Take That, Day Job!

Out of complete and utter boredom, I guess I can blog on request as my week has left me plenty of time to catch up on some television, read, and see the worst movie of the summer. It's pouring outside, so it's not as if I am going to have any customers to distract me.

Since I was 15, I have worked at CD City, a small and always struggling independent music store. Yet, no matter how bad business gets, the owner always manages to find the money to go on extravagant family vacations to New York, the Bahamas, or the Caribbean. Meanwhile, I am left to tend shop with a customer base that wants nobody but the owner of the store and thinks I know nothing, leaving the struggling business with even less customers, and leaving me with nothing to do but browse the internet and watch DVDs on my laptop. That, and and the combination of staying at my mom's for the week while she blabbers too loudly and too early in the morning on the phone about temple gossip and misinformed politics,as well as giving me a hard time about what I'm going to do about finding a job, is enough to drive nearly anyone insane.
With my newfound free time I was able to finish Series One of Doctor Who. If you don't know, Doctor Who is the story of the last Time Lord traveling across space and time in the TARDIS, a ship disguised as a police box of the 1960s (though I'm sure you already knew all that). The premise in itself is pretty brilliant because it allows the show to go anywhere and do anything. Past, present, future, the plots are limitless and the feel of the show is filled with the kind of excitement and wonder appropriate for that sense of narrative freedom.

Cleverly, in order to avoid the problems of a leaving star, the show came up with the solution of regeneration. Every time the Doctor is about to die, he is able to live on by regenerating into a new body. Same memories, same person, but a different actor with a different personality and new eyes.

I've always heard that people remain the biggest fan of their first Doctor (which is usually the scarf wearing Tom Baker who played the Doctor from 1974-1981), and having only seen random episodes here and there of the 11th Doctor, David Tennant (my first doctor), I came into Series One with some trepidation. The theory does hold up, as I find David Tennant far more playful and enjoyable than the pained and brooding Doctor that Chris Eccleston plays, but by the end of the series, I definitely warmed up to Eccleston. And I'd have to say that this is by design.

Eccleston begins the season after facing the destruction of all Time Lords in the Time War, leaving him alone and with the guilt of the death of his people on his hands. Before finding Rose Tyler, we don't know how long he has been traveling alone, but in some ways, it has stripped the Doctor of true joy, emotion, and humanity. It isn't until a full season of traveling with Rose as his companion, as well as Jack Harkness, and working with those who are close to Rose (Jackie and Mickey) and everyone they face on their travels that the Doctor lightens up and begins to enjoy life again. Nowhere is this made more clear than in the Steven Moffat penned "The Doctor Dances." It would have been interesting to see where Eccleston would have taken the role after that first series, but I'd still take Tennant over him any day.

And yes, I realize that Time Lord, TARDIS, regeneration; it all sounds pretty geeky, and of course it is, when on top of that you have television budgeted special effects and a stretched out piece of skin as the last human, but it doesn't matter when it's just so fun to watch, so while most of you probably glossed over any mere mention of Doctor Who, you should really give it a try.
DO NOT SEE THE ROCKER! No matter how funny you think Rainn Wilson is in The Office or Six Feet Under! I even thought that Rainn Wilson made House of 1,000 Corpses just a little more watchable, but not this dreck. This film plays like a bad made-for-Disney Channel movie, with a wealth of wasted comedic talent including Jeff Garlin, Jane Lynch, Will Arnett, Fred Armisen, and Jane Krakowski.
Instead of featuring Rainn Wilson in the publicity for this film, they should have been honest. This film was designed to highlight Teddy Geiger, the young singer-songwriter who somehow achieved some semblance of celebrity by being featured on the quickly canceled Love Monkey. Geiger plays Curtis, a sensitive and prolific songwriter and performer (he's got notebooks filled with songs, though the movie only features about two of them), who still hurts from his paternal abandonment. No, he's not bitter.

And neither is Rainn Wilson, who was kicked out of 80's glam rockers Vesuvius, and now catches his big break playing with his nephew Matt's band, A.D.D., headed by Geiger, and also featuring Emma Stone as Amelia on bass and vocals, who is so stone-cold that her major character arc is whether or not she'll crack a smile by the films end.

And you won't smile either as Rainn Wilson goes through the ringer with physical comedy in which he plays drums naked, falls down, and repeatedly gets hit in the face and balls. This is what the film considers comedy.

And just to make everything a little more contrived, as the drama and supposed heart of the film, we're asked to wonder whether Rainn Wilson will get with Christina Applegate (playing Curtis' mother who also used to rock but is horribly underdeveloped and due to Applegate's recent medical problems in real life is also distracting), whether Curtis will get with Amelia, and whether Matt will get with that weird girl who keeps showing up to all of ADD's shows.

If you can't tell, this is just predictable garbage.

Lastly:
I better do my homework.