then she appeared

Thanks to Hercules, I haven't left the house since midday on Wednesday. Bought a few things at the grocery store and I've hunkered down since. I can work from home whenever, basically, so I did that. The landlord cleaned the majority of the snow off all the cars, but tomorrow (since it's supposed to make it into the 20s, temp-wise) I'll go out and do the rest on both my car and mom's.

I'm also going to hang out with S&V tomorrow night; they have a place in Lynn, right along the water, so it should be pretty dramatic there in the aftermath of the storm. They showed a lot of impressive pounding surf footage on the news all day long from various beachfront locations, and Steve said that you could see his house in some of them. I didn't ask if the entire front of his house is encased in ice. I guess I'll find out tomorrow!

It was cold enough out that I finally watched the final episode of "Treme" tonight, hoping it would make me feel warm. That worked, but I also spent the entire 80 minutes weeping that the show is now over and I'll never see new scenes from those characters. It was SO very good. Between "Treme" and the James Lee Burke "Dave Robicheaux" series, I feel almost like a New Orleans native. I guess I really need to at least visit there sometime. Take in the music and the food, beignets and etouffee and muffulettas and po'boys and gumbo and jambalaya.

I've also spent the past few days watching the first 2.5 seasons of "Being Human"* (US version), which is fun in a vampires/werewolves/ghosts kind of way, but watching it all at once with no buffer of time makes you want to smack the characters a bit—stop making bad decisions!

* Not to be confused with "Almost Human", which is way more fun but has only aired half a season.

I already feel a lot better. I've only been taking extra strength Tylenol for the pain, and it's been more than adequate to deal with it. My doctor wrote me a prescription for oxycodone, but I haven't felt the need to try it.

The high points of my day so far? I took a shower. And I had a sandwich. Exciting times.

Recovery entertainment: Just watched the entire season to date of "Sons of Anarchy". Pretty good. Katey Sagal is awesome. The whole cast is good. It doesn't quite have the punch of other great crime series, though; I only thought "wow, that was great!" at the end of one episode, and I used to think that regularly at the end of, say, The Sopranos or even The Shield.

Next up: Season two of Mad Men. Maybe I'll read for a bit, first.

I Tivoed this show in December and just watched it last week, so this may not be the timeliest of commentary!

The Sci-Fi channel's recent remake of The Wizard of Oz is a darker, more adult and scary vision of L. Frank Baum's classic. It's not perfect, but for those of us who have watched the original movie at least 25 or 30 times in our lives, it's fun to see what the writer and director have done to the source material. Reviews I've read are mixed; half are horrified that someone would dare to take on a classic, and the other half finding the fun in the differences. I watched it as more of an homage to the original and had fun watching it. Since the Sci Fi Channel replays their originals every few months, it's sure to come up again.

Zooey Deschanel plays DG, the main character, who is a waitress at a diner, lives with her parents on a remote Kansas farm, drives a motorcycle, and dreams of traveling to Australia. She has disturbing dreams, however, and she sketches what she sees in those dreams. She explains to her father that she doesn't fit in there, that she never has.

One night, during a wild tornado, the house is attacked by men in long leather coats. DG's parents push her into the tornado's fury, and they quickly leap in after. When DG awakes and sees two moons in the sky, she quickly realizes she's somewhere else.

The familiar characters are there, but they're...different. The munchkins are represented by a violent race of tiny tree dwellers who take DG hostage and put her in a giant bird cage. In there with her is Alan Cumming as Glitch, looking winsome in brown lipstick, with a giant zipper down the middle of his skull. They've taken half his brain, see, and what's left is addled (but very charming).

After they escape from the ewoks, DG and Glitch come across a iron maiden rusting in a field. It looks like an undersea diving suit complete with faceplate, and the faceplate is facing a projected hologram of a miserable scene of a family being tortured by longcoats. They realize there's someone inside, and once they let him out and he bathes, he becomes handsome Neal McDonough as Wyatt Cain, in an Indiana Jones fedora. He's a former cop (tin man) in Central City, and he's a member of the Resistance. He was placed in the suit many years before as a punishment, to watch, over and over, the destruction of his family. The O.Z. (outer zone) is not a friendly place!

They are off to see the mystic man, who's conveniently located in Central City, located on the Old Road which goes through the fields of the Pa-Pe, who are scary and they run fast and if they catch you they eat you. They find a captured meal hanging in a bush and it's Raw, a scared psychic who looks kind of lionesque. His race is able to read your mind by touching you, and sorceress Azkadellia takes them hostage and sticks electrodes on their heads to get information. He's escaped, and is terrified of recapture.

