Friday Five

1. The Hamilton Documentary that I just watched was probably one of the best 1.5 hours of television I've ever seen!  I may be a bit biased since it was about Hamilton, but honestly it was just so very good.  The writers and actors and even some officials spoke about the show but they also spoke about Hamilton's life and his contributions to the current world.  It was fascinating and pretty much the perfect way to spend a Friday night!

2. In a word - AMAZING! 
          
3. What better way to learn about the delicious food in Baltimore restaurants than from the Orioles and the Ravens.  I just love the way these guys talk about the food and what's good to them.  My favorite is Brandon Williams' PB&J.  He's a guy that takes his sandwich seriously it would seem!

4. In just over a month, we'll finally be treated to the new Gilmore Girls season on Netflix. How is anyone staying calm?  I personally cannot wait and these posters are doing just feeding the excitement!  I love the Year in the Life concept and the 4 seasons theme for the posters is just adorable!

5. And in fairly shallow news this week, I've decided that after watching Matt Bomer guest host Live with Kelly, I totally miss seeing his adorable self every week on my television. Seriously, how dreamy is he?

            

I {Heart} NY

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I LOVE NY!!  It truly is the greatest city in the world. And any Saturday that I get to visit, is a very good Saturday.  Even if President Obama, decides to shut the whole darn city down by wanting to see a Broadway show.  I mean, I really can't blame him, I want to see Lin Manuel Miranda in Hamilton too! 

I do find it amusing though, that I live within a 45 minute drive of DC. I've been there countless times.  I've even been outside of the White House.  However, it takes a trip to NY to finally see a presidential motorcade.  

Aside from the extra traffic and sirens caused by his visit, it really was a great day.  We used our time before the show to explore Central Park; something the Bestie and I have never done before.  We even lucked into a lunch at Tavern on the Green's terrace with a perfect view of the motorcade.  Then it was back downtown to see Act of God.  From there it was dinner at Iguana (so-so Mexican food in a super cool setting), Schmakary's for cookies (not my cup of tea but the Bestie was happy) and then over to 44th street to introduce the Bestie to her first Shake Shack custard.  I think she was impressed.  I, of course, am always impressed by Shake Shack : )

Thanks NYC!  Let's do it again real soon!

 If you look really close, you can see the outline of the President's head in the back seat - yep, this is the best photo I have... 

 This fountain was in an episode of White Collar!  Matt Bomer walked these very steps!!!

 I was trying to be creative and sneaky...

 Great idea to take a selfie in front of the Tavern on the Green sign - except you can't tell it's the Tavern on the Green sign...

Fangirling!

Just about every year at this time, I start dreaming of San Diego.  I mean, honestly, how could you not?  San Diego Comic Con is the biggest gathering of geeks and geek culture in the world, and it's awesome.  I unlike some people, have gotten the chance to experience it. Unfortunately, I realize now, that I didn't get to really grab the bull by the horns and live it up while I was there.  I mean, I didn't even wear a costume or an ironically funny tee shirt.  I don't even have any weird pictures to share. These are about it.

At least I got the shot everyone has to take, going down the escalator into the convention center.  But, since we were there for only one day, we had only one purpose - Sit in line for hours to assure we could get in to see the USA Network panels (White Collar, Burn Notice and Psych).  You see?  We weren't even really geeking out.  We were just wanting to see the dreamy Matt Bomer - which was by no means a bad thing, let me tell you.   If by some magic, he's even dreamier in person than he is in real life!  All I'm saying is that if I were to go this year, there would be about a dozen other geekier things I'd need to see.  I think I'd go full on Fangirl.

At the time that I went, in 2010, I hadn't fully embraced my geekiness.  I was sort of aware of sci-fi, but I was much more interested in other things.  Now I get it.  I've drank the Kool-Aid, and I understand the true awesomeness of these events.  Oh, and I REALLY want to be a part of them :)

So what's a good sci-fi fan to do when she's not at Comic Con?  That's easy - take to Twitter and YouTube of course.  Have I mentioned how much I loved technology lately?  Why, just this afternoon I was able to watch the preview to end all previews for the Sherlock Christmas special, the utterly perfect lead in video to the Sherlock panel, the exclusive trailer for ConMan the series and the trailer for next season's Doctor Who.  How awesome is that!?

And that's not even the best part.  It's only Thursday.  Everyone knows that the REALLY good stuff (though I'm still not convinced that Sherlock isn't the REALLY good stuff) doesn't even happen until Saturday.  I can't even wait!  I still have a Supernatural Panel to catch, as well as all the awesome Conversations for a Cause on Sunday run by Nerd HQ.

It's a good weekend to be a geek - even if I'm not there with all my fellow geeks!

Bestie Christmas

I have the best bestie ever!  Somehow she managed to make me the coolest present in the history of presents for Christmas.  I love having crafty friends!  I've shared my passion for snowheads before but if you didn't already know, I have a thing for snowman heads.  In fact the whole Christmas tree is all snowheads - I promise you it sounds creepier than it is.  The bestie thinks this fascination is weird and judges me slightly for it, but that doesn't stop her from contributing to it.  Two years ago, she made me Neal Caffrey Snowhead - complete with a fedora and blue eyes:

Last year, it was the Doctor with brainy specs, spiky hair and his own Tardis!:

But this year, on top of an already cool melted snow head, beaded snow head and the unrelated tickets to see Jeff Daniels live, she made me Sherlock the Snowhead - curly haired, scarfed and all.  How cute is he?!  Thanks Bestie!  You rock!

