152 insights into my soul

Finally saw Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing". Its a cute little movie, and Amy Acker looks mad cute, as per usual. Lots of people from Whedon stuff- besides Wesley and Fred, there's Coulson, Castle, Topher, Simon Tam, Reed Diamond, Tom Lenk, as well as Chrissy Seaver, Finn's mom, the kid from Gladiator (what the hell, he's like grown up now!) and whichever of Garfunkel and Oates that's not on Raising Hope. (is it confusing to mix characters names with actors names when listing? Or saying Castle, instead of saying roles Nathan Fillion had in actual Whedon productions, like Mal or Captain Hammer?)

I'm not familiar with the play, nor the movie from the 90s, but I hear its pretty true to the source (despite taking place in modern times), with one supposedly subtle change, but more than that later. Since they talk in that old English style, I had a little trouble following. Like Nathan Fillion is playing Dogberry, who in the original play uses a lot of malapropisms. And like I caught some of them, but I have no idea if there were some I just failed to pick up on because they're talking all Shakespearean and shit.

But I got the gist of the movie, even if there were some dialogue I found hard to understand. Benedict (Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice (Amy Acker) hate each other, but some of their insults, I was all, "what the hell are they talking about?" And then their friends think they are way too obsessed with each other, and with nothing else to do, decide to trick them into falling in love with each other. Here's the change I hear that was subtly introduced in the beginning of the movie- Benedict and Beatrice had a former dalliance, but I guess it ended badly, which is why they're always insulting each other? Whereas in the original work, I guess they just hated each other? It was totally cute how dorky they got when they thought the other was in love with them. And then in the end, with the scheme revealed, even though they totally are in love with each other now, they still try to deny it, but thankfully finally admit their feelings.

But I guess the overarching story was that Don Pedro (Reed Diamond), Claudio (Fran Kranz), Benedict, and Don Pedro's brother, Don John (Sean Maher) visit Leonato's (Clark Gregg) villa, whereupon Claudio falls in love with Leonato's daughter Hero (Jillian Morgese). And all the while Benedict and Beatrice (who is Leonato's niece) talk shit about each other. Claudio asks for Hero's hand in marriage, and as I said previously, out of boredom since they apparently don't have anything better to do before the wedding, the rest of them decide to get Beatrice and Benedict together.

Well, Don John has other plans. He wants to ruin the wedding, so he sends his man Borachio (Spencer Treat Clark) to bang Hero's maid Margaret (Ashley Johnson) in Hero's room, while wearing one of her dresses. And Don John's all, "Oh, your betrothed is a slut! Don't believe me, spy on her window tonight!" So they do and Claudio and Don Pedro are livid. So Claudio for some reason the best way to handle it is to go through with the ceremony, but then publicly embarrass her. Like he's all weird and awkward, and everyone thinks its some sort of weird joke, but then he goes to Leonato, "Take your whore daughter back, because she's a whore!" She faints over the whole deal and Claudio and Don Pedro take their leave

And what the frick, I suppose it was olden times, but instead of believing his daughter, since Don Pedro and Claudio are men of honor and thus would never make something up (or be wrong!?), he's basically, I wish you were dead for bringing shame upon the family. Its like, screw these dicks! You're going to believe them over your daughter? And you wish her dead?! Eventually he relents, but still! In any case, the priest is all, "She should pretend to be dead and then if Claudio really loves her, he'll feel totally bad!"

Meanwhile some constables happen upon Borachio telling Conrade (Riki Lindhome) the scheme, so they arrest them and Dogberry and Verges (Tom Lenk) get the whole story and tell Don Pedro. Meanwhile, Beatrice is all, "if you really love me, you'll kill Claudio for slandering my kinswoman!" to Benedict. At first he's all, "That's crazy, plus, he's my friend!" but eventually he acquiesces because he does love her. Which is kinda disturbing for a romantic comedy- "Oh, this guy totally humiliated my cousin! Hey, guy who I used to hate but now love, if you want to prove you love me (and show that you're a real man!), you'll kill your friend!" But I guess that was more acceptable back then or something?

And its like, after Don Pedro finds out the truth, there's no scene where they tell B&B what happened! He did like challenge his friend, and its good he was all, "I shall duel you on the morrow!" because one could have killed the other, making this romantic comedy take like a dark and tragic turn. But yeah, when Don Pedro and Claudio go to see Leonato after Benedict's challenge, since he revealed Hero is dead, he's all, "See, you were tricked by your brother schemes! Thanks for killing my daughter, dicks!" So they're all wanting to do anything to make up for it. Leonato is all, "If you want to make up for it, you'll marry my other niece whom you have not met and no one has ever mentioned up to this point (but is really Hero in disguise)!"

Claudio agrees, and on the day of, they're all, "Gotcha! Even though you publicly shamed my daughter, the fact that you were willing to force yourself into an arrange marriage makes everything alright!" And then Benedict and Beatrice wait for the other to make some big overture to the other and ask the other to reveal their love, but they're both being stubborn asses, so the rest of the gang have to show them letters the other wrote talking about how in lurve they are with each other! So its two weddings!

But like I said, despite me knocking some parts of the story, I did enjoy it.

