Severe Jam Damage

So another year of new tv has started. I’ve been watching a few of the shows, and to be honest none of them are really coming up to scratch. I don’t think there’s anything thats of the quality of The Wire, Dexter, Deadwood etc this season. It’s all pretty much bubble-gum TV. Let’s have a look shall we?

Flash-Forward
Produced and Written by Brannon Braga late of Star Trek Voyager and TNG, it stars a yankified Joseph Fiennes and fellow Brits Jack Davenport (from Coupling) and Dominick Monaghan. It also has Penny from ‘Lost’ - ok Sonya Walger (also from Coupling) as Doctor Olivia and John Cho - the rebooted Lt. Sulu in Star Trek. Heh, if I was really bored I could do a ’six degrees’ thing on this show. I’m waiting for the scene where Dom Monaghan bumps into Doctor Olivia and shouts ‘Not Penny’s Boat!’ Anyway. The show itself has a pretty interesting premise based on a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, which I haven’t read. One day in October the entire world blacks out for 2 mins - but in the blackout they see their future 6 months on. Now this could be a good fate v destiny type show - ie. Are the things they do now actually driving what they’ve seen in 6 months time? Instead, we get lots of angst, distrust and betrayal. In short its another soap opera. I’ve no idea how they are going to stretch this into a second season, I’m not even sure how it hasn’t been cancelled already.

The Forgotten
Christian Slater plays an ex-cop who leads a group of volunteers who work on naming murdered Jane\John Does. The main conceit of the show is that each weeks murder victim narrates the story. Now apparently in reality there are thousands of these volunteers who actually do this work - but in the show they actually manage to SOLVE THE MURDER. Ok, ok, there has to be some sort of payoff for the viewer, but if that is how it really works then it makes the police redundant. Also, despite his receding hairline I don’t think Christian Slater has changed his hairstyle since Heathers.

V
Oh dearie dearie me. We’re only 2 episodes into this, the most eagerly awaited show this year and, well… I know people who didn’t even bother watching after the pilot. The cast is pretty good - Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet from Lost), the gorgeous Morena Baccarin (Firefly) and her former whedonverse co-star Alan Tudyk. Oh yeah, and Bailey from Party of Five (Scott Wolf) - who looks like a low-rent plastic Michael J. Fox these days.
Anyway, I remember watching the original in the 80’s - freaked to shit by the vaseline smeared baby lizard birth, and the hamster eating scene. After giving us the entire story in the pilot absolutely NOTHING happened in the second episode. Maybe I’m just jaded but the ‘revelations’ that did occur are so by the book for these type of shows that there was no surprise. Also kudos to the makeup department for making Morena Baccarin look unattractive. And I don’t mean teen-movie-glasses-wearing-pretty-girl-who-gets-a-makeover, I mean Eastenders cast member unattractive.

Stargate: Universe
The latest in the SG franchise - this one stars Robert Carlyle, David Blue (Marks spurned boyfriend from Ugly Betty), and Lou Diamond Phillips. This appears to be the SG version of BSG, except without Cylons or any likeable characters. I could compare it to ST: Voyager, but as I said no aliens. All thats happened so far in 8 episodes is pretty much exactly what happened in BSG for the first season - finding water, finding something to power the ship, etc, etc. except No Aliens (have I said that already?) Every so often they use the stones to transport their consciousness back to Earth to report in - which gives the writers a reason to invite Richard Dean Anderson back for a guest spot. I guess that’s to remind the viewers that this is actually a Stargate show but all it does is remind me what a good show the original was. Unless something happens soon I can see this one getting cancelled.

In other news, Castle is still being shown (second season) so I can get my weekly fix of Nathan Fillion, but Fox has once again cancelled a Joss show and Dollhouse will not be getting a third season. Lets be honest though, the episodes that didn’t focus on Eliza Dushku were the best. Ep 1 of season 2 with Topher (Fran Kranz) and Whiskey (Amy Acker) was fuckin’ amazing, and the recent Sierra back story episode was fantastic. Eliza as blind girl, kidnap negotiator, hooker etc. not so good.

T - 7
One week to All Hallows Eve, have you gotten your jack-o-lantern carved yet??
Warning Very NSFW.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/fbe6c2faa0/jack-chop

Yes, I’m still here, have a couple of things going on at the moment, so not much time to blog - hopefully things will calm down soon and I’ll be around here a bit more.

