1. The tragic wrong-way crash on the 401 that killed an infant and his grandparents was triggered by a theft from an LCBO store. This week the Toronto Star quoted an LCBO employee as saying that theft "is a daily occurrence." When I first moved to Toronto, the LCBO was still essentially a drug dispensary: you chose a bottle from a product list, wrote down the stock number on a form, gave the form to a cashier, and paid. Then you trudged over to a long counter with a long lineup and presented the form to a dour middle-aged male clerk. Finally, after the clerk had disappeared into the stacks, retrieved the bottle, and handed it over, you could escape from the store, sheepishly clutching the brown paper bag containing your drug of choice. I'm sure that more than one Ontarian of a certain age is remembering that system--archaic, judgmental, privacy-violating, and hugely annoying, but pretty much 100 percent theft-proof.

2. In keeping with my resolution to get over myself and get out of my head, I impulsively booked four social events this week. Coffee with F. at Mercurio, lunch with C. at Lalibela, wine and chat with L. at her apartment, and lunch with H. at Holt Renfrew. I'm kind of exhausted (because I'm so out of practice at socializing), but wow, was it ever fun. (The lunch at HR was temporarily disrupted when a sleekly blonde and highly tanned lady a couple of tables down from us jumped up from her seat and gave her companion an impromptu tennis lesson, swatting invisible tennis balls towards the ceiling while declaiming on technique. Of course she drew the attention of the whole restaurant. Rich people are allowed to be as overtly weird as they please, I guess.)

3. The Buffalo PBS channel is now airing "My Life Is Murder" without, as far as I can tell, any advance promos or notice. I found it by accident, and I am thrilled to see Lucy Lawless again. This is a show I'll stick with for as long as it's around: low-stakes (so far) mysteries, amusing, and clever--and it features a cat! Win-win-win-win.

4. This news, however, is lose-lose-lose-lose. "Run the Burbs," as the article says, "celebrates non-toxic masculinity, community, female friendships, and the complexities of intergenerational relationships between immigrant parents and their children and grandchildren." It does all that while being both goofy and smart. As usual, I'm not a member of the show's target demographic; nonetheless, I really looked forward to seeing the Pham fam onscreen every week.

Too many medical appointments and complications, publishing deadlines, and social promises made but not yet kept. Nonetheless, these three things caught my attention:

( Robin Curtis; Lichtenberg & Lorrah; and the guild of energy vampires )

More medical stuff is coming up next week (I thank every deity in this universe for the continued existence of OHIP), and then maybe there'll be time for some actual real-world fun.

It appears that Daniel Maslany (Tatiana's sib) is now back to being a (semi-?) regular in his role as Llewellyn Watts on Murdoch Mysteries. I think he's terrific in that part, but I can't look at him without remembering his performance as Bondurant in Four in the Morning, a series I loved. (Clearly, I was not part of the creator's target demographic, but who cares.) Like many other offbeat, surreal, challenging shows that I've been obsessed with, it didn't make it to a second season.

I was hoping that someone else might have been intrigued by it and produced some fic, but AO3 shows nothing. And I guess that shouldn't be surprising--the show asked an awful lot of its audience, and it got plenty of hate from people who didn't know what to make of it. But as one of the commenters on the YouTube promo site said to a complainer,

"The show features a talking pig, people who age a lifetime in a day, raven people, a [character who] gives birth to a pig, rat people, etc. And you're hung up on an eccentric trumpet player from Manitoba. Buddy."

The first and only season is supposed to be available on Gem, but clicking on the link brings nothing but a "page not found" result. I'll have to look around a bit more. In the meantime, the splendidly weird memories live on.

(ETA: Changed the subject line because it seems inaccurate to call one season a "series.")

Such good news. Fans have been waiting for this for a long, long time. I hope the original music will be included--it really was an essential part of the whole.

1. Sometimes when I'm faffing about on AO3, I accidentally discover an old story by a new (to me) author and then wonder why I'd never heard of them before. That happened recently when I found "Even Archangels Get the Blues" by RevDorothyL. The author says that this was their first fanfic, and I am impressed--not just because the story touches on some of my favourite themes (theology, eschatology, the rebirth of heroes) but because the characters' voices are interesting and fun. Recommended for fans of Xena, Buffy, and/or metaphysics.

