Random Friday
Feb. 6th, 2004 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiWell, the iTunes Music store has added its second Billboard chart, this time the R&B charts, dating back to 1946.
Oh, and for those who wanted my full Angel gripes, here they are:
The good:
Most of the Cordy stuff. Shit, if she'd been this much fun even once over the last two years, I might have given a shit that she was in a coma. She was funny, energetic, and interesting. As always, Joss characters are at their best shortly before dying.
Harmony. She clicked on all cylinders as well, providing a nice contrast between a shallow Sunnydale girl who has grown tremendously, and one who remains shallow (and, well, evil).
Actually, all of the gang clicked pretty well.
But then there's the bad:
Specifically, Lindsay. Let me count the ways. First, he's set up this wonderfully elaborate thing with pretending to be Doyle and advising Spike. The clear purpose of this is that when Spike finally reveals who has been advising him, it fucks with the minds of Angel and everyone else. So then Lindsay goes and reveals that his hand was lopped off, and the effect is ruined in about ten seconds. Why?
Second, the removal of the tattoos was possibly the worst Deus Ex ever to appear on this show.
Third, the Partners have this mysterious Angel-killing beast (known as the McGuffin). And it takes about thirty minutes to emerge from its chamber? What the fuck? Maybe they've also got a mysterious Wesley-killing device. They activate it, and in fifty years he dies of old fucking age!
Forth, it can be stopped by just pulling out the rocks?
Fifth, it's guarded by ten zombies? Yeah, that's effective.
Sixth, once it's stopped, Lindsay loses all his ass-kicking abilities? He's that easily distracted?
Seventh, what was the point of having Spike rescue Angel from the beast that L had Eve put on him if the eventual goal was to kill Angel anyway?
Eighth, Eve caves in after getting smacked three times by Harmony? What the fuck? She's worked for the senior Partners, held dangerous creatures in her hands to place on sleeping vampires, sees demons every day, and she caves like this? I assumed she was setting them up.
Ninth, that's just bad storytelling. After building up the Lindsay thing for so long, we deserved more of a payoff. Even if he comes back again (and he needs to, if only to explain his motives), they needed two or three more eps before sending him off to the Partners.
Tenth, there's still a lot of unexplained stuff about Even. Not the least of which is that since she wasn't wearing tattoos, she should have been visible to the Partners (and even if she was protected when she was with L, what about when she was doing stuff on her own, like putting the great soul-sucking dream thingee on Angel?).
This one goes to Eleventh: My one Cordy gripe: Um, okay, so it was a ghost/whatever. So how does that explain the first call from the hospital? Someone had to have reported her as alive and awake. Assuming that was her body in the bed, why did she have a physical presence (complete with blood Spike could taste)? Unless they want to write off everything as a dream sequence, which I'm assuming is not the case. The only other option I can figure out is that she was somehow a pawn of the Senior Partners. That's an interesting path (one that reminds me a bit about the doubt sewed during Season 7 of Buffy, with Dawn's visit from her mom).
And finally, did anyone else feel that Cordy's cleavage was prominent enough to deserve billing in the credits?
Wow, that ran longer than I expected. And I probably could have kept on going. For what it's worth, I enjoyed most of the episode, in spite of the complaints. But that's way too many flaws.
Does anyone remember Tripping the Rift (the other really obscene animation that was circulatinga few years ago)? Well, it's becoming a series on Sci-Fi. Although Terry Ferrell has been replaced with Gina Gershon.
Today is Christopher Marlowe's birthday. Happy Birthday to the the one of my two possible dissertation subjects, had I taken the other path and gone to grad school. It's also the birthday of Ronald Reagan, who is increasingly remembered as sweet and nice and well-meaning and only for the Cold War, instead of for running an administration that was more corrupt than any in history (including that of Harding, with whom history will eventually lump The Gipper) and fucking the world for generations to come. And of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who, well, has done nothing and been famous for it forever. And of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
justanotherg33k, who, along with Marlowe, helps to balance the other two (until we realize that today is also Rick Astley's natal day).
RIght now, the lovely folks from Surplus here, packaging a bunch of old computers. This involves unwrapping the world's loudest roll of plastic wrap, making it actually impossible to concentrate for more than a second at a time, even with headphones blasting music. I've written this sentence between loud plastic shrieking sounds. And people wonder why I'd prefer to work from home.
Link of the day: Remember the Valerie Plame story, you know, the one that the Bush Administration wishes would go away, as it basically involves both Robert Novak and at least one administration official committing high treason? Well, it looks like some indictments may be coming down soon. If this turns out to have actually come from Cheney himself (something that would honestly surprise me, as I'd assumed that this was more of an Ashcroft type of thing -- it's not that Cheney has ethics in general, but news leaks have never been his style), and not just one of his aides, we'd have a VP who had committed a capital crime. Lovely (and as it stands, the aides should be looking at the death penalty themselves).
