[Read the whole thing]]]> Steven Moffat’s second season running Doctor Who shared one major characteristic with Russell T. Davies’ second season: Both were not as good as their first seasons. Moffat is overall a much stronger writer than Davies and his story arcs have been more interesting (far fewer Daleks, for one thing), but this season felt like he bit off more than he could chew, setting up a complicated set of plot threads, but the payoff has so far been rather disappointing.

Here’s my ranking of this season’s episodes from favorite to least:

• The Doctor’s Wife (written by Neil Gaiman)
• The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (Steven Moffat)
• The Girl Who Waited (Tom MacRae)
• The Wedding of River Song (Moffat)
• A Good Man Goes to War (Moffat)
• The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People (Matthew Graham)
• Closing Time (Gareth Roberts)
• Let’s Kill Hitler (Moffat)
• The Curse of the Black Spot (Stephen Thompson)
• The God Complex (Toby Whithouse)
• Night Terrors (Mark Gatiss)

Spoilers ahoy!

Individual Episodes:

The season’s best episode was actually outside of the main arc as well as not being written by Moffat, that being Neil Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife”. Given all the River Song shenanigans during Moffat’s reign, I – like I’m sure almost everyone else – expected this would be a key story in the arc, but in fact Gaiman takes the story in a different direction, anthropomorphizing the Doctor’s relationship with the TARDIS. It was a very Gaiman-esque story, with atmosphere and horror and some sweet moments, as well as a lot of tantalizing bits for long-time Time Lord fans. Actually the story’s setting is the sort of thing that a whole season of episodes could spring from, but I doubt it will ever come up again. But that’s okay. The only drawback to the episode was the rather cheap and obvious manipulation of time used to terrorize Amy and Rory.

I previously reviewed “The Impossible Astronaut” and “Day of the Moon”, which were pretty good, but are a good example of the problem with the season’s arc: It’s terribly elliptical, and is full of an assortment of weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Why an astronaut suit? Why isn’t the Silence just cleaning up if they have these elaborate electrical powers and are nearly-invisible? Since when can the TARDIS turn invisible? Still, the set-up for the season’s big question – is the Doctor going to die, and if not (since he clearly isn’t), how’s he going to get out of it? – is pretty well done, there are plenty of suspenseful moments, and the Doctor’s solution to the Silence in the second part is rather clever.

Speaking of “cheap and obvious manipulation of time” as I did above, “The Girl Who Waited” was about as un-subtle an episode as one can imagine, taking the original meeting of the Doctor and Amy to its logical extreme via the perils of time travel, and in a ridiculously contrived environment. Yet it still works pretty well, mainly because of Karen Gillan’s portrayal of the two Amys, and the Doctor’s decision at the climax of the episode.

As you can see, I’m already not hugely enamored of the season already. The season’s finale, “The Wedding of River Song”, concerns, well, its title, and also how the Doctor gets out of it. I felt pretty foolish for not seeing it sooner, considering the solution to the problem was telegraphed several episodes earlier, not to mention early in this episode itself. It’s reasonably satisfying, and the Doctor using the trick of hiding in “a Doctor suit” (a good line) to fall “off the grid” so the Silence doesn’t keep hunting him is pretty clever. But the climax felt, well, anticlimactic, very different from the explosive Season Five climax.

The mid-season arc stories, “A Good Man Goes to War” and “Let’s Kill Hitler” were rather unsatisfying. “Good Man” continues the rather silly trend of the Doctor being this universally-known figure, loved by many and hated by many more, which just completely clashes with my concept of the character as this lone, stealth figure doing good deeds under everyone’s radar across the universe. “Wedding” suggests that exactly this has become a problem for the Doctor, but Moffat never really establishes how the Doctor’s status quo changed in this way, so it just feels awkward and uncharacteristic for the series. “Let’s Kill Hitler” focuses on the mystery of River, basically explaining what we’d all guessed earlier when we learned that Amy was pregnant. I found this fairly unsatisfying, especially since it plays way too fast-and-loose with the regeneration rules for my taste. (Heck, Moffat undercuts any reasonable explanation for why River would have been able to regenerated by having her gestate outside of the TARDIS – while Amy is a captive of the Silence – though really no explanation would have satisfied me. It’s another “weirdness for weirdness’ sake” plot device.)

The other stories were one-off tales. “Closing Time” is the best of these, highlighting the Doctor’s fatalistic last years prior to the season ender; Craig from “The Lodger” shows up and the pair basically have a buddy episode, which is quite a bit of fun other than the cliched deployment of the Cybermen as the big threat. “The Curse of the Black Spot”, “The God Complex” and “Night Terrors” are all fairly generic horror yarns, all fairly forgettable; “Spot” gets the nod as the best of the three for its less ridiculous explanation for its mysterious goings-on.

The Season Story Arc:

As I said earlier, I think Moffat bit off more than he could chew in the complicated story arc of this season.

The Silence are a fairly creepy adversary, but they’re also basically a cipher. Considering that we’ve never heard of them, nor has the Doctor, one wonder how long they’ve been around and, more importantly, what it is they’re trying to accomplish. Are they trying to conquer the universe? If so, then their attack on the TARDIS in Season Five was a disastrously bad choice, as it nearly destroyed the universe. Are they trying to destroy the universe, then? If so, why? Are they just trying to kill the Doctor? If so, why? They seem to fanatic to simply be hired guns. Or do they have some other goal, and if so, what, and why do they fear the Doctor so much? This season really didn’t make any progress in exploring any of this. Presumably these elements are what Season Seven will be all about – they’ll end up a pretty weak and forgettable foe if not.

I’ve been conflicted about River Song as a character (though not about Alex Kingston as an actress, who pretty much steals any scene she’s in; ah, if only she’d been able to appear opposite Christopher Eccleston!). For a while she was being deployed in a strict “every time the Doctor meets her occurs for her before the last time we saw them meet” manner, which was a nifty plot device, but one I never really embraced because if both of them can time travel, then why do they have to stick to that pattern? But as a storytelling conceit I was willing to accept it. But the pattern goes completely off the rails here, as the Doctor meets her as an infant (at the end of “Good Man”), and then as (effectively) a teenager (in “Hitler”), and then at two different points in “Astronaut”, and then I gave up trying to untangle their timelines, since it’s clearly no longer important. If Moffat has been planning to build up to a grand “this is the first time River meets the Doctor, and the last time he meets her” scene, he’s already short-circuited the impact of that episode this season. Too bad, since such a scene could be quite cool.

(On the other hand, it would be equally impressive – and maybe have greater impact – if the Doctor manages to reincarnate her from her computer representation back in Season Four’s “Forest of the Dead”. But I digress.)

