This weekend I watched Glee for the first time.

All 22 episodes. Back to back.

Haven’t done that with a show in a while.

I now completely understand why everyone has been quoting Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester at me.  But for me the real breakout character is Brittany as played by Heather Morris.

She gets perhaps the least lines* per episode and none of those episodes in the first season hinge on her character, but every single line she does get out (“When I pulled my hamstring, I went to a misogynist“) absolutely floored me. It’s an utterly charming performance.

Glee is easily dismissed as an opportunity to tap into the High School Musical/Normals Have Talent audience but the writing, especially the dialogue, is first rate. It’s not quite in the same league as The Gilmore Girls (which I still rate higher than The West Wing) and it’s no Veronica Mars, but I was only half joking when I described it as Battle Royale with Journey songs instead of sickles.

Odd that the Joss Whedon episode was only luke-warm and it’s a shame that the Lady Gaga/KISS episode slipped a little on one of the central character’s big moments, but overall it was a stupendous run. I guess I’ll catch the second season in more conventional sized bites with interest. The way an audience chooses to consume media does effect the experience.  I think I would have enjoyed the final season of Lost a lot less if I’d allowed it to be spoon fed to me rather than saving the entire season and then watching it in three hour chunks (more on this subject later).

I seem to be the last person on the planet to catch up on this, but if you’ve yet to visit William McKinley High School do give it a whirl. Like Ugly Betty it carves out a new niche for itself effortlessly.

Oh, and here’s the real thing for any Fugazi fans out there:

*and thanks to @robertbrook for this link.

Tidying up my office shelves and found a copy of the Monthly Film Bulletin from April 1982 which finished off its review of Sharky’s Machine thus:

“With the hitherto relaxed narrative pace switching gear to a climatic frenzy, the fact that Sharky’s final prey is virtually ejaculated bodily from the top of a tower block might be taken as a directorial joke on the genre’s oft-noted phallic preoccupations.”

One to rewatch then.

I haven’t seen the movie in years, but do have a copy here somewhere. I think the last Reynolds movie I revisited was Shamus so I’m overdue some Burt action. The MFB review seemed very British so I checked Variety* to see what they made of it:

Seems a tad harsh. Maybe a Sharky’s Machine / Blow Out double bill is in order…

*I have the Cover to Cover version of Rolling Stone magazine (1967-2007) and would recommend it to everyone.

Isn’t she beautiful?

That’s the asteroid Lutetia. Hermann Goldschmidt discovered her in 1852 from the balcony of his apartment in Paris and this month, some 158 years later, we got a much closer look. The photograph is one of several taken by the Rosetta probe. This is the one of Lutetia and Saturn that’s been getting all the attention:

This is the second asteroid that Rosetta has snuggled up to. The probe is due to to go into hibernation in just under a year’s time so that it can continue quietly on to its final destination, a comet named rather less romantically, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But in 2014 Rosetta wakes up again and deploys a lander named Philae (although I’m gonna call him Phil) whose job it is to touch down on the comet itself.

Think about that. This isn’t lets just aim some metal and crash the fucker to see what happens – this will be the first controlled landing on an actual comet.

I get all kinds of excited about this stuff and I’m not even a full-on science nerd. It just taps into the kid part of me that just thinks everything we do in space is awesome*.

But for now we can have a good look at Lutetia. If we ever get our act together and make manned missions that far she’ll literally be the best touchstone between Mars and Jupiter…

Doesn’t it suddenly strike you as crazy that Kirk, Skywalker and all those other space types never seemed to carry a camera?

More info on the mission over at the Rosetta blog.

*The September NASA shuttle launch was rescheduled for November so I’ve revised my travel plans and hope to get out there then.

I have a backlog of TV stuff I want to talk about (Sons of Anarchy), but the fourth season opener for SyFy’s Eureka just pulled out into the fast lane and demands immediate attention.

Disclaimer. I’m friends with (and a huge fan of) Amy Berg who joined the show after Leverage and so I was expecting the show to kick my ass. I have a couple of Amy’s scripts on my desk that I refer to from time to time as she’s got this down cold. If you want someone to avenge the death of your idiot family at the hands of corrupt cop Gary Oldman then you talk to Leon. If you want the same kind of professionalism when it comes to breaking a story… you go to Berg.

It’s also worth noting that up until now I’ve not been a regular visitor to Eureka. I watched some of the first season, but figured I knew where it was heading and it dropped off my radar. I’ve dipped into each season and did catch the third season finale, but again it didn’t really pull me in. All change.

I’m guessing the safe route would have been to pile on more of the same, but ‘Founder’s Day’ manages to stick to the core conceit and pull off a smart as hell reboot that should keep the old fans happy, usher in a new audience and still leave room for a Terminator gag and Erica Cerra taking down a platoon of grunts. That they also brought James Callis from BSG into the mix is a) a crowd-pleaser and b) sets up a staggering amount of story possibilities. But here’s what I really liked about the episode.

It wasn’t about the gadgets, the remarkable situation the cast found themselves in or just throwing stuff at the audience. It was character lead all the way and there were some brilliant quiet moments in the script that immediately locked me in for the season.

I’m a sucker for people holding hands.

