Pride About Our Manner

I am way behind on my apparently ill-advised movie watching goal for the year. To meet the goal I will need to watch 26 movies in the next 3.5 months, approximately. That will not happen.  New goal for 2013: Watch more TV shows!

TV series are arguably an equivalent art form to movies now, with cable channels throwing tons of money and people like Alan Ball at them. I have not had more time for movies because I have been positively enthralled by shows like Downton Abbey, Louie, Homeland, Girls, and now... Oh, now.  Now I am completely and utterly addicted (ha) to Breaking Bad.  Greg and I started watching it on Netflix and got sucked in right away by the amazingly realistic characters and the fascinating plot. We are now up to the middle of season 4, and we literally can't stand to watch anything else. We have Real Time with Bill Mahers and Louies and Daily Shows piling up on the DVR, and they will all just have to wait until there are NO MORE Breaking Bads, because we can't watch anything else.

It's just such an intense, semi-movie-like experience to watch episodes of a series one after the other, instead of waiting a week or months in between. We have so many more we want to see, too.  We haven't seen The Wire or Deadwood or... well, there are plenty to keep us busy.

I have completely fallen in love with my little Kindle, too.  I bought a pink faux leather case on eBay, and I've even taken it to work to read on lunch breaks a few times.  I've been reading a fairly mindless but cheerful and entertaining ebook series about witches.  I saw a review of the one I'm reading now (#3) on Amazon that said the reviewer would not be buying any more of these relentlessly cheerful, unrealistically nice novels. But that's exactly what I am enjoying! I don't know, I'm not in the mood for realism and darkness.  Or maybe I'm getting enough from Mr. White.

Work is going fine. I have literally read the entire manual for the program they hired me to know about, but I had no idea how many changes needed to be made, and I had no idea how far beyond my knowledge and experience this would go. I am liking the challenge, though.  And I have to admit, being basically boss-less and working completely independently is nice for me. I find that if I keep trying I actually CAN figure out things that seem hopeless. This whole job feels oddly temporary, but so far I think I am doing a great job (even though, truly, no one sees it yet at all) and I'm feeling optimistic.

I have wanted to write about how excited I am to go see Adam Ant in concert on the 29th of this month, and it is such an emotional thing for me that I can't find the words. I'll keep trying, but in the meantime I have gotten thrilly butterfly-tummy at least once a day just at the mere idea of it.

I feel beneath the white
There is a red skin suffering
From centuries of taming

No method in our madness
Just pride about our manner
Antpeople are the warriors
Antmusic is the banner

A new Royal Family
a wild nobility
we are the family
~ Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni

Tell me those drums don't make you want to buy front row center tickets to hear it live, and to DANCE.

Cleaning the Kitchen With Commander Tuvok

I have been updating my Movies page (link) and so far I'm up to 13 movies total, with 3 seen in the theater.  (I've also decided to stop spelling it "theatre" as I am not British, though I am overly fond of their spelling in this case.  I suppose if I am going to be a novelist I should stop spelling and punctuating according to my own pretentious whims.)

Really, 13 is not very many, I'm a little behind.  There are about 35 weeks left in the year, I still need to watch 39 movies to reach my goal of 52, so I need to get going.  I'm ahead on my goal to see at least 6 in the theater, especially since we are planning to go see The Avengers next month, that'll give me 4 out of 6.

Enough math!  The reason I've been watching fewer movies is because I've been watching more great shows on tv. Greg and I have discovered our DVR is big enough to hold many many hours of HD programming, so sometimes we hoard tv shows until the season is over and then watch the whole season all at once.  This is way better than having to wait a week, or longer, between each episode. We are currently hoarding Game of Thrones and The Killing, watching previously hoarded episodes of Shameless, and watching Savage U, Nurse Jackie and Girls "live". 

So far we've only seen the first two episodes of Girls, but it is tremendously original and impressive. Despite the dislike I have for the colloquial use of the word "girls" to describe women, it might be appropriate here, they really aren't behaving like women quite yet. Seeing these characters having pitiful sex with men who are idiots, saying amazingly stupid things in job interviews, doing drugs they know nothing about, yet being intensely focused on their friendship with each other makes me simultaneously glad and sorry I'm not 24 anymore.  There's a scene in the first episode where two characters are having a conversation, and they just happen to be in the bath: One is standing up shaving her legs, and the other is sitting in the tub eating a cupcake.  That just killed me, it's the exact kind of sweet comfortable thing 20 year old girls do, and I can't imagine doing it now.  But my goodness, I don't miss making bad romantic decisions with men, no, boys who are idiots.  

And I have been spending an awful lot of time lately comforting myself by watching Star Trek: Voyager.  I loved this show when it was originally aired in the 90s, back when I didn't have cable and only got 4 channels. I've always been a mid-grade Star Trek fan, the kind of fan who knows what a batleth is and what Captain Picard's borg name was and which episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation Ashley Judd stars in, but who doesn't go to cons or buy action figures.  I really liked ST: TNG and enjoyed ST: Voyager tremendously, but somehow have never watched a single episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. 

FYI:

Bat'leth:  Klingon weapon

Ashley Judd was an ensign in Darmok and The Game

Locutus of Borg

Voyager is awesome.  I love the strong female characters (the captain and the head engineer are both women) and the sexy, sensitive bad-boy first officer.

Captain Kathryn Janeway

Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres

Commander Chakotay

I find the whole Starfleet society very relaxing.  There is never any talk of money, money has been abolished by the 24th century.  So has religion:  In no episode of any Star Trek series (or any of the movies) is there any mention of the Starfleet characters being religious or even being aware of the concept of God.  No one even ever exclaims, "Oh my God" or "For God's sake".  Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek, was a pretty vocal atheist.  Commander Chakotay is Native American and occasionally mentions vision quests and medicine wheels and other aspects of his spirituality, which just adds poetry to his tattooed outlaw character.

Netflix is streaming all seven seasons, so I carry the laptop around with me and tell Greg that Captain Janeway and I are going to empty the dishwasher, or Chakotay and I are folding laundry in the bedroom.  I am just starting the fifth season, and I'm already dreading the day I run out of Voyager episodes to keep me company. 

Unfortunately there was never a Voyager movie, but there was a great Next Generation movie: First Contact.  Maybe I should re-watch that and add one to my movie total.

Commander Tuvok sez:  Live long and prosper!

Commander Tuvok