363: Things I missed in 2011

Pete Campbell and his bitchface

(delayed; due 2012)

The crew of the Enterprise

(endlessly delayed; due 2013)

Jack McCoy and the 27th precinct

(cancelled)

Snow.

134: Favorites XVI

My five favorite websites this week:

Simple Desktops

Does what it says on the package.

Go Fug Yourself

Witty fashion criticism from two smart and funny ladies (who also have a YA novel coming out soon).

Ravelry

It's where the knitters are.  Patterns, forums, groups -- it's the ultimate in crafty social media.

(login required)

Mrs. O

If you're a fan of Michelle Obama or her style, it's a must-read.

Pete Campbell's Bitchface
Nothing fills the Mad Men-shaped hole in my life quite like the ridiculous facial expressions of Vincent Kartheiser as Pete Campbell.

043: Favorite things IV

I'm retiring the "My Favorite Things" lyrics-as-subject-line gimmick.  But here's this week's roundup:

Space (...the final frontier)
This week, I saw the Hubble IMAX movie at Omnifest and PBS aired the final part of the BBC series on NASA (The Space Age), all of which made me 1) wish I weren't so bored by math, so I could be an astrophysicist, and 2) want to play that old Magic School Bus in Space computer game.

eBooks
While they don't smell as nice as real books, I've been reading ebooks since I was granted permission to use what was supposed to be my grandfather's Christmas gift, a Barnes & Noble Nook (he decided it was too techy and new-fangled).  My local library has a fairly good selection and B&N offers a free ebook every Friday, so between that and Google Books I'm amassing a fairly good collection -- and I haven't spent a single penny on 'em yet.  One of the best things about an e-reader?  You can read novels with straight up embarrassing covers without anyone seeing the awful cover art, so the people on the bus need never know that I'm reading Regency-era romance novels.  WIN.

Hats
I have a wide-brimmed fedora and a bowler that I am forever trying to work into outfits without looking like a total tool.  I have yet to succeed, but I admire people who do.  Also, I'm trying to talk myself out of thinking straw boaters are cute, because I don't want to end up buying one I'll never wear.
  
Tim Tam cookies
Pepperidge Farm brought Australia's Favorite Cookie to us a few years ago; naturally, it caught my eye in the Target cookie aisle because the cookie and I share a surname.  Only available from October-March each year, Tim Tams are essentially chocolate-covered sandwich cookies, but they must be made of the dreams of unicorns or something because they are ridiculously delicious.  At first I laughed at the people who would hoard them in March so as to have a supply that would last until October, but now I have become them.  There are seven packs in the drawer of the desk at which I am sitting at this very moment.  And I'm seriously considering taking a blogging break to eat one.  Or three.

Egypt
It's been a fascinating situation in Egypt for the last couple weeks, and the international response to Mubarak finally stepping down has been fantastic to watch.  My mother went to Egypt in the 1980s and I used to look at the photos when I was a kid and think it looked like the coolest place ever.  Hopefully, someday, I will be able to make the trip myself.  In the meantime, congratulations on the first step to a new age, Egypt.

036: Doorbells and sleigh bells

I'm eventually going to run out of lyrics for these Saturday posts, but for the time being, here are this week's favorites:

Downton Abbey

All the promos made Downton Abbey look desperately dull, but everyone who watched it said it was fantastic.  And they were completely right.  I'm only halfway through the second episode, but I'm already engrossed.  Even though it's essentially about inheritance, there's something about the upstairs/downstairs contrast and interplay that makes the program really entertaining.  Also, the costumes.  The costumes!  (Tom and Lorenzo blogged the pretty pretty costumes).  In any case, I should know better than to doubt Masterpiece programming.  I think PBS just needs some better promo-makers.  Perhaps they could poach some of the USA Network people, whose commercials make me want to watch shows that I know I don't like.

Platinum Preppy pens

My mother got me a pair of these pens for my birthday several years ago, and they're the best fountain pens I've come across yet.  The perpetual problem with fountain pens is proper ink flow, and I've hardly had any issues with these.  I'm shopping for refills for my black and red pens, and I'm in the market for a purple.

Finishing projects
I finally finished a sweater I've been knitting for ages (previously mentioned here) and it looks even better than I'd hoped.  I just have to block it, which will stop the slight curling edges along one shoulder, and it'll be all ready for...spring.  Oh, well.  At least it's a lightweight sweater.

Typewriters
Someday I'd like to own a lovely manual typewriter.  Until then, I'll enjoy window-shopping.

Community
I love that this show can do a Dungeons & Dragons-themed episode and make it cool.  I love that they turned the most disastrous anti-drug presentation ever into the most successful anti-drug presentation ever.  The paintball episode from season one is quite possibly the best thing I've ever seen.  I would marry Troy Barnes, no matter how obtuse he may be.  The only problem with the show is that it's on at the same time as The Big Bang Theory.  Thank God for DVR.

029: Warm woolen mittens

Favorite things from this week:

The Space Age: NASA's Story
Oddly, it was the BBC that made this fascinating look inside the U.S. space program.  PBS has shown the first two parts, with the next two presumably airing over the next couple weeks.  I never really studied NASA's history, either in school or on my own, so I missed out on some really interesting stories about the early days of the space race.  The "newly restored" footage from the era, including high-speed shots from around the launch pad (which any Mythbusters fan can tell you is always impressive), is fantastic, as are the interviews with retired astronauts and people who worked in Mission Control from NASA's first days.  Fascinating, entertaining, definitely worth checking out.

