Crush Alert: Jake Clemons

So on Wednesday night I went to see Bruce Springsteen and The E Street band for the, like tenth time, I think? I’ve seen The Boss a lot, my family goes every time he’s in the area. It’s one of our favorite things that we do. (Besides the Shore, it might be our favorite thing.)

And this year was no different. Well, actually it was a little different, because I realized that I have a big old honking crush on Jake Clemons.

If you’re not familiar with Jake, allow me to enlighten you. Jake is the nephew of original E Street member (and heart of the band really) Clarence Clemons. He took over when Clarence passed away.

This was a very difficult time for The E Street Nation. But over the past four years, we’ve grown very fond of Jake. And then on Wednesday night, I realized that I love him a little bit.

It’s at least partially because I’ve never seen Jake as engaged in the show as he was in this particular one. There are a couple of theories on this. There’s that he’s now been touring with the band for four years. There’s the fact that The River has a lot of really interesting sax work. There’s the fact that he wasn’t leading a whole horn section.

But whatever it was, it was working, is my point and I was very much enjoying myself.

So, I thought you all should know, that I have a huge crush on this man now.

Who my brother has christened “Little Man.”

I’m OK with this nickname but also, like, seriously. I love him.

(Also I realize I’ve been a little on the celeb boy crazy side lately. I think I need to go on a date.)

Cleanse

So this week, my mom, my sister and I did a juice cleanse. Actually we’re still doing it. It’s the final day.

It’s been interesting but not exactly fun. I’ve managed better than Mary, who was very cranky with me.

This is all a round about way of saying that I’m hungry and unfocused, and that’s my excuse for not having a post for today. As usual who wants to look at pictures of hot nerd world dudes instead of an actual post. You guys like when I do that, right?

 

Oscar, Obviously.

Grant, being adorable

Sebastian…because yeah…

Mehcad…mmmmm

Oscar again…because I CAN!

Have a good day everyone! This time tomorrow I’ll have eaten solid food again. I’m pretty psyched about that…

 

The New One

Saturday morning I went to go see The Force Awakens again.

Loved it again and seeing it with a Saturday crowd that actually included kids was fun. But that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the new love of my fangirl life.

This is about Oscar Isaacs.

I’ve forgotten David Tennant.

I’ve forgotten Grant Gustin.

I have forgotten each and every Chris.

There is only Oscar Isaacs.

Specifically there is only Poe Dameron.

This is the sexiest picture ever!

Oscar Isaacs is adorable, which I knew. But I really want to talk about Poe. One of the things after talking about The Force Awakens with everyone I know, that I decided I liked about it is how the new three are very different types than the original three.

Namely, I kept waiting for Poe to be kind of a dick, because he’s a badass fighter pilot (the best in the resistance) and those kinds of guys are pretty much always dicks in movies. (Specifically, Han Solo is kind of a hug dick in A New Hope.) But Poe, just isn’t. He’s a nice dude, who wants to bring freedom to the galaxy, and I cannot stress this enough…is incredibly incredibly sexy.

Like, I really can’t stress enough how hot he is.

He’s in a movie with Harrison Ford, and I’m not talking about Harrison Ford, who I have been in love with for as long as I can remember.

I was explaining it to a few friends this weekend by saying, “remember what I was like after I saw Thor? It’s like that.” I didn’t have this blog back then. (I had my old blog…it was not as good as this one.)  But I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of Chris Hemsworth and sighing dreamily.

I’ve been doing a lot of that.

I should note, I’ve been kind of resetting my nerd brain…I still have a few weeks of Gotham and Supergirl to watch, but I’m just not quite feeling up to it. I will.

I’m also working on some cosplay stuff for Heroes and Villains Fanfest. (including Poe…probably…I’m going back and forth on it…the only other dude I’ve ever cosplayed was Cap, and that’s different because I wear a dress…there’s a whole girly girl identity thing here that I need to parse out…you don’t care…) and I’m switching up scheduling this week, so as not to report on Sailor Moon on Christmas eve, anyway, you’ll see!

