, even if you're not really interested in having it. It really caught me off guard and completely shut down my brain, leading to general unpleasantness and a bout of self-loathing. On one hand it kind of gives me insight into why certain situations in my life developed the way they did. On the other - it's certainly not the sort of insight that might result in empathy. Yes, it's human, but it's also low and ugly.

On the other end of the scale, I was also the recipient of a very clever and sweet romantic gesture straight out of a decently written romcom. Something from Sandra Bullock's oeuvre, maybe.

So there it is, the yin and yang of random encounters.