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1. I changed my layout. May change it again or play around with the colours.

2. Do you ever see businesses or meet people and they have the same name as someone famous? Not just the first name but the entire name? Yesterday I saw a car with 'Kevin Smith Cleaning Services' written on the side. Two weeks ago I walked past 'Leonard Cohen Legal Attorneys.' My thought on both occasions was that there should be a blog or a Tumblr dedicated to the phenomena. Which will lead to a book deal. And then a film (it would feature the famous people doing the jobs of their less famous name-sharers).

3. I've been waiting on tenterhooks for this episode of The Good Wife and it did not disappoint. ( Spoilers )

4. The Chicago Code has been cancelled and I am bummed but not crushed. I thought that with time it might have sorted out the kinks and become truly great but I understand that the ratings haven't been good. I think the latest episode demonstrated a few of its weak points all too well. ( Spoilers )

5. One of my favourite TV shows of last year (that I think I only posted about on Tumblr) was The Trip, a British comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Basically, they play fictionalised versions of themselves and go on a trip together where they review restaurants in the north of England. You don't need to be familiar with either of them or their careers to enjoy it (I know, because I showed it to my mother and she loved it), because they establish the relationship and the tension between them really well and after that you just sit back and enjoy their duelling impressions, their petty squabbles, and the surprising moments of humanity.

The TV show was directed by Michael Winterbottom as a six episode series and he has re-edited it as a film for international audiences. The trailer is here and below is one of my favourite scenes.



6. It's that time of year again: Eurovision! Because they only sing one song throughout the competition, I don't watch the semi-finals because I like to be shocked, awed, and appalled by the final on Sunday. But I did find a bunch of photos of the costumes we can look forward to and they are under the cut.

( Eurovision is the definition of so bad it's good )

I finished two books this weekend. First was Cold Comfort Farm which I adored and was the perfect palate cleanser to Jane Eyre (which I finished earlier in the week). I then watched the 1995 adaptation on YouTube and while it's difficult to imagine anybody else but Rufus Sewell as Seth and Stephen Fry as Mybug, I wouldn't mind it if the Beeb had another go at it because Kate Beckinsale was pretty disappointing as Flora.

I started The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano last night and finished it this afternoon. While it won't be making my favourites list any time soon, I was impressed by it because it contained a bunch of things I dislike but I wanted to keep reading it anyway. Whoever translated it from the original Italian did a good job.

I loved Parks and Rec this week. Well, I love it every week but this episode was particularly heart warming. It's probably the only show on at the moment which draws its comedy chiefly from its own good nature. If you're not watching it, you should.

Icon dump: The Chicago Code, The Good Wife, Parks and Recreation, The Dan and Blair Show



( Here )

1. Tonight's episode of The Chicago Code was the weakest so far but still enjoyable. There was a greater focus on the crime solving, rather than the corruption, so maybe that was it. But there were still a lot of excellent character moments and I continue to love the relationship between Jarek and Teresa. You really get a sense of the history between them and I like that when he pushes her buttons, she pushes right back. On other shows with this kind of power dynamic (woman in charge of male hero), the man is generally allowed by the show to be as disrespectful to her authority as he likes because he is always right and also, she is generally a shrill wet blanket. But there is so much mutual respect between them and sometimes they are downright playful with each other. It's great.

And at this point, I really hope they stay just friends. The actors have great chemistry and I wouldn't be opposed to reading fic, but I'm not in a 'shipping place with them - their friendship/professional relationship is far more interesting to me.

2. I don't know if you've heard, but there's a new Gossip Girl web series called The Dan and Blair Show and it gets uploaded here. As someone who checked out of Gossip Girl in season two because it wasn't good, I've been really impressed with the quality of the writing, pacing, and acting of The Dan and Blair Show. We've watched them go from a crime-fighting duo, to work rivals, to secret friends, and now, perhaps, something more. I am sure the writers will find a way to mess this up, but for now I am enjoying the references to The Philadelphia Story, the way they support each other's career aspirations, and the banter. I think they should run off to a pocket universe together.

