Alone and Unobserved

I have a tradition of watching Fox’s summer reality show So You Think You Can Dance and blogging breathlessly about how hot the contestants are. Unfortunately for you, my avid readers, Twitter has taken over a great deal of that role in my life (which is one reason for the sparse updates here), which means that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t aware of my SYTYCD crush, Summer 2009 Version: Evan Kasprzak.

Here’s Evan and his brother Ryan’s audition video:

Here’s a jazz routine, choreographed by Tasty Oreo:

Here’s a contemporary routine choreographed by Mia Michaels, in which Evan is sadly fixated on his partner’s butt:

And here is the samba Evan danced last night with partner Randi.

SO HOT. Now, his samba’s not great, and in a lot of ways it’s not even good. But… somehow I don’t care.

Anyway. There you go! That’s my current crush.

Oh, and here’s the Mia Michaels routine that blew everyone’s minds on Twitter last night, and which looked like it was really going to suck in rehearsal and then turned out to be very powerful in the actual performance:

Here’s the routine were Jason danced with his shirt off the whole time (rowr):

And here’s the Wade Robson routine that closed out the night last night and made me really glad that Wade Robson is back as a choreographer on the show, and why the hell don’t they have him every week:

And oh my gosh I can’t post all the dance routines. The above videos are via Rickey.org—go watch the rest there, too. TTFN!

Craig’s birthday was yesterday, so Sunday we went out and go our eyebrows pierced.

Sunday night we had a Wonderfalls marathon. I love Wonderfalls. I think that has been firmly established on this blog. And now Craig loves it, too! I love infecting others with my media addictions. That is why I am a librarian.

The Wonderfalls Cast

Yesterday, Craig and I went to The Happy Sumo for sushi, and I had a delicious—to die for—veggie tempura roll with avocado, sriracha sauce and fresh mayonnaise. OMG so delicious.

Then we went back to my place and finished watching Wonderfalls (see above), drank a bottle of dry Riesling and downed several cups of sambuca. Liquorice-flavored magic!

Happy birthday yesterday, Craig! I hope you had as good a time as I did. (I also hope you aren’t suffering from a sambuca-induced hangover the way I am.)

The news is out, and what we’ve all secretly or not-so-secretly feared has come to pass: another Doctor is deserting us. David Tennant, who has played The Doctor on BBC’s phenomenal Doctor Who for the past three seasons is leaving the show at the end of next year.

Remember: this is a personal betrayal of each and every one of us, but it’s especially a personal betrayal of me. Fortunately, we have a year to write angst-ridden emo blogs about how Tennant hates us and how life has no meaning anymore. We could even start an internet petition or a Facebook group imploring him to change his mind! Because that kind of thing is so effective.

My online friend Misty (Hi, Misty!) introduced me to DailyLit a week or so ago, and since then I’ve been soaking up Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, delivered via RSS feed in easily digestible chunks to my Google Reader inbox every morning. This is obviously a sign of things to come: books will soon go the way of the dodo and everyone will read only ebooks or e-audiobooks. Libraries will be a thing of the past, but I won’t mind, or even notice, because I will be in my living room, taking in information through a cannula wired into my skull. NO ONE WILL EVER LEAVE THEIR HOUSE AGAIN.

Well, I don’t really believe that. But DailyLit is still a nice way to fit classic, open-domain literature into my day. I can even read it on my phone, on the go. (Maybe that cannula really isn’t that far off after all.) Thanks, Misty!

I just watched the best Doctor Who ever, where the Doctor inadvertently becomes Madame de Pompadour’s lifelong protector, secret friend and secret love, all over the course of a single episode. It was fantastic. I think David Tennant is a fine Doctor after all, despite my initial nostalgia for Christopher Eccleston, and the second series is actually better than the first. I know, it sounds impossible! But it’s true.

Despite the fact that I am perishing daily, hourly, minutely from the heat and from dehydration, I’ve had the time to take in several movies and a great deal of television over the past few days.

Friday I watched WALL-E, Pixar’s newest computer-animated tour-de-force, a hilarious and amazing film, right up there with Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. WALL-E is the name of a tiny, mobile trash compactor/robot, left behind on a deserted Earth to clean up the mountains and avalanches of garbage humanity left behind. He spends his days creating neat skyscrapers out of trash cubes, and, in his free time, he collects interesting items (bras, sporks, lighters) and learns about love and dancing from an old, ailing videocassette tape of Hello, Dolly. When a sleek, white, ovoid probe named EVE shows up on a secret mission, he instantly falls in love with her, and ends up following her back to one of the massive spaceships mankind is now living on. There, he inadvertently uncovers a seven-hundred-year-old plot, becomes the leader of a rebellion of broken robots, wins EVE’s heart and saves humanity from itself.

