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First twenty pieces that came up on my shuffle (Amazon Cloud, not iTunes). I didn't cheat at all.

1) Uma Historia De Ifa by Virginia Rodrigues
2) This Plum is Too Ripe from The Fantasticks (nb: I listened to the original cast; this is from a 2006 revival)
3) Pavanas by Simeon Simov
4) Shelter by The Beach Boys
5) Bluesology by Modern Jazz Quartet
6) Straight no Chaser by Thelonius Monk
7) Wasted Time by My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult
8) Concierto de Aranjuez III: Allegro gentile performed by Zoltan Tokos, Budapest Strings (wish the Paco de Lucia version had come up)
9) Come Heavy Sleep by Sting
10) Petite Suite (1889): Menuet (Debussy) by Dag Achatz and Yukie Nagai
11) Prayer in Passing by Anoushka Shankar
12) Twelve Etudes for Piano L136: Pour les Octaves (Debussy) by Noriko Ogawa
13) An American in Paris (Gershwin) by Oscar Levant
14) The Woman I Love by Jason Mraz
15) Symphony 104 in D Major (London) III: Menuetto Allegretto (Haydn) by Vienna State Opera Orchestra
16) Power of Two by Indigo Girls
17) Thanks/Prayer by En Vogue
18) We're Okay from Rent
19) Movie Magg by Paul McCartney (Rockabilly)
20) Quartet No. 59 (Rider) in G minor (Haydn) by The Griller String Quartet

I'm more than a little surprised that I got so much classical without any Mahler. I would have expected at least one Glee song or one acapella, but none came up. Also, I have more Spanish and Portuguese music than French. It's nice that the two major Jazz pieces are such classics, but I would have expected more Jazz than Classical to come up.

Also, I want to remember I have Indigo Girls and Anoushka Shankar because they're awesome and deserve to be listened to more.

ETA: Links were added where I could find them easily.

Since I just put in the request for topics, I'm choosing my own today.

There is an article in today's Guardian about boredom, or, perhaps more accurately, about being bored by certain art forms within certain contexts. Opera is the particular form mentioned, but there's a certain branching out, both in the article and the comments to other things: long movies, Shakespeare, certain novels. (I admit, I still haven't gotten through bloody Ivanhoe.) According to the Google Doodle, it's also Maria Callas birthday (and I know it's my Dad's 81st).
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I was given my letter by tx_cronopio.

Women -- I have been lucky that most of the women in my life have been loving and supportive.

Wood -- counters, floors, bushes, trees, spoons -- I love wood both while it's growing and when it's being used later. Running the palm of my hand over wood grain comforts me, providing the wood is sanded smooth.

Water -- I love the pure sensuality of swimming. I miss having a comfortable bathtub in which to take a nightly bath. I adore the scent of fresh water from the rivers, and like the slippery feel of ocean water lapping over my feet on a summer beach. When I'm thirsty, fresh water quenches and soothes me. Cook it for soups and stews and pasta and...

Waft -- Scent, and its sister flavor, are such an important part of my life. The surprises of perfumes can give me joy, or, occasionally, headaches. Walking through the fruit section of the local farmer's market lets me know what's in season just from the scents. The peaches may look pretty in late July, but most of them aren't ripe yet, but the raspberries are heady.

Walking -- It's my second favorite use of my body. I miss the longer walks I had when my office was on H Street NE, and I'm trying to expand my daily walks again (my only New Year's "resolution"). Living within walking distance of the National Mall was a huge factor in taking my apartment (sight unseen from an internet listing) when I moved here.

Washington -- I'm cheating a little with this. I identify myself as a District resident and make the distinction that Washington is the federal city. But I love my city so much. There are things I miss, like the scent of lilacs in Boston in May, but DC feels like home from the slang on the streets to the monumentality of the federal architecture. This is what home feels like.

If anyone else wants a letter let me know.

I know I've missed a few days.

I didn't see the pilots to many of "my" shows until well after I started watching the series. This is certainly true for Beauty and the Beast, Wiseguy, Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X Files, Stargate SG-1, Criminal Minds, and Forever Knight.

VR.5, as preposterous as the premise was, the pilot captured me. I felt like I'd seen a movie instead of the forty-five minutes of an "hour" of television.

The 4400 was a little different. I saw it from the very beginning, but it was during the intense one day marathon leading up to the premier of the second season. I think being able to mainline a show through a marathon or borrowed DVDs or Hulu gives a person a different idea of a series and the impact of the pilot is diminished.

