anniemiz

DVD: A Bit of Fry & Laurie

There's not many things better than a good laugh and British comedies are some of the funniest and silliest things to watch.  I love Hugh Laurie.  He's funny, talented and attractive in a goofy/dorky kind of way.  With the huge popularity of House, I feel compelled to comment on the show.  Unfortunately, while House is an interesting character, I think the show as a whole is lame.  Every episode I've watched seems to be a variation on the 'Oh, House, you're such a maverick!' theme.

BTW, his scruffy look for House?  Meh.  But let's focus on what I do like.  I loved him and Stephen Fry in Jeeves & Wooster.

 

Now, J&W is humorous, but it's usually not ROFLMAO funny.  Still, I enjoyed it tremendously and wished there had been more seasons.

Now, Blackadder is hysterical.  If you're unfamiliar with it, here's a pretty good description from Wikipedia:

Although each series is set in a different time era, all follow the fortunes (or rather, misfortunes) of Edmund Blackadder (played by Atkinson), who in each is a member of a British family dynasty present at many significant periods and places in British history. Although the character is quite unintelligent in the first series, he is increasingly clever and perceptive in subsequent generations (while decreasing in social status). Each Blackadder though is a cynical, cowardly opportunist concerned with maintaining and increasing his own status and fortunes, regardless of his surroundings. In each series, Blackadder is usually a cynical (almost modern) voice puncturing the pretensions and stupidity of those around him, and what might — through modern eyes — be seen as the more ludicrous and insane follies of history (from the medieval religious witch-hunts and the petty whims and insanities of various British monarchs to the bloodshed and horror of World War I).

The lives of each of the Blackadders are also entwined with their servants, all from the Baldrick family line (played by Tony Robinson). Each generation acts as the dogsbody to their respective Blackadder. They decrease in intelligence (and in personal hygiene standards) just as their masters' intellect increases. Each Blackadder and Baldrick are also saddled with the company of a dim-witted aristocrat whose presence Blackadder must somehow tolerate. This role was taken in the first two series by Lord Percy Percy (Tim McInnerny), in the third series by Prince George, Prince Regent, and in the fourth by Lieutenant George, the latter two played by Hugh Laurie.

I laughed so much watching this show.  I especially like Laurie as the exceedingly foppish and foolish Prince Regent.

There's an episode with a sidestory of the prince being without his manservant and so he ends up having to put his pants on himself.  That's a favorite, along with the one where he learns how to give a speech.  Prolly my fave episode is the one about The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Besides all these laughfests, there was A Bit of Fry & Laurie, a comedy sketch show.  I've just started watching it (on DVDs borrowed through the oft-recommended-here inter-library loan system) and sometimes I'm still laughing at one joke only to miss the next one.  They dress up a lot, which is always fun.  (Seems like a career requirement for British actors to dress up in drag at least once.  Works for me.)

Laurie is actually an accomplished musician and he quite rightly wastes this talent by performing horrible yet funny, i.e., horribly funny, songs.  In one episode he gives us the Cliffs Notes version of my hero, Bruce Springsteen; there's so little to it, yet it's so funny.

So, if you like to laugh at silly stuff, I recommend A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Blackadder.  Happy giggling!

Hamish MacBeth

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.

Yeah, But This Is Totally Different

After posting embarrassingly recently about the crassness of Valentine's Day-geared jewelry ads...I feel obliged to note that I received jewelry for Valentine's Day.  Chocolates, too.  I also feel obliged to somehow explain why me happily receiving jewelry for Valentine's Day (or for any other day, e.g., Tuesdays in general) is tewtally different from when hordes of my fellow culture-people give and/or receive jewelry on Valentine's Day.  So here goes.

Um....

Erm....

Welllllll....

