So I'm going to go insane this year in part because I'm preparing for my generals exams. For those of you who aren't familiar, these are the giant exams at the end of my PhD course work where I read a couple hundred books and than take written and oral exams on them.
For those of you interested here are the draft lists of what i'm reading over the next five months.
auralan and I have been annoyed at the pronouncements that Michael Phelps is the "greatest olympian ever" and we've been coming up with other candidates for the title. Problem is that we're both Americans...
So here is my request. If you have a great olympic champion story (involving an American or not) nominate them in the comments. Someone who dominated their sport over a number of olympics, someone who changed their sport by virtue of themselves, someone who beat someone they shouldn't have, someone who competed under horrible conditions at home. You don't have to make the case yourself in the comment, just give me a name and their event and I can look it up. Sometime in the next few days I will come up with the list.
Olympic mascots are nearly always ... unfortunate, but usually so bland people easily forget them. The mascots from Beijing were a gang of generic anime knock offs, as is entirely appropriate for the host nation. The Atlanta games had a blue ... thing named Izzy that looked like a cartoon character on meth. The Canadians managed to do reasonalby well for Vancouver, though there were hits and misses in their gang of semi-mythical animals.
And than the London Olympic Committee announced their mascots a while back. Now London has had some design problems along the way. The torch looks like a cheese grater, and some say that the symbol of the games resembles Lisa Simpson giving a blow job, but even in the context of disaster Wenlock and Mandeville are something... special. If you haven't had the pleasure here is a picture.
Despite my interest in things military and my thing for hot women in uniform... I've avoided the show Army Wives like the plague. For one thing it was on lifetime, and for another it's promos this year involve women in cocktail dresses walking around during a hurricane outside. A few years ago I tried to make it through the first season but the uniforms were so badly done that among other sins their berets looked like someone had inflated them before they put them on the actors heads. The one female service member had hair that would never be allowed and that's not even touching Catherine Bell's milktoast character from the first season.
But than I saw a picture of Kellie Martin dressed as a paratrooper captain and this seemed worth making fun... because who casts Kellie Martin as a paratrooper?
Apparently someone smarter than I am.
So yes it's a soup but it's a good soup and it improves vastly after the first season. They get military cooperation and the sense of realism on the show goes way up. And this year they brought in a bunch of characters I find really compelling.
Kelli Williams is playing the wife of a general who is competing for a promotion with the existing general's character. That storyline has been largely about the new characters because Kim Delaney disappeared a few episodes back likely because industry rumor has it that she's fallen off the wagen again. Williams seems like the perfect wife and partner to help her husband climb the right political ladders. Except she can't get her husband to pay attention to her and she's obviously exausted and trying to do too much ... and popping anti-anxity pills like they are candy. Her husband is clueless about what he's putting his wife through but also a much more complicated character than the first general. I'd watch this pair over the original any day. Especially because Delaney--booze or no booze--can't move a muscle in her face these days between the botox and the lip injections.
Kellie Martin is playing an intelligence captain who was in the closet until she was wounded in action and decided that she can't loose her partner. The chemistry between her and her girlfriend, a civilian who works on base as a youth activities director, is just amazing. Martin manages to play the kick ass with subordinates, nervous with superiors, just barely stepping out of the closet so well. She's supposed to be in eight episodes and I so hope she's going to be a regular. I so hope the show lasts past this season.
There are a bunch of new enlisted wives and they are starting to use a lot of storylines I was looking for in earlier seasons. Young people on their own for the first time who know nothing about money. Foreign women who marry american soldiers and how hard it can be for them to integrate into the community.
I just never expected it to be so complex between the politics of who gets promoted among the generals to young people who are figuring out how to live as adults. It's just... so smart.
Even if you don't want to pick the show up from the beginning I think you could start watching in season 6 and pick it up easily.
Episode Stills have been released today for the next three episodes of Pan Am including some pretty amazing shots of Kate and Colette in pretty dresses.
Several friends of mine have asked for screencaps from the new ABC series Pan Am...
All the hires I have run into up until now and the first two episodes screencaps can be found here. Standard rules, take what you want, just tell me what you are taking so I can bring you similar things in the future.
OMG Pan Am might be even better in episode 2 than it was in the pilot. Seriously folks, ignore the marketing campaign this is the best new tv show in years. Full of spies and strong women and strong women who are spies! And complicated mother daughter relationships. And men who are arm candy!
This is an incomplete list, mostly shows I'm intending to watch...
9/19 - Castle, Hawaii Five-O 9/20 - NCIS, Body of Proof 9/21 - CSI, SVU 9/22 - Community, Grey's Anatomy, Prime Suspect 9/23 - CSI NY, Fringe, Blue Bloods 9/25 - The Good Wife, CSI Miami 10/3 - House 10/7 - Sanctuary 10/21 - Chuck 10/23 - Once Upon a Time 11/1 - Covert Affairs 11/3 - Bones 11/28 - The Closer, Rizzoli & Isles
