Everybody has one household chore they genuinely don't mind doing. What's yours?
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Delurk!
Just a reminder that I'm doing Delurking Week here on Byzantium's Shores, so go ahead and delurk, if you please, and leave a comment! Anonymous comments are open (but I'll be closing them again on Friday evening or Saturday morning, because holy crap, the comments spambots are agressively trying to establish a beachhead here now that I'm temporarily opening the anonymous stuff).
Delurk, folks! Do it for the children! Do it for America!
UPDATE: Sorry, folks, but relentless spambots (I've deleted at least twenty spambot attempts today) and one irritating troll compel me to close anonymous comments early. Deleting spam is not how I want to spend my day. Comments from registered users are still welcome, though!
Delurk, folks! Do it for the children! Do it for America!
UPDATE: Sorry, folks, but relentless spambots (I've deleted at least twenty spambot attempts today) and one irritating troll compel me to close anonymous comments early. Deleting spam is not how I want to spend my day. Comments from registered users are still welcome, though!
True Geek Confessions
A while back, Jason Bennion and Michael May did a thing called "True Geek Confessions", which poses this query:
They both break this down as follows: Something you hate that everyone else loves; Something you love that everyone else hates; Something you don't get that everyone else adores; and Something that everybody has seen or heard or read that you haven't. So, here are my replies for each category:
Something I hate that everybody else loves. There's a lot of such stuff, I suppose. LOST, for one. I tried, and I just couldn't get there. I didn't like any of the characters, and after watching five or six episodes, I wasn't sufficiently hooked to stick around for what I deemed to be a likely-unsatisfying wrap-up. I could also cite Twilight, but that's got more than enough detractors that I don't think it properly falls into "everybody else loves it" territory.
For years, I would have listed The Beatles here. Thankfully, I got better.
Something I love that everybody else hates. Well, that's easy: the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Yes, it's imperfect, at times, deeply so. But I've never understood the vicious loathing of those films, and I really hate that they have become geek shorthand for "something which well and truly blows".
Also? The Pirates of the Caribbean movies that came after the first one. Maybe they're not quite in "everybody hates them" territory, but I like them all a whole lot, even if numbers two and three could have used one more trip through the script editing stage and, frankly, a more charismatic actor cast as the main villain (not Bill Nighy – he's awesome! -- the other guy).
I don't love Spider-man 3 -- it's really a mess – but I don't hate it as much as everybody else does, either. Ditto Green Lantern.
Something I don't get that everyone else seems to: Wow, I can list a whole ton of stuff here! A few examples:
Batman. I like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but in general, the character doesn't do a whole lot for me. I refuse to believe that he would last more than a few minutes in a fight with Superman, for example.
Quite a few music acts: The Beastie Boys, Nirvana, virtually the entire grunge or alt-rock era. I remember how popular this stuff was, and none of it made so much as a dent on me.
Teevee shows: The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire. I read descriptions of these and have zero desire to explore them, no matter how lauded they are.
Vince Vaughn. I don't really get him. I liked him in Anchorman, but that's a small role. I don't buy his ability to carry a movie (and I just plain didn't think Wedding Crashers was any good).
And, frankly, I'm wondering if I shouldn't go ahead and list George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire here. I don't think I have a failure to 'get' it, but I sure don't think it's anywhere near as good as everybody else.
Something that you would think I'm familiar with and yet am not: There's a lot of such stuff I could list here, mainly because I tend to be really scattershot with my approach to pop culture, rarely troubling to explore what's popular at the time it's popular. But there is some stuff that's been highly regarded for sufficiently long that you'd think I would have explored it by now. Examples:
The Paul Simon album Graceland (which Roger just blogged about). I have heard nothing but praise for this album and citations of its enormous influence on music since its release...and yet I have never heard it.
Every Steven Spielberg movie since Saving Private Ryan. This, frankly, shocks me to consider it. I need to get off my arse on these.
Any Kevin Smith film after Clerks. What the heck is wrong with me?!
Teevee shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Farscape; Doctor Who; and so on. I'm working on it, folks. I'm already watching the Battlestar Galactica reboot show (and loving it, but that's another blog post).
I've only read one book in the Wheel of Time series and didn't think it was awful, but not good enough to keep reading that series. I've never read anything by China Mieville, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman is pretty much a staple on my "Wow, I gotta read that someday" list.
So, what are your True Geek Confessions?
What is something you absolutely hate or love or just don't get, or maybe it's something you have never even seen or read. What is your deepest, darkest geek confession?
They both break this down as follows: Something you hate that everyone else loves; Something you love that everyone else hates; Something you don't get that everyone else adores; and Something that everybody has seen or heard or read that you haven't. So, here are my replies for each category:
Something I hate that everybody else loves. There's a lot of such stuff, I suppose. LOST, for one. I tried, and I just couldn't get there. I didn't like any of the characters, and after watching five or six episodes, I wasn't sufficiently hooked to stick around for what I deemed to be a likely-unsatisfying wrap-up. I could also cite Twilight, but that's got more than enough detractors that I don't think it properly falls into "everybody else loves it" territory.
