Enthusiastick Journal

This Summer, a villain will rise.

(No, I'm not talking about the Dark Knight. I will talk about the Dark Knight eventually, because it was staggeringly good. But later.)

I'm talking about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog which, as of last night, is no longer free to watch but is still available on iTunes.

I think my friend Jaywalt put it best when he said, "It's like Joss Whedon got together with the internet and made a musical for you." He's absolutely right about that. Ever since I became obsessed with Jonathan Coulton I've had a thing for music about mad scientists (prior to Dr. Horrible, the latest incarnation of this obsession came in the form of Paul & Storm aping JoCo's style for the Masters of Song Fu contest with the inestimable song "Live".)

Take that thing and multiply it's awesomeness a thousand fold. Throw in Joss Whedon writing fantastic and positively Sondheim-ian musical numbers, Nathan Fillion being a laugh-riot mook and mugging for the camera, Neil Patrick Harris being funnier than he is in Harold & Kumar and darker than he is in How I Met Your Mother, a running gag about a Mr. Ed-style equine super villain (Bad Horse, the Thoroughbred of Sin), Felicia Day standing around looking sweet and pretty, Simon Helberg being unpleasantly sweaty... the list goes on and on. The number of cool elements in this thing is staggering. Every time you think it can't get better, it does.

It's a 3-act musical, with each act consisting of an episode about 14 minutes long. If you've somehow missed the tremendous internet buzz that this thing has generated, then I'm telling you now to get on board. You'll be walking around humming the songs for days to come.

DW meme: When you see this post, quote from Doctor Who on your LJ.

"Oh come on. Give me a day like this. Give me this one." (The Doctor Dances)

(By the way, the current season? Is killing me. It's firing on all cylinders and utterly wrenching my heart. Turn Left was brutal and glorious, and the week-long wait between episodes is interminable.)

Just a quick head's up: JoCo is doing a concert with Paul & Storm in Northampton on Thursday, April 3rd. So I will (once again) be looking for people to come to the show with me... only instead of being conveniently in Somerville, this show will involve an actual road trip. All interested parties should feel free to get in touch with me and mark your calendars.

Tom Milsom has done a Jonathan Coulton cover ("Still Alive", specifically.) It's quite good.


As we all know, covering Jonathan Coulton is a one-way ticket to fame and fortune and everything that goes. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say I knew of him before his internet popularity asploded (well, more than it already has, I guess.)

OMG I AM DRINKING BRAWNDO!

Brawndo's got ELECTROLYTES. And that's what PLANTS CRAVE. They CRAVE ELECTROLYTES. Which is what BRAWNDO HAS. And that's why PLANTS CRAVE BRAWNDO. Not WATER, like from the TOILET.

1,000 mg Taurine!
50 mg Guarana Extract!
200 mg Inositol!
200 mg Caffeine!
5 KINDS OF SUGAR!

Just got around to watching this year's Children In Need special (I forgot how early they air) and it was brilliant. A love letter from David Tennant and Steven Moffat to [SPOILER REDACTED]. And now I'm all excited for the Christmas special again. And for series 4. Squee.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of internets, I shall fear no spoilers, for I have finished Harry Potter 7.

So a while back demiurgent wrote up an episode of an entirely fictitious Sorkin-esque series called Comicsense.com. Maybe I've got too much Primetime Adventures on the brain. Maybe I'm lamenting the fact that Studio 60 has been de facto cancelled. Or maybe its just the fact that I love and miss Aaron Sorkin's halcyon days, and demiurgent captured that better than the man himself was doing at the time.

Regardless, I've read it over a few times.

I found myself rotating the cast of actors in my head. A lot of people in the comments have talked about wanting to put together a podcast version, and I would certainly want to be a part of that. I'm no professional voice actor, but I would certainly lend a hand and audition or whatever. But when I read it over its the voices of the cast of the various Sorkin series that I hear in my head; it started with the cast of Studio 60 and then expanded to the older shows when I realized I wasn't entirely content with some of my choices.

Yes, I understand I am completely neurotic.

So I hereby present a full cast list for Comicsense.com as it runs in my head, composed entirely of actors who have already appeared in a Sorkin series. In order of appearance:

Role:	Actor:	Previously Appeared In:
Danny Walsh	Bradley Whitford	Studio 60 (Danny Tripp), The West Wing (Josh Lyman)
Carol	Merritt Wever	Studio 60 (Suzanne)
Shelly	Kayla Blake	Sports Night (Kim)
Jake Parsons	Matthew Perry	Studio 60 (Matt Albie), The West Wing (Joe Quincy)
Simon Fisher	Joshua Malina	The West Wing (Will Bailey), Sports Night (Jeremy Goodwin)
Miranda Clause	Mary-Louise Parker	The West Wing (Amy Gardner)
Debbie Dawson	Janel Moloney	The West Wing (Donna Moss), Sports Night (Monica Brazelton)
Jubal Green	Robert Guillaume	Sports Night (Isaac Jaffe)

Please understand this is not a definitive cast list, by any means. For all I know my selections may not line up with those of the author. And I'm not entirely happy with the relative dearth of names from the main cast of Sports Night. But what can you do, right?

(Man, this totally could have been a Because Its Wednesday. C'est la vie.)

I love burritos.

Please understand that when I say "burritos" I do not mean authentic Mexican cuisine (nor am I discussing anything sold at Taco Bell.) No, I'm talking about burritos as they were reinvented in the United States of America, and specifically Seattle: the ones that consist of rice, beans, meat and salsa (and probably cheese and hopefully veggies) all wrapped in a tortilla. Burritos are like the hamburger of my generation. They're portable and tasty, despite being the size of your head. They can be eaten quickly, again despite their size. And much like every restaurant hamburger you've ever eaten came with lettuce and a slice of tomato, they provide the illusion of good nutrition by containing all four of the pre-pyramid food groups in a single package. Of course, as dorkparade pointed out to me recently, they are in actuality terrible for you. The beans are fatty (not that I get beans on my burritos, but then I'm a freak), the rice is just so many carbohydrates, and the tortilla itself is laden with gluten.

But they're so damn tasty. And cheap! My love for burritos received a boost, no question, during college. Before then I was trepidatious about burritos as a food item, mostly because I don't especially like beans and it hadn't yet occurred to me to get one without any. When my friends would make trips to the local Chipotle I would stumble, abashed, to the McDonald's next door and get some chicken nuggets (after all, I reasoned, they have the same parent company.) But eventually I cracked and was initiated into the cult of Chipotle, and thereafter I ate a lot of burritos. Not, it should be pointed out, as many as my eventual roommate jrdameonhv, whose crazy but lovable mother at one point gave him a Chipotle gift card with something like $300 on it, with no question that he would go through it before the school year was over.

When I graduated and moved back East I lamented the loss of Chipotle, but I learned to adapt. Boston has its own unique varieties of burrito, and I studied at the feet of war_pug and sleetfall. I learned about the great rivalry between Boca Grande and Anna's Taqueria, which are according to Beantown myth and legend owned by a pair of Japanese siblings who hate one another. And I learned to love going down to the local Anna's with war_pug almost, but not quite, as much as I had loved going to Chipotle with jrdameonhv.

Of course Chipotle, as mentioned, is a national chain, whereas Anna's is merely local. And if history has taught us nothing its that you cannot stem the tide of the franchise (unless that franchise is Krispy Kreme, because we love our Dunkin Donuts here in Boston, and will totally break your knees if you even look at them funny.) Eventually a Chipotle came to Medford, but that's fairly out of the way for me, and by now I am become accustomed to Anna's and all the others, so my cravings are not that strong. I find myself instead missing things like Buffalo Joe's, a venerable chain that will certainly never make the journey of a thousand miles to the strange Commonwealth where I now reside. Recently a second burrito joint opened right here in Davis Square, a Boloco over on Elm Street. So if I really want variety in my local establishments, I at least have two options intead of one, right?

I tell you all of this so that you will understand the childish fist-pumping joy it gives me to announce that the rumors I have long chased of a Chipotle opening closer to home are apparently true. A Chipotle Mexican Grill is expected to open in July, where Buck-A-Book once stood, five minutes walk from my front door. Woo-ha.

I am only gradually coming to appreciate the magnitude of John Hodgman's brilliance. Hodgman, a former literary agent, sometime expert for the Daily Show, voice of the PC in those Mac ads, and most recently the author of an almanac of complete world knowledge, is just a really phenomenally cool guy. He's so cool, in fact, that the audiobook version of his almanac (which was briefly free on iTunes around the holidays) consists of the man himself reading the book, aided by musical accompaniment from none other than his friend and frequent collaborator Jonathan Coulton, who for those not in the know is another particularly brilliant guy (although not, it should be made clear, a guy with brilliance equal in magnitude to Hodgman.)

Bruce Campbell's first book If Chins Could Kill, has been sitting in my bathroom for a few weeks now. I didn't put it there, but since its just been lying around I've been making my way through it piecemeal. Its not Shakespeare or anything, but its eminently readable, with short chapters just perfect for polishing off in a single sitting. And the last chapter, or rather the acknowledgments, makes mention of the fact that the book would never have come to be if a certain literary agent named John Hodgman had not read some things on Campbell's website and convinced him that he could sell a book if he wanted to.

Do you see what I am saying? Is it not enough that John Hodgman's book is a compendium of complete world knowledge (which include: matters historical, matters literary, matters cryptozoological, hobo matters, food, drink, & cheese (a kind of food), squirrels & lobsters & eels, haircuts, utopia, what will happen in the future, and most other subjects)? I have no other way to say this but to say that if you are not reading hodgman_rss then you, my friend, are missing out. Or, as the man himself might render it: you, my friend, are MISSING OUT.