Just letting you know that the tone may change around her in the coming weeks!

It’s A Relationship

Schedule Shift! (Mostly For Sleep Reasons)

I was seven years old when Jurassic Park came out, which is a little on the young side, but it’s stayed with me as a tried and true favorite for all of those 20 long years.

I made a conscious choice to not watch Jurassic Park before heading to Jurassic World, because I knew, no matter how much good, scary, actiony fun contained there in, it would suffer in comparison to Jurassic Park.

It does.

But, there’s still plenty of good scary actiony fun. Plus Chris Pratt (who sadly, remains fully clothes the whole time.) and Bryce Dallas Howard, who are also the right age to remember that Jurassic Park once ruled everyone’s collective world and seem to be having a real ball.

Jurassic World takes place on Isla Nublar (Which, thank god, I thought we might be subjected to a third location, after the previously unknown “second facicility” popped up in Jurassic Park III) 20 years since “the incident” of the first film. Now a fully functioning resort and theme park, it’s hard not to giggle at the corporate pandering in Jurassic World. Claire (Howard) runs the park with peak efficiency, and is treating her young nephews to a weekend away from home as their parents prepare to begin divorce proceedings. She’s also getting ready to reveal a new genetically engineered super dino known as Idominus Rex

Meanwhile, Owen Grady, a former naval officer has shown a talent for training and wrangling Jurassic World’s velociraptors.

Things go wrong. This is a Jurassic movie, there are certain beats that need to get met.

But let’s talk about the raptors. There’s a lot of internet talk about “90’s kids,” but I’d like to see a buzzfeed article that covers the nightmare factory that is the Jurassic Park raptors. And that 20 years and four movies later I’m surprised and terrified when one of those mofos pops out of the tall grass or opens a door or dodges a bullet speaks volumes.

T-Rex saves the day in the end and it’s a pretty great reveal when Claire realizes it’s the only way out. The techs are played by Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus and they’re great. The “corporate greedy guy” is Vincent D’Onofrio, and BD Wong is back as the main Jurassic Doctor! (Remember that time that Star Lord let a raptor eat The King Pin?)

It’s a fun, dumb, movie

Rankings!

1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. Tomorrowland
3. Jurassic World
4. Avengers: Age of Ultron
5. Pitch Perfect: 2

Trailers!

The Martian looks impossibly good.

Mockingjay Part 2 did NOT make me weepy, unlike the trailers for it’s predecessor. To be fair, this is the more actiony, revengy part of the story.

The Walk looks great, I will not be able to see it the theaters, or maybe I’ll just hold my breath and do it. Because it looks wonderful.

And hey! The six minute preview finally got me psyched for Ant-Man, having a sense of what the story is going to look like helped a whole lot.

The Force Is Strong In My Family

Today’s post was supposed to be about Batman VS Robin, and for something lesser, it totally would have been. But this isn’t lesser. This is EVERYTHING.

I get a little hysterical excited when I talk about Star Wars, because I love it so deeply and truly. Seriously. It’s Star Wars, I didn’t spend my childhood running around in the yard playing Batman VS Robin, OK? I didn’t manipulate my little sister into believing that a character who can’t speak was really super cool and she should totally pretend to be him so that I could be Damian Wayne. (Sometimes I think about our childhood and wonder why my sister even speaks to my brother and I, the making her be R2-D2 was symptomatic of how we treated her in general.)

No, I was a Star Wars kid. In middle school, when I learned one of my friends had never seen the movies but wanted to go see Episode II with me, I said, “NOPE, not allowed,” and forced her to have a 4 movie marathon in my basement, so that she could fully appreciate what we were going to see…that didn’t really work out, but that’s Episode II’s fault, for being basically unwatchable. (I will still be watching it come December.)

Star Wars is snuggling on the couch with my Dad while I covered my eyes at the stuff that freaked me out. (As previously chronicled, this wasn’t difficult as I was a chicken.) Star Wars was late night marathons with my cousins, and my first crush.