For years, I would have listed The Beatles here. Thankfully, I got better.
Something I love that everybody else hates. Well, that's easy: the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Yes, it's imperfect, at times, deeply so. But I've never understood the vicious loathing of those films, and I really hate that they have become geek shorthand for "something which well and truly blows".
Also? The Pirates of the Caribbean movies that came after the first one. Maybe they're not quite in "everybody hates them" territory, but I like them all a whole lot, even if numbers two and three could have used one more trip through the script editing stage and, frankly, a more charismatic actor cast as the main villain (not Bill Nighy – he's awesome! -- the other guy).
I don't love Spider-man 3 -- it's really a mess – but I don't hate it as much as everybody else does, either. Ditto Green Lantern.
Something I don't get that everyone else seems to: Wow, I can list a whole ton of stuff here! A few examples:
Batman. I like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but in general, the character doesn't do a whole lot for me. I refuse to believe that he would last more than a few minutes in a fight with Superman, for example.
Quite a few music acts: The Beastie Boys, Nirvana, virtually the entire grunge or alt-rock era. I remember how popular this stuff was, and none of it made so much as a dent on me.
Teevee shows: The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire. I read descriptions of these and have zero desire to explore them, no matter how lauded they are.
Vince Vaughn. I don't really get him. I liked him in Anchorman, but that's a small role. I don't buy his ability to carry a movie (and I just plain didn't think Wedding Crashers was any good).
And, frankly, I'm wondering if I shouldn't go ahead and list George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire here. I don't think I have a failure to 'get' it, but I sure don't think it's anywhere near as good as everybody else.
Something that you would think I'm familiar with and yet am not: There's a lot of such stuff I could list here, mainly because I tend to be really scattershot with my approach to pop culture, rarely troubling to explore what's popular at the time it's popular. But there is some stuff that's been highly regarded for sufficiently long that you'd think I would have explored it by now. Examples:
The Paul Simon album Graceland (which Roger just blogged about). I have heard nothing but praise for this album and citations of its enormous influence on music since its release...and yet I have never heard it.
Every Steven Spielberg movie since Saving Private Ryan. This, frankly, shocks me to consider it. I need to get off my arse on these.
Any Kevin Smith film after Clerks. What the heck is wrong with me?!
Teevee shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Farscape; Doctor Who; and so on. I'm working on it, folks. I'm already watching the Battlestar Galactica reboot show (and loving it, but that's another blog post).
I've only read one book in the Wheel of Time series and didn't think it was awful, but not good enough to keep reading that series. I've never read anything by China Mieville, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman is pretty much a staple on my "Wow, I gotta read that someday" list.
So, what are your True Geek Confessions?
Monday, June 04, 2012
Unlurkify, you lurking lurkifiers!
I haven't done this in a while, so I'm declaring this to be Delurking Week here at Byzantium's Shores. So, if you're a lurker, drop a comment! From now until Friday, I will enable anonymous comments. (Or, at least, I'll try to do so, if I can navigate the new Blogger's comments settings correctly. That's an adventure in itself...just ditching Blogger's new, and awful, CAPTCHAs was a job and a half.)
So, reveal yourselves, lurkers! Say something, even if it's just to tell me what a pea-brain I am. I can take it. I think.
So, reveal yourselves, lurkers! Say something, even if it's just to tell me what a pea-brain I am. I can take it. I think.
Charting the Progress
Well, May wasn't a spectacular month for writing, in terms of actually generating word count. After finishing the first draft of Princesses In SPACE! (not the actual title) in April, I moved on to a historical fantasy notion that's been knocking about my head for a while. The book -- The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy (not the actual title) -- is intended to be something of a rollicking swashbuckler. I'm looking for a Dumas-type tale, with secret identities and allegiances, old enmities, and swords and pistols. And a lighthouse. That's the plan, anyway.
However, in May, I actually produced word count on less than ten days. That's bad. No way to sugar-coat that; just downright bad. The rule, "Never a day without lines"? Yeah. I bit it hard on that one.
Not that it was an entire waste. I spent much of the first half of the month doing stuff like this:
That's the (unfinished) map of my fantasy world in which all this rollicking swashbucklery is supposed to take place. I went through, I think, four drafts of this map before I got it somewhat 'right'; I had to move towns around and redraw coastlines and add geographic features and whatnot. This is part of the job that I don't much care for; my approach tends to be to make up details when I need a detail to be made up, and then add it to the canon afterwards. But this approach wasn't entirely working; I had to at least get some kind of detail going from which to work. So I got that done.
So, what now? Continue writing Lighthouse Boy (not the actual title), and then, in mid-July, start working my way through a second draft of Princesses In SPACE! (not the actual title). And who knows? Maybe by the end of the year I'll have an actual title for both these stories!
However, in May, I actually produced word count on less than ten days. That's bad. No way to sugar-coat that; just downright bad. The rule, "Never a day without lines"? Yeah. I bit it hard on that one.
