Pictures of Lily

Among the gifts we got Lily for her birthday was a combination mp3 player/camera. She's wanted a music player ever since a friend of mine gave her a Totoro pillow with a speaker built into it and connections for a music player.

You plug your player in and the music plays right out of Totoro's mouth. And she's never expressed a specific desire for a camera, but seeing as she steals my phone at least once a day to take pictures of her feet or the TV or of her stuffed cat from three different angles, I thought it was a worthwhile investment.

Perhaps you thought I was kidding about the cat

There will be more about the party in its own post, but Lily wanted a Batman party and the only Batgirl costume we'd been able to find at our local store was this bright pink one. Lily didn't really like it, because she wanted to be Batgirl and not this neon nightmare. So, aware of this, I skipped over the more girlie music players. I think I overdid it, because the one I picked out was this gunmetal grey, brushed steel and chrome monstrosity that looked it had been sent from the future to kill John Connor. Jen vetoed that one and we compromised on something halfway.

We went to her school culture night on her birthday. The school has a significant Latino population, and a lot of the activities reflected that. (A local Indian restaurant provided some of the food, which made it extra awesome.) One of the tables had pre-printed pictures to color and one of them was a skeleton in a dress from a Day of the Dead festival. Lily went directly for it, seeing as it combined her two favorite things, princesses and scary stuff. (q.v. her burgeoning interest in Monster High dolls) She spent a full 30 minutes coloring it in exacting detail.

I provided cover for her, because she was doing some detail work with the finger bones and I knew she would be really upset if someone jostled her and she went outside the lines. She really did a pretty great job. I think I would have had trouble with those stubby magic markers she was doing, but she kept her hands really steady.

“A Night in the Lonesome October” issue preview

This is probably not news to anyone, seeing as just about everyone who has ever commented here has a piece in the issue, but I thought I'd post it here anyway. The preview for the Lonesome October theme issue is up over at Lovecraftzine. Zach and I both have stories, and it looks like Chris Kovacs has an essay. Be sure to check it out!

Six years of Lily

Lily turns six tomorrow. I always knew I would love her, but I had no idea how much I would like her.

And now she's growing into a kid, and a good one. I'm proud of her. We went to the library on Tuesday and she went directly for a book called "Monster Goose," a collection of scary nursery rhymes. I saw the book a moment before she did and knew she was going to grab it. She dove into, reading it when we were waiting to check out, on the walk across the parking lot and during the five minute car ride, finally plopping down on an easy chair to finish it when we arrived home.

See? Here's a picture!

In fact, each of us were reading and the house was totally silent. It was a strange sensation, but a nice one. I'm glad we're raising a reader. I'm proud of the person she's becoming. 

She's kind, she's happy, she's healthy, she's so smart, and if there is one thing I would give her, it would be the gift of failure.

And that may seem like a strange thing to say on her birthday, but failure teaches valuable lessons. Somewhere along the line, a professor of mine described sympathy as "I feel sorry for you" and empathy as "I know what you're going through". And failure teaches empathy, and humility. I don't want her faith in herself to be this brittle thing that's going to shatter the first time she fails. I want her to understand that it happens, sometimes there's nothing you can do about it and that it's not the end of the world when it does.

But that can wait. Here are some happy thoughts!

My thoughts always fall into familiar patterns on her birthday.

We'd been waiting through the night for Lily to be born, but she just didn't want to come out. I think she'd been reading Shel Silverstein's "I will not hatch" inside mommy's tummy. So the decision was made to perform a C-Section. I was going to be there in the room for it, so they sent me to put some on protective gear, including these things that were like plastic bags for over my shoes. And I was having trouble getting them to fit properly, alone in that room. I supposed I should have been frustrated by my inability to get them on, but I knew that I had all the time in the world, that they would wait for me, once I stepped out that door,  they would start the procedure and I would meet my daughter and my world would change forever.

And that's what happened. I had known the first words I was going to say to her and I said them as the nurses were weighing her for the first time.

