Belfast

So I’m having a pretty good time here in the UK. Northern Ireland is lovely, and it seems that I brought with me unexpectedly good weather. Lots of people commented to me how unusual the warm sunshine was. You’re welcome, Belfast.

For the most part, the people I met were awesome. A lot of them were really interested to hear that I was from the US and genuinely wanted to know what I thought of their fair city. Many expressed admiration and apprehension that I was on my own, and I felt like I’d traveled to a city of my own relatives. The first night, I met three older guys who showed me the local bars and told me all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. One wanted to grab dinner the next night, but I figured that it would be silly to tie myself up with the same parties two nights in a row, and nicely declined. A word of advice to anybody going to Belfast: eat early. I guess I was still in New York mode and thought that leaving my hotel room after 10 would give me time to grab food and hit the pubs, but that was absolutely not the case. I struck out at all the restaurants I saw, and was lucky to make it to McDonald’s before they, too, shut down for the night.

The next night, I learned my lesson and left to find food at 8:15 (and even that was too late to get food at some of the local pubs that served meals). I had a good dinner, went back to the hotel and watched Dollhouse and the first episode of Cupid (I’ll talk about that some time later), and then went to a couple of local bars. The people in the first weren’t really as outgoing, so I left after one drink and ended up talking with Ricky and Ian, two nice guys who work at the Belfast Telegraph. We chatted for a bit outside, but they were smoking cigarettes and I was kind of freezing, so I told them to find me when they came inside the bar.

As I sat waiting for them, this old, super drunk guy who was actually sleeping when I first walked by awakened and started mumbling to me. I have discovered that it is nearly impossible for me to understand a Belfast accent when the speaker is under the influence, so I gave him a vague smile, told him I was waiting for my friends, and went back to reading on my phone. He had just asked me to join him at his table when Ian and Ricky showed up. He scowled at us and all was well until about a half hour later, when the guys went to grab more beer and I stayed at the table. Then the drunken fossil asked me how much I would charge to go back to his home with him. At first I thought that I’d misunderstood, but he said it again and I realized that he thought I was a prostitute.

I was really hurt and wondered what I’d done to give him that impression. Later, I realized that being a single foreign woman alone in a bar, who then ended up sitting at a table and talking with two local men might give somebody the wrong impression, if that person was inclined to think like a pervert. But, while I realized it wasn’t worth disabusing him of his incorrect notion, I simply said no and decided not to stick around for the pitch. I went over to the guys at the bar and told them what the old dude had said. They were touchingly offended on my behalf, and when we got back to the table, the fossil kept yelling vulgar things at use. Ian, the cute one who looked like David Wright (he’s never really done it for me, but add an accent and I can start to understand the appeal) got up, looking pretty angry, and headed toward the old guy’s table, but Ricky stopped him from going over there, and we ignored the fossil after that.

We stayed at that bar until last call, then went to another one. On the way, I somehow managed to lose one of my pretty new dangly earrings, which made me sad. I pulled out the other one so I didn’t look deranged. Even though we went to another bar afterward, we got there after last call there, too, so I helped Ricky talk to a girl he found cute. Things were going well until she told him that she was 24 and he told her that she looked 28. It was not untrue, but that lost him major points, and it took him a while to recover his lost ground, and a lot of that was due to me. I guess I haven’t lost my touch and still make a pretty awesome wingman. The guys and I parted ways in the cab back to my hotel. I got out to find my earring and had no luck, but I went back out the next morning before leaving for the airport, and found it with no problem! It was a little crushed, but I think that it can be bent back into shape.

I had heard that there wasn’t a lot going on in Belfast, and I scheduled my vacation accordingly. If I’d known before booking how awesome Belfast is, and how relatively sedate Birmingham is in comparison, I probably would have spent 4 days in Belfast and only stopped over in Birmingham for the concert. I definitely intend to go back to Belfast and spend a lot more time there!

The first Jason Mraz concert is tonight, and I’m a bit worried. I’ve heard from a person who went to a concert in Brussels, and he said it was blah, and that’s exactly how one of the free London dailies described the Mraz concerts in London over the weekend. Maybe a day off will allow him to rev up and be on his A game for Birmingham. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Dollhouse is finally worth watching

I’ve been watching Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s new show, since its pilot. I wanted for so many reasons to like it:

• It was created by Joss Whedon, who I will always love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• It stars Eliza Dushku, who played the complicated and interesting Faith on Buffy
• The premise sounded really interesting
• …

Okay, so maybe there were just three reasons that I wanted to like it. But when the show premiered, it became clear to me that maybe these things were actually liabilities. Joss Whedon is a god to a certain subset of television and movie watchers, but Buffy and Angel were a long time ago, and Firefly didn’t even last an entire season. Sure, he did well with Dr. Horrible (although I believe I made my feelings on that one pretty clear), but you’re only as good as your last show, and I’m not sure that Internet sensations count.

Second, Eliza Dushku is not a great actress. She was the perfect person to play the tough, conflicted Faith, but she’s much less convincing on Dollhouse when she’s supposed to be nice and harmless. It’s gotten to the point where casting her conveys the same message as casting Lucy Lawless: watch out for this one, she’ll hurt you bad. I never quite buy it when other characters look at Echo’s Persona of the Week and fail to notice the danger. For example, on tonight’s episode, “Echoes”, they had her running around a college campus in an outfit that screams “late 90s” (complete with a miniscule skirt and almost thigh-high socks!) and wearing high-heeled Mary Janes. Who else but a freakishly tough woman could withstand hours of kinky sex, motorcycle-riding, and sneaking around in those things? I know that I probably would have only had the fortitude to get around to the first two things on that list.

Third, the premise seems more ridiculous each week. The idea is that there is a group of beautiful people who are essentially blank slates and for incredible sums of money (usually), individuals, corporations, the government, etc. can have these blank slates imprinted with any set of memories or skill set they desire. So Echo the Doll can become sex-kitten Alice, and then go back to being Echo when the engagement is over. And aside from the fact that the technology seems to keep finding newer and more spectacular ways of failing (no spoilers, but if you’ve seen next week’s preview, you know what I’m talking about), some of the assignments just don’t make sense. Why would a couple use a Doll as a midwife? Why pay a boatload of money when a real midwife could be had for considerably less? Or as a hostage negotiator? Why shell out a lot of money on a fake negotiator when one would presumably soon also be paying a ransom? The given excuse of the need for privacy seemed pretty flimsy. I can’t imagine many negotiators make it a practice to blab about their assignments once they’re completed. And, anyway, what value did Echo add in that situation? Due to the way she was programmed, she actually kind of arsed it up before damage control and more Dolls helped save the day.

And why is Echo working in LA, when that’s where she became a Doll? Episode 6 revealed that there are 20 Dollhouses around the world (why is the LA house the only one that seems to have reached the status of urban legend?), so what sense does it make to have her stay in the city where she started out? She’s already been recognized while on an engagement, and the more assignments she does, the more likely this is to happen again. This 20 Dollhouse thing feels to me like Joss is already tweaking the established mythology, although I am glad that he did not wait six seasons to reveal that there are a lot of other Dollhouses, so this main Dollhouse is less special. It seems that I may be harboring a little residual bitterness about the Slayerettes that popped up in season 7. My bad.

I’ve said more about this than I thought I would, and this post is already excessively wordy, so I will save my thoughts on the Dollhouse staff and other Dolls for some other time.