talking about crazy couples...

David Schwimmer, 38, and Kim Catrall, 48?!

Man, the entertainment gossip industry must be having a ball. Between trying to keep up with Brad & Angelina, Ben&Jen2's engagement, new couple Katie & Tom... This makes for entertaining work reading at least. :-)

UGH

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are DATING.

Okay so I do feel a little bad about bad-mouthing celebrities, but for some reason I've always thought of Joey Potter (who I HATED) as an extension of Katie Holmes herself who I subsequently am really not fond of, but wow, this kind of justifies my theory. Joey was constantly having all men fall at her feet, and now Katie Holmes is dating TOM CRUISE???? Admittedly I'm not a fan of Tom Cruise (I think he's rather creepy), but I think most people will agree that he's basically the epitomy of the hot Hollywood actor.

I gotta say, Tom, Nicole Kidman to Penelope Cruz to Katie Holmes? You're really stepping down the ladder there...

Edited to add: PICTURES.

American Idol...wtf??

So I'm not even sure why I follow American Idol since I would never listen to the music that the winner puts out, but I liked Kelly and Ruben, and I'll even admit that Fantasia was a deserving winner. This season though? I wasn't really that impressed with any of the finalists actually (my favorite was Nikko, oddly enough) but geez, how are SCOTT and ANTHONY still in it? I'm assuming that either Bo or Carrie is going to win...neither of whom is terribly interesting. I mean, Carrie's a country singer with no flexibility, and Bo claims to be a rocker, but is he really going to put out solo albums?

Oh, and was it just me or was Heather Locklear rolling her eyes when her daughter really unconvincingly said that Anthony was her favorite?

Firefly movie!

The trailer for Serenity is out! Go watch!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/serenity/

It comes out in September but Joss is previewing the (almost-finished) movie next week on 10 screens in 10 cities across the US...Ithaca is obviously not one of them. =( Neither are NYC or Philly though so I suppose I shouldn't be bitter about how I could have gone to one of them if it was on some other date.

(Still glad I'm getting out of the middle of nowhere in a month though.)

craziness

So lately I've been rewatching a lot of old Roswell episodes...and remember why and how this was, by far, my biggest television obsession to date. Yes, I will still name Buffy my favorite show of all time, because it was better on the whole, but I was really really intensely obsessed with Roswell for the three years it was on the air.

Anyway, I've been doing some reading up on the show on the web, and apparently there were a few tie-in books written that take place after the series finale. Which of course I now want to read! The first three are still available on amazon for about $7...I mean, it's a young adult book less than 300 pages long. But the final book appears to be out of print and it is selling USED for more than $200! On eBay, the last two books are currently sitting at $71.

I guess this is a sign that there are people out there more obsessed than I am. I do still really want to read those books though...hopefully I can request them from a library back home in Long Island this summer...

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (by Alexander McCall Smith)

So my last semester of college is winding down and senioritis coupled with a light workload in general has left me with a lot of free time to read apparently.

Anyway, I don't remember where I heard about this book and I didn't even really know what it was about before I borrowed it from the library, but I've always been a fan of detective stories so I thought I might like it. And I was definitely right! It's about a single woman in Botswana who opens a detective agency. Mma Ramotswe solves mysteries brought to her by the townspeople: missing children, cheating husbands, strange behavior from employees...anything that people don't necessarily want to bring to the police. They're all relatively small cases, definitely not as complex as Agatha Christies (which I also love and Mma Ramotswe mentions on several occasions), but the solutions are clever and tidy, and have more to do with just human nature rather than devious crimes.

The mystery part isn't the best part of this book though. First of all the characterizations are perfect. You can tell what kind of woman Mma Ramotswe is instantly and you can't help but like her. And the writing is really wonderful. Each case is told simply but with humor, whimsy, wistfulness...just all the right touches. I don't think I've ever read a non-historical book about Africa, and the descriptions of the landscapes and just the general culture and lifestyle there were really interesting. The author grew up in Africa but is Scottish, I think, so there's a definite British feel to the writing too.

This book has actually spawned a series (6 books now) so hopefully I get to read those soon too!

Well since GG is back...

Though it wasn't the most exciting episode, it was still nice to have my good show back on air. I'm tired of depending on The OC to make my tv happiness or stupid korean soap operas or Desperate Housewives (is it just me or does this show really bore me now?)... However, I do really enjoy the medical shows House and Grey's Anatomy...