Listen the Mustn'ts, child
Listen to the Don'ts
Listens to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me
Anything can happen child,
Anything can be.

And I said those words to her, she looked up at me with those great big eyes. I was her very first friend. An hour ago I couldn't imagine what she'd look like and now I couldn't imagine her any other way.

 She had a bandage on her cheek for her first few days, because they cut too deep for the C-section.

She still has the scar, and I think she always will, though by now it's small and faint..

Shortly after we returned from our trip to Longleat gardens, I chipped my "World's Largest Hedge Maze" mug. But I've come to like my chipped mug. It reminds me of the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi, which holds that things are beautiful precisely because they are imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. And likewise, Lily's face would look strange without that scar. I like it. It gives her character.

Lily woke up from a bad dream last week and when this happens, we usually stay with her in her bed until she falls asleep. So we had this conversation.

Me: Lily, I love you more than anything in the world.
Lily: I won't tell mommy. It would make her sad that you love me more.
Me: It's okay. Parents are supposed to love their kids more than anything.
Lily: (drifting off to sleep, patting me on the arm) Daddy, I love you like my son...

I couldn't ask for a better kid.

Watching Cartoons with Lily: Gravity Falls

I mentioned to my friend Eric one time that I didn't like Phineas and Ferb and he was surprised, because it's about two precocious kids building these wildly imaginative projects week after week. But another thing that happens week after week is that Phineas and Ferb's big sister tries to tell her mom that her younger brothers are building a nuclear reactor or an anti-matter engine in their backyard, but circumstances always conspire to destroy the evidence. And I'm not all "Won't someone think of the children?!" but humiliating a female character when she oversteps her bounds is something with a a long and ugly history. And while I'm sure it's not what the creators of the show intended when they established this schtick, there it is, and it's the awareness of this that prevents me from really enjoying the show, because I know this is lurking in the conclusion of every episode.

And I don't really think about the show much. There's enough good stuff out there that this is one situation where I'm more than willing to ignore the stuff I don't like, but to bring it up for context. When I first saw an ad for Gravity Falls, the art reminded me of P&F and I think one of the blurbs came right out and compared them. So I was like, "Looks like this is another show I'll be skipping!" And aside from maybe the random ad here and there, I don't think I thought about it for months. We got rid of cable in favor of streaming the stuff we're going to watch and thus we don't even see random commercials any more.  But one time I was talking about Ben Franklin and Lily was like, "Was he a lady?" and I was like "No! Where did you hear that?" and she said "Gravity Falls," and I shook my fist at the heavens and cried out "GRAVITY FALLS!!!!!!"  I looked just like Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption.

And then another couple weeks passed and my buddy Tim came down for a visit and he brought an episode of Gravity Falls with him. And I was like, "Fine, I'll check this stupid thing out. Anything to shut you up."

Actually, I was a bit more receptive, because his tastes tend to be similar to mine and his instincts are usually good with regard to these things. The episode was "Fight Fighters", where Dipper enters a secret code in to a fighting game and brings the character of Rumble McSkirmish to life.

I liked the show immediately. That episode was the perfect introduction to the series for me. The pixel animation was done by Paul Robertson, the animator for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the Game, so I already knew I liked his style. The jokes were a wonderful sendup of the occasionally ridiculous fighting game genre.

And so, we sought out the other episodes. My favorite episodes of the Simpsons were always those where Bart and Lisa work together, and Gravity Falls had the same vibe. I sprung forth fully formed from the brow of Zeus and was raised by a pack of wolves, a bear and a panther, so I never had siblings, but I always wanted some. The part I really like in Gravity Falls is during the opening sequence, (which is a rocking tune) when twins Dipper and Mabel are walking through the oddities of the Mystery Shack and they see something cool and Mable wordlessly turns and smiles at her brother, knowing that he would appreciate it too. It's just such a loving and human gesture.