For those of you still reading this check out Alligator Pie, my sisters new blog. Its really quite witty.

I’ve recently gotten involved in a photography group based in Dublin called FlickrFatale - we all met on Flickr and -tired of lagging behind with our cameras when out for Sunday walks with non-photoheads - decided to meet up every so often for photo outings and the like. We’ve now arranged our first exhibition which takes place in Ballyroan Library from July 30th to August 31st.

We’re all very excited as this is the first (of hopefully many) exhibitions we’re planning around Dublin. If you want to see more of the groups work check out our website, blog or flickr group page:

www.flickrfatale.com
flickrfatale.blogspot.com/
FlickrFatale Group

Went to Copenhagen for a few days last week. Its a nice city, although I didn’t take as many pictures as I normally would - or rather I wasn’t very happy with a lot of the ones I did take so just a small set on flickr.

I’ve a couple of rolls of film to get developed as well on the fisheye so hopefully there’ll be something worthwhile there. Copenhagen is a nice compact city much like Dublin. Easy to walk around and safe enough for the most part. Went out to Christiania one afternoon but no pics of the experience as the place was littered with No Camera signs.

Some cities are more conducive to photo taking then others, I don’t know if it was the atmosphere or my own mood. Although I took the cameras with me I didn’t feel like using them that much, happier just to soak up the atmosphere and remember what its like to just wander a city and breathe it in. Perhaps I just needed to see with my own eyes rather than through a lens.

A few things I can’t get enough of right now…

1. Fever Ray - If I had a heart
Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson (lead vocalist with ‘The Knife’) has a new project called Fever Ray. If you haven’t already get thyself to itunes.

If I Had A Heart from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

2. M83 - Kim & Jessie \ Skin of the Night
I’ve already mentioned that listening to ‘Kim & Jessie’ is like wrapping yourself up in a John Hughes movie - by contrast ‘Skin of the Night’ tears the comforter away and leaves you bare. No official video for ‘Skin’ so here’s a live version - all 7 glorious minutes of it.

3. Zoë Keating - One Cello x 16
Formerly second chair in Rasputina, currently featured on Amanda Palmers solo album ‘Who Killed Amanda Palmer’ - Keating takes one cello, one macbook and makes an orchestra. Here’s ‘Tetrishead’ for a sampler.

4. The Presets - If I Know You
Simply sublime video and song.

The Presets - If I Know You from Modular France on Vimeo.

They scrobbled me in the park the bastards - and then tried to kill me in the mountains.

We went for a walk on Saturday after a night on the beer (or in my case rum, whisk(e)y and champagne.)

On the map above you can see where the planned route runs - basically around the top of the mountain to the JB Malone memorial, a peek down at Lough Tay and then close the loop back to the car park.

EXCEPT that somewhere along the way a detour was taken, and then another detour - and our ‘gentle 2 hour stroll’ turned into a tromp all over Ballinasloe.

I still think it was a trap and if we’d followed the Coillte detour right to the end we’d have ended up in some hillman’s cooking pot.

Map Legend:
Black path - correct path we should have taken
Red path - our detour(s) and backtracking
Blue path - briefly lost the Gurrier when he legged it into the woods
Lego Cop and mini - the slowest cop chase ever witnessed, even slower than OJ.
Skull and Bones - destroyed forest land aka ‘Coillte was here, ok?’ aka ‘Mordor’

I can’t see any of the Capuchin Friars from Church st doing this…

Make me a Hero. I love the flamethrower, the outfit and the patch. But I’m really not sure about that name as a Superhero or rather in my case SuperVillian. Given that I’m off to see Watchmen this afternoon, I thought it a rather timely post.

Besides the whole ‘work’ issue the other reason things have been quiet around here is because I’ve been working on a couple of other blogs.

Elimare is where SJD originally started - I switched over to blogsome because the blogger editor wasn’t very good. Anyway, that was 4 years ago (holy shit!) and I’ve decided to revive that blog for scribblings and fictions.

Viva La Recession is a new group blog I’m involved in which pokes fun at the current ‘economic crisis’ and provides some tips on how to make your redundancy cash go further. Ignore the default template for the moment, we’re waiting for someone to get off his ass and do it properly (No names, Priscilla)
We’re also looking for writers so drop us a line if you are interested. *

*WARNING: The admin is a firm believer in the Casting Couch Interview.