Cold War

Of the three episodes that have aired so far in this back half of the season I think this has been my favorite. It was a nice return to a classic monster of the week episode. Last week may have technically been monster of the week, but it was very arc heavy, what with Clara's back story and the Doctor questioning who she was. This week on the other hand was a great stand alone.

Spoilers from here on in.

The Rings of Akhaten

Right. So. I don't know guys. This wasn't a bad episode. It just wasn't great. Honestly I think the main issue was the pacing. This episode felt very slow. It was a very different format from normal episodes, which normally I like when shows do. This episode though, not so much. I liked the story we got at the beginning, and the number of aliens was cool to see. There was just a lot that I feel like didn't make sense, even for Doctor Who.

Like the who "objects of sentiment" as currency. Say I pay for something with a necklace that means a lot to me. The person I gave it to won't have any emotional attachment to it. Can they still use it as currency? I just didn't get it.

Also, I realize that Clara said the TARDIS didn't like her. At first I thought this explained why at first, the song wasn't being translated, but later was made up of words, it took a while for the translation matrix to kick in. But Clara had a conversation with the little girl before the song started making sense so I don't know what was going on there.

Maybe on rewatch I'll like it more because I'll know what to expect from the episode.

A Technical Success

On Saturday, a group of my friends and I set out to visit Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. We hopped on the "L" (El?) and went went south, departing the El ("L"?) at the Roosevelt Red Line stop around noon, all of us hungry for lunch. We walked around a little and finally came across "The Artist's Cafe".

This was an awesome choice for lunch. First of all, as soon as we walked in, the hostess thanked us for choosing to eat with them. Sincerely thanked us. Over the 30-45 minutes we were there, she thanked us four times. They happily rearranged some tables to accommodate our group of six, and to food was amazing. I got a grilled cheese that came with three different kinds of cheeses.

Mozzarella, Cheddar, and Goat Cheese, with Pesto

If you are in the area, I highly recommend it!

So, happily full of food, we struck off towards the Shedd. After a short(ish) walk we spotted it!

The Shedd!

 Then we spotted the line.

This wasn't even half the line. It went on, and on and on.

So we decided not to go to the Shedd. We considered the Field museum, but even though the line was short, their ticket price was three times more than that of the Shedd.

The Field Museum

Instead we went for a very windy walk around the Shedd, and the Adler Planetarium to a nearby beach, as it was a warm(ish) day.

Chicago skyline with a bit of the Shedd

Adler Planetarium

Beach. 

In a not-so-shocking turn of events, despite the nice weather the beach was very empty. In an actually shocking turn of events, I cut my foot on a stick in the sand.

I didn't say I cut it a lot. 

After a while at the beach we headed off. The line to Shedd had diminished, so we had hopes of being able to enter after all. These hopes were dashed when an aquarium worker told us they had lost power and closed the aquarium. Some of us stopped to take a picture with the horse statues nearby before heading off to our next location.

I'm the one in yellow.

Our next stop was *drumroll*

The Bean! Okay, technically it's called "Cloud Gate" but come on, it's a giant bean. I'd wanted to visit the Bean since I got to Chicago and I finally did.

Proof!

After a little while chilling in the park with the Bean we headed off to our final destination, the Lincoln Park Zoo!

We saw a jaguar.

 And we saw swans.

And a beaver.

And a sloth.

And finally, making our trip to the aquarium a technical success

we saw fish.

The Bells of St. John

DOCTOR WHO IS BACK!!!!! That needs to be emphasized.

As always, SPOILERS are below.

Job Hunters Season 2 Kickstarter

Hey everyone!

So there's this great web series called Job Hunters. It takes place in a dystopian future where graduate have to go into an arena to fight and kill in order to get jobs. It also serves as a form of population control. The show is very funny. Season 1 aired on youtube about a year ago. There are 6 episodes of about 10 minutes each, so it only takes about an hour to watch. Here, I'll put in the first episode for you.




So, as you can see, it's really good. And they did the whole thing on a budget of $14,000, donated through a kickstarter campaign. The main reason they could do it so cheaply? Lot's of people donated their time and resources. So a lot of people worked for no money, and the creators feel bad about that.

So, in order to make a season 2, they've created another kickstarter asking for $50,000 this time. They have a chart showing where the money will be going, but a plurality of it will be going to paying the crew.

Right now they have about $17,200 pledged and 9 days to go. If they don't get the rest of their funding, no one pays anything, and the show goes unmade.

If you like what you see, please consider giving even a small amount to help get season 2 made. I chipped in $21 but there are rewards for amounts as low as $3 (though if you want to be the first person to pledge/donate $5,000 that's your business).

Oh and if anyone was wondering, I'm not affiliated with Job Hunters in any way. I'm just a fan, trying to get the word out, so this great series can continue. And so that I can found out the result of that cliffhanger. Because seriously, the way the final episode ended is not okay. I need to know what happens.

Thanks!

What "The Veronica Mars Movie Project" could mean for your favorite TV show

Earlier today Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell, the creator and star of Veronica Mars, announced that there will be a Veronica Mars movie next year...if the fans helped pay for it. Enter the kickstarter asking for $2 million by April 12. Basically, the deal with Warner Brothers, who owned the right was that if they could get the money to make the movie, WB would pay for distribution and marketing.

As you can see if you go to the campaign, The Veronica Mars Movie Project met its goal, in one day, and still has people making pledges. 

All this has sparked a lot of discussion about what this means for the future of TV movies. Some people have expressed concern that this will become how all future movies are made. Mostly people are just excited about what it means for their favorite cult shows that got canceled. Everyone is throwing around names of shows that could get made into TV movies now, so I thought I'd share my opinion of some of them. 