Him. I had a crush on Han Solo…and Indiana Jones…and Linus from the Sabrina remake (THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE THING ABOUT THE SABRINA REMAKE)…and just Harrison Ford

Star Wars was waiting in line with my sister for Episode III and Christmas mornings because it was what we all felt like watching. Star Wars is my dream Cosplay. (Hoth Leia…I could probably pull it off now, but I want to be a certain size…it’s a motivating factor.) Star Wars is a series of choreographed play light saber battles in my cousin’s basement with everyone taking turns who would be Luke and who would be Vader.

The point is that Star Wars is important to me.

I had a feeling that we’d get something this week, coming out of The Star Wars Celebration, but I didn’t expect a new trailer, I really didn’t. I figured it would premier before Age of Ultron, because Disney loves Synergy so much. (I am looking forward to seeing it before Ultron, because, come on, you know it’ll be there.)

But this teaser, this beautiful wonderful teaser, with it’s light sabers and it’s Mark Hamill narration, and Harrison Ford pop ups and perfect music cues, and beautiful everything about it.

You know what, let’s just watch it again. And again. And again.

“Chewie…we’re home.” #Chewiewerehome, I’m making this a thing.

New York Comic Con 2014 Day 1

So it was a mellow day at comic con. Which means that I wandered around a lot was only wearing like half a costume, only went to one panel (but it was a doozy) and then met Arthur Darvill.

Not a great picture of me, but YAY!

I also got really drunk afterwards, and I’m super duper hung over, but I’m going do my best to tell you fine people things anyway. I met Babs Tarr, which was pretty great. And Ashley Eckstein who founded Her Universe and is THE NICEST PERSON. Seriously, she was super cool. It probably didn’t hurt that I was wearing one of her dresses.

Me and Ashley and another girl we were talking to!

I don’t have a lot of pictures because Aless didn’t meet me until around 6 so it was hard to get pics so let’s talk about that one panel.

I was really excited to go to The Disney Panel yesterday at 1. I was looking forward to finding out more about Big Hero 6 and of course finding out anything about Tomorrowland. 

And it didn’t hurt that Chris Hardwick was hosting the thing.

We all know how I feel about Chris Hardwick.

The The Big Hero 6 stuff was really cool. They brought out the cast. (TJ Miller! YEAH!) and as a listener to The Nerdist Network and Doug Loves Movies, I fully expected TJ to put his foot in his mouth in some way and would have to go on You Made It Weird to apologize. That happens with alarming frequency. But he didn’t. But he and Chris did make a Yogi Bear 3-D joke, which was great. We saw a couple of clips, which introduced us to the Big Hero 6 team, showed us drunk Bay Max (Hairy baby!), we saw the amazing chase scene with the villain, and the scene where Hiro first builds Bay Max’s armor. (“Would apprehending this masked man improve your emotional state?” Sweetest line ever.)

But the highlight of this segment was the truly sincere nerd love from Scott Adsit. Obviously, anyone who was involved with 30 Rock gets my eternal love, but Adsit was so kind and funny and great about appreciating being at Comic Con on a panel. He and Chris were ribbing each other and it was lovely.

Then they showed a new trailer and it was pretty great. We also all got scanned by Bay Max. I really can’t wait to see this movie. Just a few more weeks.

Then the Tomorrowland segment.

Among other things, this is a movie I’ve been waiting for pretty much since I saw Pirates of The Caribbean. I always thought that a Space Mountain movie would be pretty cool. When it was announced that Brad Bird and Damon Lindeloff were in charge, I knew it was going to be special. I hadn’t really been keeping up with it news wise, mostly because there wasn’t a lot of news.

But we got a lot of news yesterday. And I’m here to tell you about it.

It’s based around the ideas that Walt Disney had as a futurist and classic adventure movie ideas which is cool.

We saw the teaser which made me both cry and gave me chills. I can’t even begin to describe it and I’m sure it’s been leaked by now but it was so cool.

