Episode 51: “Isn’t it time to give back?”
I’ll be going to a screening of Forgetting Sarah Marshall tonight, so to celebrate that here’s a bit of Kirsten Bell funniness for you all:
Interesting links for April 12th through April 15th:
If you thought the Beverly Hills series couldn’t get any worse, guess again. Here’s the poster for the upcoming movie:
I wish I could tell you this was all a joke, but from what I can gather it’s a real movie coming out next year. The plot outline of Beverly Hills Chihuahua on IMDB is:
While on vacation in Mexico, Chloe, a ritzy Beverly Hills chihuahua, finds herself lost and in need of assistance in order to get back home.
Chloe will be voiced by Drew Barrymore and her owner will be played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Other voice talents will include Salma Hayek, Edward James Olmos and Andy Garcia.
Right…so judging by the poster somehow this dainty little chihuahua ends up in a Aztec tribe of chihuahuas? And they’ve got temples with chihuahua figures on them? And the tagline is The chihuahuas will rise? The worst thing on this poster though? The chee’ WOW wa under the title.
Seriously?
[Via /Film]
Update: There’s also a trailer out on Apple.com.
From Wikipedia:
Derived from the word “relationship”, shipping is a general term for fans’ emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction.
I have to admit I am a bit of a shipper: I always have some preference to who has to end up with who. I hate all those Brangelina like type of names though and I refuse to use such monstrosities on my beloved TV and book and video games friends (Brangelina is allowed though, those are celebrities, not real people). So who have I shipped for in the past? Veronica and Logan, Buffy and Angel, Buffy and Spike, Sarah and Grissom, Delenn and Sheridan, Ivanova and Marcus, and many more.
One of my favourite “they’ve always been hinting, but never actually went there” couples were Samantha Carter and Jack O’Neill in Stargate: SG-1. Throughout the entire series they never actually even kiss (right? tell me if I’m wrong, I might be forgetting something here), but there was always the feeling there was more between the two. The writers of the show seem to agree with me: in a blog post Stargate writer Joseph Mallozzi shows a scene that was cut from an episode of Stargate Atlantis (episode 4×16 Trio to be exact):
Carter: So…you seeing anyone?
Keller: What?
Carter: Around the base, you seeing anyone?
Keller: I dunno…I had a moment with – with this…guy. He’s not exactly easy to read so…I guess the short answer is “no”. You?
Carter: Well, I’m the boss, so I can’t really…
Keller: Right Anyone back home?
Carter: Uhm…
Keller: Un-huh, I thought so. Give it up.
Carter: Well, it’s complicated.
Keller: Show me a relationship that isn’t.
Carter: He’s in Washington…I’m here.
Keller: Ouch. Long distance relationship.
Carter: He’s going to retire soon, so maybe –
Keller: Really! Retire? So…an older man, huh?
Carter: Not that much older.
Keller: Washington, older man…is he like a Senator or something? Someone famous? Would I know him?
Carter: Probably not.
Too bad the scene was cut from the episode. It also gives a good explanation to why Keller almost kisses Ronan the one week, then suddenly asks Rodney out the next week.
Episode 50: “Ken Leeee”
Most probably you’ve seen this video already (I hadn’t, but then somtimes I can be a tad slow): a woman auditioning on Bulgarian Idol sings “Without You” from Mariah Carey, but claims it’s called “Ken Lee”:
To be honest though, I’m sure we’ve all done similar things, just maybe not that dramatic. If I look back at some of the lyrics I wrote down from songs…(you know, before you had ze internetz and could look everything up), some of them made no sense whatsoever.
With Cristiano off to the Netherlands to get his wisdom tooth removed (which I am glad to report went way smoother than mine), I thought I’d be bored out of my mind. The two past days though have just been one constant stream of geek activities. I should address each event in a separate post, but I know if I attempt to do that, I’ll end up only blogging about half the stuff. Instead I’m going to try to summarize all the stuff I’ve done here.
I only announced it two days beforehand on the Geek Dinners and the Girl Geek Dinners site, so I kind of knew that not many people would show up. However, I didn’t expect to find myself completely alone at the chosen time. It gave me time to check out the venue (Smiths of Smithfield), but I soon discovered it wasn’t really what we were looking for. Half an hour later, Patricia Hanrahan (Gondul) showed up, with Rachel Clarke following quickly thereafter. We spoke about a whole bunch of things, including Rachel and I explaining to Patricia what we’ve experienced so far in We Tell Stories. Here’s where this event kind of flowed into the next event:
For the past 4 weeks I’ve been following the We Tell Stories project. As I’ve mentioned before, besides the six public stories, there’s a hidden seventh story in the form of an ARG. I’m not going to explain everything here, but a couple of days ago we (all the ARG players on the forum) found out one of the characters would be in a bar…in real life! Jacques the French bookstore clerk, depressed because his girlfriend Bella dumped him. The idea was to bring him gifts and tips on how to woo Bella back, which somehow would lead to more clues.
I completely forgot to bring something, but during the GGC Rachel convinced me to write down a song and sing it for him. Weirdly enough I agreed to do this and even stranger I chose a Dutch nursery rhyme (I have no recollection whatsoever in what prompted me to choose this particular song). Anyhow, Daisy, one of the other girls on the forum, also came to the GGC, hauling along freshly baked muffins and printed out poems.
Abandoning Trish (who would wait for the other GGCers) we went to the bar where Jacques was and there we met up with 2 others from the forum. At 17:30 we entered the bar and there he was…Jacques, looking depressed as ever and drinking red wine. We all gave our gifts and each of us received an item in return. Some of them were clearly “only” prizes for showing up (a Terry Pratchett book, for instance), but others were actual clues. I got a blue Wedgwood tray with snippets of rules of a card game. If you want to find more, check out the We Tell Stories website and the Unforum.
