Unsolicited Advice

One of the kindly people who has donated to my Not Being Homeless Fund has requested more articles on reading body language. As Moggie is currently crushing hard on young Peter Davison, and he is an excellent example of one of the many things people tend to call "shyness", I thought I'd give it a go. (Moggie has a thing for intelligent blonds. You should have seen what happened when I showed her what Ducky used to do on TV . Another piece of pop culture that is rather dear to my heart.) Davison was pretty brutally shy on camera when he was young, especially when caught unawares. He was somewhat less so when he wasn't the only one being interviewed, as when he was booked with then-wife Sandra Dickinson , or with previous Doctors Job Pertwee and Patrick Troughton, both of whom were apparently quite gracious and friendly to their successors. He's still fairly quiet, but engaged and not trying to hide in his chair. Stick him in a seat  by himself , and give him t...

Wow. Peter Davison was not kidding when he said he was quite shy when he was younger. Sometime in 1982, the This Is Your Life  people managed to catch him, and good lord. He looks like he's sincerely trying to blush himself to death. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 For those of you who are not familiar with stage and screen makeup, like most very pale people, when Davison's in studio as he is there, they've usually got him in pretty heavy foundation and matte finishing powder. This stuff is thick and opaque and specifically meant to cover flushing, among other things -- it can get really hot under stage lights, and you don't want your actors looking as though they're about to die of heatstroke, even if they are. It's pretty effective stuff, to the point where often when an actor does go all pink on camera, you can only tell when it hits their ears, which the makeup artist will usually skip as inconvenient and unimportant. You have to turn some really inventiv...

I've started watching through A Very Peculiar Practice . Normally, I hate sitcoms. I find most of them very irritating. You have a protagonist, who you're informed is a nice person but who never does much of anything to prove it, because the entire framework of the show is built on them being backed repeatedly into socially untenable corners and not doing anything sensible to get out of them. You could resolve most of these plots in about five minutes if someone, anyone , just sat down and went, "Look, this is awkward and all, but here's what's going on." But of course nobody ever does that, because if your protagonist grows any kind of backbone or accidentally buds some common sense, there goes the premise of your series. Davison has a knack for picking comedy projects that I actually think are hilarious. Including about half of his sitcoms, which I think is a record. I started watching this thing figuring I'd sit through a couple of episodes, see what ...

I have, of course, been helping Moggie with her paper. I research things like I breathe, and I am desperately  amused that she's finally writing something on "Sidekick Studies", which I have been telling her she should be minoring in for years. There's a strangely small amount written on the role of the sidekick in literature, at least that I can find; the main source that most things cite seems to have been written up about a decade ago as someone's thesis and published in the popular press much more recently. I have also been trawling through YouTube looking for useful things, because that is what I do. It affords me an excuse to look through countless hours of footage of people I find highly entertaining. One of these people is Peter Davison. Moggie and I are firmly in favor of his entire career -- he does Doctor Who  things, some of the few sitcoms and drama-comedies that I've actually found amusing, and police procedural/detective series like Campion  a...

One of the first things that Doctor Who  fans ask when they meet each other is, "Who's your favorite Doctor?" It used to be the  first, but it may have been eclipsed by "Old or new?" -- an unfair question, I think, as the two are more a pair of linked projects than one continuous effort, but you could argue either way. It's very much a matter of opinion. Nobody's ever been a egregiously bad casting choice, although a couple of them were surprising, and some of the internal politics way back when kept some of the characters from really growing the way they intended. Six got pretty short shrift on television, where his tenure was interrupted by a series hiatus and then ended by a sea change in management far earlier than he was intended to go, but many of the Big Finish audios are brilliant. He acquires a companion who forces him to settle down a little, mainly because Evelyn simply will not be shouted down. Eight's only on-screen appearance was in a...

I use this blog to bitch. A lot. I feel like every so often I should spotlight things that don't piss me off. Here's one of them. I am a huge Doctor Who fan. Screaming, really. Old and new. One of my most favoritest Doctors ever is Ten, played by David Tennant: Tennant is a classically-trained dude with serious Shakespearean chops; his version of Hamlet with Sir Patrick Stewart is phenomenal, and I recommend everyone watch it. I don't even like Hamlet , and I like this one. He has furthermore starred in the funniest version of Casanova's story ever , with Peter O'Toole, and does an assortment of great voice work with audiobooks and as supporting characters in Big Finish productions, and so on and so forth. The short version is, he's kind of awesome. Another of my most favoritest Doctors ever is Five, played, right around the time I was born, by Peter Davison: Five is thoroughly adorable, boyish, charming, and frequently kind of confused. Davison is...