Anyway, the only thing worth mentioning was the cuteness of Luke wanting to buy a house to have a family in WITH LORELAI OBVIOUSLY! :-) Though Dean was kind of a damper. Sheesh. Also, I asked Jen about this already, but when did Taylor take over the town meetings again? I thought that was now Jackson's position? Plus I'm glad that Lorelai does care about not hurting Emily enough to have pulled the magazine cover on her. See it's little goodnesses about this show that make me so content. :-)

More shows need to catch on to that.

concert wrap-up

Concert #1 at Ithaca College

Days Away - The opener. Not too bad but kind of forgettable...further supported by the fact that apparently I saw them last year but I didn't remember them at all.

Something Corporate - So good! They played Globes and Maps! We were crushed up near the front so it was really sweaty and hot and I was being pushed all over the place, but it wasn't like obnoxious moshing so it was okay. (Although a crowd surfer pretty much fell on me.) The most surprising thing though was the lead singer, Andrew McMahon? When I saw SoCo last May, he had shaggy blond hair that fell all over his face and dorky emo glasses. But now it's cut pretty short and dyed black, so he looked like a completely different person. Haha perhaps he has grown up a little.


Concert #2 at Cornell

The Format - The opener. We got there a little late so we only caught one song, which I actually knew and was pretty good. We were dead tired from SoCo though so we just sat in the bleachers in the back.

Taking Back Sunday - Oy. So I saw TBS two years ago when they were on tour with Saves the Day and I remember them being just plain awful. It was just a lot of noise with whiny out-of-tune screaming. I felt like the band was just so concerned with "rocking out" that they didn't realize how horrible they sounded. This time though, I thought it might actually be okay because their new album has less screaming and I actually like some of the songs. Unfortunately, I was WRONG. Taking Back Sunday still has the worst live performance EVER. Plus their lighting was incredibly irritating...constant flashing and blinding strobes. Sigh, I don't know why they have to keep touring with bands that I like...if this happens again I'm going to have to skip it. Or just miss their set...

Jimmy Eat World - We stood up for this one but stayed toward the back of the crowd. I couldn't really see anything, but I didn't care too much. And wow, maybe because this was after TBS, but they sound really good live. Like the volume was definitely up a few notches, but it still sounded amazing. I was really happy that they played For Me This is Heaven and Lucky Denver Mint and Blister from Clarity, and Kill and 23 from their new album. I probably would have been a lot more excited to see them live about two or three years ago, but I am still a JEW fan (I own basically all of their albums) so I'm really glad they came to do a show here.


So, in summary: 5 bands, 2 venues, $23, and 7 hours later, I was completely exhausted but also pretty satisfied. I love concerts!

The Time Traveler's Wife (by Audrey Niffenegger)

First of all, I feel like I should mention that over the past couple of years, I think that I've gotten less rigid and more emotional. I mean, the difference isn't that noticeable, but books and movies and TV and yes, life too, have been making me cry a lot more than I used to in high school.

This book is one of the most unique I've ever read. It's about time travel, but it is solidly a romance and definitely not science fiction. The time traveler is Henry, and his wife is Clare. Henry regularly time travels to the past (and sometimes the future) without much warning or pattern...he just disappears and ends up sometime else without any clothes or possessions. And unlike in Harry Potter, he can interact with whomever he wants...even himself...without disturbing the course of events or whatever. Clare has been visited by the adult Henry (already married to Clare in his time) throughout her childhood. Therefore there complicated history makes for a really interesting story. The perspective of the novel switches between Henry and Clare, with each segment clearly labeled with their ages and the dates. It's a bit confusing at first, and takes awhile to get used to.

It's a pretty long novel, and because time is so important, it seems almost epic even though it really only spans about 40 years. It reminded me a lot of A.S. Byatt's Possession, which Niffenegger does quote from. I was really excited by the beginning of the novel, just because the concept was so interesting and fresh. By the middle, though, I was getting a little bored, and I felt like I still didn't really understand the characters too well. But by the end, I was crying. I usually never say things like this but the writing near the end was just so beautiful and depressing and it kind of broke my heart.

So I have to say that despite a few failings, this is definitely a very memorable book, and I actually have the urge to read it again now that I have a better handle on the timelines.

Ithaca you have redeemed yourself...a little

Well, Ithaca still sucks, but the concert scene has improved immensely. This Sunday I'm going to see Days Away and Something Corporate at Ithaca College followed by the Format, Taking Back Sunday, and Jimmy Eat World at Cornell. So a horrible situation has turned into an amazing one.

And then today it was announced that the Starting Line will be joining Snoop Dogg and the Game at Slope Day! I guess all the complaining about only having rappers at Slope Day made the committee realize they should get another act.

In other concert news, I'm going to the Get Up Kids final tour show at Webster Hall, and hopefully Mira and I will be able to get tickets for the Killers at Central Park Summerstage, both in June.