Rides a Bike
Best tumblr find this week.  Do you like classic films?  Do you like bicycles?  Do you like pictures of classic film stars riding bicycles?  Then I have the site for you!  I can't wait to get my bike out in the spring, but until then, I'll use the giant 1980s stationary bike in our family room and look at pictures of attractive people enjoying their velocipedes.

Black Swan
I finally saw it, and it was INSANE.  In a good way!  There was a freaky ambience to the whole film that made me very, very nervous throughout, and any film that can get that kind of reaction from me gets a thumbs-up.  It was also the best performance I've seen from Natalie Portman in quite a while.

Book bars

Library Bar in Downtown LA

A few in L.A. are featured in this article, all of which I will frequent if I ever find myself living there.  As far as I know, there aren't any similar places in the Twin Cities, unfortunately.  My friends and I used to frequent Kieran's in Minneapolis when we were in college, and we had dinner at their new First Ave location when everybody was in town during the holidays.  I can only imagine we would have lived at a book bar, which would have been great for our love for literature, but very bad for our wallets (and livers).

This tweet

Very important things are going on in Egypt right now, but amongst the protests and, unfortunately, violence, it's heartening to see that it isn't all about destruction.

022: Bright copper kettles

These are a few of my favorite things (this week):

Anderson Cooper 360° Daily podcast
We don't get CNN, so I can't watch AC360.  But CNN cuts together the best bits of the show and offers it as a daily podcast.  Although I inevitably have to mute Dana Loesch whenever she's on (just to maintain my own sanity) and sometimes the topics covered on the podcast aren't the stories in which I'm most interested, it's always reliably informative and entertaining.  And Anderson Cooper will occasionally say things like, "[my name sounds] like a nineteenth-century law firm" and "I'll be all alone here tomorrow, trapped under the vending machine."  Besides, it was on the podcast that I got to see this:

"Who's the bunny? ...  I'm the bunny?"

And you just can't beat Anderson Cooper in a bunny suit.


We Heart It
Essentially a repository for pretty pictures, We Heart It has sucked up more of my time than I care to admit. 

from page eight of my favorites

It's an easy place to just plug in whatever your current obsession is and scroll through page after page of aesthetically-pleasing photos accumulated by We Heart It members.  On any given day, I can start with "library" and end up at "puppies" by the time I realize I should be doing other things.  Today's search: breakfast.


Cleopatra: A Life

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, and I'm shallow enough to admit that the pretty cover was what first drew me to Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra (yes, every English major I know judges books by their covers).  Admittedly, I'm terrible with dates and I have only a vague idea of when various monarchs reigned, or who comes before whom -- I am extremely fortunate that there was no "Historical Figures by Date" category on my Jeopardy! game board -- so the fact that I can follow Schiff from point A to point B through ancient history is a testament to her writing.  Compelling and entertaining, it's more like reading a story than historical facts; it's creative non-fiction at its best.  I wish Schiff could write all history books; if she had, I might have attempted the AP history classes in high school.


Things Organized Neatly
Does what it says on the label.  Anyone who saw my childhood bedroom would laugh until they cried upon hearing me say that I like organization (an aunt once loudly proclaimed it a sty), but there's something very nice about the (mostly) minimalist photos.  I don't have the patience to organize my shit stuff this meticulously, but I enjoy browsing the blog.



Looking okay in photos
Seriously.  It's a rare thing for me, but I was fortunate this week, and -- as Shakespeare would say -- I am glad of it.

019: Dastardly evildoers

Villains!  Who doesn't love a really good bad guy?  There are characters we love, and then there are character we love to hate.  Sometimes the bad guys are more interesting and complex than the good guys; sometimes the good guys are so damn annoying that you start cheering for the bad guys (see: Claire Bennet, Heroes).  And occasionally the villain appears to reform, only to turn out even more malevolent than before.  But -- and this is important -- there has to be a reason the antagonist is villainous.  Bad just because is lazy, unless they're socio- and/or psychopathic.  And villains on television are great for the simple reason that they can come back again and again (until they get killed off).  In any case: a handful of my favorite TV baddies are under the cut.  Who would you pick?

016: Super sidekicks

In the vein of the other day's my-favorite-sleuths blog, I thought I'd do a bit of a triptych: detectives, sidekicks, and villains.  It was harder to think of sidekicks than investigators -- I had trouble paring down my runners-up list on that one -- but you can find my attempt below the jump.  If you have other favorites, I'm eager to hear them!

014: Gutsy gumshoes

I love my fictional crime-fighters.  I grew up watching Murder, She Wrote with my family on Sunday nights and Poirot movies on PBS.  I've been reading mysteries, beginning with Agatha Christie and meandering forward in time, since I was in elementary school.  Ghostwriter was my favorite show in the early 1990s (so much so that I actually joined the official fan club and put together my own detective kit, complete with fingerprint powder).  Nowadays, I'll take a good whodunit over a nighttime soap any day.  Even if I can usually guess what's coming next, I still watch because the really good shows are the ones that manage to surprise me regularly (e.g. Castle).

Because I thought it would be fun, my top ten (or so) favorite TV detectives, in alphabetical order, are under the jump.