Tag: binge watch

Zombies and Music

I’m still thinking about an album in a day challenge for tomorrow. I started working on the first song idea at 9:45 this evening. That means I have until 9:45 tomorrow night to finish about half an hour worth of music. It’s already feeling like a failure. I started too late to have enough ready to go for a car music in the morning. that means I’ll probably have to do a late morning car music and maybe an afternoon as well. That doesn’t seem likely.

Another roadblock was having to watch tonight’s new episode of The Walking Dead Daryl Dixon show. Did anyone else notice that the woman who played the nun who sets Daryl on his mission is the same woman who played Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter movies? I guess there are only so many French actresses around but still, she fought the Death Eaters so I bet she can take out zombies with the best of them.

Another impediment to the album in a day thing is the Doctor Who binge watch. I started season 12 tonight. That means I have finally reached the Tom Baker 4th Doctor era. He’s the Doctor I used to see on reruns on PBS back in the 80’s. He’s more or less the reason I wanted to binge watch the original show in the first place.

So I probably won’t finish a full album in a day, but I will add a lot of new stuff for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. So it’s all good.

One More to Go

My epic binge watch of the new Doctor Who show ends tonight. One episode to go and then I’ll be caught up until new episodes air in November.

I still have 7355427846428 episodes of the original series left though.

Random Doctor Who Occurrence or Odd Coincidence

Funny things happen when you binge watch two different versions of the same television show. Well… maybe not, but when you’re a weird ass nerd like I am maybe uninteresting things seem like interestingly funny-ish things. I don’t know.

I think I* wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, but while binging both the original Doctor Who and the current Doctor Who series, I had this moment when I hit points in each show where they changed Doctors. In the old show, I started season four where Hartnell turns into Troughton and in the new show I hit season eight where Smith becomes Capaldi.

Strangely, even though the two shows have vastly different episodes counts per season, it literally just happened again. Yesterday I hit season seven of the old show where Troughton became Pertwee, and a few minutes ago the new show hit season 11 where Capaldi becomes Whittaker. That’s a funny coincidence, isn’t it? Weird, right?

There’s an even weirder coincidence in the current plots of both shows. Six full seasons through the original show and for the first time The Doctor doesn’t have a TARDIS. The story line is that he is being punished for something and it was taken away from him. He’s going to get it back eventually, but I think he’s going to be TARDIS-free for a couple of years. I didn’t see that coming. The weird plot coincidence is that the last shot in season 10 of the new show is The Doctor getting thrown out of the TARDIS just before it blows up (does it actually blow up? I don’t know yet) which means that when we start season 11 The Doctor is also TARDIS-free. Again, I didn’t see that coming.

I mean… how weird is all of that? I know it’s not actually weird or funny or anything, and I am just a total nerd who sees things that aren’t really there. It’s nothing but I just figured I’d write it down so that 10 years from now I’ll read this post and think, “oh yeah, I ‘member that” and then move on with the rest of my life.

*The right shift key on my MacBook Pro keyboard is acting funny again. It took me three tries to type “I” without getting “i” instead. It seems to be working fine now though. Aren’t you thrilled?

Sleepy Wednesday Night

Today has been a long day. I am tired. I had a little problem eating dinner tonight but after a little more than an hour break after coughing up a small ocean of foamie saliva, I was able to eat the last of my protein goal. I have hit all of my health goals today so it’s good in that case. Now I just need to get some sleep.

I haven’t done any music challenge work in two days. Tomorrow I’ll get back into it, I promise. There’s so much left to do. I think I can say I am behind the pace of my three previous 50/90 successes. I’ll catch up soon enough.

The long range forecast is calling for good weather this weekend. Maybe some post-sunrise golden hour photography? I keep thinking about going into the city and walking around the Back Bay. It might be odd doing it that early in the morning, but the plus side is I should be able to get in and out of town easy enough, and I might even get some street parking, and I won’t need to worry about crowds looking at me funny. Yeah, maybe a 6:00am photo walk up and down Boylston and Newbury streets? That could be fun. I could do that on Saturday morning, then maybe Kenmore Square or the theater district on Sunday? Who knows.