Friday evening I went out on the town with my friend Craig, listened to live music at a dueling piano bar, sang along to ’80s music, ogled hot guys and got drunk. That was the first time I ever had to spend the night on a friend’s couch because I was too inebriated to get myself home. The next morning, which saw me shambling through downtown Salt Lake with greasy hair and sweaty, slept-in clothes, was also a first.

Saturday afternoon I went with Craig to see Wanted, a film about an ancient fraternity of assassins, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie . . . and Angelina Jolie’s Scary Scowl of Death. (Watch for it 24 seconds into the trailer.) The movie got mixed reviews, which is easy to understand in retrospect: the premise is interesting, and the effects are mind-blowing, stunning, unreal. On the other hand, the story lies somewhere between “Huh?” and “Meh,” which is a really good way to piss off the critics, who are forced to watch movies even if they don’t want to.

Saturday night I had my own little Doctor Who marathon, with the first of the “new” series—the season with Christopher Eccleston and a blonde I keep thinking I’ve seen somewhere else but don’t think I really have. I don’t like it as much as its spin-off Torchwood, mainly because there’s no sex or swearing [too wholesome!], but apparently I like it well enough to watch several episodes end-to-end.

This morning, while I was stumbling around getting my morning coffee, I dropped a mostly empty glass container of coffee granules on my left foot. It hurt a lot, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. After I was done swimming with QUAC, I noticed that I had a nice lump and a livid bruise on the top of my foot. So now I’m at work, hobbling around with my left shoe untied, trying not to bang the lump into anything. In my T-shirt, cargo shorts and untied Skechers, I make such a dignified librarian.

Tonight: more Doctor Who?

This is Battlestar Galactica’s last season, which is already a crime. And now it’s official: after tonight’s mid-season finale (reported to contain a jaw-dropping cliffhanger) the Sci Fi Channel will be holding the second half of Season Four until at least 2009. On the plus side, BSG producers claim that tonight’s episode is going to be amazing. Hopefully it will have enough amazing to make up for waiting until January for resolution.

So You Think You Can Dance is back, as of last night, and I am all aquiver. The auditions are, if anything, crazier than those for American Idol, but are somehow also much more watchable—yes, you get the weirdos like “Gold Inferno,” but you also get sick, amazing acts like Robert Muraine’s or polished performances like Leonidas and Aliona’s. (David “Sex” Soller has never been the slightest bit watchable, of course—he invented “skeevy,” turned it into an art form and then bludgeoned us to death with it, and I really wish he would just stay home next year.)

But the REAL reason I’m so happy, the REAL reason I got so worked up over the return of the show, is that Season Two second-placer Travis Wall was on camera for a few fleeting moments. Ah, Travis, how we’ve missed ye. For old time’s sake, here is Travis and Heidi’s duet from Season Two (a routine that won choreographer Mia Michaels an Emmy).

Travis and Heidi in Calling You
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLNCZD-7Jc&hl=en]

He showed up to teach a simple routine to the contestants, and I’m hoping (fingers crossed!) that he makes several more appearances this season in that capacity.

P.S. Cherry season has begun. Mmmmm!

[Image by Poppy Wright]

I finished re-watching Season One of Battlestar Galactica last night, after I was done with the homework I had—once again—been putting off all week. There’s nothing like three hours of watching this to make me forget that I even have a life outside of avoiding/sleeping with/fighting The Cylon Menace. I mean, look who they have on there: Jamie Bamber, Katee Sackhoff, Michael Trucco, Tricia Helfer, James Callis, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett, Aaron Douglas, Lucy Lawless . . . it wouldn’t matter if the show sucked worse than MILF Island; like MILF Island, it would still have an enormous following. Unlike with MILF Island, though, I would be watching it.

