Surprise Crochet Again

New Girl is a show that I feel like I should like, but the few times I've caught an episode, it just doesn't do it for me.  Granted, this may be because I only tend to watch the episodes that appear to have a particular interest of mine.  Case in point, the very first time I decided to watch it was because the episode featured handbells, and I was in a handbell choir when I was in high school.  And the main reason for this post, an episode from a couple of weeks ago that featured Jess and her friends having crochet time:

I love that it is explicitly called crochet time in the episode, and crochet hooks are definitely being used.  All the stuff they're working on appears to be crocheted, although I'm not entirely sure what any of them are making.  And then Zooey Deschanel has to ruin it by knitting.

Keep crochet time pure, Jess!

While working at the library the other day, I noticed The Borrowers on the return cart, and since I knew the new Studio Ghibli movie, The Secret World of Arietty, was based on the book, and since I had never read the books when I was a child, I decided to give it a look.  Imagine my surprise and delight when crochet was mentioned on the very first page.  The book starts with the framing device of the story of the Borrowers being told to a girl named Kate by her elderly relation, Mrs. May, while they work on crocheting squares for a quilt.  Kate mentions losing her crochet hook, even though she knows exactly where she left it, and this reminds Mrs. May of the little creatures her younger brother told her he saw, back when they were children.  I admit, I only finished reading the book to see if crochet was mentioned again, and while it was never part of the Borrowers' story, it did show up again in the framing device near the end (they finished all the squares).  I also read the second book, partly because I knew that the Ghibli movie involved some of it (or so I guessed from the trailer) and partly to see if crochet came up again.  And it did, but only as part of the recap from the first book.  I don't know if crochet shows up in any of the adaptations (of which there are more than I thought), but as most of them appear to disregard the framing device, I highly doubt it.

And while I'm talking about crochet in unexpected places, I'd like to point out the Handmade Ryan Gosling tumblr, which is part of the Ryan Gosling Hey Girl thing (is it a thing?  I only know of one other tumblr with this format, with a library theme), for crafts of all kinds, including crochet:

The Hub On Demand is up

For those of you who have On Demand as part of your cable package, The Hub already has a channel set up.  Right now it's just a sneak peek, but you can catch two episodes of Maryoku Yummy.  I'm guessing that once the channel debuts officially, they'll start to put up recent episodes of their higher profile series (as Cartoon Network On Demand does) after they air.
The Maryoku episodes include two segments already shown on AGPbrands.com ("No Left Feet" and "The Biggest Wish").  Strangely, though "No Left Feet" was already shown as being coupled with "Ookas Just Wanna Have Fun," it's now seen with "Ready Set Glow."

Save Castle!

This one is a request from my husband, who asked me to help spread the word. Apparently, Castle is not doing too well with its target demographic, and is on the 'might be renewed, might not' list. So fans are taking it upon themselves to make ABC know how they feel. Frankly, I've enjoyed Castle since the beginning, and I think that it deserves to get a third season. You can find out more about the Save Castle Campaign at the livejournal community castle_tv.

If you've never heard of Castle, then let me fill you in. Basically, it follows Richard Castle, played to perfection by Nathan Fillion, a mystery writer who has found his muse in no-nonsense police officer Kate Beckett (also played to perfection by Stana Katic), and thus follows her around as she solves crimes (usually with help from him). New episodes start up next week, but the first season is available on DVD, and episodes from both seasons are available for download on iTunes.

Black Adder Season One

My mother likes to say that there are only six actors in England, and they're all in everything. And there are times when I really start to believe it, like today, when I finished watching the first season of Black Adder (which I decided to check out both because there's hardly a page on TVtropes that doesn't mention it, and when you get to the third season, Hugh Laurie is in it).

Overall, I enjoyed the series, even if there wasn't any Hugh Laurie yet, but I couldn't help feeling that I'd get more of the jokes if I knew more about Middle Ages history. The DVD only has a few special features, but luckily for me, one of them is a few quick notes on some of the history as pertaining to certain episodes. Another is a "Who's Who" which gave a quick bio of a handful of the characters, spoken by Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick (and prefaces his entry with "This is the good one"), with a list of key TV and Film roles on the screen. Or rather, the titles they've been in, though not the actual role they played (the biggest are usually mentioned by Tony), so naturally I was rushing to the IMDB to flesh out a couple of them, such as Peter Cook, who played Richard III in the first episode, but was also in The Princess Bride as the Impressive Clergyman (I would not have guessed, seriously). And when I saw that Miriam Margolyes was in Little Shop of Horrors, you better believe I looked her up real quick. Turns out she was the nurse at the dentist's office, but along the way I learned that she was also Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies, as well as some voice acting work, such as Fly (the sheep dog) in Babe and The Matchmaker in Mulan.

The special features are rounded out with a sing-along of the ending theme, which was good for me, since I could only understand half of the lines, and there aren't any subtitles on the DVD, and a couple of trailers for other BBC series on DVD.