In surfing the innertubes recently (and in private communication), I find that I am not the only one who abhors cheesy jewelry store ads, especially those aired around Valentine's Day.  'Every kiss begins with Kay.'  'He went to Jared!'  As an aside, I found the second one particularly perplexing bc it's trying to create the impression that everyone knows what this Jared place is.  And I'd never heard of it before, but I see from their store locator that they are spread out across the U.S.  I thought its cheese derived, in part, from the fact that it was trying to create that sense that everybody-has-heard-of-Jared before it was the case that everybody-has-heard-of-Jared.  Now I suppose I can't think that as reasonably, seeing that it may well be just me who hasn't heard of Jared.

Moving on...so how was Kevin's gift of a beautiful ring different from what I'd just recently blogged about:

And then I moved on to mentally bitching out the wedding industry and the Valentine's Day industry and the jewelry industry and the stupid-let's-pigeonhole-men-and-women-into-roles industry, etc.  etc.  E.g., I abhor Kay Jewelers commercials.  'Every kiss begins with K.'  I abhor the implication that if you give a woman jewelry, you'll get a kiss (and, by further implication, then some).  That really, really, really annoys me.

Well, for starters, we exchanged gifts at night, after dinner (and 'Lost', of course), and we went to sleep directly afterwards so the, uh, implied exchange did not occur.  And I'll have you know its non-occurrence was a conscious decision on both our parts precisely bc it would have played into patriarchal expectations and we both feel that playing into patriarchal expectations is an insult to our intelligence, humanity and profound love for one another.  It was, then, a socio-political-cultural-feminist statement.  (Not.  We were tired.)

Now, I will delay just a moment longer to note that Mileskit, who is watching this post appear on the screen as I type it, has got to be one of the cutest kittens ever in existence.  The 9999999999999999999999999999 p   oh noes!!1! Miles got control of the keyboard for a moment there.   The rapid-fire delete power of the backspace key seems particularly fascinating to him.

 

Annnnnnnnyway, my initial thought about why Kevin can give jewelry and I can accept it w/o feeling cheesed out whereas I find the avalanche of commercials that suggest doing just that to be insufferably cheesy...was that it's simply bco the mass market commercialization of the experience.  E.g., so often the featured item in such a commercial is somethind diamond-centric: diamond earrings (the classic option for those who want to give a diamond, but not the diamond, IYKWIM); a necklace with diamonds arrayed in the current popular shape (e.g., a circle of diamonds; enough w/that design already plskthxbai); a diamond bracelet (not as popular unless you're going for big bucks jewelry and giving a tennis bracelet); the awwwwwwwww-inducing diamond engagement ring.  It's the idea that every woman would go ape-shit over receiving something that every other woman would go ape-shit over receiving something that every other woman would go ape-shit over receiving something that every other woman...and by ape-shit I mean clasp one's hands to the sides of one's face and squeal in delight, gazing in wide wonder at the joy they had found: first, the awe-inspiring bauble; then, shifting to gaze upon the unbelievable guy who had the creativity to give one - you!  little old you! - diamonds!

Whereas, at home last night, Kevin gave me a ring that he knew I would like bc he knows that:

• I prefer colored gems to diamonds
• when diamonds are used, I prefer them as accents rather than the main thing (bc as accents I like the way they play up the colored gems)
• I prefer two-tone or silver to gold
• I like sets; the ring matches a necklace and pair of earrings he gave me on previous occasions.  Why do I like sets?  Bc I'm uncoordinated enough to appreciate not having to decide what looks good w/what.  If Garanimals for Adults existed, I'd wear that.

We interrupt this screed to note that Mileskit's cuteness is truly boundless; limitless; infinite.  Seriously.

The important thing is not that the above is what I like, i.e., it's not the particular things I like.  The important thing is that Kevin (like many people) knows his partner well enough to be able to select something she likes.  I.e., he needn't take his cue from Kay Jewelers or Jared or whichever stranger wishes to advise him on gift choice for his partner.

Oops, gotta go.  I recently read another blogger's post about time management wherein she mentions that she limits herself to 30 minutes of blogging per day.  Obviously, I don't blog that much, but I do surf a bit and I often find that my surfing doesn't really add much to my life.  So, since I do enjoy blogging and that enjoyment adds to my life, I've decided to trade surf time for blogging time and limit it to 30 minutes.  So I'm kinda cutting off this anti-commercialism rant.  I do have a few other thoughts on the subject, but (a) I think the one above is the main point and (b) so what?