I thought the notion of the Silence appropriating River’s life to make her a weapon against the Doctor was a pretty nifty idea, although I didn’t understand how she was able to escape their control and short-circuit their plans. It also leaves one big questions about what we know about River: If the Doctor wasn’t killed, why was she imprisoned? How is she able to keep walking out of her prison? What authority imprisoned her? If the Doctor was killed in 2010, but shows up at some earlier time later in his own timeline, wouldn’t that conclusively exonerate her before she’s even imprisoned? For that matter, River seems able to time travel on her own, but we don’t know how. Her timeline is a mess, and I don’t see how Moffat can reconcile it all other than wiping everything away through some deus ex machina. I suspect he has no intention of trying. Maybe he has some notes which make everything fit together, but from the material on film, I can’t see how.

But okay, I admit I’m intrigued and amused by the metatextual mystery set up at the end of “River”, where the first question (of the TV series) will finally be asked: “Doctor who?” Does Moffat have the guts to actually dive into the Doctor’s earliest life and give us some insight into his character that we haven’t been given? It’s never been the purpose of the series to explain everything about the character, and some of that mystery has always been an underpinning of the show, but explaining some of it, especially in a manner that could be built on at some unspecified point in the future, would be very cool, and something that’s rarely been done. (Honestly, what must it have been like for the – far fewer – fans back in 1969 when the Time Lords were introduced? Could Moffat pull off a revelation anywhere near that level? I sure hope he tries.)

So in sum, the season was often interesting, but ultimately disappointing. In a way, it sums up Moffat’s style of writing: Many bits of it don’t make sense, but it’s emotionally satisfying. “The Girl in the Fireplace” from Season Two fits this description to a T, but at his best (“The Doctor Dances”, or “Forest of the Dead”) Moffat manages to overcome his plotting difficulties. But the whole-season arcs of his first two seasons don’t, and given that they rely on intricate plotting, they end up not being more than the sum of their parts. I think Moffat needs to simplify things a bit, and hopefully now that some of the mysteries behind River and the Silence have been revealed, the third act of the Matt Smith Doctor will hang together better than does the second.

[Read the whole thing]]]> I rode my bike to work this morning, probably the last ride of the year since daylight savings time ends this weekend, so it will be dark well before I head home if I were to bike in, and I don’t like riding home in the dark. Plus, the rains are coming. I made it to 22 rides this year, which isn’t so bad considering buying the new house, moving, and our trip to Hawaii took a big chunk out of my riding time.

On the way in, only a couple of blocks from Subrata and Susan’s house, I got flagged down by a couple of women with a baby carriage. One of the women – with the carriage – was lost (the other was just another person who was trying to help her). Moreover, her English was not strong. She used my phone to call someone (after several tries to remember the right number), and after talking to her in another language handed the phone to me. Between the two of us, I was able to direct her to where we were. I think we were only a couple of blocks away from a street she knew. I sat with the woman while we waited for the woman she called to come get her.

When the younger woman arrived, she said the older woman said that I reminded her of her son. (She wasn’t able to express this in English.)

I’m still not sure what the relationship among them was: Mother-daughter? Mother-in-law-daughter-in-law? Was the older woman a nanny who was just taking the baby out for a walk? I didn’t pry.

But at least I was able to help her get back to where she was supposed to be.

[Read the whole thing]]]> This weekend I had a productive round of shopping for new biking gear:

1. I bought a new helmet. It was really hard to find a large-size helmet; I kept finding Giro one-size-fits-all-helmets, which didn’t fit my head. I also wanted a blue helmet to match my bike, and a helmet with a visor, since a visor obviates the need for wearing sunglasses while riding (for me). I finally found a nice blue Bell Influx helmet at REI which fits great. I think the last helmet I bought cost me $90 or more; this one was $65.
2. Also at REI I found a bike tire gauge. I’ve had people at bike stores tell me they don’t make those – “Why would you want one? Just check the pressure by feeling the tire” they’d say. When pumping a replaced tube with my hand pump I can’t really tell if I’ve overfilled the tire my hand, so I’m pretty happy to have found this tire gauge, which now lives in my seat pack along with my tube-changing equipment.
3. I also picked up a couple of new tubes. Tubes are cheap, so it’s easier to replace the whole tube than try to patch the punctured one.
4. Lastly, I bought a new water bottle, since the old one was getting a bit long in the tooth. I like the Polar Bottles.

I took the new gear out with me on my ride to work today. I was especially glad to have the new helmet, since my old Giro one was definitely, well, old. (I understand you should replace your helmet about every five years, for safety.) I liked the Giro, too, but I couldn’t find the one I wanted from them in searching for a replacement, so I’m happy with the Bell.

I got a late start on biking to work this year thanks to moving, but I’ve been going twice a week for the last month (often with my coworker Sean). I may not catch up to the number of rides I did last year, but I should have a fair number by the end of Daylight Savings Time.

This one is a little offensive, but for completeness’ sake:

Sadly no one’s put up my favorite ad from this series, “Fishing Tackle”. But I’m sure you

[Read the whole thing]]]> The NYNEX Yellow Pages series of commercials from the late 80s/early 90s, roughly in order from best to worst:

This one is a little offensive, but for completeness’ sake:

Sadly no one’s put up my favorite ad from this series, “Fishing Tackle”. But I’m sure you can use your imagination.

The season-opening two parter was

[Read the whole thing]]]> We discovered that Comcast On Demand features Doctor Who, so we’ve been able to watch the first couple of episodes of season six despite not getting the BBC America station. Nice! (Sadly we haven’t been able to see the Christmas episode, but it doesn’t seem like we missed much.)

The season-opening two parter was a little disappointing, though. Spoilers for these episodes if you haven’t seen them.

The biggest problem I have with the story so far is that it has too many elements which seem there merely to seem cool or quirky without serving much purpose. For example:

• The opening sequence taking place in America, and the Doctor wearing a stetson. Yes, bow ties are cool and fezzes are cool, but this is getting tiresome.
• Did I miss something? Since when can the TARDIS turn invisible? Isn’t the whole joke about the broken chameleon circuit that it always sticks out like a sore thumb?
• The Silent that Amy meets in the bathroom killing the woman who’s also in there. This could have been an effective indication of the Silence’s power, but they completely fail to use this ability in any remotely intelligent fashion in the rest of the story, when they should have been able to eliminate most of their opposition trivially. Consequently the woman’s death seems gratuitous.
• The handling of Amy maybe or maybe not being pregnant was extraordinarily clumsy.
• The trick Amy and Rory employed of marks on their skin to indicate how many Silents they saw effectively set up the creepy scene in the orphanage, but in a practical sense it seems pointless; they could have recorded that information in better ways.
• The notion that the girl’s space suit would call the President was rather silly. Why would it bother? What would it expect him to do? Setting up Nixon’s habit of taping everything in the Oval Office was cute, but no more than that.

