A late night; should be in bed shortly (funny thing is, I get home more or less at a decent hour after the Alma Mater Law School Asian Alumni dinner, and I end up watching Ben Kingsley on the Tavis Smiley show, and Craig Ferguson cracking Katie Couric jokes, and then not moving onto bed. Yeesh).
Good to see FC and P and various mentees and classmates and others. Dessert at the dinner was spectacularly good. Yum, I like good cake. And pastries. And caffiene to clean the palate off. Maybe there should just be a thing for desserts alone. Maybe I’m just weak and w/o discipline because I’m a sucker for dessert and caffiene.
Though I must say – seeing the interior of the new law school building was very nice. Nice view and everything. It didn’t leave me with the feeling I still get, five years and running, when I see the Undergrad Alma Mater’s new student center (yeah, that’s right, my class was the class w/o a student center for three years because they just had to build the new one after razing the old one, leaving us with the tin can temporary building… but, not that my class is bitter about it. Really).
Oh, and Wednesday’s snow: Seeing the snow had me in a tailspin, since it’s not something you expect to see in April. And, yeah, like FC said, those were big snowflakes. Or, as I saw it: Big Ass Mutant Snowflakes. Almost made me morbidly wonder if we were having a nuclear winter. Or global warming really making bad things. Bottomline: very strange weather.
A very funny Slate article – and very correct. The whole problem with couples on tv series is that, no matter how much sexual chemistry there may be between the characters, you can never ever have them together until the series finale (assuming you have a network that allows you to get to a series finale). The rule is, you cannot have a happy couple on tv or at least one that is happy while still dealing with the ups and downs of life.
Like, how on “The Practice,” Bobby and Lindsay could not enjoy one moment of happiness and their divorce/separation takes it toll on everyone (made for ugly tv, not good tv, which may explain why I stopped watching “The Practice” when the characters got too sanctimonious for their own good).
Like, as cited in the article, Mulder and Scully on “X-Files” really couldn’t take their chemistry very far on-screen (leaving the rest of us with overactive imaginations to come up with something).
Heck, I’ll even note how on just about every incarnation of Star Trek, long-term romantic relationships aren’t handled very well. On DS9: Worf and Jadzia’s relationship ends due to her death (didn’t help that the actress was leaving the show and Worf has a poor streak of women dying on him); on The Next Generation, Picard and Crusher with their whole “Jean-Luc, I have something to tell you…” and Crusher never getting to tell him because… red alert on the Enterprise…; Janeway and Chakotay on Voyager letting their subtext and longing get to them but for her stubborn refusal to stray from her vows of duty; and the ultimate frittered-away relationship in Star Trek: Trip and T’Pol on “Enterprise.” As Spock would say, highly illogical indeed.
“House” – this Tuesday’s “House” continues the saga of the Housian Odd Couple – Drs. House (played with perfect zing this week by Hugh Laurie) and Wilson (played with the usual puppy dog cuteness by Robert Sean Leonard) continue to drive each other crazy, although House is a bit more realistic about it than Wilson (i.e., doesn’t it occur to Wilson that Mrs. Wilson ain’t coming back? Although, I still think Mrs. Wilson should make one appearance, even if it’s the camera watching her from behind as she turns away from the Perfect Oncologist Cutie Pie Man (whose big weakness is consoling with women who aren’t his wives)).
Meanwhile, Dr. Cameron makes the nasty quips at the men; methinks she’s getting tired of them not taking her seriously (she made a real zinger at Dr. Chase, which made me wonder if it was a rather unkind reference to their one-night stand, or she has spent way too much time with House).
Drs. Foreman and House had their own Odd Couple moment: sarcastic WASP House is the Leader who usually writes on the white board with the marker, and he (in his lovely un-PC way) tells off African-American Foreman with a not-veiled remark of “There’s a reason why they call it the white board…” and Foreman grabbing the marker and snapping, “There’s a reason why they call it a black marker…” Good for Foreman for not backing down on House’s idiotic moments (he does have them – and boy did he have a lot in this episode!).
Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, the ex-Dawn of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (i.e., Buffy’s supernaturally-derived kid sister), plays the patient of the week, with a mysterious illness. I didn’t think she’d still play the teenage kid roles by this point, but I guess it makes sense since she’s still a teenager. Nicely done, though (most of the time, the patients are just irritants).