Not only did I have the "Soft Kitty" song from last night's BBT going through my head (which was one of the better episodes of the season) all day, I also have that Rock Band ad with Taylor Swift singing "Love Story" running around in there, too! Agh!

Finally got my Renegade achievement on Mass Effect last night. Once I got the needed points (had to wipe-out a whole colony of zombified humans to do it) I turned into Mr. Nice Guy again. Now all I'm missing are a few companion achievements, completion on the Hardcore and Insanity levels, plus several biotics-related achievements. And I also have the urge to create an account at fanfiction.net and start writing NC-17 Mass Effect stories. My male-Sheps have all gotten the girl, but my one fem-Shep (who was my first shot at trying to earn the Renegade achievement) got no love, poor girl. :( Guess I'll just have to try again. :)

I also have Arkam Asylum for my PS3 which I've barely gotten into and should really just restart because I haven't played it in several weeks and I don't think I was doing well when I was playing it.

What else?

I'm heading back to Minnesota for Thanksgiving on Saturday via Seattle and Chicago. Hopefully my luggage will stay with me the whole way. :) I'm flying United the whole way.

What else?

BBT looks like it could be good tonight. I only got something like a 5 second look at the preview, but Penny/Sheldon scenes always make the show better. Last week's was one of the better episodes of the season which isn't saying much because it hasn't been really all that great so far this year.

The last two parts of the CSI trilogy were excellent. New York wasn't as stylized as Miami was, but they had some good story telling effects, and Gary Senese was much more subtle than David Caruso. Laurence Fishbourne was excellent too, but I think his character was written better when they returned to Las Vegas, which was also the better episode of the three.

I think that's it for now.

A single-mom and her three year-old daughter (I think she's 3) moved into the apartment below me just a few weeks ago. This morning they're not getting along very well, or at least the girl is screaming her head off for some reason. So the mom puts the girl in her room (the one below me right now) and says, "You're not coming out until you're done crying." So what does the little girl do? Cries, "I'm. Done. CRYING!!" over and over as she continues to cry, occasionally punctuated with "Open the door!"

I don't know about their doors, but if they're anything like mine, they don't have locks.

As annoying as it all is, it's pretty hysterical from my viewpoint.

I don't watch CSI: Miami very much, but I watched it last night since it was part 1 of The CSI Trilogy this week and I think I was blinded by lens-flares!! What, was J.J. Abrams directing the episode?

It was an okay episode, overall. My favorite part was the Dark Knight-like music used during the opening scene of the girl driving through The Glades on sparking rims. She was obviously running from someone, and the music (which sounded a lot like the cue from the bank-robbery scene in DK) helped to heighten the tension as Horatio and crew were figuring out that this girl may have been abducted. Unfortunately, her fate was far worse.

I watch CSI: New York even less, so it should be interesting to see where they take the storyline on Wednesday night.

I haven't gone to the movies in a long time, and haven't reviewed one here in even longer, so since some of these films are coming out or are already out on video, I might as well let you know how I grade them, just in case you were waiting to hear my opinion to help you decide whether you should see them or not. ;)




A far weirder and less sentimental movie than the book, the 3-D effects were okay, but Mr. T's appearace as the town cop was a nice plus. C+.



I didn't have high expectations for GI Joe, so that may be why I was surprised that 1) I saw it, and 2) that I enjoyed it as a nice, rather silly romp. And of course Sienna Miller looked fantastic and even had a couple of clever lines in her role as The Baroness. B-.



For some reason I expected better. Granted, there were some pretty good moments in this film with some fine acting, but those handful of scenes is this alternative-universe World War II movie don't make up for everything else. C-.



Deserving of its accolades: Tom Felton was excellent although not quite the show-stealer some have been calling his performance; Daniel Radcliffe was also very good, but I liked his moments when he was playing a supporting role in a scene best. I wasn't 100% convinced of the Harry/Ginny romance, and I expected a little more from Dumbledore's murder-scene, but all-in-all it was another fine addition to the series. Oh, and every scene with Luna made that scene just 1000-times better. B+.

Meme taken from (where else?) emmaorgana.

→ Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
→ Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
→ Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on.



This is a picture of Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki that I took during a game in Seattle back in May. It's titled "Outstanding in his field" and since he's one of the best players in baseball, that's pretty much true. I framed the shot so it would work as a wallpaper. It represents excellence, yet it's tinged with isolation and loneliness even though he's in a stadium filled with thirty-thousand people. Interpret that as you may.

So I was watching Death Cab for Cutie's video for "Meet Me On the Equinox" from the New Moon soundtrack the other day when two things popped into my head:

One: Weren't these guys on the Wicker Park soundtrack?

and

Too: How does Kristen Stewart get her hair to move like that?!? It's like Spawn's cape; it has a life and personality all its own!

(Bria, you should get that reference. Jen, if you didn't get it, ask someone at work about Spawn's cape.)

Andy is going to college, so what will happen to Woody, Buzz and the rest of his old toys? Here's a hint in the Toy Story 3 trailer.

The Truman Show was on TBS this morning, and it got me to thinking. Would there be Truman Show Conventions?

