Crushing On

Crushing On: Dollhouse, Season 2

December 13, 2010 by krisis

Let’s talk about how much I love this crazy promo image, which evokes Jim Steranko comic art for me.

I have a vendetta against television.

It stems from my pre-adolescent years. I had such a television schedule – every night a list of can’t-miss shows. I remember once, for a social studies class, we had to furnish a full schedule of our television viewing habits. Mine was absurd – 6:30 to 12:30 on some nights.

Eventually the internet and guitar supplanted all but Buffy and X-Files, and I’ve never gone back to appointment television since the pair went off the air. In fact, we don’t even have broadcast teevee in our house – a fact oft-lamented by co-workers and friends.

(Frankly, I think that makes people look a little… uh… unintellectual. Just putting that out there. Can you really not live without cable and the evening news?)

The thing about television is it doesn’t keep its promises. You might go all in for a show that starts really strong. Well, like a first album from a new artist, those show creators had their whole freaking lives to dream up that strong start. What’s the season finale going to be like? Season two? Season nine?

Point being, if the latter years of a show are going to suck, why bother investing at the start? That’s my new philosophy – I want to see a proven track record of excellence at least three seasons deep before I’ll deign to sample something. Otherwise, you just get burnt (Heroes) when a series can’t stick (Glee) the landing (Battlestar), or meanders on too long (ER).

Eliza Dushku is much more watchable in the second season, partially because she doesn’t have to carry entire episodes on her shoulders, but also because Sierra (Dichen Lachman) and, especially, Victor (Enver Gjokaj) are doing some extraordinary supporting work.

I watched the first season of Dollhouse on Hulu and found it mostly inert despite a thrilling concept and solid supporting cast. With that in mind, and with Joss Whedon’s accumulated good will in full effect, recently E and I watched the first three episodes of Dollhouse Season Two on Netflix streaming.

They sucked. They were stultifyingly bad and, since Dollhouse had relatively little good faith from me to begin with, I wrote the series off as dead (putting a dent into Joss’s good will).

Thankfully, this weekend E cajoled me into watching the fourth episode and… well… WOW.

Dollhouse went from borderline-embarrassing to an insane five-episode sprint into total must-watch madness of genre-bending plots, double-crossing paranoia, and restructuring the entire concept of the show – answering the unsettling promise of the season one “Epitaph” DVD-only episode.

The show finally gets around to asking the question underlying its premise: if you can change the architecture of the mind, what’s stopping you from bending the entire world to your whim? And, what happens when dissension in the ranks leads to two different whims? Would anyone be able to call their mind their own?

Admittedly, after the five stellar episodes it took a brief break and then pushed through a rushed two-part finale. But that quintet, plus the heart-rending epilogue, are some of the strongest television I’ve selectively watched in the past few years. The supporting cast is scorching and Eliza Dushku, freed from carrying the show on her own, is much more compelling than in the first season.

If you gave up on Dollhouse after the first season, please nab the final disc of season one and then take a chance on season two.

Crushing On: Del Monte Fruit Chillers

November 3, 2010 by krisis

I like dessert. I love cold dessert.

I also enjoy not blowing up my boyish figure like a Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon. You scoff, but I am fighting a genetic profile full of large Italian asses and midsections that expand post-30, and I refuse to go boldly over that particular hill.

But, you see, I love cold dessert a little too much. I cannot pass a water ice or sorbet store on foot without buying a serving. The average shelf-life of a half-gallon of ice cream in my house is 36 hours.

As with many things, strawberry is the best flavor.

Think about that, and then contemplate what happens when Acme has one of those “2 for $5” sales.

It ain’t pretty.

Enter the Del Monte Fruit Chiller. It is basically the best invention ever. Made by Del Monte (kindergarten flashback: they made your fruit cups), the tiny plastic cups start out as a semi-solid fruit slush. However, a few hours of freezer time makes them yummy fruit ice cups that are as a near a neighbor to a fresh fruit smoothie as they are to a sorbet.

(Hot tip #1: Serve with a dollop of peanut butter for a breadless PB&J dessert snack.)

(Hot top #2: Toss two in a blender with some vodka.)

We absolutely live on them. Yes, the dreaded High Fructose Corn Syrup is ingredient number three. But do you know what ingredient number one is? Apples. Basically, Del Monte found a way to make apple sauce awesome for the post naptime set.

Single-serving, satisfying frozen desserts that are non-dairy, made with fresh fruit, 100% of daily Vitamin C, and 170 calories with no fat. Oh, and less than a dollar each in a four-pack.

Sold.

PS: Beware, dieters and diabetics – thanks to sugar content they are 15% of daily recommended carbs.

PPS: This is not an endorsement of the fruit-pop style Chillers. They are creepy. Stick to the cups.

Crushing On: Dresden Dolls

November 2, 2010 by krisis

Sometimes you find music that is so in tune with your own influences that it seems to be deliberately made for you.

The Dresden Dolls are that.

The Dresden Dolls

The Dresden Dolls are a two-piece band – hard, clanging piano from Amanda Palmer and the best drumming on the planet outside of Scandanavian death metal from Brian Viglione. Amanda sings in a smarmy, cabaret-influenced alto belt which over the years has become a third finely tuned instrument in the band’s arsenal.

Already they are completely up my alley. Then, it turns out the Dresden Dolls are influenced not only by cabaret and punk, but by Bertolt Brecht and David Bowie. They love winkingly nodding to unusual corners of pop culture, like covering the Maurice Sendak poem (and personal anthem) “Pierre” and – on Sunday night – covering an Auto-Tune the News song.

I originally heard about the Dolls from our friend Chaz, but didn’t really get the point of their vicious cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” Then, 2006, we were headed to Bonnaroo and I saw their “Yes, Virginia” on the Bonnaroo artists rack. What the hell?, I thought, and picked it up.

That album became one of my favorites of the decade, and yielded perhaps my favorite song of the decade, “Backstabber.” Virginia transcends punk cabaret to be an awesome pop album filled with hyper-catchy singalong anthems with a subversive bent, like “My Alcoholic Friends” or “Mandy Goes to Med School,” a catchy tune about being a back-alley abortionist.

Sunday night at their 10th Anniversary Concert they played “Backstabber,” “Mandy,” and just about every other song I love, and ended with “War Pigs.”

This time I got the point.

Recommended mix-tape: “Good Day,” “Coin-Operated Boy,” “Girl Anachronism,” “Backstabber,” “My Alcoholic Friends,” “Shores of California,” “The Kill”