So yeah, I was expecting Berg to kick my ass – she’s actually been doing that for years before I met her – but this was a pummeling. It sometimes seems that the very process that gets a show onto television is constructed in such a way to suck some of the elemental fun out of the finished product. That I was grinning from start to finish shows that Eureka pulled off something special last night.

Oh, and if you really need another reason to get on board they’ve got a 28 Day’s Later inspired zombie episode on the way… with Wil freakin’ Wheaton.

I’m sure this is everywhere by now, but I was grinning and watched it more than once in the early hours of the morning:

No love for Simon though?

And yeah, I admit I have this on heavy rotation too:

ps You already know about this*, right?

*Edited to fix typo caused by excitement in chatting to one of my fave actors. Also please don’t count any guest stars before the show is hatched. Updates on that to follow.

When I was blogging from the train the other week I meant to mention this piece too:

Mainly to get a reaction from @Hinchcliffe.

It’s a flyer for a Jason Chalker show, but it was just the Snoopy as Red Baron thing that drew my attention. I’ve always drawn a straight line from Snoopy’s flights of fancy to the dizzy heights of Calvin & Hobbes. Back in my metal days when most of my friends had Maiden and Anthrax going on, my own leather jacket featured a full back acrylic painting of Calvin and Hobbes.

I did go through the horns ‘n’ demons phase, but as much as a good piece of album art touched me it was always the stronger narrative that won out and I’ve always believed there’s something more real in the tale of a small boy and his tiger than even most of the literature I studied.

Than again I think Watership Down is a vast improvement on Homer*.

*The original one – no eyes, no overbite.

Sod’s law.

Two days being ill and then as soon as I start to feel a little better one of the radiators decides to flood the place. So I was up bright and early to dig into the writing I’m behind on when the plumbers arrive. We’re now into hour 4 of draining the system, remounting the offending radiator and fixing a second leak.

Noisy.

When we bought the apartment we kept the very old-school radiators to keep some of the old building’s character. Not so sure that was the wisest choice we ever made. Coupled with the complicated iron windows that we’re not allowed to replace despite how warped with age they are I’ve decided that the next place we live will be a new build.

Preferably cybernetic with smart heating run off brain stems.

Fuck this history shit.

The main thing I’m in the middle of writing right now just had a warning shot land across its bows that *may* complicate things a little. So I’m spending the day working that out and catching up on some blogging while the hammering and the clanking drowns out my Big Black.

Fucker finally came and I’m happy to report it’s well worth the wait.

As soon as I saw the DODOcase website back at the beginning of May I was smitten. I’m a big fan of Moleskines so this just seemed a perfect solution to my case problem. When I bought the iPad in the States I neglected to pick up a case and both the official Apple one and subsequent third party designs left me cold so I’ve been carrying the little bastard around naked.

That changed on Friday. Let me get the negative out of the way – this was a long wait. DODOcase are a small company and each case is made with a lot of care and attention to detail. Being way across the Bay from San Francisco meant I also had to wait for the international mail to do their thing. When it seemed that that was taking a tad longer than expected I dropped an email to DODOcase as there was no way for me to track the package. Sadly I’m still waiting for a response, so customer service is certainly taking a pounding while demand is high. I found out that the case hadn’t got lost in the post when I got a note from my local postal depot informing me that I had a package with a customs fee to pay. So that was $49.95 for the case, $25.00 for the shipping (basic international postage with no other option – I would have gladly paid more to have it arrive via courier) and then just over £14.00 to cover the missing VAT.

So getting the thing here was a little annoying. But fuck that, it’s a thing of beauty.

My iPad has been a brilliant travel companion up until now. If I’m not on a train or a plane then it sits on the couch waiting for me to check something on IMDB or keep on top of email while watching Michael Caine stab Brian Blessed with his helmet(!). But now it’s all dodoed up I don’t put the thing down.

In fact this weekend I started (and finished) reading a novel on it for the first time. Up until now I’ve dipped into all sorts of written content on the iPad but have always been aware of how unbooklike the experience is. Simply having the DODOcase open mimics a hardback enough to fool my deteriorating brain. This alone is worth getting one for.

The iPad fits very snugly inside. I can’t see a good reason for ever wanting to take it out to be honest (although I don’t have a dock and am told that may be an issue). Oh and you can’t hold the thing completely upside down while open and not expect gravity to fuck with you. It’s also less of a protective case and stand (although it does double as both) and more of the missing element that the iPad needed all along to become more important than your children.

My iPhone by the way has been completely neglected. I’m told the iPhone 4 is a bit of a tit and if it hadn’t been for the iPad I’d have been one of the first in line to play with it, but to be honest I’m finding it very easy to ignore in favour of its larger sibling.

The iPad 2 however…

Few more pics here.*

*Yep. Reluctantly using Flickr again despite the Yahooliganism.

Surfacing.

On the final leg of a first draft of pilot number two. Fun, but had a very different set of problems than Slingers.

I somehow skipped Friday completely, lost as I was trying to get this fucker to respond. This week’s writing is planned to the hilt so should run a little smoother… best laid plans and all that.

Plenty to catch up on. Sorry if I owe you email or a call. Getting on top of that right now.