3. Speaking of pocket universes THERE IS A WEB COMIC ABOUT ADA LOVELACE AND CHARLES BABBAGE FIGHTING CRIME IN STEAMPUNK VICTORIAN LONDON, SOMETIMES WITH THE HELP OF ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL. MY LIFE IS COMPLETE!

Ahem.

For those of you who have not heard of Ada Lovelace, she was Byron's (yes, that Byron) only legitimate daughter. Her mother, fearing that she would take after her father, raised her on a steady diet of maths, science, and maths, so that when she grew up she was one of the few to understand the design and purpose of Charles Babbage's analytical machine, an early precursor to the computer. Because she wrote an algorithm for the machine, she's considered by many to be the world's first computer programmer. In reality she died at thirty-six from cancer, so it's nice that she's been pulled from the pages of history to be awesome and fight crime.

4. It just now occurs to me that I only really care for people fighting crime when that's not their actual job. So have some ficlets about non-canonical crime fighting duos:

( From Gilmore Girls: Lorelai and Michel )

( From Inception: Arthur and Ariadne )

1. There is a Tumblr dedicated to cats that look like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. And then Vulture called up Nick Offerman and got him to comment on some of the posts ("You wouldn't guess it, but that's a look of abject pleasure on both the cat and Ron," says Offerman. "That would be Ron sitting by a burbling stream, redolent of trout."). Oh internet! The random joy that you bring!

2. Speaking of Nick Offerman, I've started my West Wing rewatch and I saw him in episode 1x05 aka "The Crackpots and These Women". He played one of the crackpots, part of the delegation that speaks to CJ about Pluie the wolf and the wolves-only highway they want the government to build. It's just the kind of outdoorsy thing I can see Ron being interested in if it weren't for the fact that he hates to see tax payer's money spent so frivolously. So I have decided that Ron was once an idealistic young man who believed in big government and went to the White House to plead his case, only for him to be rebuffed by CJ's disbelief and thus he became the Libertarian curmudgeon we all know and love (and now compare to cats!). If only he'd known about the position paper CJ went on to write, about the necessity of wildlife protection...

3. Still enjoying The Chicago Code. It's definitely more about the corruption and the politics than it is about the cases, which is good because crime procedurals generally bore me to turning off the TV. One unexpected source of delight is the scenery. They film on location and they really take advantage of it by shooting the streets of Chicago in a very cinematic way: lots of wide pans and overhead shots. I had no idea Chicago was so beautiful.

And it's an interesting when juxtaposed with The Good Wife which is set in Chicago but actually shot in New York and deals with similar subject matter. Already I've gotten a much better sense of Chicago itself in the three episodes of Code than I have from the season and a half I've seen of Wife.

4. I think we're headed for trouble in the Community fandom. I think it'll look like a shipper war but speaking for myself it's actually more complicated than that. I feel that the second season hasn't had the same depth of character as the first, with Abed and Troy being the only characters to grow. Jeff and Annie get most of the focus (him out of all the characters - which, yes, he is the main character, I know - and her out of all the girls) but they keep on playing the same beats: he eventually realises that he does love this rag-tag bunch of misfits, she runs into conflict over her standards/perfectionism, and the ship teasing continues apace. Pierce has actually regressed as a character, becoming more and more unlikeable. Britta and Shirley get pushed into the background far too often for my liking and often come across as one-note (something I attribute entirely to the writing).

Anyway, I've noticed some disagreements breaking out between Jeff/Annie shippers and people who aren't Jeff/Annie shippers. Trouble is on the horizon. We'll see if the next few episodes keep it at a rumble or cause the fandom to splinter.

5. I'm currently drinking wine that cost me $8.00. I'm having a hard time detecting the notes of melon and guava it's supposed to possess, so I guess you get what you pay for.