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since 1997 | by maryann johanson

bias update: November 11

Wed Nov 11 2009, 10:16pm | 29 comments

obsession: Doctor Who (and eager for “The Waters of Mars”)

boyfriend: Ben Mansfield in Primeval (where did this cutie spring from?)

psyched: Up in the Air (more George Clooney? yes, please)

girl crush: Emily Blunt in Young Victoria (it’s good to be the queen)

dreading: The Twilight Saga: New Moon (vampires who don’t suck suck)

enemy: director Robert Zemeckis for A Christmas Carol (thanks for ruining Dickens, dude)



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  • FrankS

    MaryAnn – Are you listening to David Tennant cohosting the morning show on Absolute Radio?

    http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/djs_shows/djs/tennant.html

  • On this morning’s show, he appeared in a painfully silly Doctor Who mini-episode or ‘twittersode’ – with John Simm literally phoning in his performance as the Master. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

  • Gee

    Proper Dave – Heh! Painful is correct!

    And here are some pics of the performance (from David’s bed – to be auctioned tomorrow for Children in Need).

    http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/photos/gallery/eyJwIjoiRGF2aWQncyUyMEdhbGxlcnkiLCJzIjoiMzU4LCIsIm8iOjAsImMiOjEzMTI1fQ==

    (I don’t know how to convert to tidy links, sorry.)

    There are podcasts for the three shows this week. Next and final one is tomorrow, 6-10am UK time.

  • Gee

    Oh, and they have a short chat with John Simm about 5-10 mins after the “twittersode”. I expect that will be included when the podacst for today is put up.

  • MaryAnn

    MaryAnn – Are you listening to David Tennant cohosting the morning show on Absolute Radio?

    Nope. Haven’t been.

    Here’s a secret: I’m in love with the Doctor, not so much with David Tennant. I mean, I probably wouldn’t say no to David Tennant, but I’d like him more if he had a TARDIS…

  • MaSch

    Here’s a secret: I’m in love with the Doctor, not so much with David Tennant.

    Aww, come on. As if you wouldn’t melt if David Tennant told you to “get thee to a nunnery” … ;-)

  • “Aww, come on. As if you wouldn’t melt if David Tennant told you to “get thee to a nunnery” … ;-)”

    me, i’d be pissed off royally if he told me that. the one thing i don’t want to be told by a man i find attractive is that he thinks i should be a nun! i want some rolling around together time with DT (yes, i know… pathetic creature that i am, i do love DT… not just the Doctor. though, the Doctor would be my ideal… er, perhaps i’ve said too much).

  • Gee

    Heh. I agree with bronxbee. That was not a good quote to pick!

    Have you seen the new preview clip of the Hamlet film? It’s only about a minute long but packs a lot in – Hamlet’s first speech.

    It’s (geo-locked) here (scroll down right hand menu):

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/11_november/11/artsandmusic.shtml

    but I expect it is available in a more accessible form too somewhere.

  • Althea

    Hey Gee, about short hyperlinks: Use TinyURL at http://tinyurl.com/

    All you have to do is go to the page you want to link, copy its address, paste it into the TinyURL space, and it converts to a new, tiny, address that you can copy easily.

    Even easier, if you have TinyURL bookmarked, when you’re on your original page and click your bookmark, it’s done automatically.

    Oh, yeah, for free, natch.

  • Gee

    Ooo, thanks Althea. Very very useful.

    And, to demonstrate the ratcheting up of my sadly deficient geek skills, here is a compact link to a region free Hamlet trailer…

    http://tinyurl.com/y9h5sxg

    (Fingers crossed…)

  • MaSch

    Okay, I see your point, bronxbee. What about “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?”, then?

  • Jurgan

    I’m actually psyched for New Moon, just because I want to read your review of it. I’m not sure how you’ll top that classic.

    It’s really been a whole year? It feels like that turd was out just a couple weeks ago.

  • Some Doctor Who-related video clips from Davy T’s radio show:

    http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/video/shows/christian_o_connell_breakfast_show

    The children’s questions in ‘part 2’ are the cutest thing you’ve ever heard.

  • Pedro

    “Vampires who don’t suck, suck”.

    Oh my god, HOW I agree with that. Unfortunately, no female in my age bracket seems to. And none seem willing to accept the “hey, it’s vegetarian AND emo vampires who don’t transform their victims when they touch them! What gives!?” line of argument.

  • Orangutan

    The whole ‘vegetarian vampire’ thing irks me. The only true vegetarian vampire is Bunnicula.

  • MaSch

    Orangutan, I see this as an insult directed at Count Duckula!

  • Paul

    Emo vampires? That means emotionally sensitive? From now on, whenever someone says that women understand men, I’m going to start talking about vampire fantasies, just to say it ain’t always so.

  • MaryAnn

    “Emo” meaning “a parody of emotional sensitivity”; “mopey and whiny and self-centered to an extreme degree.”

    Ability to acknowledge that one is an emotional being, and one able to express those emotions: awesome. Never shutting the hell up about how you’re feeling and why you’re depressed and how the world doesn’t understand you: fucking annoying.

    That’s how I think of it, anyway.

    I hate how how the *Twilight* crap either doesn’t understand that vampirism is a metaphor for sexuality, or doesn’t care that it twists that metaphor into a celebration of abstinence. I’d say, What the fuck? but there’s no fucking going on, not even the metaphoric kind.