The main characters are Dipper and Mabel, fraternal twins sent to live with their Grunkle (Great Uncle) Stan in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. I described the show as a bit like an animated version of Eerie, Indiana, which would have been the ideal frame of reference had anyone else actually remembered that show. It was about a small town where weird stuff happens and so is Gravity Falls.

It's hard to say who I like more, Dipper or Mabel. I was certainly like Dipper at that age (and at twice that age, for that matter) prone to making lists and over-analyzing situations, so there is a certain identification  there, but Mabel is voiced by Kristen Schaal in an inspired bit of casting and she gets all the best lines. On reflection, I think you can't have one without the other, and it's the combo of Dipper and Mabel that I really enjoy, as they play off each other's foibles. 

 

 

I can sometimes enjoy kids as protagonists. I thought the early Harry Potter books did it extremely well and so does Gravity Falls. Kids aren't all that far behind in their straight up reasoning ability than adults. They simply have a smaller base of experience to draw upon than adults. Indeed, a lot of the time, adults (at least the adults I know) are on autopilot and don't experience things the way kids do.

I like the supporting cast too. Of particular note is Linda Cardellini as Wendy, the object of Dipper's crush.

 I've liked Cardellini since her Freaks & Geeks days, and she's one of those actors for whom I'll watch a movie just because she's in it. Wendy's demeanor (and name, I realize on reflection) are similar to the character of Lindsey from F&G and I don't think that's a coincidence. 

 
It's also a tightly plotted  show, loaded  with a bunch of Easter Eggs. My favorite has to be the character who appeared in the background in a couple episodes. He's later shown to be a time traveller ("No, Time Baby!") , in charge of cleaning up temporal anomalies. It's good, silly fun, sometimes poignant, sometimes just absurd, but always entertaining.

Dipper: Hey, hey! Let go of my sister!
Gnome: Oh, hey there. You know, this is all really just a big misunderstanding. You see, your sister's not in any danger. She's just marrying all 1000 of us and becoming our gnome queen for all eternity. Isn't that right, honey?
Mabel: You guys are butt-faces!

Ranking the Doctors, the right way

Update! This post is out of date! My revised and updated list is here  Read that one instead!

My friend Jen wrote a post over at her blog ranking the different incarnations of the Doctor.

Her list, from best to worst:

1. & 2. (tie)  Tom Baker (4th) and Patrick Troughton (2nd)
3.  Jon Pertwee (3rd)
4.  Peter Davison (5th)
5.  Matt Smith (11th)
6.  David Tennant (10th)
7.  Sylvester McCoy (7th)
8.  William Hartnell (1st)
9.  Paul McGann (8th)
10.  Christopher Eccleston (9th)
11.  Colin Baker (6th)

It's a copiously researched and brilliantly written piece, marred only by the fact that she's completely wrong about everything.

So, here's the list of the best versions of the Doctor in their proper order.

1.) Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor

Jen observes that most American fans of the original series grew up with Tom Baker as their Doctor. I know I did.  I'd watch it every Saturday night on NJN, with my bowl of Chex mix and my glass of lemonade. There's a t-shirt out there that says "You never forget your first Doctor". He was silly, charming, funny and very, very entertaining. He had two of the very best companions on the show, Sarah Jane and Romana II and had great chemistry with them both. He had the best companions and the best stories. I like him because he operated on a small scale as often as not, and while you can't have an episode where the Doctor fails to save the universe, you can certainly have one where he fails to save an individual from the monster of the week. I always found those episodes more engaging, because there was legitimate tension and the possibility of actual failure.

2.) Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor

I liked him because had this core of absolute ruthlessness beneath his veneer of whimsey. He starts out kind of silly, but gets darker and darker over the course of his tenure. He outmaneuvers his enemies at every turn, and not infrequently causes them to be the agents of their own demise. And while I usually don't like this kind of thing, I think an immortal, super intelligent time traveller is one of the few people for whom I'm willing to accept this level of Xanatos Gambit.

