T-Shirt Tuesday #3: Doctor Hoo

This Tuesday’s T-shirt brings together two of my favorite things – Doctor Who and owls!  Artist Mallory Dyer really knocked it out of the park with her adorable owl versions of all eleven doctors.  This closely edges out one of my other favorite anthropomorphic versions of Doctor Who, Doctor Mew.  Though I don’t have a Doctor Mew T-shirt, I do have a print hanging in my office and it makes me chuckle daily.

I ordered this tee about a year ago from Threadless and it has remained one of my most beloved wardrobe items.  My love for Doctor Hoo is so great that I actually have 3 versions of it – 2 sizes of the tee version  and one zip-up hoodie!  When I was in London last summer and visited the Doctor Who Experience, I got a couple of comments from people who worked there, asking where I got it.  In fact, I often have people ask about this shirt in the strangest places like the doctor’s office.    I guess Whovians are pretty widespread these days.

Threadless has a few sizes still available, but they often reprint if they get enough requests so if you like it, let them know!  Until next Tuesday’s sartorial shout-out – Be comfy, wear a T-shirt!

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OMG Awesomeness! : The Professor – Live Doctor Who Inspired Improv

If you live in Austin, TX  like I do, there are dozens of interesting things to do each weekend.  Of course, there is the well known music scene, but there is also a thriving improv scene here that deserves your attention.  Just within the past year I have seen improvised shows inspired by Miyazaki, Steampunk, and Doctor Who.  I never knew improv could be like this, especially since most of my experience with it was in high school drama class or “Who’s Line is it Anyway?”

The Professor: Improv Inspired by Doctor Who starts with the show’s director, Justin Davis, soliciting a couple of words from the audience in typical improv fashion.  Using those words as a starting point, the cast completely improvises the evening’s show.  It can and will go anywhere from here.  But surprisingly, out of it all comes something that is indeed inspired by (in theme and structure) a typical Doctor Who episode, including the occasional regeneration (!).  Simple staging and the small theater really allow the audience to focus on the actors and their antics on stage which should be the whole point of improv.

The night I attended, there was an amorous alien, Anubis, and his hellhounds trying their best to end the world as we know it.  Of course, thanks to the quick thinking of the Professor (Mike Ferstenfeld) and his companion, Clara (Emily Breedlove) this fate was averted.  This season of The Professor includes 3 different Professors, as well as a number of different companions.  Tonight’s episode is rumored to be a regeneration episode, so get thee to the theater to check it out.  Apparently the new Professor will be a she!  Not even the BBC has been brave enough to do that (yet).

Needless to say if you love Doctor Who, enjoy the creativity that improv allows and live near Austin, you should definitely check out The Professor during its run Fridays and Saturdays through April 21 at the Salvage Vanguard Theater.

If you don’t, the Daleks and Cybermen win.

What is dispatches from catopia?

I know.  Another blog.  Really what the world needs now.

So why am I doing this?  Well, I have enjoyed reading various blogs over the past 10 or so years, but I feel like they no longer speak to me in the way they once did.  So I want to write something I would like to read.  I hope it will be an amalgam of a whole lot of stuff that I like and that I think others like me would appreciate.

For better or for worse, the Internet has something for everyone, so hopefully if you’ve found this blog – it will be for you.  If it’s not, that’s fine too.  Just keep on going, nothing to see here.

So what will I blog about?  I enjoy movies and beer, often at the same time.  So that’s something to start with.  Sometimes I’ll use this place to share a bit of awesome I’ve come across in my virtual walkabouts.  In any case, it will be a place to share beyond just the errant Facebook or Twitter update.

Now I hate to throw around the “G” word here as it has become so en vogue to do so these days.  So I won’t.  I love what I love and I won’t be ashamed to say so, but I know not all of it is Geek-cool, in the ironic hipster way.  When I wear a shirt with a cat/robot/zombie/Tardis on it, I wear it because I like it, not because I think it is ironic.  Irony be damned.

So why catopia?  Years ago when I was in grade school, I wrote a sweeping story called, “Beyond the Horizon.” It was about a girl who encounters a magical perfect place inhabited by cats.  It was a catopia (utopia +cats) called Catmandu (forgive me, I was nine.)

So now this is my perfect place in the big scary world of the Internet.  And we know the Internet is full of cats.