@missy  I’m horrified at the thought of an early departure, frankly.  I hope that’s just a trick of impatience that I’m very familiar with (impatience as a trait if a “besetting sin” of mine): you achieve what you’ve been working toward and hoping for, and it’s every bit as wonderful as you thought it would be, and more.  But instead of just ba…[Read more]

@thecrynoidman   Thanks; I’d about made up my mind not to bother with this, due to a killer review in The New Yorker Magazine.  Your comments have completed the decision.  Re-makes are always iffie; I usually avoid them like the plague anyway.

@craig  Right, then — thanks to @Phaseshift for a delightful read.

@craig  Thanks for that lovely link!  What a neat breakdown of the whole dodgy concept — !  I never could make much sense of the whole TL thing and have been quite happy without them and in NO hurry to “find Gallifrey” because — why?  Bunch of decadent-looking fuck-ups if ever I’ve seen one.  I’ve been quite comfortably convinced that the Doct…[Read more]

@missy   Oh no, the plaid pants have only shown up in various shots around the production of S9, including I think an early one of Capaldi and his old buddy Craig Fergusson each wearing a pair (?) in a shop someplace, in Trailer #1, and also in some shots of the filming of the Maisie Williams “highwayman” episode.  From what Capaldi said r…[Read more]

@janetteB  Damn it, Capaldi can’t go so soon!  Four years; five years, better!

Unless, of course, there are other considerations that we wot not of, which of course there must be — that incline the situation against a long tenure rather than a short one.  Didn’t we have news a while back that S10 was already signed up to go, with both Moffat an…[Read more]

@lisa   Wait, now — do you really want to look at the grocery clerk and see that he’s really a zygon?!  I’ll take blissful ignorance, thanks.

Thanks all for the reminders about apple cider and honey — I did that for a while, should probably go back to it.

@Ania  My mom had an old upright and it never stood a chance, really.  One of mom’s fri…[Read more]

@purofilion  If anyone has legit reasons for “having work done”, it’s actors — for so many of them, their faces are, literally, their fortunes (unless they go to doing voice work only).  On the other hand, for some at least the more sculptural qualities you get from age are a benefit.  As in, I am waiting for Bradley Cooper, an excellent and ta…[Read more]

@Ania   On arthritis — the same person who directed me toward the rosemary oil + gin-soaked raisins included also not an application of lavender oil, but sniffing the stuff along with the others.  I keep a bottle of lavender oil for that purpose, and so far, so good!

@bluesqueakpip  My GP, like most GPs, has no time to learn herbology, so I do…[Read more]

@ania   What “cow” were you watching?  Did you mean to write “watching the show”?  If not, you’re seeing a *very* different DW than I am . . .

Re the sunglasses — I think Capaldi explained in a recent interview that the sunglasses were needed for one episode — to see zygons, was it, in human disguises?  He liked them, so he’s incorporated the…[Read more]

@Mudlark — I like that too — the open-endedness of themes and details.  Of course that very thing drives the more — ah — more compulsively detail-oriented fans bats and makes them scream that (once again!) the show has been *ruined* by the dastardly dreadful awful horrible show runner-writer MOFFAT!!!!!

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@craig   Good article from the den — thanks.  So It’s a good thing that Steven Moffat mostly ignores the “demands” of the fans, eh?  I think it is.  That lovely extra tension, between fan uproar and Moffat’s teasing and forked tongue talk is a strong element in the pulsing lifeblood of the show, IMO.  Buzz, buzz, shriek, swoon, terror, hyst…[Read more]

@purofilion   Oh yes, loved The Empty Child.  So much Good Stuff over the years . . . can’t *wait* for S9.

@Mudlark  Ah, the Viennese bakers . . . New York used to be full of lovely bakeries like this, where you could get a real apple strudel with tart apple filling + cinnamon and a few raisins and of course miles of butter, slathered on between the enclosing layers of puff pastry — instead of those flat, heavy, over sweetened gummy apple cakes that…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip  Except that Marxist-commnist zealots are worshiping gods in disguise — the Great Leader, be he Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot or that weird little creep in North Korea becomes the one true God of the nation he rules over, and his zealots do exactly what “religious” zealots do: try to stamp out other religious power centers in their…[Read more]

@Mudlark  Some things I guess you just have to make at home, or give up on.  A good local bakery offers a “lemon meringue cake” that’s yellow cake with lemon curd layers between, but topped with a “meringue” that I guess holds up better in the showcase than the real stuff: a cement-tough block of white pastry cream (just very sweet, solid fat so f…[Read more]