You know, before I knew what Black Adder was, and just heard the title tossed around as a show that people liked, I thought it was actually some kind of sci-fi mystery show. Probably because the title becomes Blackadder after the first season (which is technically called The Black Adder). It just gave me the image of a dimly lit set and strange happenings going on.

Alice in Wonderland - Lots of Famous People

One of the mainstays of my childhood was the 1985 tv-movie of Alice in Wonderland, which my father taped when it first aired, and my sisters and I watched for years afterwards.  However, it had been quite a while since I last saw it, and after noticing it show up a few times while browsing through the IMDB, I checked out the whole cast list and realized that there were a ton of people in it who I had had no clue who they were when I was young, but I did know now.  So I decided to watch it again, especially since it's on DVD, with the intent of taking screenshots and writing up who I knew and how I knew them (as there are a few people in it that I only know from doing this).

Well, that was my original plan, only, in the process of taking the screenshots, I got a new DVD player program, and unbeknownst to me, every time the program was opened and screenshots were taken, it saved them under the same numbers, deleting the shots taken previously.  And since I watched the tv-movie in chunks, the majority of the screenshots I took from the first half were deleted.  But I didn't realize this until I'd already sent the disc back.  Now, I might have re-rented the disc and taken the shots again, but I also realized just how boring the entry I originally planned would have been.  I mean, it would have basically just been a fairly dry (and long) list of roles.  So instead, I say to you, go to the IMDB page for the tv-movie and see who's who for yourself.  Then, if you feel so inclined, give it a watch.

One thing I will say about this version of Alice in Wonderland is that it is very faithful to the books -- in parts.  There was one part toward the end of the second part where I thought the plot dragged terribly, but then I went back and reread the book, and it was almost word-for-word.  But there are also parts that are strangely unfaithful as well.  For instance, when Alice meets the Mock Turtle (played by Ringo Starr), he does not sing a song based on the three(!) pieces he had in the book, but an anthem to nonsense.  Also, this is one of those specials that thinks that what makes a musical a musical is that every character introduced gets a song.  Not that the songs are bad (I particularly like the Queen of Hearts' song), but it does get to be a bit much.

Argh!!!!

Whyyyyy?  Why are the only shows I actually watch being not shown this week?  I can understand Heroes and House being pre-empted by election related programming, but there is no reason to not show Pushing Daisies in favor of Dancing with the Stars!  At least I still have Ugly Betty to look forward to...

Being spoiled

Normally I try to avoid spoilers--big spoilers, I mean. I don't mind little spoilers, like an image or a tiny piece of information. Usually the kind of thing you'd find in a "sneak peek" featurette. Sometimes I even rejoice for snippets of information, like the tiny, tiny clip of Vidia in the upcoming Tinkerbell movie. But I avoid summaries like the plague unless I have no plan to see/read the title in question. And I especially try to avoid finding out about episodes of shows that air in other countries before they air over here. Even if it seems like everyone and their brother is watching the episodes early. This has killed at least two messageboards for me, as I tend to stop going there to avoid being even casually spoiled. Which is what happened on a certain Codename: Kids Next Door forum, where I was hugely spoiled by someone using an image from the big twist of one episode (a rather infamous one) as part of a caption game. After that, and a few other spoilers in places that should not have had them, I had to stop going. And once the episodes did air, I just couldn't get back into the same spirit as I had there before.
Anyway, despite the fact that I try and avoid spoilers, I do give in to temptation sometimes. As I recently did, thanks to Youtube. Lured by the knowledge that Bridget Robbins sings, I watched the (very far off) upcoming episode of Strawberry Shortcake, A Princess Called Rap (A retelling of Rapunzel). Although this episode is approximately 5 DVDs away, it has already aired in the UK and on Playhouse Disney Asia, and someone posted in on Youtube. And that's not the only one, either. Youtube is rife with SSC spoiler episodes. Not that it's hard to avoid them, it's quite easy, really. I don't search for SSC stuff on youtube anyway, so most of the time I don't even come in contact with the spoiler videos. But, being spoiled once generally leads to being spoiled more. And sure enough, while watching A Princess Called Rap, I took a look at the first part of another episode, Sleeping Beauty, because one of the preview images was aged-up Apple Dumpling. I ended up watching the entire first part and part of the second before I resolved not to be spoiled anymore (I could tell where the story was going, anyway). I did see a new character, and Banana Candy being the worst messenger ever, before I left, though.
This whole post is just the intro to a three post series I'm planning on posting over the next two weeks. The first post will be spoileriffic, so if you don't mind, go ahead and read it. But if you don't want to be spoiled, better tune in later.

Filler

Well, I had planned on writing up a post for you guys all about how you shouldn't watch Richard Williams' The Little Island (even though someone was nice enough to put it up on Youtube), but that I would watch it for you (seriously, after the first five minutes, I skipped ahead to the end just to see if anything actually happened) and describe it, mainly because I wanted to make fun of it. Even though it won a BAAFTA (Timothy Spall won one, too, but not for animation). But first I was at work all day, and then I went to the movies with one of my friends after work. And when I came home, I wanted to catch up on livejournal and Gaia, and stuff, before I started on this post. And since I had the first disc of the first season of The Critic from Blockbuster.com, I decided to put that on as background while I did my other stuff. And that was where my plan went downhill.
I'd never seen the show before tonight (other than random clips here and there), and I devoured it. The only thing preventing me from watching all the episodes on the disc tonight is the fact that I have my library internship tomorrow, so I can't stay up too much later. Which is also why I'm not posting my original post. Which I will do soon. Probably tomorrow, but we'll see.