For tonight though, I am trying to finish a Doctor Who season three serial from 1965. I am starting to get close to the end of the run for the first Doctor. The NuWho binge watch started season seven earlier tonight. I am starting to get near the end of the run for the 11th Doctor. I am ready for both of them to change. Tomorrow morning while I exercise before work though, it will be the musical episode of Star Trek: Brave New Worlds with songs written by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce of Letter to Cleo. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Mountains of Who

How about an update on the massive Doctor Who binge watch?

The new series is proceeding nicely. I started season four (of 13, so far) over the weekend. Each season is 13 episodes plus an extra special episode or two (or three), usually a bonus episode around Christmas time. The show changed actors playing The Doctor after the first season. From there it’s three seasons per actor. The next season that airs (I don’t know when that will be) is going to bring back a prior actor for the first time. I don’t know if that is going to be confusing or not. We’ll see. I have a long, long way to go before I have to worry about that.

As for the original series… holy shit is there a lot of stuff there. Not only are there 25 seasons (I think) but the first batch of seasons have over 40 episodes! FORTY! They are only about 25 minutes each, and at some point the seasons drop to 20-something episodes each, and eventually 13-14 (for the couple of later seasons I spot checked) each.

I think I am 22 episodes into season one, so about half way. There isn’t a lot of similarities between the first season of the original show and the current show. There’s a guy named The Doctor who travels through time and space in a police box, but as far as the character himself, they are pretty different. I read somewhere that they will change direction at some point, possibly as early as season two. That will bring things more into line, I think.

There is also the small matter of some episodes are missing. I believe it is down to something silly like the BBC taping over some of the video. Someone somewhere has tried to recreate the missing pieces. Either using audio tracks that still exist, combined with still photos taken from set, or maybe some animation? I have seen one audio-only story arch so far but I think there are animations coming in the near future. I should also mention that the show (in season one, at least) operates like a serial. There are 42 episodes but there are longer stories made up of multiple episodes. It’s actually kinda cool.

The main point of what I am getting at with this discussion is that it is going to take a long time to plow through the original show. I mean a long time. We could be talking years here. It’s beyond crazy how much there is to watch. I did find a podcast that appears to cover every episode of both series so I have someone to follow along with. Still… it’s going to take a very long time.

A very long time, indeed.

Oh No, Not Again

My Star Wars The Clone Wars rewatch was nearly derailed in season one by a slew of Jar Jar episodes. Seasons two and three were Jar Jar free and it was such a massive improvement. I’m on season four now. Jar Jar is in two of the first four episodes. I want to quit again.

It’s unbearable.

Binge Watchin’ Fool

My X-Files rewatch is in season three. Deep Space Nine is still in season two. Strange New Worlds is almost done. Before all of this started I rewatched The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. I recently rewatched Rebels. Over the last week I rewatched Andor (best Star Wars Disney+ show by miles and miles) and two nights ago I started rewatching Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I don’t want to stop with the two non-Star Wars shows, but I am really feeling the ol’ Galaxy Far Far Away vibes right now. Three more episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and I’ll be out of live action shows on Disney+. Does this mean I am going to have to watch The Clone Wars from start to finish? That would include both seasons of The Bad Batch as that is really just The Clone Wars part two, right? Clone Wars has episodes with Jar Jar though… do I really want to go through that again? On the other hand, it would be a good prep for Ahsoka, which comes out in August.

On an unrelated note, I restarted another thing from last year this morning. The Great Spider Hunt of 2023 is on like Donkey Kong. While running in place this morning (yogging) I saw a HUGE sucker crawling up the wall behind my desk. I removed him/her from the equation with extreme prejudice. I expect there to be hundreds more to follow over the next couple of seasons.

On another unrelated note I haven’t played my guitar yet this month. I have a bunch of little song ideas, mostly just riffs, in progress, but I only have one song form sketched out and I haven’t plugged the guitar in at all. I still haven’t played through the King of Tone pedal after 5+ years on the wait list. Sigh of frustration. I’ll figure it out.

Okay. Time to go shower and get ready for work. Happy Tuesday, said the ancient 52 year old.

