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The things I did today

I woke up early, but didn’t get out or my pajamas and into the world until late morning. I ran a few quick errands, stopping by the dry cleaners, the post office, and the library. And then I spent the rest of the day hanging around the house, mostly just watering the garden beds and mowing the back lawn. I watered the tomatoes in the back, which haven’t gotten a lot of rain, along with everything else. A small bird misunderstood, but was quite happy with the bath I had apparently decided to provide it. With the new bird seed and suet cake I put up, it’s almost like a small bird spa back there. Beats the puddle I saw two pigeons bathing themselves in, the other day, in Manhattan.

I also spent a fair amount of time watching episodes of In Treatment. I’d seen some of it before, but I never made it through the first season for some reason. It can be pretty intense, especially for a show that’s often just two people in a room talking, a conversation between patient and therapist. (Even on my days off, I can’t escape from the world of psychotherapy.) It’s a really good show.

And that, such as it was, was my Saturday.

It is Saturday, right? I had to double-check a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t lost a day somewhere.

Tuesday various

Sunday

I gave the dog a bath today.

Or at least, I did the best I could with a bucket of warm water, the garden hose, and a bottle of pet shampoo. Tucker seemed to genuinely enjoy the brushing that followed the bath, removing a lot of shed fur, and he seemed more or less resigned to getting wet initially, but he was not pleased by the bath itself. But he looks and smells a lot better now, so I think it was definitely worth it.

Other than that, I spent the day mostly like yesterday, only more Sundayish than Saturdayesque. I did the Sunday crossword, which was kind of blah. I read some Kaleidotrope slush again, thinking idly about looking for a slush reader to do it instead of me — even though, quite honestly, I don’t know that I’m at that level, and I wouldn’t know what sort of guidelines to offer a reader. (I reject a lot more than I accept, but usually not because it’s completely off the mark from what I want.) And I watched a couple of episodes of The Killing. It’s an okay show; I like that it’s slow and deliberate, although that’s in danger of becoming boring, a show left spinning its wheels, piling on the shocking but not at all game-changing twists each week. Still, I’m enjoying it.

That was Sunday, such as it was.

Saturday in earnest

I can’t say I slept entirely well last night, and on waking my allergies seem to have stepped up their game, unfortunately. But otherwise, it was a good day. I watched the last two or three — I lost count — episodes of season two of Justified, and I read a little bit, at least until the summer sun and falling apple blossom buds annoyed me too much and I left the back deck behind.

Then this evening, I accompanied my parents into Manhattan for dinner out and a show — specifically The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway. They were discounted tickets, with the show was sadly playing to a not very full house, and in part an excuse to go to this restaurant my father likes, and which every year sends him a birthday coupon for fifty dollars off.

The show was great, silly fun, at times maybe a bit too Oscar Wilde-ian — I couldn’t help but be reminded of this Monty Python sketch — but quite enjoyable.

And that was Saturday.

Wednesday various

  • Scott Tobias on Fast Five:

    Fast Five may be lizard-brain escapism—and there’s something unsettling about how it lays waste to Rio’s desperately poor favelas—but nonsense this well-orchestrated is a rare and precious thing.

  • Genevieve Valentine on Priest:

    Basically, Priest exists as an example of what happens when a team of creative people all get a concussion at once.

  • John Seavey on Smallville — and, more specifically, why it is not Doctor Who:

    And then, the next night, I watched “The Doctor’s Wife”. And while I won’t spoil anything, because the episode is very wonderful, very surprising, and many people probably haven’t seen it yet, I will say that it is the epitome of everything that Doctor Who is and everything that Smallville isn’t. Instead of being an “epic game-changer” that really doesn’t change anything, not even really the things it’s obligated to change…this was a normal, everyday, stand-alone non-arc episode that just happened to transform everything you thought you knew about forty-eight years of the series. And it did it almost casually.

    Doctor Who is, and always has been like that. It’s never been afraid to reinvent itself, not even after forty-eight years. It’s a bold, inventive show that has no boundaries, no self-imposed rules, and no orthodoxies to uphold. That’s why it attracted a writer of the caliber of Neil Gaiman, whereas Smallville has had to content itself with Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb. That’s why it’s still going and why I don’t think it’ll ever stop. Because it’s a show that can do anything…and one that will do anything.

  • And speaking of shows that promise but don’t deliver on change, Zach Handlen on House:

    It’s like a game, really. Each year, the writers have to come up with some new way to trick us into thinking that the show is moving on. And then, come next season, they have to find some way to undo all those changes, because in House-land, we can have the illusion of growth but not growth itself.

    Everything I’m reading leads me to think that my decision to quit on the show at the start of this year was wrong only in that it came too late.

  • And finally, Existential Star Wars [via]: