Oh. Holy. God. HOUSE IS BACK. BACK BACK BACK. I don't just mean after, like, two weeks. I mean the show is BACK. The characters I love, the crazy way everything just fits, thematically, from POTW through to the interactions between House and Wilson, and Chase and Cameron, and OMG THE HOUSE/CUDDY ASDL;AJDJASJFSDHFSDFLSDAS.

( she'll be red and delicious before she knows it )

I have actually watched this episode, like, three times tonight while typing this up. I love it. I've not felt so compelled to rewatch and rewatch and REWATCH in a very long time. LOVE LOVE LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE. ♥ ♥ ♥

OMG teevee hiiiiiigh. XD

1. It's been a WEEK since I've posted. Whaaaaat. Where does the time go? Oh well, it just means less verbal diarrhoea for you guys to wade through... or it just means that it ALL COMES AT ONCE, like I expect it will in this Omnibus Post of Doom. Heh.

2. Work. Holy god, WORK. Last Wednesday was legit one of the worst days - WORST DAYS - I have ever spent in the office. I left work at 9pm the night before, dragged myself back in by about 5am, and WORKED and hammered my brain into submission and wrote something like 11-13 paragraphs, NONE OF WHICH WAS USED, and basically wound up in a stairwell crying. Yeah... really NOT a highlight of my career to date. And to just add insult to injury on that bad, bad day, I went in search of some Japanese food in this particular restaurant... only to discover the restaurant had closed (temporarily, for renovations, but REALLY, talk about shitty-assed karma, huh?). SIGH.

3. So HOW have I rewarded myself for that much fail? I think it's called an epic EPIC marathon of TV over the weekend. Basically, I watched over half of Season 5 of Desperate Housewives AND got caught up on the new season, and just finished watching House, Bones, Glee AND 30 Rock. A++++ me - bringing couch potato-dom to new heights of obsession every day. ( THOUGHTS )

4. WOW THAT WAS A LOT OF TV. Amidst all of that, I still managed to find time to meet friends on Sunday afternoon to FINALLY watch Julie & Julia - OH HAPPY DAY. I have such a craving for French food right now, and am about three million times more excited for It's Complicated. ( some disjointed thoughts on the movie )

5. Everyone needs some pretty damn awesome Bebe Neuwirth in their lives. No lie. All fact. Courtesy of illusory_thrill.

6. I really need to go to bed, though I'm not sleepy at all. Good thing I'm away from regular work for the next two weeks and can use that time to recover my sanity. Oh, and buy tickets for NYC. XD I'm so tempted to get tickets for A Little Night Music RIGHT NOW, guys, but the tickets are so expensive and Telecharge isn't offering up anything AWESOME. Are they holding blocks of seats in reserve and only releasing them later? Should I wait a bit? Will there be discounts? Because ticket prices for this show are LEGIT INSANE. Oof.

1. URM. FOUR DAYS. Just four days more, guys - this time, in four days, I will literally be boarding the plane for Qatar New York. OMG. I can't... even BEGIN to process this, it doesn't feel real at ALL. I mean, I have tickets for most of my first week of shows, and at least half of the second week, and I've been planning this for a while. STILL. NOT GOING TO BELIEVE IT, as usual, until I'm actually THERE.

2. In other news, longest, laziest weekend I've had in AGES. We had a full three days off thanks to Labour Day (May 1) falling on a Friday. I had SOME grand plans of catching up on tv (god knows my flist is going to explode when the next House episode airs, and I am FIVE MONTHS BEHIND), or do something a little more productive... and yet, I spent most of it asleep and being lazy. Truth be told, I actually kind of like the sound of that. XD

3. Friday was family day - lunch out for my brother's birthday, at a fancy Chinese restaurant where basically we proved that, genetically, we all have a song playing in our heads at any given moment. Seriously we all just kept... humming out loud during the meal, while scoffing down epic amounts of beef and cod and god knows what else. I came home and napped after that, as I had gone to bed at some ridiculous hour of the morning, and then out for dinner to my aunt's place again. She's doing better after her second round of chemo, not having quite as bad a reaction to it as the first round, so ♥. Then I came home and... spent the entire night flailing at weazel_luv over Wonderettes. GOD KNOWS WHY. (I AM SEEING IT WITHIN THE WEEK, GUYS. ASFHALFHLSDHFLSDHFLSD.)

4. Saturday: I had plans to go for yoga, which were completely thwarted when I got up at 3.30pm (sigh). Instead, I watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which I actually REALLY liked. I know it's been critically savaged, for the most part, but I loooved it. Turns out I'm just a huge X-Men/Marvel fandork, I guess, because I just... had the best time settling back into that universe, watching all the characters I love pop up in flesh, blood and celluloid, and... it was just FUN. (I also loved X3: The Last Stand, so yeah, I really am just a huge nerd with really poor taste in movies. I'm not apologising though, these movies make me happy!) I am a sucker, apparently, even for not-entirely-well-wrought romance, and bought into the Silver Fox thing by the end. URGH, ME. No spoilers, however. Let us, for a minute, discuss the masculine pulchritude on display in that movie. ZOMG HUGH. JACKMAN. When I saw the trailer, I KNEW the movie could have been an absolutely god-awful pile of steaming manure and I'd have loved it anyway just because Hugh gets to run all over the screen being sexy and hot and growly omg omg. And that he did, in epic amounts. What surprised me is that I also found Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool ridiculously sexy. SHUT UP. In his six minutes of screen-time, he didn't even bare these, but I was still done. OMG HOTNESS. Now I have to go watch Definitely, Maybe again. I did NOT, however, like whoever played Gambit. Taylor whatever or somesuch? Urgh. Not that Gambit's one of my favourite characters, but... it just didn't work for me. He wasn't anywhere near charismatic enough.

5. During the movie, I had the insanely pressing URGE to delve back into the comics again - now, try to believe me when I say that I really AM far from being the biggest comics dork around. ( I don't think anyone really believes me, do they? )

6. AFTER the movie, to get back to my weekend - I went to a colleague's house for an awesome potluck dinner. ♥ He made chili and corn on the cob, other people brought corn muffins, mashed potatoes, ice cream (I contributed some not-so-great salad that wasn't popular anyway with all the OTHER things on the table), and it was just fun to sit around chatting about... movies, work, anything, everything. Honestly the people I work with are about the only reason I haven't lost my fragile grip on sanity in the past six and a half years I've been at this job. And it's been FAR too long since we had one of these chat sessions, so that was good!

7. Then, on Sunday, I managed to get up in time for my 2pm yoga class: which, although it was the easiest of the easy classes, I almost died in. GOD. I have not been back in weeks, because I've been lazy and the thought of inflicting pain on my really just completely inflexible body didn't appeal. So, being out of practice, that - predictably - became a self-fulfilling prophecy. A+, me. I'm already sore, and am going to hurt like the DICKENS tomorrow. In fact, I was apparently so tired I went for lunch, came home, and SLEPT FOR FOUR HOURS. Straight through dinner on a worknight. EPIC FAIL. That now means, of course, that it's 2.46am and I am WIDE AWAKE. AUUUGGGH.

8. ALSO, YOUTUBE LOOP. AIEEEEEE. Chiefly, there was Alice and Emily belting their faces off in I Will Never Leave You, one of the few times I've SEEN them sing that song unattached at the hip. YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT, GUYS: can we say omigod sexy SASSY belting times a million. 2:31 is legit an ORGASMIC EXPERIENCE, when they belt in opposite directions but sound PERFECTLY in sync, omigod. (ETA: OMG, 0:55!!! How. Cute?!) Then I found Bebe videos, and although she really doesn't have the best voice on her, god I LOVE her sass. She's SUCH a killer Velma, and probably the only person I'd want to see in the role over Julia (that's right, REPLACE IN CHICAGO, JULIA, PLZ). And yay, Bebe singing from Cabaret! I LOVE her line readings more than anything else. Mmmm, dripping with sarcasm and sass. I heart you, Lilith Bebe. ;)

9. And, because apparently this isn't already epic long enough, I figured I should get started on my alphabet meme, or I won't be done by the time I hit NY. To wit, here's the first five letters of the alphabet, accompanied by a lot of flail and a handy Twitter-ready summary for each. ( That would be A-E, in case you didn't know )

10. OMIGOD THAT TOOK FOREVER. Wow, I am going to have to seriously cut down on the time I spend on the next 21 letters or I am going to die. D: I shall now attempt to go to bed at 3.47am even though I'm WIDE AWAKE (damn the nap) and hungry (no dinner). Blaaarrrgh.

1. I had NO IDEA how frickin' tired I've been over the past week - apparently sleeping 3-4 hours a night while still trying to be a semi-functioning human being at work isn't a good idea - until I got home early this morning. I ended up going straight to bed at 4 in the morning or so, and waking up about 13 and a half hours later. At 5.30pm. WTF.

2. O_o

3. At least it was a fun time out last night - I went out for a HUGE Japanese buffet dinner with noldoparma and C, to this awesome restaurant in Greenwood that basically gives you as much sashimi as you could ask for, for just over $70. Which is a freakin' amazing deal and SO WORTH IT. It's fun to eat with people who can eat as much as I can and ENJOY IT, so yay! Honestly we scared other patrons away with the amount of food we kept ordering and then inhaling - it was nuts. Wasabi and pitan tofu = MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF LOVE. I think the waiter there recognises me now. *ahem*

4. Then we watched the new Mummy movie, which was the randomest thing to ever random. For serious. Weirdass movie, which was surprisingly fun because it clearly had decided it didn't care about having a plot or being in any way logical. Whatever works for it, I guess. Basically my only takeaway from the show, other than the fact that Michelle Yeoh speaks truly shitty Chinese and has not improved one iota since Crouching Tiger, is that I have this inexplicable liking for Brendan Fraser. WTF. I can't explain it, really, but there it is. He's not movie-star handsome and not hideous, but he has this totally goofy, oddball charm that makes him just... IDK, so adorable. I'm kind of excited to be seeing him in the Inkheart movies now. :D

5. I sent noldoparma home after that, and decided to head up to her place to grab some book!crack, since I'm on a kids' fantasy kick. We wound up sitting around in her room chatting for 2.5 hours. Talking about everything and anything in between - JD Robb (wut, now I have to read this series, LOL), American politics and goodness knows what else. Good times - what am I going to do at work when you guys leave, I ask again? I have NO IDEA.

6. I'm due at dinner in 15 minutes. I have neither showered nor budged from the computer. Punctuality is so not gonna happen.

7. However, fandom flailing is. OMG, DHP IN A NEW PLAY. Opens late April. I guess the trip to NYC in May will have to go ahead after all? Then I can watch this AND 9 To 5? *sobs* Too much awesome.

8. Also, I know you've all probably seen this already, but quite a few of you might not have. And I have to share it for the awesome that is Eden Espinosa and Tracie Thoms singing Take Me Or Leave Me live. :D OMG. I wish I could see this FINAL Broadway cast do Rent live. Still bummed that I missed Eden in June. :(

1. Guess sleeping about 2-3 hours every night all week would catch up on me eventually. I was SO dead-tired after I came home last night that I fell asleep in front of the computer, and finally shifted to the bed because, you know, back was breaking, and slept for, like, ten hours straight. I'm actually on normal people's time now! Kind of! Waking at noon is more normal than waking up at 7pm, surely.

2. So: Jason Robert Brown concert last night. Fortunately, none of the four singers attempted to sing the title song of the concert (Dreaming Wide Awake), as that would have been just tragic. The show was... okay. Two singers out of four that I liked - one of the girls was REALLY good, had a fantastic voice and ability to switch from high to low and was a pretty good actress too. She did an impressive version of Christmas Lullaby, and fortunately she dueted with the male singer I did like on I'd Give It All For You. He was really good. Powerful and a good actor. The other female singer had a broad... range, but a voice I didn't appreciate, and the other guy. God. When he sang within his range, he wasn't too bad. But when he tried things like King of the World? I couldn't keep from rolling my eyes. Or wanting to stab them out with my recorder. During the intermission, noldoparma and sepulchralice both whipped out their iPods to check how the song should actually sound, LOL. So. Not going to hang on to the bootleg of this, I think. :p

3. As for I Can Do Better Than That, which is at present my favourite L5Y song - the two female singers performed it as a drunken duet, which was funny, for the most part. It worked in parts (when they were all drunk and slurring and not-quite-landing-the-notes) but not in others (when they, well, couldn't land the notes even when they weren't playing drunk). By the end they were pledging love for each other. Hee. Now that kind of reminded me of that Alice/Emily duet I Could Always Go To You.

4. I have NOTHING planned for this weekend, bah. I'd cleaned out my entire schedule in case I had to work - and I'll be doing that in a couple of hours, going to the office for a bit - but this is just retarded. I guess I'll go watch Indiana Jones by myself later tonight if nothing crops up work-wise. Because, hai, the flist has gone mad with Indy love, and even though I haven't watched the original three films - DON'T KILL ME - I still want to see Cate Blanchett as a sexy, evil Russian spy, kthx.

5. Oh god. Julia AND Brian AND David Hyde Pierce? WTH. How is it possible for three people of that much awesome to be in the same room at the same time? *sobs* And why is it that I do not live in NYC so I can see this happening! DHP doing improv! GAH!! I hold little hope that anyone will be there to audio the show, but at least the people behind the event put up videos.

6. In my ongoing attempt to impose form and structure upon my iTunes library: is there a way to edit files that appear to be edit-protected? It REALLY bugs me that I can't change the album or title info for some of the tracks so that they'll match other tracks from the same event. BUGS ME IN AN INSANE WAY. iPods are not good for obsessive-compulsive people. In that vein, more album art for Julia's two other concerts:


7. GOING TO WORK NOW ON A SATURDAY. LIFE FAILS KIND OF HARD. Edited to add, at 4.17pm: Screw that. I spent so long procrastinating that it'd be stupid to go in now and anyway I'm sleepy and can't be bothered. I shall just go shopping and watch a movie instead. :p

I say, recycling my subject line from an old post. (Firefox has the most incredible memory for these things.)

BUT. ZOMG. NINE TO FIVE. NEW MUSICAL WITH CAST OF WIN:

20th Century Fox’s 1980 hit film "9 to 5" has been given a Broadway musical makeover with the help of the movie’s original star, Dolly Parton, writing the music and lyrics, Patricia Resnick, adapting her own screenplay for the stage, director Joe Mantello and choreographer Andy Blankenbeuhler. Along with an all-star cast, including Megan Hilty, Stephanie J. Block, Allison Janney and Marc Kudisch, 9 to 5 will premiere at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles beginning in September before heading East to Broadway.

Allison. Friggin'. Janney. And obviously, SJB and Megan Hilty as well. BUT. ALLISON JANNEY ZOMG!!!! IN A FRIGGIN' SOUTHERN-FRIED MUSICAL. HOW CRACKTASTIC WILL THAT BE. THERE IS ONLY A WORLD OF FLAIL I HAVE FOR THIS WOMAN. Seeing her live would be kick.ass. medland - you want to be coming to NYC in January next year to see teh Janney in action too, yes?!?!!?!? ;)

Edited to add: I REALLY want to see Cry Baby too (and I will, in June!). Because Harriet Sansom Harris is in it - FRASIER-RELATED FLAIL - and now that I'm stalking broadwayworld.com instead of GOING TO BED LIKE I SAID I WOULD, I've discovered that there are very hot young men in the show as well, drool. Like James Snyder and Spencer Liff. I don't even know what they've done. But they're cute. Hee.

1. NYC IN JUNE HERE I COME. I've been flailing over the possibility with alexia88 for a couple of days now, especially after I discovered that Julia Murney was going to do a show in June. So I was halfway talking myself into going but, like, just horrified at how dorky and terrifying that would be to fly just to see her in a show that no one knows anything about (it's not like it's Wicked, hai!) and she might get all of ONE song or whatever. So I tried to convince Alex to go with me so it doesn't feel so pathetic, and OMG everything just SNOWBALLED INTO SO MUCH AWESOME TONIGHT. Partly (mainly) because I read that Curtains is closing on June 29, which is all kinds of fail because I REALLY love DHP (and also Jason Danieley) and want to see him in something live, so I showed that to Alex, who was JUST as horrified, and we've since talked ourselves into a two-and-a-half week long FANDOM FLAIL FEST. This is what it looks like right now: a week in London, where we'll see Kerry Ellis' LAST Wicked together, and other shows and more flailing besides. Then just over a week in NYC, where we'll see SJB's last and Kerry's first in Wicked, if those aren't sold out (would they be, so far in advance?!?), CURTAINS, JULIA FRICKIN' MURNEY IN SAVED! and Tony Danza for Alex (he's doing a cabaret!), and lots and LOTS of other shows in between. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD THIS IS SO PERFECT. The flights look good - yeah, we've already checked - so I just need to get the okay at work on Monday and we can start booking for shows. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