Then we talked to the cast, including Hugh Laurie, who is obviously playing  villain, but also was super charming and sexy, and british and all that good stuff.

Wait? Did someone say charming and sexy? Did the actual physical embodiment of those traits show up at that panel.

Was I in the same room as GEORGE CLOONEY  or was it some kind of weird dream? No I was actually in that room. and it was pretty amazing. He was adorable, making jokes about being on his honeymoon, and how he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be allowed at Comic Con anymore, and how he apologized to Adam West, and I’m sorry I have to share my actual notes from this aspect of the panel, it pretty much sums up how I felt the whole time.

Please forgive my serial killer handwriting!

It’s hard to explain how it feels to have one of your favorite movie stars about 100 feet away from you, smiling and joking and being perfect. There was lots of giggling involved and since I was by myself, a lot of trying to engage strangers on my abundant love for Dr. Doug Ross and Danny Ocean.

Then Aless and I came back to hotel, drank a lot of wine and cider and then we went to Dave and Busters and drank many margaritas, and now I have a lot of hangover. BUT we go back to Comic Con now! Again, go to twitter and facebook for real time updates and if you want to say hey!

We Love Tennant!

“I’m so glad that you found this!”

“What’s the point of having an obsessive fangirl friend if I don’t find things like this for us to do?”

This is the exchange that Crystan and I shared as we hugged and said goodbye after meeting up (along with several of her other friends) to see “The Rise of The Cybermen & The Age of Steel” on an IMAX screen. It was a special event followed up by a nice little interview with David Tennant about the episodes, and being the Doctor.

Most Doctor Who fans have an actor that they refer to as, “my doctor.” And for me, that’s always going to be David Tennant. And not just because I find him incredibly, incredibly attractive.

Although that helps.

It helps a lot.

A lot, a lot…

Which is basically what Monday night proved, as Crystan and I spent about two hours sighing and squeeing and laughing. Also, if you can avoid it, don’t watch “The Rise of The Cyberman & The Age of Steel” on an IMAX Screen! Sometimes, things that look good on TV, or in my case on a laptop screen, don’t really do terribly well on a giant screen. The effects in series 1 and 2 of Who weren’t spectacular to begin with. In IMAX, they are hilarious, but not in a good way. We had a lot of fun mocking the episode, and also, we kind of forgot how Mickey is the main character of that one.

I mean, Mickey. Really.

In the interview, the guy who was talking to Tennant (who was not Chris Hardwick, for reasons I can’t fathom…) referred to these episodes as “beloved.” Crystan got that right when she said, “Are they though?”

I mean, these episodes are fun, but as the episodes chosen to represent Tennant’s time as The Doctor? Maybe not the best choice. But it was still super fun, and frankly, we were just there to fangirl over Tennant.

Also, Crystan still hasn’t moved past “Journey’s End.” I am shaming her for this. SHAME CRYSTAN!

You need to move on. I rewatched Series 5 recently and was reminded of how special, that season really is. I fell head over heals with Amy Pond and Rory Williams again.

Also, I was sitting in that theater with 1 person I’ve known for years, and five who I’d never met. Traditionally? That’s not a good arrangement for me. But it’s one of the things that I’ve really come to love about fandom in general and Who fandom especially. There’s this short hand. We just know each other, almost instantly. Crystan said it best last night, it’s like there’s this secret world and once you know it’s there, it’s everywhere, and you can just talk about it and be friends.

Sadly, we were missing Aless. Because she’s sick. Or some other ridiculous excuse that I do not accept.

How To Fight Presidents And More Crushing

When I found out that Daniel O’Brien was writing a book about presidents I was really excited, and not just because I think that DOB might be my soulmate, but also because I knew that the book was going to make me laugh and that I’d probably learn something.

I did both. (I also, incidentally fell deeper in love with O’Brien, but that’s not relevant.)