Because he was the Doctor when the series ended (though it's my understanding that the show was never officially canceled; they just stopped making or airing new episodes), there were a ton of books written about the Seventh Doctor and he gets his own side canon apart from the show.  They were leading up to revealing what his dark history includes and it's spelled out in the novel Lungbarrow. More on this a little later.

Also, I'm really getting into Iain M. Banks' Culture series and the novel the Also People, featuring the Seventh Doctor, has a thinly disguised version of the Culture in a very big part.

3.) Christopher Eccleston, the Ninth Doctor

You can't talk about the Ninth Doctor without talking about Rose. I didn't know what to think of this new TV show at first. I had been burned once before by the Paul McGann TV movie and I was afraid we'd get another stinker like that. However, I liked this new show. It was a nice mix of stuff from the old series (Autons for the win!) and an updating for the modern world. Davies was very good about taking the best bits from the old series and ignoring the rest of it. Not that he doesn't have his flaws (Ha ha, fat people are funny! and the deus ex machina of a cosmic reset button immediately spring to mind), but nor is he as terrible as his detractors claim. However, he also gave us Rose, and I can't forgive him for that.

 I liked Rose at first. She didn't twist her ankle while running down one of the interminable lengths of corridor from the original series. She had pluck, she had agency. But she never struck me as anything special. Tegan had pluck and agency too and the Doctor wasn't all falling in love with her. If she was special at all, it was because she hung out with the Doctor, not the other way around. I thought of her as the viewpoint character. She's there to do things that the audience would do if they were there and occasionally to prompt some exposition from the Doctor. But Russell Davies fell in love with her somewhere along the way and we just kept getting hammered over the head with how wonderful she was. I can't remember when I started actively disliking her, but I know that I really enjoyed this exchange from Bad Wolf, so it must have been by then:

The Anne Droid: So, Rose, what do you actually do?

Rose Tyler: I just travel about a bit. Bit of a tourist, I suppose.

The Anne Droid: Another way of saying unemployed?

Rose Tyler: No.

The Anne Droid: Have you got a job?

Rose Tyler: Well, not really, no.

The Anne Droid: Then you *are* unemployed. And yet you've still got enough money to buy peroxide.

Ha ha ha! Stupid Rose!

Anyways, I really enjoyed Jack Harkness, another companion introduced on Eccleston's run and one of the first male companions in ages. I liked Eccelston because he was angry and flawed and poisoned by his survivor's guilt, but still brave enough to sacrifice himself so that Rose (ROSE!!) could live.

4.) Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor

A lot of the old Doctor Who episodes were in fact, kind of lousy. The effects were on par with what you'd find in a high school play and the writing wasn't good and there was not infrequently an appalling amount of filler. However, it had energy and it had charm and it threw out all these gonzo concepts without worrying about the ramifications. (I recall reading that Doctor Who never had a story bible, which is how it wound up with so many contradictory stories and three separate versions of the destruction of Atlantis, but my friend Eric suggested that this is actually a feature and not a bug and that all the time travel is overwriting previous stories.  I like that explanation. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.)

This is to some extent, a nostalgia score, because it's been a while since I've seen Pertwee and I'm not sure how the episodes would hold up. However, I do love the Master, Moriarty to the Doctor's Holmes. I'm a sucker for an evil twin/dark counterpart story and Delgado and Pertwee were excellent together.

I'll get in to more detail on this on Matt Smith's entry, but something I really liked about the Master is that he's better than the Doctor in certain areas. He had a TARDIS that actually worked, for instance, but the thing that sticks with me is that the Master got better grades than the Doctor. That's my conception of the Doctor, a member of an advanced society, and a smart and talented guy, but not its most brilliant member. This is at odds with Stephen Moffat's interpretation of the Doctor. I can't track down the interview right now, but he said, shortly before he became the showrunner that he sees the Doctor as someone without peer.  But I think the Doctor is at his best when he has peers like Romana and the Master to play off of.

