Sometimes I shouldn't use words

If the Mark Watches blog were a song it might be this one:

1. The one who seduced you, screwed you over, broke your heart in a million pieces, and laughed about it.
Heroes maybe? I never do heartbroken for long (although Glee is an an accident waiting to happen).

2. The old flame you don't see very often any more but whom you still really enjoy getting together with for a few drinks and maybe a pleasant nostalgic romp.
Alan Bleasedale. I have the Boys from the Black stuff on DVD. I think its time is coming back

3. The mysterious dark one whom you used to sit up with talking until 3 AM at weird coffee houses and with whom you were quite smitten until you realized s/he really was fucking crazy.
The Lord of the Rings. Don’t judge me. The kids love it (uncomprehendingly).

4.The one you spent a whole weekend in bed with and who drank up all your liquor and whom you'd still really like to get with again, although you're relieved s/he doesn't actually live in town
Old Hollywood movies. Any time. Call me.

5. The steady
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Be still my hard drive.

6. The alluring stranger whom you've flirted with at parties but have never gotten really serious with
RTD Who. It begins and ends with David Tennant being hot.

7. The one you hang out with and have vague fantasies about maybe having a thing with, but ultimately you're just good buddies
Firefly.

8. The one your friends keep introducing you to and who seems like a hell of a cool person except it's never really gone anywhere
Fringe.

9. The one who's slept with all your friends, and you keep looking at them and thinking, "How the hell did they land all these cool people?"
Farscape. But specifically John Crichton who I fell in hate with on first sight and every time I dipped into the show there were more of him.

10. The one who gave you the best damned summer of your life and against whom you measure all other potential partners:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You never forget your first.

11. The one you recently met at a party and would like to get to know better:
The Wire. We’re going steady now. It could be love.

12. The old flame that you wouldn't totally object to hooking up with again for a one night romp if only they'd clean up a bit:
BSG or failing that its various offspring. I did Caprica.

13. Your hot new flame:
Batwoman (Elegy). So very, very hot.

14. The one who stole your significant other:
Manchester United. Although since the football came first, maybe he was never really mine. Did I ever tell you the story of the honeymoon plan to visit all the premiership grounds in the order of their finishing in the league?

(  A Working Class Hero is a Hard Thing To Be )

( Who didn’t shoot Liberty Valence )

I think it was around February this year the box set of The Wire was on special offer and I bought it as a bribe to myself. Write the motherfucking paper then you can watch the motherfucking show (K’s name for it based on trying to watch the late night BBC2 showings without subtitles). Still haven’t written the paper. I swear that dataset has an inbuilt uncertainty principle, it changes every time I look at it. But I did other good things. Then there was a week of karmic frustration when I couldn’t remember where I’d hidden the box set from myself. Then a week of mainlining season one.

( Nicely done )

Title: Last Chance Texaco
Artist: Ricki Lee Jones
Fandom Caprica (episodes 1-13)
Characters Graystones
Warnings: Flashing lights, self harm, suicidal ideation
Format: DivX
Size: 49.1 MB

Summary: She’s not there


Download from here (Right/control click and save target as)

( Notes )
( Lyrics )

This fifteen character meme has been going around and I started mentally doing it just to see if I’d be able to make it fifteen. I tend to think that I’m not very polyamourous about characters. There a few I would follow into soap opera hell and probably an equal number I fell in hate with at first sight and can’t bear to watch the awesome shows they’re in because of (even more reason to hate them). Still, did make it to fifteen in the end with only minor cheating so here’s the list.

List fifteen of your favorite characters from different fandoms, and ask people to spot patterns in your choices, if they're so inclined

Sarah Connor (Terminator movies and T:SCC series)

Buffy Summers (BtVS TV series and comics)

Laura Roslin (BSG)

Number Six (BSG)

Gaius Baltar (BSG)

Catherine Weaver (T:SCC)

James Ellison (T:SCC)

Robin Hood (anon)

Dana Scully (The X-files)

Jean Harrington (The Lady Eve)

Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)

Mike Chang (Glee)

Elliot Hoo (TXD)

Sam Tyler (Life on Mars)

George Bailey (It’s a Wonderful Life)

I finally finished remastering my TSCC vid Nobody Loves You. You can download the new shiny by right clicking here or streaming (YouTube allowing):


I still really miss the show and rewatching the vid only makes it more so but there’s some potential good news on that front. Josh Friedman (show runner for TSCC) has written a pilot, which Fox have picked up with a decision to be made on it in May 2011. Originally he was going to produce, he may still be show running but now it has Spielberg and some guys who produced the New Star trek Movie and Fringe as executive producers whatever that means. It’s based on a comic book (sorry, graphic novel) series called Locke and Key about a family (the eponymous Locke’s) moving back to their ancestral spooky mansion in the aftermath of the father’s murder and horrible wackiness ensuing. I haven’t read the books, they say the art is interesting, but they seem to focus on the 6 year old boy, his teenage brother and occasionally their sister Kinsey while the mother hangs around in the background in a haze alcohol-fuelled grief. But that the book. When Friedman did Terminator it was supposed to be all about John but he brought back the Sarah of it and added Cameron and Weaver and Ellison and that Derek guy. And the first character they’ve cast is the mother, Nina - Miranda Otto (Eowyn) and then the daughter, Kinsey ( Sarah Bolger). It could be good. Or never happen. Whatever. Happy New Year!

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown had an article on The Awl about the awsomeness of Ripley and Buffy and Marti Noxon and River and Summer Glau which was totally heartwarming except the (very small) part where she dismissed Sarah Connor in order to elevate Ellen Ripley to mother of all fictional mother figures.

I do love Ripley, I do. Even though I think the only Alien film I’ve actually seen all of in one sitting is Aliens I love her. In the 80’s I loved “Get away from her” Ripley almost as much as I loved “No living man am I” Eowyn a decade or so before. Alien hybrid Ripley is the one bit of awesome in a very strange broken movie. Ripley in maternal mode is the mother little girls wish for but not, I think, the mother to speak for them when they grow up when and if they have daughters of their own. Sarah speaks.

It’s a constant of Terminator 2 discussions that someone will claim it’s really a John Connor origin story but even in the movie (which is less Sarah than the show) who gets the voiceover? I generally hate them but what other female character gets the voiceover? I’m coming up Clueless. Eye roll. Whatever. Sarah speaks.

There are two scenes I remember from first seeing the movie. The dream sequence where her nightmare was the world burning (see, Sarah has to save the world) and another, much quieter scene when she’s watching Arnie with John and thinking how the machine will never let him down, never be angry with him, always be there. She can’t compete. In the show this theme is revisited in the parallels between Sarah and Weaver. Aliens has the classic good-bad mother dichotomy in Ripley vs the Alien queen. Its bad mother is a giant pulsating mass of teeth and venom, a maternal nightmare dreamed by people for whom mama will never be the name they call themselves (Sigmund I’m talking to you). Weaver isn’t bad. She’s cold, fluid metal, all things to all people; a beautiful quicksilver mermonster; the perfect other mother; the one who takes John away when he’s ready. Sarah lets him go. I think that’s the part that speaks to me. Much deeper than “Get away from her you bitch!”

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky

But until that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With your daddy and mammy standing by