Oh, and by the way: The Brits get Churchill last season, and we Americans get Richard Nixon? Thanks a lot!

(Bookzombie has his own set of things he liked and disliked.)

To be sure, there are many things for which I give the story a pass, since it seems likely that these are things that will be explained later: Who the girl is, why the Silence needed a space suit, why they put the girl in it, why the girl seems able to regenerate, what the SIlence’s goals are, why they captured Amy, how they survived until 1999 (since we see one in the Utah sequence), who killed the future Doctor and why, why they seem to own the time machine from “The Lodger” (or one similar to it), etc. etc. Steven Moffat has set up a complicated story for the season, and I think he’s a good enough writer to make it all pay off.

However, he must make every one of these elements pay off in order to make the season successful. And even if he does so, I think his predilection for throwing in strange elements for no good reason weakened the season opener. It’s strange that he does so, since it seemed like something that Russell T. Davies would do, while Moffat’s stories for the Davies series were much tighter and contained fewer frivolous elements.

On the brighter side, the most resounding success of the story was how the Doctor managed to deal with the Silence, by essentially programming humanity to kill them on sight. It’s a bit of a stretch when you think about it, but it is fundamentally a cool idea and plausible enough to appreciate.

How the Doctor’s future will play out, now that we’ve seen his future self get killed, is of course the mystery of the season. Will it turn out to be an impostor? A clone? Merely a “possible” future? A future that can be changed? Was he not really dead? After a lifetime of reading comic books and science fiction, this set-up is actually a little less fascinating to me than some of the other mysteries in the story – unless Moffat comes up with some solution I haven’t seen before.

The other big mystery is who the girl is. The prevailing theory seems to be that she’s Amy and Rory’s daughter, who can regenerate because she gestated in the TARDIS, and who might grow up to be River Song. (See, for example, this post at Bleeding Cool.) My personally loony theory is that there’s another Time Lord around, and the last (and first) time we saw her she was, strictly speaking, even younger than the girl we see here. I doubt that’s what’s happening here, but it would be funny if it was.

Whether she’s connected to River, well, it wouldn’t surprise me. After all, we first saw River wearing a space suit, and in an episode titled “Silence in the Library”. Those may both be coincidences, though.

Overall the story was a nice “ride”, but the plotting and storytelling were both rather shaky. It’s very, very hard to tell a serious story with some many superfluous trappings (really, The Avengers is the only TV show I can think of that managed to do it), and I’d much rather have Moffat focus on solid plotting with witty dialogue, and dispense with the stetsons and body markings and assorted silliness. It doesn’t make the story better, and it’s certainly not necessary for a good Doctor Who story.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Those of my readers who know I work on Apple’s developer tools may have heard that we recently shipped Xcode 4. But this entry isn’t about that (since, well, this isn’t a work or an Apple blog). Rather, it’s about our ship celebration, which was dinner at Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco on Thursday night.

Debbi and I decided to take the bus up with most everyone else, mainly because driving into the city during rush hour wasn’t attractive, but also because driving home after dinner wasn’t real appealing either. It only took a little over an hour for the bus to get there, so it wasn’t much of a compromise.

Teatro Zinzanni is – literally – dinner-and-a-show, the show being similar in some respects to Cirque du Soleil, but with a dash of vaudeville and audience participation thrown in. The show alternates a comedy bit – usually plucking an audience member for their involvement and a little embarrassment – with a musical and/or acrobatic performance, and one of the five courses of the dinner. While the style of the comedy bits were not really my thing (although seeing my cow-orkers’ involvement was greatly humorous, which made up for it), the other performances were very impressive. I was particularly amazed at the feats of strength and acrobatics performed by “Les Petits Frères”, which were frequently amazing.

(I’m amused that Zinzanni’s slogan is “Love, chaos and dinner”, since in order to perform these stunts in a dinner setting what they’re doing is anything but chaos.)

Almost worth the visit all by themselves are the available mixed drinks (PDF), of which I think I had one more than I really ought to have had. (Another excellent reason to have taken the bus.) I think the “Bella Donna” was my favorite.

We had fun socializing before dinner. Debbi met many of my cow-orkers, whom she mostly hadn’t met since I moved to a different team last summer, and we caught up with a few people we don’t see very often.

It was around midnight by the time we made it home, but it was well worth it. We have some friends who are big fans of Teatro Zinzanni, and I can see going back sometime.

I’d just rather not be one of the people picked to participate in one of the comedy bits!

[Read the whole thing]]]> While no one can take away from Russell T. Davies his accomplishment of getting Doctor Who back on the air, by the end of his 5-year run I found the style of the show under his reign had worn thin; indeed, I liked each season less than the one before. Some of this was because Christopher Eccleston’s performance in the first season was so much better than David Tennant’s (nothing against Tennant, just that Eccleston was a supernova in the role), but mostly I found the stories were getting less sensical and more saccharine, and I was pretty sick of the Daleks and the over-the-top and ever-more-ludicrous season-ending two-parters.

As the new producer, Steven Moffatt, had written many of the very best episodes under Davies, I had high hopes for his first season. But the end result was… not quite what I’d hoped for. While Moffat wrote six episodes in the season, none of them were as good as the best ones he’d written during the Davies run, and while the season overall was more consistent than the last few Davies seasons, there were still several clunkers.

Here’s my ranking of this season’s episodes from favorite to least:

• The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (written by Steven Moffat)
• The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone (Moffat)
• Amy’s Choice (Simon Nye)
• The Beast Below (Moffat)
• The Lodger (Gareth Roberts)
• The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood (Chris Chibnall)
• The Eleventh Hour (Moffat)
• Vincent and the Doctor (Richard Curtis)
• The Vampires of Venice (Toby Whithouse)
• Victory of the Daleks (Mark Gatiss)

If you haven’t seen the season, be warned that there are spoilers ahead in my review.

The biggest change, of course, is that we have a new Doctor in Matt Smith, and a new companion in Amy Pond (Karen Gillan). The best feature of the new stars is their relationship, as it’s established from the first episode that Amy is fascinated by (and infatuated with) the Doctor, but she also feels betrayed by him because she feels he broke a promise to her when she was a girl to take him with her. (Of course, it was just that darned unreliable TARDIS bringing him back 12 years later, but she doesn’t really change things for her.) Amy’s sorting out of her feelings for the Doctor and for her fiancé, Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), is a big part of the season’s story arc; it’s basically her coming-of-age story.