5.) Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor

I really got into Doctor Who when I lived in Florida with my mom when I was about 12. We had a used book store in the neighborhood and I picked up every Doctor Who book I could find. One of them was not a novel, but the Doctor Who Programme Guide. (I thought that it was pronounced "Program-ey" guide, being unfamiliar with the vagaries of British spelling at the time.) The book was an alphabetical list of the characters and in which stories they appeared. I read that book cover to cover and consulted it all the time, and as a result, I knew just about everything that happened in the series, up to the end of the Fourth Doctor's run.

And we got to his last episode, and then Peter Davison started his run and I had no idea what was going to happen next. It seemed like anything could happen, and that kind of potential was really exciting.  That's something I miss, living in the modern world. We're so connected now, and it's so easy to find out what has happened and what's going to happen on your favorite show. The mystery is gone. And yeah, as with Pertwee, a lot of this is nostalgia, but I loved it at the time.

As Jen points out, Davison had the hard act of following Tom Baker at the peak of Baker's popularity. But he had Nyssa, played by Sarah Sutton, another of the all time great companions. He was also saddled with Tegan, one of the worst, and apparently there's a band called Sarah and Tegan, which I was certain had to be some kind of Doctor Who reference, but it turned out that it was just a coincidence. The Master also shows up quite a bit during his run. His death and regeneration was really poignant too.

6.) Patrick Troughton, the Second Doctor

I like him, though not as much as Jen does. But I don't think Patrick Troughton's wife liked him as much as Jen does. In the Three Doctors special, the First Doctor calls the Second and the Third "a dandy and a clown".  Jen calls him "endearing" and I think that's the best word for him. Also, I like that his companions are not in fact a succession of ingenues from modern London, but run the gamut from a Scottish Highlander to a 21st Century scientist. I like that his somewhat bumbling demeanor is in large part just an act and he's sandbagging this prodigious intellect.  And as long and as tedious as the War Games was, it does a great job of introducing the Time Lords and setting the stage for the Pertwee era.

Fun Second Doctor Josh fact: I had read that he carried a recorder around with him, but I had never heard of a musical instrument by that name, and having never seen any of the episodes at that point, I just assumed that they meant a TAPE recorder.


7.) David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor

The problems with Rose get more pronounced with Tennant, until they're at a point where Rose is talking about living in a house with a white picket fence with him. Blarg! He hit his stride once he replaced her with Martha, who ruled and once the writers stopped giving him scripts seemingly written with his predecessor in mind. He did have a number of good episodes, though. School Reunion (which drew significantly on  Dark Season, an earlier show by Russell Davis and Kate Winslet's birst major role) , Human Nature/Family of Blood and Journey's End were phenomenal. John Simm was pleasure whenever he was on the screen.

Unfortunately, we also get Donna Noble, who makes Rose look like Romana. If the Doctor is really this demigod thundering across the stars, how come Donna outwits him more than half the time? Watching her is like chewing tin foil with a mouth full of fillings.

8.) Paul McGann, the Eighth Doctor

I got nothin. The COMPLETEly Useless ENCYCLOPEDIA has this entry for Half-Human: "The  contribution to Doctor Who mythos by the makers of the 'US telemovie with Pertwee logo' and judging by the eighth Doctor's interest in Grace Holloway, it's the bottom half."  I was delighted when Tennant reacted in horror at the suggestion that he might be half human, suggesting that this is no longer canon. Thank god.

And it must have been hard for him to fill the role in the short time he was allotted. I think of the TV movie as a pilot, and there's the tedious work of establishing the premise to be done. Had McGann continued, he might have grown into the role.

9.) William Hartnell, the First Doctor

 "MATLOCK!"

10.) Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor, aka Miss Piggy

His interests include walks on the beach, strangling his companions and committing genocide. It's not that a dark Doctor can't work, Eccelston and Tennant have each shown us otherwise. From Wikipedia: "The Sixth Doctor was an unpredictable and somewhat petulant egoist, whose garish, multicoloured attire reflected his volatile personality." He was an unlikeable jerk, but more than that, he was an uninteresting one and I just didn't want to watch him. Also, as the The COMPLETEly Useless ENCYCLOPEDIA points out, Timelash is an anagram for "lame shit".