I'll keep it to the top five. Seriously, ONE Favorite character of either sex? The person who came up with this meme obviously wasn't a Gemini.

5) Frank McPike -- Wiseguy
He was described by other characters as scrawny, wimpy-looking, and unfeeling. In reality, he was stalwart, loyal, and terrifying when pissed. There was a scene during the garment district arc when a six-foot four mook with a law degree grabs his arm and tries to threaten him subtly. McPike pulls himself up to his full five-foot eight-ish and says quietly, "Do you know you have your hand on me?" Mook backs off, smartly.

He's a bureaucrat who believes in the system, but doesn't always respect the men who've been made his bosses. He finds lying painful, but will do it, mostly by omission, if it's necessary. Between them, McPike and the Lifeguard, make life bearable for the men undercover. He's a remarkable character, even if he does buy his clothes at "Sid's Suit Shack."

4) Marco Pacella -- The 4400
We meet him in the second episode. He's young, but he's in charge of the the Theory Department, a small group in the basement whose office is nerd central. He has a crush on Diana, but as we get to know both characters, it's clear that he has no illusions about her. He breaks the law for her because she's convinced it's a higher moral right to do so. All of that makes him sound like a doormat, but he isn't. He's more like an old-fashioned Lancelot for whom love is the greatest duty of all. There's a dream sequence where he thinks he's dying and his last act on Earth is to drag himself closer to Diana and her daughter; the posture is protective of them. I really adore Marco.

3) Vincent -- Beauty and the Beast
He understands pain. He's mature and wise, loves poetry. If he laughed more, he'd be higher on the list. The fact that he's not fully human is a mere incidental, honestly. He's the protector writ large, but I respect the fact that he respects Catherine. If she asks for his advice, he'll give it, but there's never any assumption that she'll take it.

2) Doctor Spencer Reid -- Criminal Minds
Yes, I have a crush on the actor. And somewhere along the line, Doctor Reid acquired some of his actor's talents -- like sleight of hand -- but Reid is a performance and a really wonderful one considering it's the actor's first major role. It says something about the character and the man who plays him that we can believe he had multiple Ph.D.s before the age of twenty-one. He's able to empathize with others to a startling degree, although all the characters on Criminal Minds seem to share that trait.

Reid's the designated whump character, but the character rises above it.

1) Doctor Daniel Jackson -- The various Stargate iterations
I'm in love with Daniel Jackson. I've never been able to stand James Spader, but I loved Daniel Jackson in the movie. I squeed a lot during the film, which I saw on the opening night in the theater. My sister was less enamored.

Nearly a decade later, I find the show on Sci-Fi. And it's a different actor, but Daniel is Daniel. I think Shanks is a fine actor. I enjoy him in most things I've seen, even some of the cheesier "the-kids-need-new-shoes" cheap made for Sci-Fi movies he's done. But while I could see spending an evening shooting the breeze with Shanks, I could see spending a lifetime learning with Daniel. The character is good. Like Spencer Reid, we have to believe he has more than average brilliance, and Shanks makes it credible.

Daniel's never been a coward or a wimp, though I'm always amazed at the directors and producers who think he is. I can only assume they've never actually seen the show they work for.

Heroes, a thousand times over.

I stopped watching near the beginning of the third season. When the third season came around, I don't know what happened, but I really wasn't enjoying the show and halfway through the two-part eclipse episode, I thought, "I don't need this." I never watched another episode.

The first season, I absolutely could not miss an episode. Some were less good, but none were outright bad. Moreover, they'd plotted out their online content so it truly complemented the episodes without being necessary for the fans who weren't as involved. When Nathan swooped down to save the day in "How to Stop an Exploding Man" it was the culmination of all 22 episodes. It was the perfect bookend to his flying up to keep Peter from dying in the first episode. Had Tim Kring had the guts to follow through on his original idea -- that each season of Heroes be newly cast with one or two characters (probably Sylar and Mohinder the most) from earlier seasons crossing in and out occasionally -- I think the series could have been great. Instead, it became a watered down soap opera with superpowers.

In its own way, as satisfying as it was to open Season 2 with Peter rescuing Nathan, the mistake came when their sacrifice became something they could recover from. I love Pasdar. He tried to make sense of some inherently nonsensical scenes and dialogue and succeeded more often than failed, but magic blood and the writer's attempts to recapture the lightning in the bottle of the first season meant that his talent, and that of everyone else, was ultimately wasted.

