Thursday, June 05, 2008

The quiet house

This week has been awfully quiet at my place. Last Thursday was the official end of my 2007-2008 TV schedule, and now...summer.

My Tivo is basically full--I sacrificed almost everything else in order to keep the full season of Lost intact, because that's what you do when you're scatterbrained and compulsive about the most complicated show on the planet--but it's okay, because there's nothing on the Season Pass horizon until September. (When that day comes, though, watch out. Did you know that both Joss Whedon [Buffy, Firefly] and J.J. Abrams [Alias, Lost] have new shows premiering next season? And not a single one of my current shows has been cancelled. OY.)

It's nice, kind of. I can write. Read. Knit. Enjoy the psychic space of my quiet apartment. Listen to the guy across the street with the outlandishly loud voice when he talks on the phone. But I'll admit that after awhile, psychic space gets kind of dull (same with the neighbor; he sounds like Louis Armstrong on HGH, but I can't actually understand what he's saying), and I know I'm going to be trolling the universe for something to occupy that part of me that's always hunting for a good story.

I've declared this hiatus the Summer of Battlestar Galactica, which I think will be a Thing when I get there, but I'm still too close to the Lost finale to even think about something so brain-intensive (to say nothing of the aforementioned full Tivo, which I will eventually need to watch through and/or delete--it's a closure thing, since we won't see the island again until January). In the interim, I've got Freaks and Geeks coming up on Netflix, which is supposedly brilliant and not too long, and I'm trying to figure out whether I can find and finish the first season of Mad Men before the second season premieres in July. (The DVDs come out July 1. Why do they do this, not give us catch-up time between DVD releases and premieres? Maddening.) And then there are the other, smaller shows just starting to tap at my consciousness--How I Met Your Mother and, secretly, Dr. Who--which I probably won't get to anytime soon, but am sort of wondering whether I should. Right now I'm taking it easy with old episodes of Gilmore Girls--the first season is just like perfect old pajamas, I've seen them so many times--and random run-ins with What Not to Wear. Which is nice, and doesn't tax the brain too much, but at some point I will have recovered from 2007-2008 and be ready for sucking-in. And when that time comes, I want to be ready. What to watch, what to watch?

7 comments:

Xerxes said...

Of course you need to watch Dr Who!
Any show that has been around since 1963 (it premired the day Kennedy was assassinated)HAS to be watched. Okay so it was off the air for a few year here and there but STILL...

Of course (this is the father in me talking) you could see if some guy friend wanted to go out an do something instead of watching TV! :-)

HeHa said...

I love love love LOVE Doctor Who!! I'm finishing up season 2 this week. Ah, David Tennant... so adorable.

How have you been liking Special Topics in Calamity Physics? My boss and I both read it last year. It got me reading the suggested reading list from the chapter titles. I was surprised by how many of them I hadn't gotten around to before.

Liz said...

Well, how do you know I'm not? :) A lady never kisses and blogs...

it premiered the day Kennedy was assassinated

That's amazing! I didn't know. (Fun fact: C.S. Lewis died that day, too.)

Xerxes said...

Kennedy, Dr. Who and C. S. Lewis, all coming and going on the same day, sounds like an X-files thing. Maybe you should write something based on these three occurrences.

BTW heha – that would actually be the 28th season of The Doctor.

Liz said...

HeHa,

See, I've heard such good things about it, and plenty of people have told me I'd like it. One of these days.

I finished Special Topics over the weekend and am having a hard time summing up how I felt about it. I actually really liked it--her prose is super-precocious in a way that is potentially hateable in someone so young (like, why have I not published my excellent mystery/coming-of-age novel?), but I found the story really compelling, especially towards the end. And I guess I might have issues with the things we end up knowing and not knowing, but I still thought it was pretty brilliantly put together. I don't know--I've been trying to write a review of it, and totally failing.

Did you like it?

HeHa said...

Yes the 28th season :) I don't understand why they call it the second. It's still BBC Wales, right? Still the same show title... so what gives?

Special Topics was good. It kept me guessing what might come next. But I felt the ending situation with the father was kind of an easy out. I just don't buy that a father who had been so very much involved in his daughter would really just skip out without a word or a trace. Even if he was embarrassed by his past and who he really is. It's her book and not mine though so it's okay that I'm not completely satisfied. I'm looking forward to her next book if she ever writes one.

Anonymous said...

I'm just going to say it: I don't get "Dr. Who". It's a bizarre show that I tried watching on BBC, but just couldn't stomach.

You need to watch the Wire. Seriously. It will blow your mind. I'm starting to get into "Friday Night Lights" too. It's pretty good. There's a big stack of "Dexter" and "Battlestar Galactica" in my house for later use. Take that, Intellectual Property Rights...