Yesterday I mentioned how patrons sometimes turn me on to stuff to read. Well, to watch also. I've read most of M.C. Beaton's Hamish MacBeth series. They're cozy murder mysteries, i.e., at least one person dies, but not too too heinously, and the mystery is solved over numerous cups of tea or drams of whiskey in the tiny hamlet of Lochdubh, located in the rough terrain of the Scottish highlands. I didn't realize there'd been a tv series done of it in the UK. Three seasons. I've watched the first two seasons and will get the third season DVD soon. PSA: I'm getting all these DVDs to watch FREE via interlibrary loan.
In the book, Hamish is tall, gangly, red-haired and fair-skinned, parsimonious and a terrible mooch. In the tv series, Hamish is played by Robert Carlyle so he's short (though still slender), dark-haired and neither cheap nor moochy. Actually, I should just say that if you've read the books, the tv show takes great liberties with the books. 'Priscilla' from the books is 'Alexandra' in the show. I don't like either character's role; a little back and forth is fine, but it's dragged on for too many books; hook up with her or move on already. (It's like Polly to Jim Qwilleran in The Cat Who books...I was so glad when Polly went off to France for a while. She's such a blah character...always so prim and proper...and tasteful...and demure...sounds like a stereotypical librarian. Oh wait! She is a librarian! Talk about living down to expectations.) I don't recall the book Hamish smoking, but lots of the show characters smoke. The show Hamish drinks much less tea and much more alcohol than the book Hamish.
Anyway, if you like the books the way they are you may be disappointed by the show. I was a little thrown at first by all the differences, but I do like the show. It's very much an ensemble show complete with quirky villagers. I do wish there were subtitles bc the accent is very thick and I often miss a bit of what's said.
This post very happily segues into one of my favorite topics: men in skirts. (And if you all haven't figured out by now that all this talk about a tv show is really just a clumsy and circuitous way to allow me to talk about men in skirts, then perhaps you ought to eat more fish.) The kilt. Look at that link to the Wikipedia page or Google images of kilts (ignore, if you can, the gratuitous pictures of bare bottomed men lifting up their kilts). Most men - of all shapes and sizes, the pictures will bear me out on this - look quite nice in kilts. And I'm sure they're comfortable and perhaps quite so for certain activities. According to Wikipedia (not exactly authoritative, I know), a US mail carrier proposed that the kilt be added to available uniform options (it was rejected). Apparently, there's something called the contemporary kilt that's become popular in recent years. It's also referred to as a 'male unbifurcated garment' (MUG), perhaps to avoid the term 'kilt' or 'skirt'. Here's a contemporary kilt:
And it's a cargo kilt! So you can put manly gear (like your cell phone) in the cargo pockets!
Now, if the MacBeth series is any indication, there is no hesitation to wearing kilts among the gentle menfolk of Lochdubh. In fact, the Doc Brown character wears them all the time. And in one episode where it's believed that MacBeth has gone into the mountains to follow the men who ran over and killed his beloved wee Jock...
...and the menfolk decide they must follow MacBeth and stop him from killing the ne'er do wells, what do you think they wear for an arduous trek in the mountains? Cargo pants? Pants with the legs stuffed into socks so that the narsty wee buggies don't bite their delicate legs? The Northface gear? L.L. Bean uber-technical pants? Nooooo, they wear kilts! With wool socks and hiking boots! Tough clothes for tough jobs, those kilts.
Well, I have to go to work and I honestly don't know how to subtly end with an impartial argument for men to wear kilts/skirts/MUGs, so I guess I'll just end with that blatant admission.
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