    A vampire who will not bite you is a eunuch.

  • Bluejay

    MaryAnn, have you read the books? I won’t defend them as literature, but your comment above misrepresents the story’s intention, I think. At some later point (spoiler!) they do get down and do the deed–both the literal and metaphoric kind–so it’s not so much a celebration of abstinence per se as much as a long-drawn-out tease. I think, for its fans, the long-withheld *promise* of sex is a powerful part of the appeal.

    I think the idea of someone choosing to go against their nature (or their hard-wired instincts, or what’s expected of them) is a pretty interesting one to explore.

  • Orangutan

    Orangutan, I see this as an insult directed at Count Duckula!

    You know, I’m gonna be honest here, this is the first I’ve ever heard of Count Duckula. I had to do some research, and clearly I’m wrong in my initial assertion. And now I’m stuck imagining what it would have been like if the two of them had teamed up. :O

    Did Count Duckula never make it Stateside? I remember some Danger Mouse from when I was a kid, but I don’t remember him even on that show.

  • CB

    Bronxbee wrote:

    “Aww, come on. As if you wouldn’t melt if David Tennant told you to “get thee to a nunnery” … ;-)”

    me, i’d be pissed off royally if he told me that. the one thing i don’t want to be told by a man i find attractive is that he thinks i should be a nun!

    Would it make you feel better to know that in Shakespeare’s day, “nunnery” was a slang term for brothel? ;)

    Orangutan wrote:

    Did Count Duckula never make it Stateside? I remember some Danger Mouse from when I was a kid, but I don’t remember him even on that show.

    Yep, Nickelodeon carried it. They also aired the Danger Mouse episodes where he first showed up. I was a huge Danger Mouse fan, and mostly watched Count Duckula because it continued with the same style of humor after Danger Mouse ended. But DM was the better show. :P

    Danger Mouse: [not believing the alien/robot he’s seeing] “Pen Pen, what does that look like to you?”
    Pen Pen: [covering his eyes with his hands] “It looks like six sausages with long, narrow windows.”

  • CB

    Oh, and about vampires that don’t suck, sucking. My girlfriend certainly agrees (even though she’s intent on seeing the second film anyway). And that includes both the literal and metaphoric chastity. She had some very specific and graphic opinions on what Bella wanted but didn’t get on Prom Night at the end of the first movie.

  • A vampire who will not bite you is a eunuch.

    Funny that you mention that.

    You really need to read the Chelsea Quinn Yarbro vampire novels some time, MaryAnn, because she has some very interesting ideas about vampiric sexuality. And for what it’s worth, her male vampires are definitely into the sex thing but not necessarily in the conventional sense.

    Plus she often has female protagonists.

    But, alas, like most writers worth reading, her work isn’t likely to turn into a movie any time soon…

  • MaryAnn

    You really need to read the Chelsea Quinn Yarbro vampire novels some time, MaryAnn, because she has some very interesting ideas about vampiric sexuality. And for what it’s worth, her male vampires are definitely into the sex thing but not necessarily in the conventional sense.

    What makes you think I haven’t read Yarbro?

    And the vampirism thing *is* the sex thing, at least traditionally: the Bela Lugosi vampire didn’t fuck his victims, but we knew that that’s what he was doing when he bit their necks. Of course, writers in the meantime have spun off the metaphor into other directions, including ones that include actual sex, but there’s something kinda perverse — as vampire fiction goes — in how Meyer turned her vampires into metaphors for abstinence. That’s just… wrong.

  • maureen

    I can’t stand the Twilight saga and i think it’s hilarious that some of the actors in the movies clearly don’t think much of the source material eg Robert Pattison said something about how when he first read the script he thought he was reading Meyer’s sex fantasy or something along those lines.

    Also Jamie Campbell Bower (from Sweeney Todd, but playing one of the evil vamps in New Moon I believe) said that he wished that Tim Burton would direct Breaking Dawn- because at least Tim would make the script more interesting, even if it diverged completely from the source material. I lol’ed. If Burton directed Breaking Dawn, I’d pay good money to see it… oh the havoc he’d wreak with the fans :P

    And just as a note: I have read the books.

  • What makes you think I haven’t read Yarbro?

    1. You never mention her on either site.

    2. You have never written something like “Yes, I’ve read her books but how is she relevant to this conversation” whenever I brought up her name before.

  • Mr.Evil

    I have to say, I find it hilarious how much Robert Pattinson resembles Cassidy from Garth Ennis’ Preacher on some photos. I think that if he ever got a proposition to play this character, he would gladly accept it – I mean, playing a hard-drinking, constantly swearing Irish vampire would be a great relief after playing an asexual vampire.

  • MaryAnn

    1. You never mention her on either site.

    There’s LOTS of stuff about myself that I never mention… :->

  • LaSargenta

    And for what it’s worth, her male vampires are definitely into the sex thing but not necessarily in the conventional sense.

    […as LS strolls into this conversation, humming to herself…]

    Well, on the subject of vampire sex, I really think that Pat Califia got it perfectly in a couple of really hot short stories: “The Wolf is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want” and a sequel to that when Ulric returns to find Alain again. ;->

    Don’t go looking for these if you are scared off by very explicit imagery!

    […and LS strolls off, still humming to herself…]

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