Matt Smith is fine as the Doctor, but he didn’t blow me away. Indeed, I was disappointed for the first few episodes that he seemed to just be channeling David Tennant, that his Doctor wasn’t a significant departure from his predecessor (this might be a first for the franchise, which previously has usually made an effort to make the break between Doctors clear and even extreme). At times it seemed like he was Tennant’s Doctor in Peter Davison‘s body wearing Patrick Troughton‘s clothing. Fortunately, he grew on me as time went on, but I’m still hard-pressed to say how his Doctor is materially different from Tennant’s. I think Smith brings a little more empathy to the role: His Doctor is a more sympathetic figure, and that makes those moments when he seems to betray his companions (whether inadvertently or as part of some larger plan) seem all the more emotionally wrenching. But I think Smith makes the Doctor earn the benefit of the doubt more than Tennant did (Tennant’s Doctor often seemed callous to me, putting on his “gosh that’s too bad” face in reaction to other peoples’ troubles; consequently I didn’t have much sympathy for his whining in “The End of Time” when his time was up).

Karen Gillan pulls off the nuances of Amy’s character quite well, excited about traveling with the Doctor, challenging him on some of his stranger behavior, and being stuck between him and Rory (by the way, Arthur Darvill doesn’t get a lot of different stuff to do playing Rory, but absolutely nails it when he does get a chance to show some range, such as in “The Big Bang”). She’s a strong character, though I noticed that she’s another in a line of female companions who seem at dead ends in their lives before they head off with the Doctor: Sure, Martha Jones was an exception, and Sarah Jane Smith is the most prominent professional-woman companion, but Rose was a young woman working in retail and seemingly without direction in her life, Donna was unemployed, and now Amy does “kiss-o-grams”; not really distinguished backgrounds. But to be fair, Amy has the mitigating factor that her life has been turned upside-down by the crack in time and space in her bedroom wall. One could argue that a wandering adventurer like the Doctor is more likely to attract companions at loose ends or without direction, looking for someone like him to give their lives meaning. That certainly seems to be the case for Amy.

The unifying story element of the cracks – as with the running threads in past seasons – is handled a bit awkwardly, with the cracks showing up in various episodes to no real effect other than foreshadowing of the season’s finale. (“Bad Wolf” in season one was basically the same.) The exception is in “Flesh and Stone” when the Doctor uses a crack to deal with the weeping angels, but otherwise they’re more ominous than actually relevant. Then again, the season ends with the “why” behind the cause of the cracks left unresolved, with the promise that it will be central to next season’s story, so if things get better from here, then the fact that the cracks were handled so cavalierly will happily be forgotten.

As far as the individual episodes go, the season contained several pedestrian stories: “Victory of the Daleks” is one of the weakest Dalek stories I can recall, with a ridiculous climax involving World War II airplanes in space. I wonder whether this story played better to a British audience who might feel a more visceral excitement in this sort of recreation of the Battle of Britain, but absent that it’s just a bad episode. “Vincent and the Doctor” is a worse-than-average monster story which is not quite redeemed by the coda where Vincent Van Gogh (nicely played by Tony Curran) glimpses his future. One assumes writer Richard Curtis is a huge Van Gogh fan, since the story has no reason to exist otherwise. “The Vampires of Venice” is a similarly weak monster yarn. And “The Eleventh Hour” is only notable for its nifty set-up of the Doctor/Amy relationship, but the threats (Prisoner Zero and the ridiculous-looking Atraxi) are by-the-numbers.

In the middle of the season’s quality range, there’s the two-parter “The Hungry Earth/In Cold Blood”, which is a bit better than the average monster story (although not nearly as terrifying as the Fifth Doctor story “Frontios”, which also involved people being pulled into the Earth), and brings back the Silurians in (I think) the form of yet another subspecies of this prehistoric reptilian race. The most notable thing here is the absolutely gorgeous depiction of the Silurian city, which might be the single most impressive special effect and set design in the history of the show – really beautiful. “The Lodger” is a more effective horror story, with the Doctor isolated from the TARDIS, renting a room in a flat in which mysterious things are happening, and getting to the bottom of it. Matt Smith gets to play soccer and there’s an entertaining love story among the supporting cast, but the ending was a little disappointing, since the cause of the mysterious happenings felt a little too quickly examined; I’d have appreciated more depth in the history of the thing. “The Beast Below” is a very traditional trapped-in-an-enclosed-space-with-danger-all-around story, except that Moffat turns the premise on its ear by making things be not what they seem, and using it as a means for Amy to demonstrate her worth to the Doctor. It doesn’t quite hit on all cylinders, but it’s pretty good.

Then there’s the best of the season: “Amy’s Choice” and the pair of two-parters written by Moffat. “Amy’s Choice” is a fine suspense piece, cleverly taking place at two different points in our heroes’ timeline, and presenting a difficult puzzle for them to figure out, plus bringing resolution Amy’s conflicting emotions about the two men in her life. “The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone” brings back River Song (Alex Kingston, who has plenty of screen presence to stand as an equal to the Doctor) and the weeping angels. While I think Moffat plays fast and loose with the nature of the angels (it seems much easier to keep them at bay here than in “Blink”), I liked some of the new characteristics that he added to them (“that which holds the image of an angel becomes an angel”, resulting in the tensest scene of the season), and there were quite a few nifty last-minute escapes. Despite this, the story seems overlong, the military crew who show up to deal with the angels don’t seem very competent or prepared, and overall the story has more style than substance. While still quite a good story, it felt disappointing given its heritage in previous great Moffat-penned episodes.

Moffat saved the best for last, in the season’s finale, “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang”, in which River returns to help the Doctor solve the mystery of the Pandorica (which turns out to be a pretty neat idea), and then to help the Doctor and Amy save the universe. “The Big Bang” has one of the best opening sequences of any Doctor Who episode ever, and despite the solution relying on a time paradox, it’s a highly entertaining romp, with the denouement at Amy and Rory’s wedding being great fun. Yes, the Doctor saves the Earth and the universe again, but Moffat brings more gravitas and humanity to the event than Davies did in his season-enders. And yet… I still wish the series would veer away from having to end every season with a big bang (literally, in this case). Honestly when the stakes are this high, you just can’t keep topping yourself every season – it just doesn’t work. It only works here because Moffat is a flat-out better writer than Davies (and Davies certainly didn’t pull it off season after season in his run), and maybe Moffat can pull it off once more, but that’s probably the limit.

I want to make special mention of the season’s incidental music, composed by (I believe) Murray Gold, which is some of the most memorable of the series. I particularly enjoyed the themes he wrote for the Doctor and Amy, which key the final scene of “The Eleventh Hour” as well as the coda of “The Big Bang”. I hope the music gets released on an album, because I’d certainly buy it.