2. CAN I JUST SAY? FASKFJDLKJFLAJSDAJSDAOPRUWEIORFJASDLKFAS.

3. ALSO? FLAIL. FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL.

4. OMG I NEED A RECORDER NOW. FLIST. HELP WITH THE RECOMMENDATIONS. And teach me how to use one, LOL!!

5. And LOL, I actually did other things on my lazy Saturday!! I watched Into The Woods with my Broadway dork of a brother, and LOVED IT. It was a semi-amateurish production, done by the local theatre/arts college and featuring a bunch of students about to graduate or something. But it was so much fun! I LOVE Sondheim now, I think, for the insane complexity of his work - it really is just such fantastic song-writing, with words and ideas and themes all mixed together, and who wouldn't love a musical that looks at fairy tales in a completely skewed way? Sondheim totally did it before Shrek, and here he explodes all the myths with much post-modern cheer - with the happily-ever-after coming at the end of Act ONE. SO MUCH LOVE FOR SONDHEIM. I had a lot of fun at this, and it was great flailing with my brother too, who's SUCH a Broadway dork. I love that we're getting into this at the same time.

6. After that I went to see Grace Is Gone with John Cusack, because HAI I adore John Cusack in every way imaginable. And he was fantastic. It was a good film too - rather depressing, since it's about an Iraq war widower and how he tries (or not) to break the news of their mom's death to his two daughters. But Cusack was fantabulous as ever.

7. I am sooooooooooooooooooooo obsessed with Julia Murney. I just had to say that again. But today it really just HIT me, you know? That just thinking about this woman and her singing and her humour and everything makes me smile. That's when I know I've hit fandom paydirt. I CAN'T BELIEVE I MIGHT REALLY REALLY BE SEEING HER LIVE IN JUNE. FRAK.

8. I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. SO. SO. HAPPY.

9. noldoparma - I KNOW THIS IS OBVIOUS TO YOU BY NOW. BUT IF YOU WANT TO SEE CURTAINS/JASON DANIELEY, YOU HAVE TO COME WITH THIS JUNE. YOU HAVE TO.

Work, fortunately, has gone a little quieter in the last few days - though not quiet enough to keep me away from the office tomorrow, after brunch with a friend. Sigh. But it did mean I allowed myself to get up at 3pm this afternoon (a trend on Saturdays, apparently), and went out to watch La Vie En Rose, which was much love - I want more Edith Piaf music than I can shake a stick at, so I'm heading HMV-wards tomorrow. :)

In the meantime! I was deciding between working on fic and flailing, and decided I'd better get cracking on the fandom meme started by lissie_pissie that I've been intending to do for the last two weeks. Sigh. RL's a bitch, what can I say. And in drawing up my list of fandoms, I realised I have far too many to do them all justice. So I'm narrowing this down to just TV and music fandoms - my celebrity, movie and book loves will have to wait 'til another post, I guess. If I ever get around to it!

For each person/show you've really fangirled, try to find whatever it is that made you fall in love with them. Made you see them differently than you had before... like a switch had been flicked somewhere. ;) If it's a video, see if youtube has it, if it was an amazing picture or quote, upload it and post it. Whatever it was - share it. Post your "catalysts" as I like to call them in a new post in your journal.

( there be madness ahead... )

THAT TOOK WAY LONGER THAN I THOUGHT, ZOMG. TWO HOURS, LOL. But man. It was so much fun to go through all my fandoms. Like I said, haven't even TOUCHED on the movie love. That might take me twenty years...

Come flail with me? Y/Y?