Things that have made me smile in the past week:

• Joni Mitchell (always)
• My apartment being clean(ish)
• The taste of really sharp white cheddar cheese

Things that have made me squeal out loud in happiness and excitement within the past week:

• Pushing Daisies, and Lee Pace on said show
• Freddy Rodriguez cuteness on Ugly Betty
• Dexter, and Michael C. Hall on said show
• Edamame
• Shaun Tan’s inventive new graphic novel, The Arrival
• The ACME Burger Company’s house-made Three-Bean Veggieburger (with herbed goat cheese!)

Thing that has made me shriek aloud in anger and really lose my cool, and about which I will not elaborate at the moment because I don’t want to become crazed again:

1. The idiotic library science homework in my idiotic library science class

My DVR series lineup this season:

Heroes (Mondays, NBC)

After a smashing first season, the sophomore year of this show about “ordinary people discovering extraordinary abilities” gets off to a great start with tons of shirtless Milo Ventimiglia. Oh, and he has a cute new haircut, too!

Chuck* (Mondays, NBC)

The situation: All of the government’s most top-top-secret secrets are accidentally downloaded into the brain of a loser computer geek named Chuck, making him both a target and a hot commodity. But even though the premise is utterly, utterly laughable, like it was thought up by a person who had never touched a computer before, the fact that the whole thing is played for laughs—and by such a great cast!—makes it very easy to suspend disbelief.

Dancing with the Stars (Mondays & Tuesdays, ABC)

Drew Lachey as guest-host. Need I say more? Oh la la!

Reaper* (Tuesdays, CW)

Total cutie Bret Harrison plays Sam, a young slacker/loser type who discovers on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the Devil before he was even born, and that now the debt has fallen due. Fortunately, Sam is of no use to the Devil in Hell, so he gets the unique challenge of becoming a bounty hunter, hunting down souls who have escaped their eternal punishment in Hell and sending them back where they belong. Besides being hella tasty, Harrison also looks an awful lot like one of my younger math professors, which has led to some interesting Pavlovian reactions from me.

Life* (Wednesdays, NBC)

Twelve years ago, Charlie Crews was a run-of-the-mill cop in the LAPD. That was before he was framed for a horrific crime he didn’t commit, and before he served twelve years in a federal supermax prison before being exonerated on DNA evidence. Now he’s out and on the force again, but after twelve years of absorbing Zen koans along with the inevitable prison abuse, he is a changed man. As he struggles to adapt to life in the twenty-first century, life on the outside, and life as an exonerated convict, he must find out who framed him and why, before they come after him again.

Pushing Daisies* (Wednesdays, ABC)

When Bryan Fuller cited the enormously popular French film Amélie as an inspiration for the whimsical, oversaturated visual style and tone of this new TV show, many people reacted as if he had said something filthy and disgusting. After the preview screeners went out, critics like the NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley trumpeted things like, “It is possible to have loathed ‘Amélie’ and still enjoy ‘Pushing Daisies,’ ” as if only morons would have liked “that insufferably coy French movie.”

Well, I loved Amélie, and I’m fully prepared to love Pushing Daisies as well. Lee Pace (from Wonderfalls, another Bryan Fuller show) stars as Ned, a young man with a startling gift: a touch from his hand can resurrect the dead, but a second touch sends them back for good. And if he fails to administer a second touch before a minute has passed, a random person in the vicinity will die instead. How will he use his gift? What other strictures are there? How does his talent for pie-making come into it? I guess we’ll find out tonight, when Pushing Daisies premieres.

Ugly Betty (Thursdays, ABC)

After last season’s devastating finale, Season Two starts out strong with the hilarious/wrenching episode “How Betty Got Her Grieve Back.”

30 Rock (Thursdays, NBC)

I kept meaning to watch this show, but somehow—despite the fact that I bought the entire first season from iTunes—I just never got around to it. Well, after the show went and won an Emmy, how can I turn my back on it?

Torchwood** (Saturdays, BBC America)

I don’t know what it is about this series, but despite production values more reminiscent of Dr. Who (the show this one spun off from) than Battlestar Galactica, it has grown on me. I’ll give it a few more episodes to really reel me in.

Family Guy (Sundays, FOX)
American Dad (Sundays, FOX)

I usually save a few weeks’ worth of these two shows on my DVR before finally sitting down and watching them. They’re backup to the more important television I watch.

Remember, all the major broadcast channels now have “full episode” features on their websites that allow you to catch up on your favorite series. How many episodes you can watch online depends on the channel and show.

**New to the U.S.; originally aired in the UK between October 22, 2006 and January 1, 2007.