This has been a far longer review than I’d anticipated, which I guess speaks well of the season overall. Certainly I enjoyed it, even if there were a few clunkers along the way. But it did feel like it was struggling to throw off the weight of the immensely popular Tennant era, and having a hard time finding its own voice. It did set up the overall storyline for next season, which I hope will see further evolution and rise in quality.

Benedict Cumberbatch works quite well as Holmes, at times seeming to deliberately emulate the style of Jeremy Brett in the 1980s

[Read the whole thing]]]> Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss’ series Sherlock is quite good, as a modern-day reimagining of Sherlock Holmes (much in the same way that the new Battlestar Galactica was a reimagining of the original).

Benedict Cumberbatch works quite well as Holmes, at times seeming to deliberately emulate the style of Jeremy Brett in the 1980s series (which was fairly faithful to the original stories), but other times carving out his own style. Much of this is because in this series Holmes is a much less sympathetic character, callous and lacking empathy: As Detective Inspector Lestrade (Rupert Graves) says at one point, he’s a great man and maybe someday a good one. Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson more fully shares the role of protagonist than did his predecessor, being a humanistic figure where Holmes is not.

The series features only three 90-minute stories, of which the first, “A Study in Pink”, is the best. Holmes and Watson meet and become roommates, and solve the mystery of what appear to be serial suicides. It’s the best because the relationship between the two is at its most nuanced here, with Watson showing that he has skills too, albeit very different skills from Holmes. “The Blind Banker” involves a Chinese smuggling ring and a series of murders, and is certainly atmospheric, but focuses on Holmes’ overly-developed sense of importance and capability, while showing him to not be quite as clever or skilled as he thinks he is – but not really seeming to learn from the experience. “The Great Game” presents Holmes with a series of mini-puzzles as an unknown adversary threatens to kill individuals unless Holmes solves his puzzles. This episode seemed a little too clever by half, getting too involved in the mechanics of the plot, while everyone other than Holmes seemed to be shoved to the sidelines. It also unfortunately ends on a cliffhanger.

So the series has its flaws, largely from the writing side, but it’s at its best when it turns the actors and characters loose to interact with one another. It also has some terrific cinematography and excellent music, and the verbal jousting among the characters is first-rate. Fortunately it sounds like a second season is in the works, and hopefully it will build on the first and further develop the characters.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Last night was the first night of this season’s SBUL. While I pretty much failed at my goal of losing a substantial amount of weight for it, I have been pretty active since last season. However, I learned that:

1. Bicycling doesn’t really improve your endurance for sprinting while playing ultimate, and
2. Jogging doesn’t really improve your endurance for sprinting either.

Yes, it was another first-frisbee-night huffing and puffing after running back and forth down the field.

On the bright side, my forehand throw hasn’t deteriorated as much as it usually does between seasons. Also I completely shut down a couple of faster, taller players while I was on defense (although that’s what leads to the huffing and puffing).

I was surprisingly not very too stiff and sore this morning – except for my right heel, which hurt a lot when I put weight on it getting out of bed. It gets better as I use it during the day, but I think I need to get some cushioned insoles for my (new) cleats to try to mitigate this problem.

Man, this game sure was a lot easier when I was in my 20s.

Me (just being a goofball): Wow, now I’m between a rock and a hard place.

pause

L: Hey!

N: Wait… which of us is which?

Me: I’m going to let you

[Read the whole thing]]]> At last night’s book discussion, I sat down between L, the moderator, and N, another attendee. Then the following exchange took place:

Me (just being a goofball): Wow, now I’m between a rock and a hard place.

pause

L: Hey!

N: Wait… which of us is which?

Me: I’m going to let you work that out between the two of you.

pause

Me: Wait, I’m between the two of you!

I was moved to respond to him on Facebook:

Used in a sentence: “A lot of wildlife habitat loss in the world is occurring due to defenestration.”

His response:

For that grammatically correct sentence, I wish to defenestrate you, mrawdon!

I

[Read the whole thing]]]> This morning, @joeyhagedorn tweeted that his word of the day is “defenestration”:

I was moved to respond to him on Facebook:

Used in a sentence: “A lot of wildlife habitat loss in the world is occurring due to defenestration.”

His response:

For that grammatically correct sentence, I wish to defenestrate you, mrawdon!

I later stopped by his office and observed that everyone talks about defenestration, but refenestration never gets any love.

It turns out the Urban Dictionary has a definition for “refenestrate”:

Sad to say, this exchange may have been the high point of my day. Sure made me laugh, though!

“Hmm… that’s strange.”

There was a staple stuck in the tire, one prong jammed neatly

[Read the whole thing]]]> My current schedule is to bike to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So Tuesday I went out to the bike to pump up my tires. I rotated the rear wheel to get the nozzle in the right place and…

“Hmm… that’s strange.”

There was a staple stuck in the tire, one prong jammed neatly into the tire. I pulled it out, and saw that the tire was flat. Was it flat before I pulled the staple out? I dunno, but even so I wasn’t going to bike to work with a staple in my tire and get a flat halfway in.

My thought process then went something like this:

1. I could change the tube myself, but I’m not very good at it. It’d probably take me about 20 minutes to change it.
2. Then I’d be getting into work pretty late (even by my lights), so I’d better drive.
3. If I drive, should I then change the tube myself tonight, or shall I be lazy and take the wheel to the shop and get it fixed?
4. I’m going to be lazy. Then I can have them check the tire to see if it’s still otherwise sound, too.
5. Of course, if I never change flats myself, then I’m never going to get any better at it.
6. Then again, I don’t really want to get so many flats that I get that much practice…

(I find changing the tube to be difficult mainly when trying to start getting the tire off, or finish putting it on; the tension is pretty strong, and I just don’t have the right technique or something, because I always stress my fingers at those points, and struggle with it until it finally pops out or pops back on. A pain in the ass, really.)

Two additional ironies: When I had my bike in to change a different flat a few weeks ago (due to the tire rupturing around the nozzle because I’d twisted the screw that holds the nozzle in place too far) he said my tires are pretty impenetrable. Apparently not completely impenetrable (maybe the staple just missed hitting the kevlar lining, or maybe biking on it drove it through). Second, we’d gone by the bike shop on Saturday to have the gears on Debbi’s bike adjusted; had I known about the staple then, I could have brought the wheel in at the same time.

Anyway, I took the wheel in after work on Tuesday and it was fixed in 15 minutes (so… maybe it would have taken me even longer to fix it myself?), and the wheel checked out. So I biked in again on Thursday and it help up like a champ. (And the wheel itself, which I had replaced last year with a beefier model because the spokes kept breaking, has done wonderfully this year, as well.)

bbum suggested that I get some slime-filled tubes for my bike. So I might try that. Although honestly I don’t get many flats these days, so it would just be an extra layer of insurance. But maybe.