Spoiler Alert

As a rule, I avoid series finales.  I've said this before and it's no surprise.  They are ultimately very sad and I am ultimately very against crying.  I've managed to skip finales of some of my favorite shows - The West Wing, Will & Grace, Burn Notice and I'm sure there are more.  I still have no idea what happened at the end.  And I'm ok with that.  

But over the course of the last week, I decided to man up because 2 of my favorite (1 most favorite) shows were going off and I thought I could handle it.  And surprise to end all surprises, I did.  I happened to love the Newsroom finale.  I know there were many others that thought it was hokey and ridiculous.  But I thought it was just hokey enough.  It had heart and it was a fitting ending.  Also, I've had that "How I Got to Memphis" playing on an unending loop in my brain since Monday.  I thought I'd managed to get rid of it, but for some reason it appeared back when I woke up this morning.  But that's not the point.  The point is, the show was good, and I didn't cry.

Then tonight came White Collar's last bow; a show I've been in love with since the pilot. What Matt Bomer, Tim Dekay and Willie Garson have together should be bottled.  Their chemistry is perfect!  Everything about that show is wonderful and spot on and I'm still not sure how Royal Pains has managed to stay on USA Network while White Collar was cancelled. Also beside the point.  

Halfway through, I literally texted the bestie "this is why I avoid finales" (I won't spoil it for anyone that hasn't seen it) but I foresaw lots of crying in my future.  The bestie and I were plotting the writer's demise at this point.  But after the next 20 minutes, I'm willing to saint Jeff Eastin for his writing of a perfect finale.  It was sweet, funny, and it brought back loads from the last 5 seasons.  It also included everyone of the supporting characters while still letting those 3 fantastic actors shine.  If there's a Hollywood God, I'd like him to give these guys another project together one day - even if it's just reading the phone book.  I'm sure they'd make it interesting and funny and all together adorable.

So I think I've conquered the beast.  Of course, these finales weren't billing themselves as sob-fests.  The next time a finale comes along, I may be ready or I may also avoid it like the plague because the trailer told me to.  Honestly, I blame the previews.  It's entirely their fault : )

This Place Thursday: Geek Edition

In celebration of the biggest geek fest of the year starting today, we'll be visiting Comic Con for This Place Thursday.  Up until a few years ago, I had never heard of Comic Con.  It's been around for decades but it's seemed to really explode in the last decade or so.  For those of you not geeky enough, Comic Con International is the largest Comic/Pop-Culture/All things geek convention in the US which is held in San Diego every year.  Hundreds of thousands of nerds, geeks, and all around pop-culture fiends flock to the city to be treated to panels, parties, exhibits, and stars galore.  It's a mecca for a lot of people, me being one of them.

So, in 2010 I got the crazy idea to see what the big deal was.  Tickets are surprisingly affordable.  It's that darn flight and hotel that get you every time!  And of course since I couldn't fly across the country alone, I dragged the bestie along. 

Now I must be honest, I am a certified nerd.  I love The Big Bang Theory.  I have a picture taken in front of a prop Stargate.  The songs of Dr. Horrible are on my iPod.  I'm a Whedon-ite: Go Browncoats!  I wrote an entire post on the Higgs-Boson particle.  I saw the Lord of the Rings trilogy on their opening days.  I know about, understand and LOVE steampunk.  You could say I have the geek-cred but I really didn't want to attend for that reason.  Seeing that stuff was just a happy by-product! No, the bestie and I were much more interested in the USA Network panels that were taking place on Thursday.  For 3 glorious hours we listened as the casts (and semi-casts: BN I'm looking at you!) of Psych, Burn Notice, and my personal favorite, White Collar cracked jokes, told stories and kept every one of the 1500 con-ers in the room rolling in the aisles.  It was fabulous!  We had great seats, which were to be expected, since, to actually get into this particular room we had to sit in line for 4 hours before hand. 

That's the thing about Comic Con.  Everyone else is just as big a die-hard as you are.  You have to do the work and pay the price if you want to see the greats. You need a solid plan of attack, of which we had none.  Due to this pain in the neck, we pretty much spent the majority of the day sitting on the floor twiddling our thumbs and people watching, which just happens to be the other thing about Comic Con.  People watching on a regular everyday street can provide about 5 minutes', give or take, of enjoyment.  Comic Con people watching should be its own sport.  In no other place can you sit and watch Dr. Horrible, Darth Vader, Pokemon, the Ghostbusters, Dexter, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp was big that summer: Creepy!) and Captain Tightpants himself (not the real one unfortunately) walk by like it's an every-day occurrence.  It's magnificent!  It would be even greater if I wasn't so afraid of getting caught taking their pictures but I snapped a few so I guess that's progress.  I wouldn't say the 4 hours blew right by, but it definitely made them more bearable. (Of course, dreaming of the Neal Cafferey I was about to see didn't hurt either.)

After the panels (which I'm sure can be found on YouTube if you really try.  They are well worth the hour!), pretty much everything good had ended for the day, so we trolled the floor for a while, then left.  Of course, since the convention takes place over 4 days and most of the stars that come, stay the weekend, if you don't have weekend tickets, you can star watch all over the city.  At the hotel I saw Patton Oswalt and Grant Imahara (Mythbusters).  And while having dinner on the water, Deidrich Bader and his family strode by. I was kinda hoping to see Nathan Fillion or at least the other 2 dudes from Mythbusters, but not so much.

Overall, it's an experience of a lifetime if you go into that kind of thing.  Even if you don't, it's shiny (token Firefly reference) and fun and a super cool experience to have.  I would recommend planning your attack very carefully and getting tickets for the whole weekend.  San Diego is a beautiful city but I could have roamed the halls of the SD Convention center for hours!

Below: First set are pics of the floor and exhibits.  The next 3 are the panels.