So they get away from the scary running things and then they get to Central City. Central City is kind of like Pottersville after George Bailey never existed. It's a den of sin, and the mystic man, played by Richard Dreyfus in a scene-chewing role, is a leering drug addict. He snaps out of it long enough to tell DG her next step in her quest, and off they all go, back on the road. They steal a camper, though, so there isn't much skipping. In fact, I think there was no skipping at all! And not really any singing, either.

It's a six hour miniseries, and it's all pretty dark, albeit fun. There's an evil witch who may or may not melt into a pile of goo, there's flying bat-monkeys who form out of Azkedellia's chest tattoos, there's saintly parents, a shape-shifter who turns into an adorable wee dog, misunderstood robots, latex galore, and a strange quest that DG must follow to find her place in the world. Involving an emerald.

There's definitely no place like The O.Z.!

Did I miss the memo? It seems to be sf actor guest appearance week on network television. First we had Michael Dorn on Without a Trace at the end of last week, then we had Nicholas Brendon over on Criminal Minds last night, then tonight we have Seth Green and John Billingsley on Grey's Anatomy, then tomorrow night it's Wil Wheaton on Numb3rs. Thanksgiving week is geek week?? Yay!

Another entry in the so-bad-they're-almost-good SciFi Channel movies list. This time it's "Mammoth"; with Vincent Ventresca in the Corin Nemec role, 25-year-old Summer Glau playing his 16-year-old daughter, and Tom Skerritt totally slumming as crazy-old-coot-who-believes-in-aliens Grandpa.

But wait, there's more! Vinny (SciFi's "Invisible Man" series) is Dr. Frank Abernathy, a scatter-brained natural history museum director; his current obsession is a well-preserved wooly mammoth. When he accidentally signals the mother ship by drilling into the mammoth's butt and pulling out some kind of transmitter, mayhem ensues. The mammoth comes to life and becomes a, yes, mammoth-alien hybrid zombie, and runs amok in all the usual ways. And hello? Why WASN'T Corin Nemec cast in this movie? Was he too busy? They couldn't possibly have written the part with anyone else in mind.

Summer Glau is totally underutilized as Jack, who is supposed to be celebrating her 16th birthday, but is instead being neglected by her flaky scientist dad. She has a boyfriend (played by Cole Williams, Paul Williams' son (yes, THAT Paul Williams)) who convinces her to sneak out and go to a really dull rave. They do, and mammoth mayhem happens with predictable results. Her job? Looking upset. Running. Screaming. Pouting.

We lost count of the many many good movies that they referenced: Men in Black, the Blob, Night of the Living Dead, Addams Family, Jurassic Park, Signs, War of the Worlds; basically every SF movie there ever was -- meaning there wasn't a new or original idea in the whole movie. But it was cheesy fun, and I laughed a bunch. Since it was a Saturday night and we'd already gone out to the movies and had dinner, it was an acceptible way to spend a couple of hours.

Joss writes about the future of television: "Shows will be stored in the pancreas and will enter the brain through the bloodstream after being downloaded into your iHole."

Whoo! Just finished watching the day's baseball offerings. I watched the Sox while I monitored the Yankees game via MLB.com, then when the Yanks won I switched over to monitor the Indians game.

The AL East is pretty exciting right now. The Sox were in first place for so long this season that I actually forgot how it feels to be nervous about the end-of-the-season standings. We have seven games left to play: four against Toronto, then the final three vs. the Yankees. We're tied with the Yankees for first right now, and they have four games against Baltimore to play before we see them. This week should have some pretty exciting baseball!

But soon baseball will be over for another year and I will be sad. Lately I have withdrawal symptoms when baseball ends. I get irritable, jumpy, twitchy, and I always want to eat carbs. I think I need another sport. I can't stand football--too many high school games that I (as a member of the marching band) had to freeze my ass off for--and basketball seems sort of pointless. Hockey? I dunno. Too many toothless guys, and the uniforms are just not flattering. No cute butts! Golf is Mom's thing, I can't get into it anyway. Maybe tennis? They definitely have the cute outfits and butts, but the grunting is sort of disturbing.

I really think I'm a one sport girl, anyway. I'll probably just stick to network television and wait for spring...