Biking has otherwise been going well this year, aside from flat-tire mishaps and issues with getting ill or our late-season rains. I think I’ll easily eclipse my mileage from last year.

But what struck me the most watching this series, and especially game seven, is what an ugly, ugly game the NBA has devolved into. No beauty and very little strategy offensively from either side. No ball movement, and lots of standing around. Very hard to

[Read the whole thing]]]> John Gruber on game seven of the NBA Finals:

But what struck me the most watching this series, and especially game seven, is what an ugly, ugly game the NBA has devolved into. No beauty and very little strategy offensively from either side. No ball movement, and lots of standing around. Very hard to believe that these are the two best teams in the league. The Lakers shot just 33 percent from the field and yet clearly deserved to win the game. For decades, a game seven in the Finals between the Celtics and Lakers resulted in basketball at its very best. Now, it’s basketball at its worst. Brutal.

There’s no particular reason that a sport, when played optimally, should be beautiful or even interesting. Most sports evolved organically, and continue to evolve (albeit slowly) under pressures other than what makes a good or interesting game. Strategy and tactics in baseball (the sport I know best) are clearly far superior to those employed even 20 years ago, in terms of teams trying to win games, yet certainly there’s some basis in arguing that the reliance on walks and home runs has made the game less exciting. (Stolen bases, while exciting, are very minor components of winning; a walk is far more valuable.)

So I wonder: Has basketball strategy been optimized such that the game has become boring, or “brutal”? Were the Lakers and Celtics playing a general style of game which gave them the best chance of winning (notwithstanding specific errors committed in-game)? Or were they playing a fairly stupid game and both teams managed to get to the finals only because of their superior talent (or luck)?

I have close-to-zero interest in basketball (slightly more than I have in hockey or soccer), so I really have no idea. But in the abstract, it’s an interesting sports question.

Speaking of interesting sports questions, has anyone else noticed that people (other than Lakers and Celtics fans) seem more upset that the Lakers won than that the Celtics lost? I guess that’s what being the Yankees of the NBA gets you.

[Read the whole thing]]]> WWDC went well last week. Everything I’ve been working on is still under nondisclosure but it seemed to be well-received. I spent my usual shifts (plus a few hours) in the labs, which were low-key for me compared to usual (and my cow-orker who works in my same general area had the same feeling). My biggest success was figuring out that someone had somehow ended up with a corrupted install of his developer tools, and figuring out exactly what was broken (although not why). I did come into the office on Wednesday and did a quick turnaround of an issue my managers wanted me to look at.

I always sign up for the 9 am Friday morning lab shift, partly because it’s fun to get up with Deb and carpool up with her to get dropped off at Caltrain, and partly because it leaves me with the afternoon free to do stuff. I went to lunch with friends (some from work, some attendees) afterwards, and then took BART over to drop in on Borderlands Books.

I was grateful that the heat wave of the previous weekend broke before the conference started, since walking to and from Caltrain is no fun in 80+ degree heat. In the normal cooler weather, though, it’s quite nice. Plus I get to do some reading on the way there and back.

I was less grateful when a new heat wave moved in on Saturday, as it dampened my enthusiasm to do much stuff around the house. Though neither heat wave was as brutal as the ones we’ve had in the past. And we did get out to look for a new gas grill; I ended up buying a Weber Genesis E310 from OSH, which was having their periodic “we pay the sales tax” sale this weekend. Between the grill and various other things I picked up, I saved a bundle of money in sales tax. Now I just have to put the grill together…

Back to work this week, but it’s a pretty low key week as everyone recovers from WWDC. I biked in today, and had a flat tire when I came out of the gym after showering. I walked it over to the bike shop to get it repaired (I could have repaired it myself but decided I’d rather have a pro do it since they’re not far away), and learned that the nut which holds the nozzle in place can cause the tube to rupture if you tighten it too far, which I must have done. I also learned that the nut is not really needed, so I got rid of it. Success!

Lastly, we’re moving offices again on Friday (the second and final stage of our big office move, staged this way I think mainly because our building has gotten substantially remodeled along the way), so I’m packing today, and then taking the rest of the week off to catch up on some of that stuff at home. And then I’ll have another new environment to get used to!

I mainly plan to use this to play podcasts in my car, replacing my venerable

[Read the whole thing]]]> Is it silly to be excited to get a new toy like this? Especially since there have been weeks when I’ve spent more on comic books than I spent on this? (Okay, very few such weeks, but still.)

I mainly plan to use this to play podcasts in my car, replacing my venerable – but nearing the end – 80 Gb “classic” iPod.

[Read the whole thing]]]> It took me almost two weeks after daylight savings time started, but I got back on the bike today and rode to and from work. It was about as hard as I expected, but not too bad. My legs were definitely wobbly during the morning, and around 3:30 my body decided it was naptime. Once I got home I was quite hungry, and afterwards I felt pretty well zonked. I’ll sleep well tonight!

Amusing little aside: On my ride in I often stop off at some friends’ house. Usually I just stop in front, have some water, and push on, though sometimes I see one of them and say hi. This morning I turned into their neighborhood behind a car that looked just like theirs – not too surprising since they have a common make, model and color. But it turned onto a different street. When I got to their house, their garage was open, and I noticed that their license plate was exactly the same as the other car’s to the fifth digit (of seven). What are the odds?

I’ve got a busy couple of weeks lined up, with lots to do at work and at least at much to get through at home. So updates may be sparse. March and early April always seem to be this way, for some reason.

The theme of the season is both one of the Doctor’s impending regeneration (which we

[Read the whole thing]]]> We recently caught up with the last episodes of Doctor Who starring David Tennant. Taken a whole, they were okay, better than the fourth season, but they still show lead writer Russell T. Davies’ tendency to be overly sentimental.

The theme of the season is both one of the Doctor’s impending regeneration (which we know about thanks to the mass media, but he obviously doesn’t), and the Doctor’s relationship to his companions generally, i.e., why he has and needs them, since he spends these adventures without any companions.

The first episode is a big tease: “The Next Doctor” (written by Davies) has the Doctor land in London in 1951 where he becomes embroiled in a plot by the cybermen, but more importantly he encounters a man (David Morrissey) who claims to be the Doctor, and even has a companion, Rosita (Velile Tshabalala), who resembles the Doctor’s past companion Martha Jones. It quickly becomes apparent that this Doctor isn’t who he claims, and the fun is in figuring out who he really is. The explanation doesn’t aim too high, which is fine, since it provides some insight into the Doctor himself as well as making the other character interesting in his own right. The cybermen story is much less satisfying, culminating in a truly ridiculous monstrosity menacing the city. So this one was a bit of a mixed bag.