Anyway, How To Fight Presidents had it’s inception when a college professor told O’Brien that neither he nor any of his classmates would ever be president, DOB’s response? “I never wanted to be president, but when that constantly angry profesor told me I couldn’t — even if I want to — something inside of me was triggered and I thought, “Oh yeah? I’ll show you. I’m going to president. I’m going to be president all over this country, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it!” (O’Brien, 2) and he went about learning everything he could about Presidents to become like them.

He concluded that he could never be president, because all of the presidents are insane in a very specific way, and he was not insane that way. Thus, he decided that if he couldn’t be president, he would learn how to beat them all up. How To Fight Presidents is a primer on presidential trivia and a very funny one. And again, cements my eternal nerd crush on this man.

I mean, how do you not fall in love with a guy who paraphrases Thomas Jefferson by saying, “blood is the poop of freedom,” (O’Brien, 20) and describing James K Polk as “The James Browniest President.” (69) and makes a detailed case that Ronald Reagan might have been Wolverine. But also, how do you not just love a book like that?

I come from a generation that likes our education with a healthy dose of humor and entertainment. We were raised on Bill Nye The Science Guy and Wishbone, and that’s why it makes sense that one of us would write a book that when describing JFK says, “Plenty of presidents have been as good as Kennedy, and many have been better, but he is the only president that made the American people, in unison, say, ‘What a cool dude. I’d let him have sex with my girlfriend if she was into it.'” (O’Brien, 215) or when advising you on how to beat James Madison says, “Grab that sucker, lift him up in the air, say, ‘By the away, I’m a big fan of the Constitution, I’m really glad you put that thing together.” (29)

Of course if you don’t have time to read the whole book just read three chapters, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, absolutely worth it.

In Praise of Chris Lowell

I saw Veronica Mars twice this weekend, and I’m completely obsessed with Enlisted right now, so I think that it’s time to talk about how truly adorable and talented Chris Lowell is. Even if Piz is the most ridiculously out of place character in the entire run of Veronica Mars, but I’ll get to that. It’s hard not to be charmed by Lowell’s smirk and floppy hair.

Whattacutie!

I first became really aware of Chris Lowell when he played Dell, the adorable single father assistant on Private Practice, who had a strident overpowering love for Audra MacDonald’s Naomi. What I always liked in general about Private Practice was the way it took the similar tropes of it’s parent series Grey’s Anatomy and made them a lot better by handing them off to more likable characters. This made Private Practice an easier show to swallow and good deal more shallow, but honestly? I’m not looking at a prime time soap about the love lives of impossibly good looking medical professionals for emotional complexity. Dell’s love for Naomi was similar to George’s love for Meredith, in that she was aware of it and it made her uncomfortable, but not like it, in that you rarely if ever wanted to smack either of them in the face. Of course, once Dell died in a fire, and Naomi half adopted his daughter, she got pretty insufferable for a while. (Remember when she tried to force her daughter to get an abortion? That episode was the worst. But Audra still killed it.)

Next (not in his career just in my level of awareness) came Piz. I actually like Piz, he gets a lot of Veronica Mars fan hate because he’s an obstacle to Logan and Veronica’s relationship, but I don’t mind that he’s that. Characters can be an obstacle to the main couple and still be great. (Let’s go back to Grey’s Anatomy, and talk about McVet. I mean right? Or Brooke Davis, or Jake on Scandal.) The problem is that Piz is really only an obstacle to Veronica and Logan’s relationship. He’s also there to give Wallace someone to pal around with, since season 3 focused more on Veronica and Mac’s friendship, but he’s probably the most blatant example of Veronica Mars changing itself to fit into The WB’s formula, when it was retooled for the new CW. Piz worked at the campus radio station and wanted to be a serious broadcaster, liked indie rock a whole lot, and this would have been fine, again, if this had been used at all for the plot. But Piz’s reporting chops never helped Veronica solve a case, in fact he might be the only character on the show who never had anything to do with the mysteries. Even Duncan Kane, for all of his milquetoast boring-ness was at least kind of crazy, related to the show’s initial murder victim and the father of another’s child. Duncan was dull, but he was dull functionally. Piz was fun to spend time with, but didn’t make sense to the plot. This leaves him the job that was once Wallace’s, (make everyone be normal for a night) and to be a punching bag for Logan.