For me, the scenes that work as "Best" for television are the ones that pay off the investment in time and mythology building. Joss has some excellent ones in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including Xander's Dream sequence in Restless, but the sense of satisfaction is very complex.

The first scene like that I remember is from Beauty and the Beast and involves Paracelsus, the hero's journey Vincent is on, and a lot of Freud. Really, without context, I can't explain the emotional thrill this moment of nearly pure evil gave me.

So, instead, I'm going to talk about two scenes that were the best ever because they sucked me into a new show and in one case, led me to good friends and the freedom of fandom.

I love The 4400. It was everything Heroes wanted to be and did it on half the budget. I never planned to watch it, but the opening scene has a bunch of people in a government research area panicking over a comet that's just appeared and is about to collide with the Earth. A woman comes in as random techie says, "The comet just changed course."

The woman, Diana Skouris, answers, "If it changed course, it isn't a comet."

I was hooked for several reasons. One is, even though the exchange is moderately predictable, many scripts would have let the dramatic idea of the comet changing course either stand or take them to commercial for added impact. Too many people don't understand even the basics of how heavenly bodies work, and the writer could have given us bad science. The second reason is the fact that the person making the correction -- the scientist -- is a woman. It's hard to find women scientists who aren't medical doctors, and, while we find out Diana is a biologist, she's a researcher with the CDC who has been pulled into the enforcement/administrative side of things.

The other... after Buffy one night, there was nothing on. I forget why or what we didn't like on the WB, but Lucy and I (and possibly the professor) flipped through channels and were caught by a bald young man with an apple in his hand talking to a very healthy looking even younger man. It was the second episode of Smallville, and Omar G. at TWoP described it as the "Gayest Look Ever." Lucy, I, and the rest of the household made it appointment television. When Lucy and the Professor left the household, one of our new housemates was jerminating whom I'd met through fandom. When the house was sold a couple of years later, I ended up living with eanja whom I met through the fandom.

How many of you on my friends' list are people I know through Smallville? I love you all and I know you because Lex and an apple captured me in a "Best Scene (to hook someone) Ever."

Two quick PS
The first: If you haven't heard about perclexed and you're an old Smallville buddy, well, a fire, a job loss and some other things mean she's in need right now. Find out more: http://littledrop.livejournal.com/531521.html

The second: I know I'm a day behind on this. I was at work until 10 last night. 9 tonight. Tomorrow may be the same. I'll catch up over the weekend.

Beauty and the Beast -- "Though Lovers Be Lost"

This two parter evolved from the opposite situation of AJ Cook. The fans saved the show, but Linda Hamilton, who was pregnant, did not want to return. Her departure set up the arc for season 3, which was never completed. The death they gave her was bad. The implication that Vincent might have raped her was bad, though that was clarified as the episode went on.

I'm rare. I actually liked season 3. No one forgot about Catherine. Her death made the three men who loved her work together to try to find her killer and get back her child. That theme of Catherine, even in death, bringing out the best in people was a lovely coda. And the scenes with Joe, Vincent, and Elliott working together, however brief they ended up being, moved me.

But this episode nearly made me quit watching, not because I was mad about Linda Hamilton's departure, as so many fans of the series were, but because I found her kidnapping and execution after her child's birth to be so triggery. This show never flinched from the violence of city life, but this was both fantasy violence and realistic violence at the same time -- and it was too much.

Seinfeld.

I saw one episode, or at least a major part of one, sometime in the first season. I thought I wouldn't invite these people into my living room in real life, why would I want to see them on my TV screen.

A couple of years later, it's a phenomenon. Everyone I know watches it (obviously pre-SCA where few people I know even own TVs) and I try again. George's fiancee dies and everyone thinks it's funny. I threw up in my mouth a little.

Anyway, I remember going to Waterstone's Bookstore in Boston before it burned down -- and someday I'll have to think through the whole "why I might not use Amazon as much if there were still Waterstone's in the US" thing -- and being shocked at how deserted it and all of Newbury Street were. It wasn't until I got home that I realized the series finale of Seinfeld was on, so no one was out.

I don't have one. I enjoyed White Collar, but if I missed it, I wasn't bothered. Fringe, which I adore with an unreasoning passion, started the year before, so it doesn't count.