After the cool weird meet-up with a fictional character, I made my way back to the GGC (now expanded with Emma Persky and Weefz), only to discover that the SoS was packed. There was no way we could talk in there. I suggested to move to the Starbucks down the street where the ARGers had gone to sort out all the clues. Patricia, though, deserted us to meet up with Judith ‘deCabbit’ Lewis at an SEO party, but invited us to join her later. After a short half an hour in the Starbucks, we went in search of the SEO party.
We arrived a bit before 8 and the bar was crowded with SEOers. I was surprised to discover at least one person I had met before: Chris Hambly, whom I had met at MediaCampBucks last year. I had a short talk with him about some upcoming events, including a second MediaCampBucks and a MediaCampLondon.
Despite having no actual experience in search engine optimization, I had some interesting conversations with a couple of the SEOers there and was amazed when I realized I had been there for more than 2 hours. Around the same time, Patricia and the others decided to leave too and I slowly made my way back to home. Of course, even though arriving home at a fairly early time, I managed to only get to bed at about 3.
Naturally, I slept through my alarm and I arrived quite late at the Social Media Cafe. I had met Lloyd Davis (the organizer of SMC) back in October in Berlin and had been meaning to come to a SMC for some time now (wisdom tooth removals and sleeping the cause of missing previous ones). I’m glad I finally made it, cause I got to meet a lot of new people (I’m not even going to try and list everyone). What I found interesting was that (if I’m not mistaken that is) this was a completely different set than the usual Geek Dinners and BarCamp crowd; most people there hadn’t even heard of those two events before!
Just when I wanted to leave, it started pouring outside (even lightning!), so I decided to stay a little longer. I talked some more with LJ Rich and after the rain cleared up, she suggested having lunch at a Vegetarian Thai Buffet close by. Great food and great conversation with both of us geeking out about TV shows, books and other stuff. Having already spent most of the day procrastinating networking, I realized I wouldn’t get any real work done today, so it wouldn’t hurt to go to:
Three words: real life rickrolling. By now there should be enough reports and videos documenting this event.
So those were my two action packed geeky days and all I want to do now is sleep. I’ve announced the next Girl Geek Coffee on both Geek Dinners sites and a new idea for another event (Geek Meet). Let me know if you’re interested in either of them by leaving a comment on one of those blogs.
Interesting links for April 6th through April 8th:
It’s a bit last minute, but the next Girl Geek Coffee will go on next Thursday. We’re going to try out a new venue and I’m hoping it’s suitable. It’s the Smiths of Smithfield near Farringdon tube (also a potential Geek Dinner venue). I haven’t tried it out yet (so fingers crossed), but I’ve heard a lot of positive things about it.
When: Thursday, April 10, 2008, 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Where: Smiths of Smithfield near Farringdon
Cost: attending is free, cost for coffee and food will be on a “buy your own” basis
Upcoming: 465894
If you have trouble finding the place or are running late, you can phone me (07521 294 391) or Twitter me directly (mseckington). Please use the upcoming link or comment below to indicate your interest.
In the last week I’ve watched the entire first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender and initially this post was going to be about why you should watch it (which I’ll cover in a future post). Strange enough though, thinking about this new show (for me at least it was new) has given me a major eye-opener about myself: I had totally lost faith in the creation of good great cartoons.
Looking back, I realized that I hadn’t seen a single animated tv show since high school (six years ago), casually dismissing all series without even trying them. During that time I did consider myself an animation lover, but just believed that nothing that was produced now could ever reach the standards of previous shows. I did keep watching animated films, but subconsciously just disregarded new animated tv series. I’m really only fully realizing that now and I’m still in shock by it; how could I not watch potentially addictive material?
I guess I do understand where this in part comes from. In the years before I stopped watching, you couldn’t exactly say that the quality of the then-new shows were any good. On the other hand, it could also have been that only bad ones were being shown on Dutch television (if that was the case, why the hell didn’t they broadcast any good stuff?). Or alternatively, that my standards were just way too high. No matter the reason, somewhere along the way I started believing that all new cartoons were bad and that from that moment on only bad cartoons would be created.
What was I thinking?! How could I ever be so halfwitted to even think there would never be a good animated tv show ever again? I’m still amazed, baffled, flabbergasted that my mind (no, scrap that, I shouldn’t be giving my mind the blame) that I could ever believe such a thing. And yet, it is true. I’ve lived under this weird illogical delusion. Me, someone that prizes herself for being a logical person. It’s as if never reading another book in your life again, just because you read a couple of bad books, even though you read hundreds of great books before that. It’s a fallacy, an utterly faulty reasoning, a down-to-the-core wrong deduction.
I’m still in shock. I just can’t believe it. It’s not about Avatar. It’s not about not watching cartoons. It’s about realizing that there’s this weird little part of my mind that’s been influencing my choices in life (even though it’s something as simple as tv-watching) based on a reason that is so out of sync with the rest of me. It just feels so very, very weird.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but then I’m writing this in the wake of my illumination. And very late at night, after 2 days of sleep deprivation. Yeah, not the perfect time to blog, I know. But I know that for me this has just been a revelation and my mind it still trying to cope with it. Hey, blogging is supposed to be therapeutic, right?
Episode 49: “We’re not in bloody Cardiff anymore, we’re in London”
What do you get when combine a group of sleep-deprived geeks, lots of sugar and the anticipation of the series finale of Torchwood? This video:
To find out more about this video, check out the Torchwood Swede Blog.
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