Farscape

I remember when I hadn't ever heard of "Farscape" and Trey was trying to describe it to me. Everything I pictured was SO off. And when I finally watched an episode, it was somewhere in the middle of the series, when Criton was being his snarky self - I thought he was a jerk.

But when I finally watched Season 1 in order from the beginning, I was suprised by the quality effects, the quality acting, the imaginative and explanitory plotlines, and the intriguing characters. It's such an enormous show! Even the PLOTS are enormous - the entire show is nothing but gigantic story arcs! Well, that's exaggerating a bit, but it does make it hard to just jump in and know what's going on. (Thank goodness the library has all the season on DVD).

I also love how they have one of the better answers to the alien translation problem.
And Criton's character in first Season is so clueless - this is someone from our time on earth in an alien galaxy who has no idea how things work. So he asks the questions we're dying to know. We relate to him - that could be us and through him the other alien characters become more acessable where I think they otherwise would not have been so easy to get to know, had Criton been FROM their world.

Highly creative show: creative visuals, creative characters, creative plots. Interesting and entertaining, it never gets old and it's one of the more original television series I have ever seen.

Neko Case

Neko Case... it's funny that I'm such a big fan of her music. I love her voice and her attitude. I say it's funny because I generally don't care for country music. People call Neko Case "alt-country" but really all she's doing is writing her music in the fashion of old-style country. Alongside her own original songs, she covers old classic country songs and they all go together well. So I guess maybe I might like old fashioned country. *shrugs*.

Her music has this haunting, murder-mystery twang to it. It has definite atmosphere. And her voice has POWER, even in gentle songs, this woman can belt it out. Her older albums are more honky-tonk flavored and the newer the album the less country twang, like you're peeling down to the heart of her personal style as time rolls on. If you like country, then "Furnace Room Lullabies" is a good album to start with (it's the one I started with, though I am no country fan - the album artwork is what grabbed me, heh). If you aren't so much into country, then try "Blacklisted".

The other thing I love about Neko is, like I said, her attitude. The often conservative air of a lot of country music really scares me and puts me off. So to have this gal who outrightly will tell you she loves porn, who doesn't care if she sings songs about loving women (and she's not lesbian), plays her guitar with it slung low about her waist like a rock-star, and talks about feeding extra children to the tigers to help save them (the tigers - it was a JOKE - on her latest album, "The Tigers Have Spoken")... well, somehow, folks like that seem a bit friendlier to me than flag-waving, bible-praising, Bush-loving country stars. <:) (Do NOT take offense! I mean it in a snarky, "I'm too headstrong for my own good" way <:) GO NEKO!