So, a few posts ago, I did a Top 50 Favorite Hot Chyx list. Now that I've had time to ruminate, using that list, I came up with a top 10 list that's actually ordered and everything. ( cut for brevity )

So, the mean age of this group is 26, which actually meshes with the whole your age divided by 2 plus 8 rule. So maybe I don't show a preference for chyx who are way too young for me. I would go so far to say I like girls of the appropriate age for me!

But breaking it down again, I noticed they're all snowflakes, mostly brunettes, with just two red heads and no blonds. Well, unless you count Odette Yustman as Latina, and technically Olivia Wilde and Emma Stone are natural blonds, they just dye their hair to a color that works way better for them. clevemire jokingly(?) commented I need to come up with 250 girls to get better data. But alas, I've only come up with 164 so far. The problem with shooting for a particular number though, is at least when I was just coming up with girls off the top of my head, I could trust I really found them attractive. But if I have to think of 86 more girls, I might just be naming them to fill the spots.

TV commentary:

Warehouse 13- Wow, what a way to end the season. ( spoiler cut )

TV Commentary:

Dollhouse- So the end of the series. I still maintain people who watch the show, but didn't bother to pick up the DVDs to watch Epitaph One would've been totally confused. Interesting changes in the intervening years. ( spoiler cut )

Caprica- What's with Taurons and Fedora hats? Is that their thing in that universe? And wait, did I totally mishear things, or did Adama's uncle out himself? "I'd be hitting on some guy, and Joseph would pick up their sister". Or wait, did he mean literally hitting a guy, because he is kinda thuggish, and he was saying he'd be beating up some dude, and Adama would hook up with their sisters? And Atia and Andi from Kyle XY (Okay, Sister Clarice and Lacey) continue to seem to have a lesbianic vibe to their interactions. And weird, Jason Street is on this show? But getting back to Lacey, is it me, or did she look kinda cute in that kinda Amish dress she was wearing? ( spoiler cut )

TV Commentary:

Dollhouse- What the?!! ( spoiler cut )

TV commentary:

Bones- Okay, having the cuter Deschanel sister on as stunt casting is fine, but did everyone have to be all, "seconds cousins? You look like you could be sisters!" We get it, they're sisters in real life!

Dollhouse- Is it me, or have these past few eps been amazing? ( spoiler cut )

TV Commentary:

Dollhouse- what the frick, so Fox is choosing pull Dollhouse from the November sweeps schedule to show re-runs of House and Bones. Which doesn't sound too promising for the show. Fox said they were definitely gonna show all 13 eps of this season, but its looking doubtful that there'll be any more beyond that. Even more annoying, they choose to do that after an incredible ep like this? ( spoiler cut )

TV Commentary:

Dollhouse- An article on one of the TV gossip sites I peruse reminded me of a comment I forgot to make about last week's ep. ( spoiler cut )

NCIS: Los Angeles- Seriously, what's up with Linda Hunt and the wardrobe aspect of the show? Like other than undercover ops, why would NCIS have any say in what exactly their agents should wear? In any case, the ep did have me curious about whether there is any animosity between true fighter jocks and Predator/Reaper pilots. Well, animosity is a strong word. But I can see a fighter pilot thinking of a UAV pilot as a gamer geek trying to run with the big boys. I mean, while the groundpounders do think the pilots already have it better, they still have to deal with the physical stresses of actual flight, and the danger of getting shot down, while the UAV pilot is chilling in a safe place, and nothing happens to him if the drone gets shot down.

Actually, another thing I'd be curious about is, I'm assuming since they're sitting at a console flying the drone like it was a video game, there's no 20/20 vision restriction, or other certain physical restrictions. So would the job appeal to people who wanted to be pilots who washed out on those things but were otherwise fine? It is flying, but its not really flying, and I wanna say those who do want to be fighter pilots, its less about wanting to blow up stuff and more about the feeling of zooming around in the air. You can't get the feeling of speed and those g-forces against you from a computer screen.

TV Commentary:

Dollhouse- ( spoiler cut )

TV Commentary:

Prison Break- Dang, missed bits and pieces of this because Fox interrupted the broadcast for weather news. ( spoiler cut )

Dollhouse- thankfully, Dollhouse wasn't interrupted by weather stuff. ( spoiler cut )

Ah, with Lenten meatless Fridays over as of midnight, I can actually have something different to eat next Friday. I've ended up having the exact same meals these past fridays- Sushi for lunch, a salmon salad at Bonehead's for dinner this past month. I could've varied it though. Mebbe a grilled cheese basket at Junior's one of those days.

Argh, stupid weather making me miss FNL and most of Sarah Connor. I did miss like a few seconds of Dollhouse because Fox kept doing tornado warnings during the actual show instead of during the short commercial breaks. Seriously, its like the commercial break would end, and it would start into a few seconds of Dollhouse, and that's when they'd choose to the warning. What the frak?!

Anyways, TV commentary:

Dollhouse- I actually like that the eps lately haven't been MotWs. I'm surprised actually. I thought we'd get more "here's a crazy adventure Echo gets into with such and such imprint" in the series, but they've actually doing more exposing of the workings of the Dollhouse than I'd been expecting, particularly these past few eps. ( spoiler cut )