Haha, apparently when I start work this August the first thing I have to do is make a friend to go to concerts with!

state of the television

I've been known to have a love/hate relationship with the TV shows that I watch...it's kind of unavoidable considering how involved and emotionally invested I get. I tend to take it a little hard when storylines suck, when characters are being butchered, and when I just perceive the writers and producers and actors to just not be doing a good job. And on the flipside, when things are good, TV can make me incredibly happy.

Lately though? I feel as though I've been let down so much that I'm actually starting to not care. The OC has become completely uninteresting, Alias is still a shell of its former self, Desperate Housewives is getting tiring, and Joan of Arcadia ruined Adam, one of my favorite characters. I'm not even mentioning that Rory on Gilmore Girls has been long on her way to annoying-Joey-Potter-perfection, and that there's a serious dearth of science-fiction/fantasy shows on the air right now (you can argue with me on this, but I don't feel as if Alias and Lost really count...not yet anyway).

Man, I can't help but miss my high school days when I first started getting obsessed with TV. This was right before reality TV took over, when I felt like the networks had their own personalities. CBS was for older adults, with shows like Touched By an Angel; NBC was Must-See TV, ER, and the West Wing; FOX had all the edgier stuff like the X-files, Dark Angel, and 90210; UPN was home to African-American sitcoms and the WWF; ABC was kind of floundering with a lot of family sitcoms and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; and the WB targeted teens and young adults, and did a damn job of it.

I watched almost every single show that aired on the WB during my junior and senior years of high school: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Roswell, Felicity, Dawson's Creek, Jack & Jill, Popular, Charmed, Gilmore Girls, Grosse Pointe...add that to the X-files and Dark Angel and well, it was just a good time to be a teen and scifi/fantasy fan who likes TV.

I mean, that's not to say that I'd want to still be watching those kinds of teen shows now...I mean, One Tree Hill, Everwood, and Smallville are continuing the WB teen tradition and I'm not interested in any of them. But I'm not interested in all of the traditionally adult shows like CSI or Law and Order or any medical drama either. I guess part of the problem is that I don't identify with the main age groups anymore...I'm out of high school (and college, almost), but I'm not a working person with a family either. And I definitely miss the scifi/fantasy...there hasn't been anything good since Firefly and Jake 2.0 and Wonderfalls, all which were cancelled.

I do seem to still care enough about TV to write monumentally long posts like this one though...

Veronica Mars renewed!

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271|94630|1|,00.html

More TV talk to come soon. Some quick tidbits though:

• I was rewatching some old episodes of Roswell this weekend, and Jason Dohring (Logan Echolls) played that kid who delivered cold food to Alex right before he died. Sigh, Alex! Roswell!
  
  
• Apparently Alexis Bledel and Milo Ventimiglia (Rory and Jess from Gilmore Girls) are still dating. Haha, I know this is a little weird, but that makes me happy because I liked their characters' relationship on the show but it totally failed.
  

romantic comedies and such

I haven't posted in a while because well I haven't had much to post about. I'm 8 weeks behind in Alias, there have been no new Gilmore Girls eps in a while, I can only post so often about how much Summerland sucks, The OC is just eh at the best, and I'm even bored with Desperate Housewives believe it or not. So there we go on the TV front. I just ordered 7 CD's on BMG, so maybe I'll start writing about music one of these days...

Anyway, while I've been super duper wanting to see Sin City, I haven't gotten the chance to yet! Apparently it's not a movie I can convince my female coworkers to watch with me. It's a "guy movie" or something! *sigh* So instead, yesterday I got to watch Miss Congeniality 2. Ya know, I enjoyed the first movie a lot. I mean it's not my favorite movie of all time, nor anywhere close, but it was a good laughs, cute romance movie. I was worried with the sequel because I knew that Benjamin Bratt wasn't in it. I didn't want them to go and make her a NEW love interest, ya know? Well they worked it in pretty well. Cuz the sequel starts off only 3 months after the first movie left off. She's been "seeing" him, but right off the bat he breaks up with her. Which then leads her to the breakup blues which leads her to deciding on a drastic lifestyle change. Anyway, I was happy because this was just a comedy and not a forced romantic comedy, keeping it different from the first one. Because I personally hate when there's a first movie, and you're rooting for a couple to get together and finally they get together at the end and then they make a sequel, and now you're rooting for a different guy. (Yes, run on sentence, I know!) But it's kinda sad that the "perfect couple" you were rooting for? Well in the long run they could break up and you never know cuz the movie doesn't show that! So Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You've Got Mail? Who knows, 6 months down the line they could realize that they're just so frustrated with each other that they break up. Or Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You? Maybe she goes off to college and finds a better guy and breaks up with him. Most likely in her senior year of college in the hopes of really living her college experience. I mean even in the Princess Diaries movies, Mia and Michael don't stay together! So really, since we don't know the afterstory of romantic movies, how do we know that they really stay together as soulmates for the rest of their lives? The thing that's at least sweet about the depressing ones where someone dies (ie. Message in a Bottle, Up Close and Personal, and my all-time fave Moulin Rouge) is that you know that at least they loved each other until the last moment of that person's life. Well at least the dying person loved the living person until the last day of their life. The living person could possibly mope around, and have another great love story afterwards. *sigh*

