If I should die in a wombat zone

October 13, 2018 So it's only been one episode so far I've had to judge from, but I have to say I really like Jodi Whittaker as the thirteenth Doctor. She's clearly a great comic actress, and has both successfully aped the style of several of the recent Doctors (Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith) very well - alternatively scattered, slightly self-deprecating, and deadly serious, able to shift back and forth on a dime (she has clearly studied those actors' style extensively) - yet also injected some flavor unique to her. Peter Capaldi was a much darker Doctor, in a way we hadn't seen since Sylvester McCoy - bitter, sardonic, tired, trying his best to keep on saving a universe he knew damned well didn't appreciate him and wondering how long he could keep this all up. He made you feel every inch of his 2000 year old lifetime. Whittaker represents a departure, a rejuvenation, a Doctor once again excited by life, playful and seeking adventure, in that Matt Smith s...

June 20, 2018 Review of Jagged Little Pill, the musical (Aka, “everybody hurts”…and lets you know at very loud punk volumes) As appropriate to a musical created as tribute to a Catholic songstress, I have a confession to make: Alanis Morisette’s music came at the most perfectly precarious and wounded, open moment of my youth, the freshest days and weeks and months after the breakup of a four year relationship that was the entire universe to my 18 year old moment in time. And here on the radio was someone who understood, who sang raw, blunt yet poetic lyrics about loss and rejection, anger and pain and empathy, as if to say, yes, yes it does mean the entire universe, and fuck yes you should take it that seriously…but with just enough distance (as her songs and albums progressed, she seemed to be just a tiny bit ahead down the road from where I was, the prefect long-distance mentor) to let me know there was light at the end of the tunnel. Not the light of paradise, n...