The second episode, “Planet of the Dead” (written by Davies and Gareth Roberts) is the least interesting story of the season. The Doctor gets on a London bus on which a jewel thief, Lady Christina (Michelle Ryan) is also travelling, and they end up getting sucked through a hole in space to a desert planet, from which they need to learn how to escape, since going back through the hole kills anyone who tries it. They meet aliens who have recently crashed on the planet, and learn why the world is a wasteland, but none of that is really interesting: It’s just a lackluster monster story. The emotional core of the story is the Doctor’s relationship with Lady Christina, who find the Doctor and his life of travelling alluring, but the Doctor realizes that the amoral Christina would be a poor companion and rejects her. There’s a foreshadowing here of the Doctor’s impending demise, but that’s really the high point of the episode. This one was a misfire.

By contrast, “The Waters of Mars” (Davies and Phil Ford) is the best of the specials. The Doctor lands on Mars in 2059 during the days of the first manned mission, but he knows that every person on the base is doomed to be killed in a huge explosion, although Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) inspired her granddaughter to help lead Earth outside the solar system. Things start to go wrong when several crewmembers are infected with some sort of virus, causing their bodies to be controlled by some sort of water-based alien. The Doctor tries desperately to depart, but he’s delayed just long enough to have a change of heart: As a time lord, he can change history, and he resolves to do so, to save whomever he can from the base.

This episode is in the tradition of many of the classic series’ “locked inside with a killer” stories, as the characters get gradually herded to a place where they have to make a stand or die, with the added tinge of melancholy since the Doctor knows their fates. It tie into the overall theme of the specials is to show how the Doctor can act unchecked if he doesn’t have a companion tying him to humanity. It’s a tense story with compelling acting and drama, although any long-time viewer of the series will be a little perplexed (as I was) that companions are so important to the Doctor, since he’s gone for periods without them in the past and his fundamental character hasn’t changed. I guess you can chalk it up to specifically the Tenth Doctor being a man whose hubris led him to making this frightening decision. In any event, this is probably he single best episode Davies has written.

Finally we have the two-part episode “The End of Time” (Davies), in which the Master returns (played again by John Simm, although this time as a sort of young punk rather than an insane aristocrat – quite an impressive turn, really). The Doctor arrives on Earth to prevent this, where he again meets Donna’s grandfather Wilfred (Bernard Cribbins) who has been having nightmares about the Doctor and the end of the world. The Master is captured by a billionaire who wants him to activate a piece of alien technology, which he does, except that he turns the tables by using it to take over the Earth himself. But all of this may end up being incidental, as we learn that the President of the Time Lords (Timothy Dalton) has been using the Master as a means for Gallifrey to escape the time lock it was plunged into at the end of the Time War. The Doctor has to stop all of them to save humanity and the rest of the universe besides, but at the price of his tenth incarnation.

This story is annoying for two reasons: First, it’s yet another of Davies’ over-the-top season-enders, which honestly gets very boring after a while. You can’t keep ratcheting up the suspense and excitement level all the time, it’s not “Doctor Who Saves the Universe Again and Again”. Second, even after he’s been fatally wounded, there’s a lengthy denouement where he travels around to visit or see the many friends he’s had in his tenth life, a sort of melancholy mirror to the events of “Journey’s End” at the end of the fourth season, but which really feels entirely unnecessary. A little nostalgia here and there is okay, but geez, this was too much. The scene with Captain Jack was amusing for the decor of all the aliens in the bar, and the encounter with Rose was amusing, but I think this sequence should have been scaled back considerably.

Some bits are quite good: Wilfred is an endearing character, and the fate of Donna is still rather tragic. John Simm is excellent as the Master, especially in the first half, Timothy Dalton is always a delight to see, and the final confrontation between all parties is quite good (although it perhaps goes on a bit too long, and the solution the Doctor chooses seems so simple as to undercut the length even further; Davies is not really the strongest plotter). But overall I found “The End of Time” a bit disappointing, especially after “The Waters of Mars” (whose themes were largely dropped in this story, which is also too bad; I’d been intrigued by the possibility of the Doctor heading down a path of hubristic self-destruction, which isn’t how it played out).

I’ve said several times before that I didn’t think David Tennant was as good a Doctor as Christopher Eccleston. This is selling Tennant short to some degree: I think he was let down by the writing as much as anything. Although I do feel he played the character in a way too similar to some past Doctors, whereas Eccleston’s Doctor didn’t really resemble any of his predecessors (which was, uh, fantastic). But Tennant’s earnestness and comic tinges have been entertaining.

For next season, I’m most excited that Steven Moffat will replace Davies as executive producer and head writer, as Moffat has written several of the very best episodes of the series, and I’m looking forward to the quality of the writing going up next season. Here’s hoping that’s how it works out.

(You can read my reviews of other nouveau Doctor Who seasons here.)

[Read the whole thing]]]> Roger Ebert is one of those people I thought would be around forever, because after all I’ve been watching him since I was a kid, when he and Gene Siskel were hosting Sneak Previews in the late 1970s. It was a little shocking when Siskel died in 1999, but also reassuring (I thought) that Ebert kept their film review show going afterwards. Other than graying hair, Ebert didn’t seem to change very much over the years. I can’t say I was ever a “true fan”, since I didn’t follow his columns (even on the Web), nor watch his show every week (though I’d sometimes watch one if I came across it). Nothing against him, but I’m not truly a film buff, and in fact I’ve spent more time in the last decade watching films made before I was born than films made after I was born. Still, like any other enduring public figure who’s been there for most of your life, you get used to the lack of change.

I came across Ebert’s blog a year or two ago and had read about him having had throat cancer. His picture on his blog showed him with his hands palms-together in front of his face, covering much of his lower face. But other than looking thinner, he basically looked like the same guy.

The picture, it seems, is several years old, as I learned by reading this amazing profile of Roger Ebert in Esquire, which includes a head shot of Ebert as he looks today: He no longer has a lower jaw bone, and cannot eat or talk. And, obviously, he looks quite different. If you cover the bottom of his head, then he looks basically the same as he always has. But the difference of the totality is striking.

I’m not sure why the photo is so fascinating to me. I usually shy away from pictures like this (for example, the seemingly-omnipresent ads in the paper to donate to help children with cleft palates always cause me to turn the page immediately), but not this one. With the equally bewitching article, I think it makes me think that this sort of thing – although rare – could happen to anyone. Ebert seems to deal with it as well as anyone could hope for, at least from the view from the outside: Last month he wrote an entry about not being able to eat, where he seems to be philosophical about it. I’m sure it’s been terrifying for him at times – but you can’t be terrified constantly.