But now there’s Enlisted, and OMG EVERYONE WATCH ENLISTED AND GET REALLY ANGRY IF FOX CANCELS IT BECAUSE IT IS GREAT! The show centers on 3 brothers who were raised as army brats and are all now stationed in Florida with The Rear Detachment Unit, who support the army families left behind. Oldest brother Pete is a returned hero from Afghanistan, youngest Randy is an incompetent but enthusiastic soldier and middle brother Derrick is sarcastic and disdainful but couldn’t cut it in college so it was the army or oblivion. Guess which one Lowell plays? If Piz had been more like Derrick, I doubt he’d be as villified. Derrick is currently dating the bartender at the place where the unit hangs out, and rooming with his little brother.

Anyway, I’m just sort of into the guy right now, and I wanted to write about his parts here. And also, just pimp Enlisted, because seriously, it’s really good.

Girl Crush: Constance Zimmer

I watched Season 1 of House of Cards this week. I haven’t moved into season 2 yet, but I fully plan to. I know I’m a year late. And yeah, a lot of people (my sister) were mad at me because I didn’t watch it the minute they told me to! Well, I’m sorry, but there was Justice League and Doctor Who to rewatch, and then I got really into Parenthood for some reason. (Guys, but seriously, I’m sooooo worried about Joel and Julia’s marriage/divorce! I mean they just got Victor’s behavior problems under control, this is not going to be good for him.) But I did watch, it’s amazing and it awoke a long latent girl crush.

I’m talking about Miss Constance Zimmer.

God, I love this woman. She’s always so sassy and compitent and she wears sensible suits and looks awesome in bangs.

Like So Good

I want to hang out with her and make smart topical jokes while drinking martinis at some bar that has a lot of mahogany in it. I’ll ask her who was a better kisser, Mark Feurerstien on Good Morning Miami  or Jeremy Piven on Entourage. We’ll compare the hard boiled cynicism of House of Cards with the sunny optimism of The Newsroom. I’ll ask her to recommend a hairstylist who can finally show me how to pull off bangs.

I’ve always kind of loved Constance Zimmer. Obviously, as I’ve mentioned, I watched Good Morning Miami, and really enjoyed it, as did many of the seven people who watched it. I also loved her on an even more ignored show called Out of Practice, an awesome vehicle where Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler played a divorced pair of doctors, who’s children were all doctors. She was their daughter, who I think was a lesbian gynecologist. It was a stupid CBS show that probably would have run for like ten years now, but this was in the age of Raymond when standards were a bit higher.

But then, oh then!  Then came Entourage. Generally, the women of Entourage were not super stellar. They tended to be bimbos who were treated as disposable sex objects. But there were a few exceptions. And one of them was Zimmer’s Dana Gordon. By the end of the series, Dana ran Warner Brothers.

This, this was mostly Dana.

When Ari Gold split from his wife, the only other woman who could handle his Ari-ness and keep her autonomy? Dana. (Frankly, like most of season 7, I hated that plot line, but it was better than pregnancy turning Sloane into a CRAZY PERSON!) And in the end, when Ari went back to his wife, as was inevitable, Dana shrugged it off, said, this was great and I get it, and went on with her life. I presume that by the end of the Entourage movie, she will simply be presiding over Hollywood on a great throne in a kick ass black pantsuit and hipster glasses telling Ari Gold and Vince and The Boys to go fuck themselves, thank you very much.

Then of course she played Taylor Warren on The Newsroom, and killed it, and I love her character Janine on House of Cards, because anyone who consistently tells Zoe Barnes to shove it deserves undying devotion.

So let’s hang out, Constance. I can be acerbic and smart. I mean, you couldn’t tell from this, but I am perfectly capable. I’m not great in a pant suit, but my little black dress will make a good contrast. Also, seriously, your bangs. Need to learn your secret.