As always, I am most interested in hearing what others think on this, especially if you find problems with my opinions, have another perspective on it, etc.

Now, I gotta go shower; have breakfast (besides my delicious Valentine's Day chocolates); head over to Pharmacy Creations to pick up Dolly's chicken flavored budesonide and leukeran; do some laundry so I have something clean to wear to Roma for dinner tonight (looking forward to heart-shaped ravioli!); tidy up the joint; and finally balance my checkbook.

Rerun

Thanks, Sawyer.  Via Feministe, Sawyer's nickname generator.  Mine is 'Rerun'.

And yeah, Sawyer is pretty, even when slightly dorkified by wearing some probably dead fellow passenger's plane crash-salvaged glasses.

Cat Linkage

Friday Ark #162 is here at The Modulator.

Carnival of the Cats #188 is here at Missy, KC and Bear.

Another favorite picture from I Can Has Cheezburger. 

I admit that, by not enjoying The View, I kinda feel like I'm letting down the sisterhood.  I've only seen bits of it and have never felt the need to let the remote linger over it very long.  The picture pretty much sums up what it all sounds like to me: blah, blah, blah.

And Barbara Walters is not aging gracefully.  I don't mean appearance-wise (btw, those super-soft focus cameras she used on 20/20 and her Oscar interviews are most annoying); I mean what-comes-out-of-her-mouth-wise.  I know, I know, she's a groundbreaking, legendary journalist.  I liked her better when she stuck to the news.  Not that anyone asked me.

Just So You Know

I recently changed the photo on the front page from this:

.

.

.

.

.

to this:

.

.

.

.

.

JIC it wasn't obvious to anyone dropping by that that's not my picture.  This is the fabulous Mrs. Slocombe character from Are You Being Served?, one of my fave British comedies.

.

Mrs. Slocombe - or Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Jennifer Rachel Yiddell Abergevenny Slocombe, if you wish to refer to her by her full name - shown here with a bright pink rinse.

.

.

.

.

.

.

And now with a green rinse.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Sporting a blue rinse (she's with Captain Peacock here).

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Light pink (shown with Miss Brahms).

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Again with Miss Brahms, but with a purple rinse..

.

.

.

.

More blue.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

As a brassy blonde.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Two tone Mrs. Slocombe.

.

.

.

.

The colors go on and on.  The British sure make some funny stuff.  Another time I'll have to chat about some of my other favorite British comedies, like Mr. Bean, Keeping Up Appearances, The Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted, Blackadder, etc.  When in England last year, I saw a show called 'Little Britain' that was absolutely hysterical.  They do love their drag over there.

Nothing Like A Good Alien Show

I've recently begun watching 'Invasion', a first season TV show about aliens inhabiting(?) people in a local community in FL.  I missed the first few episodes, but that hasn't mattered too much.  The aliens only inhabit people via the water, e.g., when the local sherriff was the only survivor of a plane that crashed into the water some years before, he came out different.  Recently, a hurricane came through that moistened and changed a lot more people.

***Spoiler alert***Don't read if you don't want to read spoilers***

So anyway, I wasn't sure what to make of this series at first, but I think I like it.  Even though that website calls it a sci-fi drama, the show makes fun of itself quite a bit, though with a straight face.  And that's kinda fun.

I also like that the characters in the show, as they learn about the aliens, come to accept the situation in a matter of minutes.  When Larkin thinks Russell, her husband, is having an affair with Mariel, his ex-wife and mom to their two kids, he tells her about how Tom, Mariel's new husband, and Mariel are both 'hybrids', i.e., part-alien.  Larkin (BTW, I find that name very annoying and distracting, and I dislike the character some just bco her stupid name.) goes from thinking they're having an affair to believing the alien business in about 5 or 6 lines of dialogue.  Keep that storyline moving.  And her summation in the final line of that segment is something along the lines of, 'This is terrible.  What are we going to do?'  How great is that?