Series meme

Choose five series (no peeking before you choose them), list them, and then answer the questions below.
1. Harry Potter
2. Adventures in Care-a-lot
3. Paniponi Dash!
4. Pushing Daisies
5. Sushi Pack

1. Which is your favorite series from your list? And why?
Pushing Daisies, most likely. It's the one I worried about most during the Writer's Strike, anyway. I really liked Wonderfalls, which was made by the same guy, in fact it was the first live action show that I actually cared about and planned to watch every week. So of course I was devastated when it got canceled after three episodes. Which is why I was worried that the same thing would happen to Pushing Daisies. Fortunately, it didn't but then the Writer's Strike happened! You see, bad things happen to shows that I actually care about and don't watch just because everyone else in the room is watching it. But it seems to be safe now.
As for the actual show, I can't describe just what makes it so awesome, but it basically boils down to good writing and a great cast.

2. If you were to pair two characters from 1 and 4, who would they be?
From Harry Potter and Pushing Daisies? I honestly have no clue. I don't generally think of anybody romantically with anyone else in HP, actually, although I know plenty of others do.


3. What is one thing you'd like to change about 3's plotline?
What plotline? Well, I'd probably make Becky not a genius 11-year-old teacher. I know it's me overthinking things, but it just bugs me so much.

4. If both main characters of 2 and 5 were falling off a cliff, which one would you save?
Depends on which main character, since both shows have a core five. I mean, if it was Funshine vs. Ikura, I'd save Ikura, since Funshine can probably use his belly badge to make a sun parachute, or those light balls he used in "Unbearable" to save himself. Actually, that's true of all the Care Bears except for Oopsy, so I'd save the sushi each time, unless it was Oopsy, in which case I'd have to save him, unless Wingnut was around, because then he'd do it instead.

5. Which event was the most horrible for you in 1?
I don't even remember anymore. I mean, I had Sirius' death spoiled for me because I didn't read the fifth book until a year after it came out, and it's been so long since I read the books that I can't remember my initial reactions. And I didn't really like the last one so...ah, there we go, hearing Mrs. Weasley call Bellatrix a bitch. That was the worst, because I imagine Mrs. Weasley as being a lot like my mom (although my family doesn't have nearly as many kids in it), and she would never use that word, no matter how mad she got.

6. Which is your least favorite character of 2?
I don't really dislike any of the characters, especially since most of them are not all that fleshed out. I guess if I really had to pick, it would be that General robot from "Heatwave." Or maybe New-B, although he gets points at the end for zinging Grizzle.

7. If the antagonist of 3 were to rape the main character of 1, what would you do?
Again, who is the antagonist? I really can't think of one for PPD.

8. What song reminds you of 5?
While I usually find songs that match characters from the shows I watch, I haven't done that for Sushi Pack yet, so I have to skip this one.

9. Of 1, 3, and 5, which is the easiest to think about?
At this point, Sushi Pack. HP is overdone for me, although Wizard People, Dear Reader is currently awesome, and PPD is easier to enjoy if I don't think about it too hard (see question 3).

10. Are the protagonists of 2 and 4 similar?
No, not really. Not at all, in fact. Too bad it's not 2 and 5, then I could post my decisions on which core five members match up.

Ugly Betty and Wicked

As a Broadway Buff, I love Ugly Betty for representing musicals, but every now and then, they do something to suit the constraints of the TV format that just drives me nuts. Like in tonight's (yesterday's, technically) episode, when Betty and Henry finally got to see Wicked and end up backstage in Glinda's bubble/pendulum. Since this is TV, the pendulum of course starts going on stage. What bugged me about this is that it was during Defying Gravity, and the pendulum doesn't show up during that song. >_<
Similiarly, from the first season, in the episode when Justin was going to see Hairspray, but the subway got stuck en route, so he started acting it out by singing Good Morning Baltimore. I got so annoyed that the writers cut a part of the first verse out of his performance, not just because it messes up the song, but because Justin's character wouldn't cut out/forget the lyrics!

Pushing Daisies

Nothing big, but I really like Pushing Daisies. Watching it makes me want to watch Wonderfalls again, though. I have it on DVD, but I don't really have the time.
Kristin Chenoweth + Ellen Greene = Date with Destiny!

Also, it's narrated by Jim Dale, which is awesome not just because he did all the Harry Potter audiobooks (which my mom listens to when she's working, so I get to hear it by proxy), but, back in the day, he was Dr. Terminus (the conman doctor) in Pete's Dragon! Not to mention all his theater work (like starring in Barnum. I need to borrow the OCR next time I'm at Wallingford Library)