I mean the "show" supposedly went on for, what, 30 years? Couldn't you just picture rows and rows of autograph tables with Truman's former teachers, his dentist, the town bus drivers, the radio announcer, his dad doing the circuit after he "died". The little old ladies who watched the show could pick up knitting-patterns for their pillows, that girl who played Lauren could have her own "Free Truman" presentation, stuff like that.

Last weekend I didn't plan on just going to Seattle to see the last two Mariners games of the season, I also wanted to visit the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (which I thought would be a little bigger, but it actually had a lot of stuff), and to do some fine dining at one or two of Seattle's better known restaurants in downtown.



If I could live only on pizza and chocolate chip cookies, I would. I would also visit Serious Pie in Seattle every now and then for the pizza portion of my life-time sustenance.



Take a gander at the luscious-looking morsel above. I could have ordered the yukon gold potato, rosemary, and olive oil pizza or the penn cove clams, house pancetta, lemon thyme pizza or even the guanciale, soft egg, arugula pizza, but since this was my first visit to Tom Douglas' pizza eatery I decided not to take too much of a risk and ordered something that sounded closer to a "typical" pizza: the buffalo mozzarella, san marzano tomato. It was very tasty, slightly soggy, a tad salty, but oh so delicious! $15, big enough for two, but small enough for one.

I got there at, I think a little around 11:30 maybe 11:45, and only had a 15 minute wait before a place was cleared for me at one of the few tables. It was kind of a community experience, with the possibility of having many parties at one of the chest-high tables in the small-ish dining area (the Japanese lady next to me paid for her portion of the bill with a Little Mermaid credit card) where you had a good view of the street as well as the cooks preparing your food and cooking the pizza in a wood oven. The wait felt a little longer than 15 minutes once I ordered my pizza, but the end result was quite yummy.

Finally on Facebook.

I only got one response to the OTP meme I put up a week or two ago. emmaorgana asked my for my Star Wars OTPs, and here are my answers.

OTP: I'm going to redefine the common meaning of OTP and have it mean Original True Pairing for a moment and name Luke/Leia my OTP. Yes, I know, in a post-May 1980/1983 era that sounds pretty disgusting, but since I like to consider myself part of the OT's prime target audience, I fully accepted that the Hero and Princess would go on to live happily ever after. While I wound up becoming a big fan of The Scoudral who would eventually wind-up getting The Girl, I still liked to think I had more in common with The Hero and I felt sorry for Luke when he didn't get The Girl in the end.

Now, back to the original definition of OTP. My One True Pairing will have to be Luke and Mara. Finally, The Hero gets The Girl and she's a feisty one, wasn't she? Not only that, but she hated his guts when they first met, too (a bit like Han and Leia, don't you think?). Eventually, Mara would come around from wanting to kill Our Hero to wanting to marry him. That farmboy must have had one Force-ful personality.

Runner-up: Will have to be the original romantic pairing, Han and Leia.

Honorable mention(s): Anakin and Padmé. Yes, the movies didn't really convince most of us why these two would get together, but love doesn't just mean never having to say you're sorry, it also means never having to say wha? how? why???

Artoo and Threepio. 'Nuff said.

Crack pairings: Ahsoka/Rex. Hey, the age difference between these two is probably the same as the difference between Padmé and Anakin, and the female in this pair is the elder of the two, too.

Also, Winter and Lando. Admittedly, this only exists in a couple of pieces of fan-fiction I've written and have yet to write/finish, but I still think they're a good pair.

Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't: This is mainly an EU, beyond ROTJ pairing, but I never found the Jaina/Jag pairing all that convincing, mainly because I never found Jaina to be all that appealing. Now, I stopped reading post-ROTJ EU after the New Jedi Order, so I really don't know much about what she's like now, but I'm not exactly pleased that she's the last Solo off-spring.

I'm in the Emerald City this weekend (hence the change in journal theme) to catch the last two games of the Seattle Mariner's season, so if anyone is interested in a postcard, PM me your address. If not, well, your mailbox will be just that much emptier. :p

Always looking to sell magazines, Esquire has named Kate Beckinsale this year's Sexiest Woman Alive, and while I've drooled over Megan Fox in a previous Esquire related post, I'm not going to argue with them about their selection. No. Way.

Ask me a fandom, and I will tell you:

+ OTP
+ Runner-up
+ Honorable mention(s)
+ Crack pairing(s)
+ Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't.


Yeah, I'm a little late to the game, but what the heck.

and today is going to be long.

Some days I can easily survive an expedition to Wal-Mart, but others...

Like today, for example, I went in looking for an umbrella, couldn't find it, didn't ask for help (I mean, come on, if you can't find it on your own, what's the use asking for help?), but I still wandered around the entire building looking for an umbrella? What section would you put the umbrellas, anyways? Luggage? I think I found that section, but there weren't any umbrellas.

Anyways, getting to the mental trauma of the experience, no soon am I pass the greeter than I hear the over-head making what was essentially an all-hands-on-deck call for checkers, while at the same time customers were racing to the front of the store as if there was a fire in back!!

