A Hot Time in Egypt Tonight

2011-05-14T00:18:00.003-04:00

"Thousands of years of history," she said, her chubby lips parting in a smile, "and a bottle of wine. I think I'm getting wet already!"

Gordon Pinsent Reads Bieber

2010-10-21T09:33:00.002-04:00

Sweet Fucking Christ

2010-09-28T20:45:00.001-04:00

Click on the title for more.

So, so true...

2010-09-16T13:51:00.002-04:00

'Walking Dead' Trailer

2010-08-25T12:18:00.001-04:00

Coming in October. Yeah.

You're A Fucking Idiot!

2010-08-25T09:22:00.005-04:00

Cool blog about human behavioral blind spots. Read it.

Autopsy

2010-08-24T00:20:00.000-04:00

New, from Pizza Hut

2010-08-15T15:24:00.003-04:00

Shit-Lover's Pizza

Living Pop Art

2010-08-15T09:22:00.004-04:00

(Via Stumble!)

Who Fix

2010-08-14T21:08:00.003-04:00

A great Doctor Who blog. Just click on the post title and have a look.

Kevin Smith

2010-08-05T11:40:00.001-04:00

...seems like a nice guy, but just sucks creatively. Yeah.

Pretty much sums up MY reaction...

2010-08-01T18:27:00.004-04:00

Can YOU Feel it?

2010-07-25T15:17:00.001-04:00

Nostalgia

2010-07-24T02:17:00.000-04:00

I never thought I'd ever see this again.

I Fuck Goats

2010-07-24T02:00:00.005-04:00

GOATS!!!!!

Beer -- Inside a Squirrel

2010-07-22T15:02:00.001-04:00

Seriously, what the fuck?

Moffat's 'Sherlock' Miniseries

2010-07-22T06:50:00.000-04:00

Bitches of Plastic

2010-07-13T23:11:00.002-04:00

Exterminate!

2010-07-10T02:53:00.001-04:00

You have to fucking listen to this.

Let the slash-fic fly!

2010-07-08T12:06:00.002-04:00

Pix

2010-07-06T21:14:00.006-04:00

(Here.)

The Marathon (part 1)

2010-06-30T23:31:00.022-04:00

Here I go.

I'm vowing to watch every single episode of classic Doctor Who, in sequential order, a minimum of one a day if at all possible, from An Unearthly Child to Surv ival. God knows how long it'll take me. God knows what kind of shape I'll be in when it's over. But tonight, I watched the pilot episode in all its grainy, early '60s glory, and rather enjoyed it. I'm not really sure how long that enjoyment will last, especially once I start getting into the three hour (plus!) epics that only exist in scratchy audio stapled to slide shows of blurry publicity shots. I may go insane. People may end up dying. One of them may be you.

Some of my earliest memories involve watching Jon Petwee episodes on TVOntario in the '70s as a child; I must have been about the same age then as my older son is now. I've tried to shield him somewhat from heavy exposure to nerd media, but he does like my Doctor Who toys, has seen an episode or two, and came home the other day with a 'draw anything' sketchbook he was given at the start of the school year by his teacher. Inside, I found this:

In the seventh grade, I saved my allowance for months, and skipped on a year-end camping trip to go to a Doctor Who convention. This one:

It was magnificent, but I'm not entirely sure I'd encourage him to do the same. Fandom has its own costs. (Look carefully, and you can actually see me sitting there when Pertwee comes in. Weird.)

My parents were so impressed that I had the discipline to save the $35 admission fee that they gave me some spending money for the convention itself. I went with a friend who later dropped out of school, perhaps to join the army. We called each other by our last names, which my mother thought was strange. A decade later, when my then-girlfriend (the crazy one -- not that there were so many) went to England on a trip, I asked her to buy me some sort of Doctor Who item, even though I felt I'd outgrown the program. She brought me back a copy of the official magazine. When I went to England, I didn't buy any such things, but I did look in a depressing little Doctor Who shop in Hastings. Later still, when my brother was at graduate school in London, he bought me some overpriced, but cool, little figurines and mailed them to me. They're sitting on a shelf. I can see them if I turn my head.

I recently bumped into my father in a shopping mall. My kids were with me. It was the first time I'd seen him in nearly a decade; his hair and mustache were completely white, and he didn't recognize me until I spoke. I'm not really sure what the kids thought. I'm not really sure that I'm going to call the telephone number I now have for my father, though I probably will. I doubt he still watches Doctor Who. I'm sure he still reads crypto-fascist science fiction novels, though. I picked up an interest in the former because it watching it was something we did together. He tried very hard to interest me in the latter. I read them all. None of them really spoke to me, and, as an adult, I now find them creepy and sometimes laughable.

A boy I knew in the fifth grade reintroduced me to Doctor Who after I'd lost interest in the show for several years. (It was the first of many such returns.) When I was in university, Jazzroach and I, by random chance, saw my old school friend at a bar, and I remember his delighted reaction upon seeing me for the first time in years: "You turned out cool!" Maybe me being his childhood Doctor Who friend had made such an outcome, in his mind, unlikely, however superficially my coolness now sat upon me. He eventually left the club when I started forgetting which drinks were his and which drinks were mine. I drank many of his. He told me how World War II wasn't Germany's fault. I wonder if he still likes the show. If I remembered his last name, I could look him up on Facebook, but I don't.

In 2005, the new version of Doctor Who is debuting, and I'm downloading and watching each episode as I wait to return to North America. A few years later, the fact that the show still exists after being away for so long reassures me in a time when very little else does. In 2010, I sit on the sofa, watching The Big Bang on my laptop as my wife and kids sleep on the second floor of the first house we've ever owned. Last week, I visibly impressed my immediate boss by using the phrase carte blanche in a conversation without really thinking about it. I remember learning it from Doctor Who, back when I was very, very young. I am young no longer.

It's a Doctor Who marathon.

How It Should Have Ended...

2010-06-30T14:04:00.002-04:00

This Will Change Your Life

2010-06-28T22:57:00.000-04:00

Seriously.

The DEATHWatch Blog