Mando: Finished-ish

The Mandalorian two-season re-watch to prep for the March 1st start of season three is complete. Yeah, that finale cameo still works for me. Maybe not as much as it did on first viewing, but it still really works.

I say the re-watched is finished-ish because I just watched episode one of The Book of Boba Fett. Boba is seven episodes. The first four are Boba Fett’s story. The next two are The Mandalorian season 2.5. The finale is sort of both.

I will finish with ages to spare before season three and then get back to The Bad Batch and Poker Face and re-watch The Last of Us over and over and over again.

Television: The Golden Age, babie.

Week 41 Weigh In

I am pleasantly surprised and rather pleased. I mentioned before that I have been eating a lot more than usual. I’ve been eating things that aren’t necessarily good for me too. I’ve been handling it all okay for the most part, though the couple of ounces of peanuts I tried to eat last night gave me the worst bought of nausea I’ve experienced since the start of this whole thing.

I expected minimal weight loss at best, and realistically with all the stress eating and difficulties of the last week I expected to gain a little weight. I did not. I lost 1.8 pounds, which under the circumstances feels like a ton. I now weight 222 even. My BMI dropped 0.2 points to 27 even. I’m inching closer to that mythical, magical 25 mark. My weight loss since the surgery is now at 209.4, and my weight loss since the first check in moved the 10’s column and reached 230.4.

At the wake Monday night I lost track of the number of times someone came through the receiving line and didn’t recognize me. While it was life affirming every single time, I also got a little tired of it. I get it, I am thinner. Can we focus on the topic at hand please? I don’t know. I felt guilty about feeling good about my health while my mother was 10 feet away in a casket.

On an unrelated note, I am watching the last few minutes of The Mandalorian season two, episode six. I just watched Boba Fett kick the crap out of a drop ship full of stormtroopers. If only the Book of Boba Fett season had followed suit. Oh well. I think I am going to include that show in my Mandalorian pre-season three prep binge anyway. It was good, it just wasn’t great. Except for the episodes with Mando and Baby Yoda, of course. Those episodes were stellar.

On another unrelated note, I took today off to recover from the wake and the funeral. It might be the best move I’ve ever made, career wise. I need a decompression day. Jen is working though so I am not going to play guitar through an amp all day. I am going to play guitar through an amp sim though. I have eight songs to put rhythm guitars on before I sleep tonight. I will get The RPM Challenge on track today, even if it kills me.

Hungry

The last few days have been weird, weight loss surgery wise. I assume it’s stress over the upcoming services for my mother, or something along those lines at least, but I could be wrong. I’ve been hungry. A lot. Like, all the time. I’m not going too far overboard, but I am snacking between meals way more than normal and the meals themselves have been much larger than usual. When I say “much larger” what I really mean is instead of 4-5 ounces at a time I’m like 5-6 ounces. When I say I’m snacking I mean 1-2 ounces of peanuts or two little sugar free pudding cups instead of one. I stepped on the scale this morning out of fear that I was screwing things up and I was down a little since Wednesday. Not much, just a little. So I don’t appear to be ruining previous progress but… what the hell, Robert?

On a weight loss related note, I am finding myself oddly aware of my physical structure. I have bones I didn’t know I had. There’s one in my chest that I first became aware of a few months after the surgery and I thought it was a growth or a tumor or something. I told the doctor. She checked it out. No, nothing to worry about. That’s just your sternum. Duh. Now it’s my rib cage and my shoulders. I can actually feel the space between my ribs. I have no padding on my shoulders anymore so when I played my guitar the other day it actually hurt.

I added a new discovery to the list last night. I haven’t shaved in a couple of weeks. That’s going to change later today, but I was sort of rubbing the stubble on my neck and I felt something. Apparently Robert, your humble narrator, has an adam’s apple. I mean, I always assumed it was there but I never actually found any evidence to support the assumption. Now I can feel it.

Who knew, right?

Now if I could just shake what my mother used to call “the hungry horrors” and start eating better again. That would be aces.

As I type this I am watching season one episode three of The Mandalorian. The tribe of Mandalorians just came out of the covert to help Din Djarin and Grogu (we don’t actually know their names yet) escape the guild. Absolutely epic.