Weekend Potpourri

I know many of you keep blogs of your own, and so you've probably seen things where you go, “Oh, man, I am SO blogging on that,” and then you can’t even manage to get a tweet out on Twitter because you can’t find the time? That’s kind of my life. Unless it’s to do with the Lost rewatch or photos of people holding my book. ;) In that case I will always post!

So now here’s just a bunch of odds and ends I’ve been meaning to chat about.

Shows I’m Watching and Not Telling You About:
I really need to do some more blogging about shows other than Lost, but I’m still watching (and adoring) Modern Family, and I’ve started watching The Big Bang Theory and LOOOVE it with all of my heart. I’ve been PVRing it for months, and finally sat down to watch a whack of them. There’s one that opens with the guys playing Klingon Boggle that had me laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. And then when they were on the train with Summer Glau? Brilliant. I think Jim Parsons is a genius as a comedian, and the entire ensemble just works for me. I feel like I’m laughing with them, mostly because I’m kinda one of them (I say "kinda" because I, sadly, have never attained the glorious level of geekdom they have... I'm secretly jealous of people who know so much about comics and RPGs -- I've never played D&D or anything like that). I just watched the Wil Wheaton one and it was hilarious. What a great show.

But more importantly... FRINGE. I used to blog on this show in the very beginning, loved the pilot and second episode, and then after about the fifth episode it kind of fell off my radar and felt too episodic. However, I always intended to go back and watch again, until the DVDs for season 1 were released a full four minutes before season 2 began (what was THAT all about?!) so I’ve been trying to catch up on season 1 while PVRing season 2. Anyway, hubby and I finally watched all of it during the holidays when all other shows went on hiatus, and from mancupines on airplanes to bald ratboys in the sewers and everything in between, I am in LOVE with this show. We finally finished Grey Matters last night, so I’m all caught up. Next week it comes back, and I cannot WAIT! (This is honestly the first show in a long time where I’ve thought, “Hey, I’d like to write a book about THAT!”) I’ll post more coherently on it next week in anticipation of the return. But I DO have to say here... now that I’ve seen how the parallel lives theory is absolutely central to Fringe, doesn’t Flashforward feel even MORE like a greatest hits of both Lost and Fringe? And yet it doesn’t do it as well as either of the other shows. Anyway...

Friday Night Lights: I haven't posted on it because it's still being shown on DirecTV and isn't yet on NBC, but honestly, it's AMAZING. Please please please watch it when NBC airs it because you will not be disappointed. They had to insert a few game-changers and make it a new show, and it works on every level. I cry in almost every episode, and yet I'm also laughing out loud. My HUSBAND cried in two episodes... there's no other show on television like it.

You Guys Kill Me
According to my numbers, there are hundreds of you lurking out there and just reading and not commenting (this is me waving hello!) and I hope you’re enjoying what you read. But I must say that the past few days have garnered some of the funniest comments on these posts I’ve ever read, here and over on the Lost Rewatch. So if you’re just reading my posts, you’re only reading about half the entertainment over here. Definitely click on the comments and see some REAL craziness. Sometimes a totally innocent and innocuous post can turn into something completely different in the comments section!

Where’s My Best of the Decade List??!!
So, somewhere around the first of December I saw my first "Best of the Decade" list, and it caught me completely off-guard. It's like seeing a best of the decade list in 1996 for the 90s. It just didn't make any sense. I thought it was a mistake, and then I saw another one, and another one... and I'm thinking, but the new decade starts NEXT year, doesn't it?! And then it occurred to me... no, we all celebrated on December 31, 1999, like it was the turn of the millennium. We had no choice; we'd been brought up on Prince, knew all the words to the song, and since in two thousand zero zero the party would be over, oops, out of time, we were gonna party like it's nineteen-ninety-nine, dammit!! So everyone acted like it was the turn of the millennium in the wrong year.

But for some reason this decade just didn't feel final to me. When we're kids, the first thing we learn is to count from one to ten. Not zero to nine. If you had 10 items in front of you on a desk, you wouldn't start counting with 0 and end with 9 and consider it done, and then count from 10 to 19 to count the following ten items. No, those ten items wouldn't be finished until you counted to 10, and similarly, our decade isn't actually finished until we hit the end of 2010.

I know I'm being a stickler -- to be honest, I kinda hated the people who bemoaned celebrating the turn of the millennium on December 31... I mean, come on, dude, ALL of the numbers in the year were changing!! It's like staring at your odometer when all 6 numbers are about to turn over!!! It's just not a moment to be missed. (I make my own fun.) And it comes down to naming the decades. 1990 just feels like the first year of the "90s." 1970 is the first year of the 70s. Saying 1970 is the last year of the 60s just sounds... wrong. So I get why people are doing it, and why, culturally, we've embraced that.

But that's why I haven't composed my best of the decade yet. I will... but it'll probably be late. In fact, it'll definitely be late because EVERYONE ELSE has already done it.

Why I'm the Luckiest Blogger I Know
And while I wanted to post this at the time, I thought it might look like I was mining for more Christmas presents from people, so I decided to wait until the Christmas season was over to show you what I got. A few of my readers actually sent Christmas cards to me at my publisher's office, and some of THOSE were accompanied by gifts. Marebabe sent me a list of her favourite YouTube videos, which is PERFECT for my "While You're Waiting for my Lost Post" pre-posts that I do every week. Humanebean put together a mixed CD of his favourite Christmas music, from the traditional to the wacky, and I loved both of these. JW sent me a signed copy of his Lord of the Films book (surprisingly, I work with many authors who I never get to meet face to face, and therefore I never get to own signed copies of their work, so I was THRILLED to get this!) And then there was Sonshine Music, who made me my own tote bag, and when I opened it at work, I did something I never thought I'd do: I actually said the acronym "O.M.G." out loud. And then the other people who work there had the same shocked looks on their faces:




Isn't it glorious?! I hope many of you will be able to make it to the Lost conference in Hawaii in 2011, because I will be wearing my bag there! After all, a Dharma researcher has to wear the badge somehow, right? ;) Thanks again to everyone who was so thoughtful. You guys are seriously awesome.