2. While purging a storage closet, I came across a surviving copy of an old letterzine that I once subscribed to. The editors of letterzines would collect typewritten submissions, paste them up, photocopy them, and mail the finished zines out to subscribers several times a year. This was how we exchanged LOCs, reviews, illos, opinions, and personal news with other fans across the country and around the world. Rediscovering the letterzine made me remember how enjoyable it was to see this type of fannish ephemera turn up in the actual, tangible mailbox.

3. I'm sad that Pretty Hard Cases won't be returning for a fourth season. It took me a little while to warm up to the show, but Adrienne C. Moore and Meredith MacNeill brought such realism and chemistry to their characters and their relationship that I became quite invested in them. Many of the episodes were pretty standard police procedurals, but the characters and the settings made the show entertaining and multilayered. Add this to the long, long list of Shows I Miss So Much.

Apparently I'm 100 percent lacking in the courage of my convictions.

( Read more... )

Looks like I'm backsliding once again (at least for the eight episodes of this series). I just hope I won't be eating crow garnished with strawberry jam two months from now.

By means of a typically circuitous route, I came upon Memories of Moonlighting (circa 2006). I think this mini-doc was made at exactly the right time--after the lead actors' conflicts were mostly resolved, and before real-world life changed everything.

I'd heard that there were music-rights issues preventing the show from being rerun on TV or streamed on a service. But now I'm daring to hope that a streaming release might actually happen in my lifetime (though GGC says, "Lots of moving parts. And it could take quite a while").

Man, I adored that show and Maddie and David beyond all reason. Those two characters had the most powerful chemistry that I can remember seeing on a TV show. My pals and I would have endless discussions after every episode (always in-person, over coffee or a drink or while lollygagging around at the office, since none of us got online until 1989, just when the show was ending). Just the first notes of Al Jarreau's theme song are so evocative that when I hear them I feel like I've suddenly stepped into a time machine.

And the episodes themselves--the writing, the directing, everything. "Atomic Shakespeare," "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice," "Big Man on Mulberry Street," and of course "I Am Curious...Maddie" (60 million viewers for that last one, according to Wikipedia, and we can certainly see why).

I really, really wish that I could be that blissfully invested in a show again.

Son of a Critch is a quirky, intelligent, life-affirming comedy set in 1980s Newfoundland. It's based on Mark Critch's Son of a Critch: A Childish Newfoundland Memoir; it's now in its second season, and well worth watching.


( Read more... )


In an added viewing bonus this week, Hudson and Rex showed us in "Rexit, Stage Left" that at least one character (a temporary one, of course) in St. John's actually has a Newfoundland accent. We takes what we can get, b'y.

Why did Courtney's "Waterworks" fanvid get me where I lived? After all, I've been watching BCS for all six seasons, and although Odenkirk has strongly reminded me visually of KC since his first appearance on Breaking Bad, I didn't feel a frisson of fannish emotion or fannish character connection until I saw the vid.





The music was eerily appropriate for the episode, and of course Courtney's sensitive choice and editing of ep clips made the whole thing stunning (almost literally). I really don't remember the last time I was so affected by any fanwork of any kind. It's been decades, maybe.

I've been obsessively rewatching the vid for a few days, and no doubt I'll watch it many more times before the series finale next week. Heartbreaking, as was "Waterworks" itself.

What can ever take the place of BCS? I really have to binge the whole series at some point in the future.

I can't understand why more people weren't fans of this show. (Or maybe they were and I'm just looking in all the wrong places.) The end of the series was pretty wrenching--and as I've said elsewhere, the ep dealing with the aftermath of Gordon's death equals, and maybe surpasses, Buffy's "The Body" as the best hour of television I've seen that deals with death and loss and family.

I'm not sure that I'm persuaded that Joe will stay in the humanities department, but I like the idea of his teaching. The surreal and yet wholly plausible "Phoenix" interlude was brilliant. Almost everyone was given a believable and satisfying ending. I think I'm going to have to go in search of post-series fanfic. Please let there be some good and serious-minded writing out there!