And it's not entirely his fault. I daresay that John Nathan-Turner had as much, if not more to do with the problems of Colin Baker's tenure as did Baker.

11.) The Valeyard

 

Ha! You thought I was going to go with Matt Smith here, didn't you?! In your face, hypothetical reader! The Valeyard is, oh, fuck, this is why I get embarrassed telling people that I 'm a fan of about genre TV, because I feel ridiculous writing this stuff down. The Valeyard is the Doctor's future evil self who serves as prosecutor in the Trial of the Time Lord. But he was a pretty decent villain, even if the Trial of the Time Lord makes the War Games seem like Dalek Cutaway when it comes to brevity.  Also, he shows up in about a zillion of the novels.

12.) The Watcher

The figure in white who points the Fourth Doctor in the right direction in Logopolis.

13.) Earlier Incarnations of the Doctor seen during the psychic battle in the Brain of Morbius

 It's unclear, perhaps deliberately so, who those faces seen in the psychic battle are supposed to be. The Fourth Doctor starts the battle, and we see the Third Doctor, then the Second, then the First and then a whole bunch of faces we've never seen before.  I like the theory that they're the incarnations before the Hartnell one. There's no unambiguous support for this interpretation over any other, but  the context and Morbius's question, ""How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?" seems to imply it.

14.) David Morrisey, from the Next Doctor:

15.) The Other, from Lungbarrow: In writing this, I've noticed that I seem to hold two contradictory opinions about the Doctor. I like the C-student from Galiifrey who was good at some stuff and less good at other stuff, and I also like the Seventh Doctor who hints at an ancient past and terrifying powers. When the original series collapsed, the writers were working towards reestablishing some of the mysteries of the Doctor's past. I like this quote about it: "...Omega and Rassilon were the founding fathers of Gallifrey. They towered above the Time Lords who followed. They were demigods...there was a third presence there in the shadowy days of Gallifrey's creation. In other words, the Doctor was also there. So he's more than a Time Lord. He's one of these half-glimpsed demigods."
The Doctor was the third of the Founding Fathers of Gallifrey, the Other. He threw himself into the looms that grow baby Gallifreyans and was eventually reborn as the Doctor, which I thought was a neat way of explaining a bunch of the weirdness surrounding the Doctor's past.

16.) Rowen Atkinson from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death

17.) Richard Grant from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death

18.) Jim Broadbent from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death

19.) Hugh Grant from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death

20.) Joanna Lumley from Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death

21.) Peter Cushing, from Dr. Who and the Daleks, now on the Big Screen in Colour!

22 - 99.) Future Doctors to be named later

100.) Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor

"That's right. I'm a tool. What are you gonna do about it?"

I like Moffat a lot as a writer. I like him less when he's charting the direction of the show. I was skeptical about Matt Smith in the role and I didn't like him when I watched his first episode, which seemed like one long warbled yalp of "This is what I think of your tenure on the show, Russell!" And, for as much as I complain about Matt Smith, I don't think he's the worst thing in the world. I took an instant dislike to his portrayal of the Doctor, but it's possible that this one episode doesn't reflect what the character eventually became. But there's so much other stuff out there that I don't feel like watching something I don't enjoy in hopes that it will get better when there is so much stuff that I know I do enjoy.

Also, Moffat's direction for the show seems to be at odds for what I want out of it. I want a Romana for the new series, a true equal to the Doctor  but he's dead set against that idea. And this dovetails into the second concern about Moffat I haven't watched the show since Matt Smith's debut, but I have a ton of friends who have and under these circumstances, one tends to absorb the information osmotically. And something that comes up time and again is that Moffat has a problem with women. He's unquestionably a very talented writer,  and I enjoy his standalone stories tremendously. I have no doubt that he can realize his vision for the series. However, his vision of the Doctor is not something I want to watch.