Firefly: The Movie

One of the most commonly suggested shows to get this treatment, given that the first movie got made on the strength of the series' DVD sales, it isn't that much of a stretch to imagine it would try a kickstarter campaign.  The stars have also expressed interest in coming back and continuing their roles. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of things working against it. The first movie didn't do very well at the box office, so the studio might be wary to make it, even if the fans chip in. Also, given that the show is science fiction and takes place in space, it's going to need a MUCH bigger budget than $2 million, so any realistic amount asked for might just end up being too much to actually get. Also a problem (though a good one), Joss Whedon is pretty busy right now with Avengers and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so even if it does happen, it'd be a while. Besides, like with Buffy and Angel the story has already been continued in comic book form.

Gilmore Girls: The Movie

In honor of Rory Gilmore, a Pro/Con list.

Pros: No real dangling plot threads means they can write a real stand alone movie, Can be done on a low budget since there were never really any massive special effects, Also owned by Warner Brothers the success of VM means they might be more willing than other studios to try, Fans clearly want it to happen.

Cons: Do the creators and actors want to make a movie? While they've expressed interest when asked, they haven't gone out of their way to say it's something they want to do, the way Thomas and Bell have.

Chuck: The Movie

While special effects cost would drive up the price to make this a reality, the fans have shown in the past that they are willing to put their money where their mouths are. Chuck fans went to Subway restaurants (a main sponsor of the show) and bought sandwiches, leaving suggestion box notes to "Save Chuck". It worked, the show was renewed and got five seasons in total. Given the open ended nature of the finale, a movie would be a great way to show just how things finally ended up. Also going for it? Earlier today Zachary Levi, who played the titular Chuck, tweeted that the Veronica Mars news "bolstered [his] faith that [he] can bring you a Chuck Movie". 

Leverage: The Movie

One thing that kept repeating in the back of my mind today while waiting to see Veronica Mars reach $2 million was that $2 million is also what John Rodgers has said is the budget for an episode of Leverage, so I imagine a full on movie would cost more, but not a lot more. The show was only just canceled, but Rodgers says TNT has been letting them shop it around to try and find a new home, so why not let the fans, who stole a People's Choice Award to try and get the show renewed, pay for a movie?

Arrested Development: The Movie

Years after the show was canceled, Netflix got the rights to the show, and has now made a season 4, to be released in May. Ron Howard, the creator has said that the episodes will stand on their own, but also as a lead-in to a movie which, as of this writing, hasn't been ordered by any studio. The hope was that if the soon-to-be-released season 4 was successful enough, a movie deal would come through. And that may still happen. But maybe instead, the movie studio will ask them to do a kickstarter. Luckily, an Arrested Development movie could probably be done on a fairly low budget, and the fans have been very clear in their desire to see it happen. 

My Essay Writing Process

I recently changed majors, from one where there were no essays required from me, to one where there are lots of essays required from me. As such, I've become very aware of the process I go through to write an essay.
Note: This is just a general format, obviously each essay is different.

Step 1: Read the prompt.
Step 2: Look at the number of pages expected from me.
Step 3: Panic.
Step 4: Read the prompt again, hoping desperately that I think of something to say on the topic.
Step 5: Go off and do other things, occasionally thinking about the essay and worrying.
Step 6: Out of nowhere, think of an argument or fact that can be used for the essay.
Step 6 1/2: Go back through my readings/do research to find facts I can use.
Step 7: Write down the fact(s) in my outline.
Repeat steps 6-7 until I have an outline that is at least half as long as my paper needs to be, because the outline is single spaced, doesn't use full sentences, and doesn't include anything regarding the introduction or conclusion.
Step 8: Go over my outline, rearranging things until I feel like there's at least some transition between main points.
Step 9: Try to start writing an introduction.
Step 10: Get annoyed because every attempt to start the paper is garbage.
Step 11: Skip straight to writing the first body paragraph because I have an outline for it so I at least have some idea of what I want to write.
Step 12: Get inspiration for my introduction in the middle of writing a body paragraph.
Step 13: Go back and write my introduction.
Step 14: Finish my body paragraphs.
Step 14 1/2: Every so often write a sentence that I just hate so much that I delete it, then rewrite it only to delete it again until I just give up and decide to let future me deal with the problem of the terrible sentence in editing.
Step 15: Try to write a conclusion.
Step 16: Get frustrated because conclusions are hard.
Step 17: Just write something as a conclusion, mostly by reiterating my main points.
Step 18: Wait 8-24 hours before rereading the essay.
Step 19: Reread the essay, expecting it to be terrible.
Step 20: Become pleasantly surprised that it isn't a steaming pile of turd after all.
Step 21: Fix the terrible sentences that annoyed me earlier, because for some reason I can now figure out how to phrase them so that they aren't terrible.
Step 22: Reread the essay, fixing spelling and grammar mistakes as I go.
Step 23: Turn the essay in.
Step 24: Panic that it's actually a horrible essay and that I should have spent more time fixing it. At no point reread the essay to reassure myself that it isn't bad.
Step 25: Listen to the person who graded the essay explain in general terms what we as a group did wrong and should improve on for the future.
Step 26: Assume that every single one of these errors applies to me, even if the part of my brain that remembers the essay knows that they can't all apply.
Step 27: Get the graded essay back.
Step 28: Congratulate myself on having tricked the TA/professor/grader into thinking I'm a good writer.
Step 29: Briefly consider that maybe, just maybe, I have unrealistically high standards for myself as a writer.
Step 30: Disregard that thought. It's clearly stupid.