Sherriff Tom is probably the best character.  I haven't figured out what he's all about, i.e., is he a good guy, is he a bad guy, is he just a poor, confused hybrid who just happens to be the sherriff, to whom everyone looks for guidance, when he's having a devil of a time trying to deal with his own uncomfortable genetic situation?  I'm starting to think he's gone to the dark side, but that could also be just what the creators want you to think.

Last night's episode was pretty good.  Dave, Russell's brother, who lives with him and the unfortunately named Larkin, was once attacked in the water, but escaped.  Dave and Russell told everyone, including Larkin, that it was an alligator, but they knew otherwise....  Anyhow, some creature turns up at the Dave/Russell/Larkin abode, scaring the crap out of Larkin and Rose (Russell and Mariel's young daughter; there's also an older son, Jesse, but he doesn't get too riled up about much).  Dave shoots The Thing and he, Russell and Larkin (who's now told the real nature of the attack on Dave) get a closer look at it.  The Thing looks an awful lot like Dave, though he's got no legs (he drags himself around by his hands), has some big, odd lumps on him, and pretty much looks like a sea hermit that fell on hard times.  Dave notices the likeness and starts to feel kinda sorry for The Thing.  The Thing also gives Larkin a photo of her and Dave from when they were little kids; Dave says this was his favorite picture of them.  Now Larkin gets all sentimental about The Thing.  The Theory is that TheThing is only a partial Dave bc Dave escaped the attack and so the natural order of alien habitation was disrupted.  Russell gets his first aid kit and tries to help The Thing, but to no avail.  *Sniff.*  They end up putting The Thing's body in a sack and tossing it in the water.  (Hmmm.  A  one-armed deputy got his arm back during the hurricane; I wonder if The Thing will be rejuvenated now that he's back in the water?)  Good stuff, good stuff.

I don't watch much TV and what I do watch isn't appointment TV, but this might become such.  Kevin also doesn't watch much TV, but he's become hooked on 'Lost', which is right before 'Invasion'.  Sometimes I watch 'Lost' with Kevin; that's how I got hooked on 'Invasion'.

This show reminds me how much I miss a good alien show.  I used to watch 'The X-Files', but that's long gone.  Then there was some show called, I think, 'Alien Nation' or something like that, and I kinda liked that, but, for some reason, I never got into a habit of watching it.  So I'm glad this one came along; I hope it makes it.  Bc I don't watch a lot of TV, it feels like a treat to find something I like to watch regularly.

Well, I gotta beat it outta here.

Yeah, I'm Talkin' to You

Hey, Sopranos fans, the show is filming in town today.  They've filmed here quite a few times already; they must like filming here.  Maybe the town just wreaks 'New Jersey'.  Who knows.

Apparently, there was a bit of a snafu in town-tv show relations at one point, due to an episode in which a character was murdered in Boonton's projects (our 'projects' equate to one apartment building).  Although the scene was not filmed in Boonton, it mentioned Boonton by name, which upset some people for suggesting that our town is violent.  Things have since been smoothed over.

Since I don't have HBO, I don't watch the show and so have never seen our town as seen on tv.  I drove through town a coupla months ago, when they were filming.  The Boonton Diner had become the 'Dartford Diner' of 'Dartford, NH'.  It's kind of fun seeing local places dressed up as something else.

Annnnyway, dear readers, if you see the episode for which they're filming today, you'll get to see where I work bc that's where they're filming.  Why they're filming scenes for a mob show in and around a library, I have no idea.  Maybe I'll have to find a way to see this episode and find out.  If you see it first, let me know!

Kathleen ♥ C-SPAN

Kathleen O'Donnell, a college housemate, sent an email saying she'd be on C-SPAN this morning.  As part of C-SPAN's 25th anniversary celebration, the channel held an essay contest.  Kathleen's essay on her love of C-SPAN won her a spot as a call in guest on the show.  It was nice to hear her distinctive voice again.

Kathleen, honey, you look great!!!