Author: Rory

Possibly the least convincing campaign slogan ever: "Follow the French and Dutch."

(from Twitter, by txt)

This is honestly among the most inconveniently timed pirate festivals ever. It’s up there in the top five for sure.

(from Twitter, by txt)

I’m in a club carved into a cliff face. I *guess* I can afford to pay €12 for a drink…

(from Twitter, by txt)

Just landed in Naples. Time for some vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice-cream.

(from Twitter, by txt)

I have now completed the transition from, “I want to learn to play this on the guitar,” to, “I hope they put this in the next Guitar Hero.”

(from Twitter, by web)

Not feeling the need to add Indy IV to the collection. The bits that were recognizably Indy? Great. The rest? I don’t want to talk about it.

(from Twitter, by web)

Suit shop staying open late for you: good for the ego, bad for the credit card.

(from Twitter, by txt)

While I’m celebrating less than entirely pointful milestones, I should probably make brief mention of the more meaningful ones too. I was promoted this week, presumably on the grounds of my strongly exceeding people’s expectations of my Guitar Hero prowess. There’s only one sound to mark the occasion:

Today is my eleventy-first twenty-fifth birthday. Alas twenty-five years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

I don’t think I’d be alone in holding the idea that Joss Whedon has been away from TV for far too long. Firefly‘s unjust demise was in 2003, and all we’ve seen from him on any screen since then was Serenity which, though fantastic, at about two hours running time was hardly a replacement for the glory days of two hours a week of Whedonism. Incidentally, if anyone wants to try to make a pun relating the phrase “glory days” to season five of Buffy that’s actually funny—a feat which escaped me—feel free.

Lede well and truly buried, I wanted to mention Dollhouse, Whedon’s new show starting in January. It stars Eliza Dushku (True Lies), making it automatically worth looking at watching for an hour a week. The show is about a house full of improbably attractive people who are given new personalities in order to perform missions for customers—anything from a date to becoming an assassin. Then the memories are wiped to make way for the next customer. As the phrase “improbably attractive” may have given away, Dushku plays one of these “Dolls”.

It starts in January on Fox. No news yet of any Irish or UK stations picking it up, but if it does well we can probably count on Sky and RTÉ to do the right thing. Interestingly, Fox is planning to show it with far fewer ads than usual so every episode will be 50 minutes instead of the now common 42 minutes for an “hour long” drama.

Already established as the place to get news of the show is Dollverse.com, who as of now have the first trailer online.