Pitch Perfect

Watching Pitch Perfect with the family and some company. Anna Kendrick is simply LuLu transported to the future and assigned a different name. They look like clones for Pete's sake.

Paul Walker

I didn't know Paul Walker as an actor, haven't seen any Fast & the Furious movies, and don't remember him in Pleasantville. Still, a human is a human, so RIP.

We Blew It (but innocently)

YaYa is upset we put up the tree in her absence. She was there when we bought it but headed out to Grandma's before the decorating. But as I told her, Mom did 96% of it, as she always does, because she likes her tree just so; all the rugrats did was hand her some ornaments and hang a couple at the end. They were also stuck going to Mass, cleaning the yard, and putting away laundry; think she'd still want to trade places with them? :)

Black Friday 2013

Longest line of the day? Joann Fabrics, of all places, where the line not only snaked around a roped off queue but continued down about 40% of the store's considerable length. Second place? Easily Kmart, where the line was awe-inspiring but rather quick. No line of note at Dollar Tree.

Alas, the one item I needed to buy on Black Friday I failed to procure, and off-sale I may not be able to pull it off this Christmas. Won't be the first time I've had to improvise, but . . . sigh. I did get a few deals on smaller items last night, and *fingers crossed* my co-workers hopefully scored on two items for me earlier this morning. So far today we've cleaned and rearranged the living room and we're gearing up to go buy a Christmas tree, with some talk we may cut one down ourselves. 

Happy Black Friday everyone.

Jane Kean

RIP 90 year old Jane Kean, aka "Trixie"  from the Honeymooners :(

Wow

A video for the song "The Way" by Ariana Grande just came on the TV. I swear to Gawd, for weeks I've heard this on the radio and thought it was a surprisingly good Mariah Carey tune. That girl has some pipes!

Frustration

"Tolzein would have been on his back or throwing INT's [today], we saw 3 losses with him, I don't need to see anymore" You're an idiot, sir. This is a poorly constructed, shoddily coached Packers team, currently led by a QB [Flynn] that is a favorite of the coach despite being laughed off the roster of many a better team. Where are all the Matt Flynn/Ted Thompson fanboys now?

Chicken Soup

Best Dang Chicken Soup we've found at the grocer

The Day of the Doctor

small SPOILERS: It was my great honor to re-watch "The Day of the Doctor" today, this time with all four kids. Not only did they watch with rapt attention, they asked to watch a Doctor Who special afterwards, even when I gave them free reign of the remote. They also displayed copious amounts of Whovian knowledge - OJ spotted the re-numbering of the Doctors, and called out the apparent conflict with the canonical # of Time Lord regenerations; YaYa spotted the fourth Doctor and asked for a copy of his scarf, and Junie, God Bless her, asked: "How can it [the TARDIS] be biggah on the inside?" :)

Doctor Who - The 50th Anniversary

Following exactly one day after JFK’s assassination, another event that loomed large in my childhood took place: Doctor Who, a low budget children’s sci-fi show, premiered on the BBC.

As with Kennedy, I didn’t become aware of the phenomenon until the 1980’s. By that time, if I can get my own memories in sync with the chronology, they were already on the Fifth incarnation of the Doctor (Peter Davison) and it had become a worldwide cult favorite.

I don’t remember where I saw my first Who, or when, but I remember gobbling up the slim Target novelizations of each episode and imagining what the companions looked like, so it was at best a fleeting glimpse of the show itself.

Later, a PBS station here in Milwaukee began playing Doctor Who in chronological order every night at 10pm, one half hour episode at a time. I’d often pull up a chair in my Grandma’s kitchen and watch it with her – oh! The sacrifices she made for me! I enjoyed Hartnell, was not as in love with Troughton as most people seem to be, adored Pertwee (still my favorite Doctor) and was fond but not overjoyed with Tom Baker, etc.

Did I mention I fell immediately in love with Sarah Jane Smith, and still feel a pitter-patter at the mere mention of her name?

Around the time the PBS station caught up with the Davison era I stumbled upon a Madison affiliate that was broadcasting the very first episode of the 7^th Doctor! It was probably a year old by then, but no matter; to me I was blown away at the “awesome” special effects, which seemed sooooo much more advanced than the rubber suit monsters I’d been watching every night!

I joined a national Who fan club and subscribed to their newspaper, once writing in and objecting to their casting the BBC of the “enemy”, and getting a personal response in turn. I had a Doctor Who mug, and a Tardis key on my key ring. My Mom crocheted me a reasonable facsimile of Tom Baker’s scarf that I still use. For my 15^th birthday my Grandma bought me a retrospective of the show’s first quarter century. I frequented the Turning Page, a niche bookstore on the East Side that specialized in Who, and my Dad let me drive all the way there when he was teaching me to drive.

I LOVED that show.

And then it was cancelled, packed off forever into the land of reruns. Our PBS station refused to pay for the rights to the show and it was dropped from their schedule. The Turning Page closed. A Fox TV movie introduced us to the 8^th Doctor but did nothing to revive the series.

Life went on.

I was happy to hear the show was returning in 2005 but was no fan of the overwrought, cynical acting of Christopher Eccleston, and let’s not get into how awful John Barrowman is as an actor. I barely paid attention to the series.

And then came Tenant . . .

He brought the show back to life for me. The charm, the wit, the excitement and the humor, it was all there again, in spades. He never quite trumped Pertwee for me but man, it’s close.

(Mat Smith ain’t too bad either)

Now the show is more popular than ever, a true global phenomenon. I wish more people realized that the pre-revival Who was darn good stuff worth watching, but I’m not going to argue with success. Today marks the 50^th anniversary of the show, and what a milestone that is! 50 years is a heck of a stretch for a business, a marriage, or even a building to acknowledge; but a TV show???

Wow.

Congratulations to everyone connected with Doctor Who over the last fifty years. I tip my hat to all of you, and wish you fifty more to come!