They Had Me at Who

As mentioned ad infinitum, my cable provider does not carry BBC America. There are a lot of reasons why this shows that they know f**k-all about what people want, and it causes me a lot of personal grief. It meant that I had no idea how the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, met his demise. And I had never seen anything other than stills of the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith,

But in celebration of my getting a brand new Roku box, I decided to download the final David Tennant specials and Series 5, the first featuring number 11.

The new Doctor Who does not disappoint. (BTW, be careful here -- when referring to this show, the character is called "The Doctor" and the show is referred to as Doctor Who. I slip up all the time, but that's the rule. I also think the Doctor's new companion, Amy Pond is brilliant. Amy is played by Karen Gillan and looks just like my friend Mariah Wilson. (That's neither here nor there, but I did want to sneak in a plug since her film, Revealing Hate, is now available on DVD.)

Matt Smith is great and although I've just seen the first episode and some coming attractions, I can report that he completely embodies the spirit of the Doctor. It is too bad that they didn't go with a Black Doctor, as was rumored, but again Smith does a fine job. And although I will miss the show's head writer, Russel T Davies, we are in good hands with Stephen Moffat, who many of you know from his show, Coupling. As you may remember, Coupling, had a lot of clever playing with time and space -- good practice for Doctor Who indeed.

Photos by alun.vega. Thank you!

@Wossy, i < 3 u

While Phonybrit does have a Twitter account, I have not ramped up for tweeting. But thank goodness, Jonathan Ross has.

It kind of hit me like a ton of bricks when I was listening to the podcast of Wossy's Radio 2 show and he started saying his goodbyes. Somehow I missed his announcement earlier this year that he would be leaving the BBC entirely in July. Apparently, he was still a little irked by the Sachsgate business and there have been reports over negotiations over money not going well either. So no more Friday night chat show, no Saturday radio show, and no film round-ups on the Beeb.

Whatever the reasons were, I was happy to find out that he will be starting the chat show again on ITV ... but I'm not to optimistic about that being transferred to this side of the pond.

In the meantime, we will content ourselves with his very good Twitter stream, which he seems to update very regularly. It's no podcast, but it's something.

Guess WHO's back

Due to some wonderful, encouraging folks at a bloggers dinner the other night, fine folks who claim to have been readers when I posted nearly daily, I have decided to revive Phonybrit.

But so many amazing things have happened since the apples fell off the cart. What to blog about first? The Lib Dem “win”? British Petroleum? The World Cup? Jonathan Ross retiring? The fact that I haven’t seen Get Him to the Greek?

Here’s one: My daughter’s at camp. During their “color wars,” they took the theme of classic rock bands (i.e., Red Rolling Stones, etc.) My daughter was on the Blue Who. When my wife and I were looking at the pictures of the opening exercises, she noticed the Who logo and said, “What’s that bullseye for?" Evidently, I looked at her like she just asked, “Was Paul McCartney in band before Wings?” Of course, I had my trusty DVD of Quadrophenia within arm’s reach and showed her, in seconds, the Who’s logo.

Since then, we’ve asked a couple of very intelligent people about the logo and they claim not to have realized that the Who even had a logo, analogous to the Rolling Stones lips or the Grateful Dead skeleton.

So okay, here’s the thing about the “bullseye,” for those who are trying to gaslight me by still pleading ignorance. During World War II, the airforces of the various sides had logos that they would put on the wings of their aircraft, I guess so they wouldn’t get shot down by friendly fire. The USA’s Army Air Corps and Navy had the five-pointed star. The Luftwaffe had the twisted cross. The Japanese had the Rising Sun. And the Royal Air Force had concentric circles of (from outside in) blue, white and red -- the colours of the Union Jack. During the 60s, the Mods adopted the logo as their own. (I don’t think the Rockers had a logo, beside greasy hair.) As the mod-est of mod-dy bands, the Who took on the logo, along with an adaptation of the “male” symbol (same as the symbol for Mars in astrology) as their own.

Okay? So when you see the RAF/Mod/Who logo, please do not call it a bullseye. Unless it has yellow in it. Please?

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