This month Ebert wrote a follow-up to the Esquire article, and it’s also a fascinating read (and has additional pictures). He seems a little surprised that he’s exposed his home life as much as he has, as if he knew intellectually what inviting the writer into his home to write the profile meant, but until he saw it he hadn’t realized it emotionally.

It’s the final paragraph in the blog post that gripped me the most:

I studiously avoid looking at myself in a mirror. It would not be productive. If we think we have physical imperfections, obsessing about them is only destructive.

I don’t think I could do that. I don’t know if I’d be able to deal with it as well as Ebert seems to be. Then again, maybe you deal with it because it’s better than the alternative.

Actually, what I think he misses is the more interesting issue, which is that while the

[Read the whole thing]]]> Caleb Crain’s article “Against Camel Case” in the New York Times is part informative historical information, and part silly exhortation. And through it all he doesn’t address the most important issue, that being, shouldn’t it be spelled “CamelCase”?

Actually, what I think he misses is the more interesting issue, which is that while the advent of writing initially helped to “fix” language so that it evolved somewhat more slowly (well, English, anyway), the greater use of writing for a wider variety of communication has cause the written form of the language to evolve rapidly and in unpredictable ways: The ubiquity of acronyms (LOL, WTF, IMHO and their brethren), which evolved (sort of) into L33Tspeak and text message lingo (which seems closely related in spirit, if not in derivation), which has started creeping out of the Internet and into student papers and such.

Language evolves. These things happen. I’m as pedantic as the next guy (probably much more pedantic than the next guy) about using correct grammar and spelling (typos and my meandering run-on sentences notwithstanding), but arguing for uniformity seems hopeless at best, senseless at worst. Set against some of the linguistic developments of the Internet age, camel case seems relatively innocuous.

Crain’s historical notes on the subtraction and later restoration of spaces in Latin is fascinating (separation of words by spaces was dropped completely? Wow), but I think he’s missing the forest for the trees: It’s pretty drastic to drop what is the functional demarcation between units, but not nearly as much so to drop a demarcation within a unit. “Bank of America” doesn’t mean “this is the bank of the entire nation” (there are, after all, other banks), but rather “this is a bank whose unique name is ‘Bank of America’”. That’s probably not that BofA wants their name to mean, but in practice that’s what people use the name to mean. And I expect that BofA recognized this when they changed their name (if only temporarily) to “BankAmerica”. (They might also have wanted to avoid people accidentally abbreviating their name with a term that could be pronounced ‘boh-fah’, though I have always heard people pronounce it as ‘bee-of-ay’.) The whole term is a unit, and the spacing is almost irrelevant.

Camel case is currently used in terms intended to sound trendy or cool (or that’s how I interpret it, anyway). Obviously, YMMV as to whether it sounds that way, but the intent, I think, is to convey that little extra emphasis. (Whether or not camel case is appropriate for a given company or product is another matter.) But I hardly think the loss of a few spaces is worth much fuss. At best, it might be grounds for a slippery slope argument, and we all know how much those are worth. It seems more likely that camel case is just one of Crain’s pet peeves.

The evolution of language is a fascinating thing, and it’s going to happen whether we want it to or not, and probably in ways we can’t anticipate. It’s just one more way the information era is changing and challenging the nature of our lives and our world.

Saturday we took the cats to the vet, Debbi taking hers in for a 2 pm appointment, then me

[Read the whole thing]]]> Friday night I surprised Debbi by taking her to dinner at Sundance The Steakhouse, which we’d last (and first) visited for my birthday this year. It was as good as it was the first time!

Saturday we took the cats to the vet, Debbi taking hers in for a 2 pm appointment, then me taking mine in half an hour later. She was in-and-out and ran into me as I was arriving. It took longer for my guys to get their check-ups. Newton seems to be doing well enough given that he’s taking thyroid medication. Jefferson, however, has some really crummy teeth and his gums are looking pretty bad, including a spot that’s bleeding. He’s lost 3 pounds in the last year, and it could be because he’s having hyperthyroidism himself, or it could be because eating has been difficult because of his mouth. And the vet said there’s a chance that he could have a tumor which is bleeding. So both cats are getting blood tests, and we’ll see where to go from there. My bet is that Jefferson “just” needs some dental surgery.

Still, for 15-year-old cats, that’s not really too bad.

We had a more exciting day today, since I wanted to go up to the city for Borderlands Books‘ 12-year anniversary sale. We left early and got breakfast in San Carlos, but realized that we’d be getting to the bookstore well before their sale started, at noon. We tried going into Golden Gate Park to visit the botanical gardens, but there was no parking. However, we saw a sign on the way for the Disney Family Museum, which recently opened in the Presidio, and decided to go check that out.

Even with a $20 entry fee, I figured there was still some chance that it would be little more than a few trinkets that Diane DIsney Miller had inherited from her famous father, perhaps with some notes on his life. But in fact it was much more than that, and we spent more than two hours going through it (and could have spent more time than that).

There’s not much left inside that looks like an old Presidio building – they clearly spent plenty of money to make it a modern venue, with computerized displays in addition to the memorabilia, and even a theater in the basement. The reception area has hundreds of awards that Disney was given during his lifetime (including most of his Academy Awards) on display. Inside is an impressive collection of photos of Walt and his family, and many DIsney memorabilia, including a polo cup he won, one of the trains he built for his home, the fiddle his father played, and many of his early drawings (some the originals, most reproductions). The earliest known drawings of Mickey Mouse are among he collection.

The narrative is well-written, although the layout of the individual rooms makes it sometimes difficult to know where to start, so sometimes you experience things out-of-order. While it admirable grapples with a few of Disney’s less shining moments (such as the early 40s animators’ strike), it oddly glosses overt the construction of Disneyland, which occupied Walt for several years and was one of his greatest accomplishments.

While some have cautioned that the museum is more about Walt and less about Disney, anyone interested in either the man of his company ought to enjoy the museum. It’s a good companion experience to the biography of Disney I read a few months ago.

After the museum, we stopped for sundaes at Ghirardelli Square, and then headed to the bookstore, where I picked up a few things, and we got to see Borderlands’ two hairless cats, Ripley and Ash, the latter of whom I hadn’t met before.

The only blemish on the day was having trouble getting dinner cooked (stuffed pork chops from the supermarket that took about 25 minutes longer to bake than advertised), and watching the Patriots mysteriously hand the Sunday night football game to the Colts by not punting the ball on 4th-and-2 at their own 30, leading by 6 with 2:30 left in the game. WTF??? The Pats lost 35-34. Gah.

But that aside, it was a day of pleasant surprises, so I can’t really complain.