Oddly during my wanders ('bout 15 minutes, I think) I spotted a bird fly from Automotive to the Gardening section, the closed in Gardening section. All I'm saying is that I didn't expect that? Although the vision of someone trying to buy a melon then a bird poops on said melon did pop into my head.

When I finally escaped (empty-handed) I went to the other side of town and bought a large chocolate shake at McDonalds even though there was a Mickey D's two blocks from Wally World. And I haven't even had dinner, yet, which I should started in a few minutes.

So that's that.

Just a few quick comments on what I watched during premiere week last week.

Monday

I'm not thrilled with CBS putting Big Bang Theory after Three and a Half Men when clearly BBT is the more family-friendly of the two. That said, I saw a little of 3½, which was kinda amusing and the Eddie Van Halen cameo was okay, but I was really eager to see what would happen on BBT. I have to say it wasn't one of their better episodes, but it was alright. I think they could have exploited the fact that the nights at the North Pole are very short during the summer as a reason for some of the difficulties the boys had. The fact that Penny had actually gone and seen the Star Trek movie without the boys has got to have some sort of back-story. And while I'm happy she and Leonard finally hooked up, the fallout that it was "weird" should be interesting. Oh, and I think Harold should keep his mustache. While I don't usually watch CSI: Miami, I'm always up for good origin stories, and that one was okay.

Tuesday

There's a lot I could say about what I liked about NCIS, but there's just too much! Tony was AWESOME, telling the truth in a way only he can, the bad-guy is addicted to Caf-Pow, and that's how they found him, McGee play opossum, the attempted hiring of Zeva's replacement (I liked the third gal), and Tony's description of Gibbs as a "functional mute" was my favorite line of the night. "I did mention that he was a sniper, didn't I?" was my second. I liked NCIS: Los Angeles, too, but it was a little rough, plot-wise, I think. There are a bunch of new characters to get used to (even from their intro-episode on NCIS), so it will probably take awhile to figure everyone out. I like the Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J chemistry, and I'm sure a thousand slashy ships were launched last week.

Wednesday

I think I just watched baseball on Wednesday.

Thursday

I'm really late to the Lost bandwagon, so I've decided to jump on the Flash Forward bandwagon early, and it looks like I'm going to be there for the next six months. Again, lots of new characters, so I'm not familiar with their names, but it looks like we've got a lot of compelling stories to follow. Why did this happen? Why were they out for two minutes and seventeen seconds? Why not just two minutes? Why not three? Why did they have memories of their future? What is behind it? Some terrorist organization? God? Who was that one person wandering around at Tigers Stadium in Detroit? How did that little boy know the doctor's name? Why does the doctor leave her FBI-agent husband for the little boy's father, Jack "Commodore Norrington" Davenport?" Who is hunting down the FBI-agent investigating the event? Why does the wife of the FBI-agent that's getting married (Harold of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, I think) want to dance to "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rodgers and Dolly Parton at their wedding? Why was there a polar bear kangaroo hoping through downtown Los Angeles shortly after the event?

Then there was CSI which is off to its typical good start. I was surprised that the team wasn't exactly getting along very-well, but now that Nick has been promoted and Roy has been bumped up a level, things should get better. I was only slightly surprised that Riley was dropped, but I'm glad that Wendy and David have finally been named regulars. It will be nice to have Sarah back for a little while, at least. I always shipped her and Greg, so I'm hoping to see those two out on assignment together again.

Friday

Fridays are going to be a little complicated because I think Smallville and Clone Wars are going to be on at the same time. I guess that's okay because it's not hard to get up to speed after missing a half hour of Smallville, really. Anyway, Smallville was good. I liked see Clark with the S on his chest and pseudo-cape over his shoulders. I wasn't thrilled with the whole Tess/Zod stuff, which they could really do without. Brian Austin Green is suppose to become some new super-villain that I'm not familiar with, so his short stay on the show should be interesting. I'm still a little cheesed about Jimmy being dead, but I understand why Clark didn't go back in time to safe him for Chloe. And what's up with that ninja-super-chick anyways? I think she was the one burning the S into the walls and such, but my dad thought Clark was doing it. I told him he was wrong, but if anyone else agrees with him, let me know. And we really need to buy a shirt or seven for Oliver! It must be in his contract that he must do at least one scene per show without his shirt on. I say that if that's the case then the guys need equal eye-candy, and we need to Lois to do at least one scene per show in her bra and panties. Who's all for it?!

*crickets, crickets*

Saturday

Saturday the 12 year-old girl in me got a hold of the remote and we watched iCarly. That wasn't too bad and it looks like the Sam/Freddie/Carly love-triangle is starting to form. Plus Gibby Russian-mobster look was just... unexpected. And he has a girlfriend from another school. A cute girlfriend at that. Very unexpected. There are always a few things on that show that are bound to make parents a tad uncomfortable even though it really shouldn't.

I only went to the theaters to see 2 of the 100 worst movies between 2000 & 2009 according to reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes.com, and I'm not telling which ones, you'll just have to guess.

Penny gets a job at a comic book convention, but why does she want Leonard and Sheldon to keep it a secret from Howard?

( The Mercury Mitten Mystery )