Okay I sound like a girl who's been recently dumped or something, which I'm really not. It's just that it's a little sad thinking about the ephemeralness of "true love" in movies.

augh

Perhaps it's early set-up for May sweeps, but TV this week was seriously intense. Man, the writers out there in LA have soooome balls.

24: The President was attacked by terrorists while on Air Force One. It's not clear whether he died or not (it was an indirect hit) but wow, what TV show/movie has the guts to actually kill the President?

Lost: Boone (Ian Somerhalder, who has the most ridiculously pretty eyes ever) died from injuries after falling off a cliff in an old plane. I didn't think Boone was the most interesting person on the island, but geez, killing off the character of a member the main cast who didn't want to leave the show?

Alias: SpyDaddy Jack Bristow very likely exposed himself to radiation trying to save his daughter. Again, I'm not sure what the extent of this exposure is...but look what happened to Mason on 24. And like I've mentioned before, I took a course in nuclear engineering and the biological effects of radiation, which are decidedly not fun.

spoiled!

There are two things have been constants in my TV-watching life for the past few years: I download episodes off of the Internet and usually watch them the day after they air, and I read the entertainment news on sites like TVGuide and Zap2it every morning. And I never really saw a problem with this system until this morning.

There are two types of shows I watch: ones for which I religiously read spoilers and ones for which I really do not want to be spoiled on AT ALL. Lost is of the latter category, and it's been common knowledge for awhile now that there was going to be a big death. So this morning I check TVGuide.com and augh the death is advertised on the front page! And since I've been trying to not be spoiled, I didn't even know that it was happening this week...

Sigh. I'll watch the episode later today but I'm already bummed because I know who dies. Perhaps once I get out of school I'll start watching things on TV when they actually air.

Sin City!

I'd been looking forward to this movie for weeks and I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to catch it while it was in theaters but happily I was invited to go see it today. And wow, what a cool movie.

The trailers were pretty good at preparing you for what to expect...the movie looks as close to a comic book (er, graphic novel) as you can get without actually animating the characters (though they do do that for a few scenes). The black-and-white with only spots of color just made for a really unique visual experience. There's a lot of blood and guns and violence and I have to say that the graphic novel feel helped to lessen the gore factor a little, sort of like in Kill Bill. The movie also feels very noir, like it's set during the 40s or 50s but not really.

There are three minorly connected storylines, none of which are groundbreaking or anything, but they kept me engrossed and I liked the characters. There's a male lead in each part, who are all basically trying to exact revenge and/or protect some women, but they were different enough from eachother to keep things interesting. Same goes for the villians...they were either gross, funny, or just plain creepy. And it was just FUN. It wasn't trying to be thought-provoking or anything like that..it was aiming to wow the audience and well, it wowed me!

As for the acting, I really only have a few comments: Clive Owen is still kind of hot, Brittany Murphy has confirmed herself as one of the worst actresses in Hollywood, and Alexis Bledel, even as a hooker, is still pretty much Rory Gilmore.

what I'm listening to

So for some reason I have pretty strong opinions on what I consider to be good and bad music, but I could probably never be a music reviewer because I have no clue how to describe music or even to explain why I like I what I like. I do know that I probably try a little too hard to like "cool" music that always ends up on the OC a week after I discover it anyway, but this is some of what I have been listening to lately:

• The Indie Pop Rocks! radio station on iTunes! I always feel like I can't keep up with new music so I'm just letting some cooler people do it for me.
  
• Bright Eyes - Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. His other album is more highly regarded but I guess I'm not so much into its folky sound.
  
• Stars - Set Yourself on Fire. This band has female vocals that I actually don't mind. Wow.
  
• The Futureheads - Self-Titled. Very peppy!
  
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell. More female vocals! I'm branching out!
  
• Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want to Be. I'll probably see some of their set at their concert with Jimmy Eat World in a few weeks so I might as well be prepared. I like this album better than their older ones anyway.
  
• Interpol - Antics. I'm still kind of sad that I missed them when they played at Cornell before they were famous.
  
• Built to Spill. They haven't had any new stuff in awhile, but I'm catching up.
  

What have you been listening to lately?