Oh, and for those who wanted my full Angel gripes, here they are:
The good:
Most of the Cordy stuff. Shit, if she'd been this much fun even once over the last two years, I might have given a shit that she was in a coma. She was funny, energetic, and interesting. As always, Joss characters are at their best shortly before dying.
Harmony. She clicked on all cylinders as well, providing a nice contrast between a shallow Sunnydale girl who has grown tremendously, and one who remains shallow (and, well, evil).
Actually, all of the gang clicked pretty well.
But then there's the bad:
Specifically, Lindsay. Let me count the ways. First, he's set up this wonderfully elaborate thing with pretending to be Doyle and advising Spike. The clear purpose of this is that when Spike finally reveals who has been advising him, it fucks with the minds of Angel and everyone else. So then Lindsay goes and reveals that his hand was lopped off, and the effect is ruined in about ten seconds. Why?
Second, the removal of the tattoos was possibly the worst Deus Ex ever to appear on this show.
Third, the Partners have this mysterious Angel-killing beast (known as the McGuffin). And it takes about thirty minutes to emerge from its chamber? What the fuck? Maybe they've also got a mysterious Wesley-killing device. They activate it, and in fifty years he dies of old fucking age!
Forth, it can be stopped by just pulling out the rocks?
Fifth, it's guarded by ten zombies? Yeah, that's effective.
Sixth, once it's stopped, Lindsay loses all his ass-kicking abilities? He's that easily distracted?
Seventh, what was the point of having Spike rescue Angel from the beast that L had Eve put on him if the eventual goal was to kill Angel anyway?
Eighth, Eve caves in after getting smacked three times by Harmony? What the fuck? She's worked for the senior Partners, held dangerous creatures in her hands to place on sleeping vampires, sees demons every day, and she caves like this? I assumed she was setting them up.
Ninth, that's just bad storytelling. After building up the Lindsay thing for so long, we deserved more of a payoff. Even if he comes back again (and he needs to, if only to explain his motives), they needed two or three more eps before sending him off to the Partners.
Tenth, there's still a lot of unexplained stuff about Even. Not the least of which is that since she wasn't wearing tattoos, she should have been visible to the Partners (and even if she was protected when she was with L, what about when she was doing stuff on her own, like putting the great soul-sucking dream thingee on Angel?).
This one goes to Eleventh: My one Cordy gripe: Um, okay, so it was a ghost/whatever. So how does that explain the first call from the hospital? Someone had to have reported her as alive and awake. Assuming that was her body in the bed, why did she have a physical presence (complete with blood Spike could taste)? Unless they want to write off everything as a dream sequence, which I'm assuming is not the case. The only other option I can figure out is that she was somehow a pawn of the Senior Partners. That's an interesting path (one that reminds me a bit about the doubt sewed during Season 7 of Buffy, with Dawn's visit from her mom).
And finally, did anyone else feel that Cordy's cleavage was prominent enough to deserve billing in the credits?
Wow, that ran longer than I expected. And I probably could have kept on going. For what it's worth, I enjoyed most of the episode, in spite of the complaints. But that's way too many flaws.
Does anyone remember Tripping the Rift (the other really obscene animation that was circulatinga few years ago)? Well, it's becoming a series on Sci-Fi. Although Terry Ferrell has been replaced with Gina Gershon.
Today is Christopher Marlowe's birthday. Happy Birthday to the the one of my two possible dissertation subjects, had I taken the other path and gone to grad school. It's also the birthday of Ronald Reagan, who is increasingly remembered as sweet and nice and well-meaning and only for the Cold War, instead of for running an administration that was more corrupt than any in history (including that of Harding, with whom history will eventually lump The Gipper) and fucking the world for generations to come. And of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who, well, has done nothing and been famous for it forever. And of
justanotherg33k, who, along with Marlowe, helps to balance the other two (until we realize that today is also Rick Astley's natal day).RIght now, the lovely folks from Surplus here, packaging a bunch of old computers. This involves unwrapping the world's loudest roll of plastic wrap, making it actually impossible to concentrate for more than a second at a time, even with headphones blasting music. I've written this sentence between loud plastic shrieking sounds. And people wonder why I'd prefer to work from home.
Link of the day: Remember the Valerie Plame story, you know, the one that the Bush Administration wishes would go away, as it basically involves both Robert Novak and at least one administration official committing high treason? Well, it looks like some indictments may be coming down soon. If this turns out to have actually come from Cheney himself (something that would honestly surprise me, as I'd assumed that this was more of an Ashcroft type of thing -- it's not that Cheney has ethics in general, but news leaks have never been his style), and not just one of his aides, we'd have a VP who had committed a capital crime. Lovely (and as it stands, the aides should be looking at the death penalty themselves).