Not that it was an entire waste. I spent much of the first half of the month doing stuff like this:
That's the (unfinished) map of my fantasy world in which all this rollicking swashbucklery is supposed to take place. I went through, I think, four drafts of this map before I got it somewhat 'right'; I had to move towns around and redraw coastlines and add geographic features and whatnot. This is part of the job that I don't much care for; my approach tends to be to make up details when I need a detail to be made up, and then add it to the canon afterwards. But this approach wasn't entirely working; I had to at least get some kind of detail going from which to work. So I got that done.
So, what now? Continue writing Lighthouse Boy (not the actual title), and then, in mid-July, start working my way through a second draft of Princesses In SPACE! (not the actual title). And who knows? Maybe by the end of the year I'll have an actual title for both these stories!
Sentential Links
Links! But first, apparently Kristen Stewart blinks!
Hokey-dokey then....
:: It's not that I hate the others; not even the prequels. They're fine for what they are. It's just that as the Star Wars universe expands, the impact of that first film diminishes. I don't love them like I love that first movie. In fact, I've grown to think of them as non-canonical. I wish I'd known I had that option when I was 13 and rebelling against the idea that Darth Vader is Luke's dad. I still think that's a bogus story development. (Interesting take! Personally, Vader being Luke's father is my favorite story development in the entire saga.)
:: This was the first time a private company did what has previously been the sole province of national governments: they designed, built, and successfully demonstrated both a booster rocket and a functioning, useful spacecraft. Yes, NASA provided some seed money and the parameters to follow, but SpaceX, and in particular the company's founder Elon Musk, essentially did this on their own. And while there are several other private companies aiming for the same goal, SpaceX got there first. A plucky little company comprising fewer than 2,000 employees, mostly enthusiastic young people from what I can see, has brought us into the age of commercial space travel. It's a great story. (It is a great story, and one I'm glad to see unfolding. I do hope for some caution against reading this development as another Grand Triumph of the Market Where Government Failed, because without a government to do the blunt-force to get there first, the market never would have gone there at all. Still, it's time for governments to get out of Low-Earth Orbit and start moving out farther, and let the Market follow as it will.)
:: There are what? 7 billion people in the world now? Statistically speaking, there has to be at least one person in the world who hates puppies, Harry Potter, chocolate, AND bacon. *shudders* (This person must be found. And eliminated. The existence of such a person threatens everything that is good about the human species! New blog to me, btw...by Beth Revis, author of a SF book for teens called Across the Universe, which I just started reading. The first 40 pages are pretty good...but I'm keenly interested in the market for which this book is written, because it just might be the target market for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title).)
:: Ever wondered how big the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos are compared to the real-life USA and UK? (I was actually planning to figure this out for myself, given that in A Dance with Dragons, GRRM provides a specific 300-mile distance between two points on the Westeros map, but now I see I don't have to. Huzzah! Basically, while Westeros is significantly skinnier than the continental USA, a journey from the Wall to the southern coast of Dorne would be roughly equivalent to going from San Francisco to Boston.)
:: There’s no magic curtain you get to hide behind on the Internet, people. Think twice about just how public you are if you don’t want to embarrass yourself. And when you do, hey, you have to do what we all did in high school and we embarrassed ourselves: live with it.
:: Instead, as we’ve seen so often before, we recognize that there seem to be no boundaries as to what people seem to have been given permission online. (These last two cover similar ground. I'll be interested to see what Presidential campaigns are like in, say, fifteen or twenty years, so that candidates have to answer for their blogs and whatnot. It'll be interesting to see some person who ran a rabid war-blog in 2003 running for office.)
:: So I’m giving us credit for helping out Santana by not having been there. (Heh. Finally getting that first no-hitter...maybe I just don't get it because I'm a Pirates fan and they've got a few no-hitters, but it strikes me as odd that such an event could be as big a monkey on the back of a franchise as the commentary has indicated since Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in Mets history the other night. I mean, a no-hitter is awesome and all, but...well, would you trade a World Series win for a no-hitter in some regular season? I sure wouldn't. The Mets have two World Series wins to their credit. Was a no-hitter that big a thing? Or was it just that it became a big thing once the game reached, say, the seventh inning and Mets fans all over realized what might be happening?)
More next week!
Hokey-dokey then....
:: It's not that I hate the others; not even the prequels. They're fine for what they are. It's just that as the Star Wars universe expands, the impact of that first film diminishes. I don't love them like I love that first movie. In fact, I've grown to think of them as non-canonical. I wish I'd known I had that option when I was 13 and rebelling against the idea that Darth Vader is Luke's dad. I still think that's a bogus story development. (Interesting take! Personally, Vader being Luke's father is my favorite story development in the entire saga.)
:: This was the first time a private company did what has previously been the sole province of national governments: they designed, built, and successfully demonstrated both a booster rocket and a functioning, useful spacecraft. Yes, NASA provided some seed money and the parameters to follow, but SpaceX, and in particular the company's founder Elon Musk, essentially did this on their own. And while there are several other private companies aiming for the same goal, SpaceX got there first. A plucky little company comprising fewer than 2,000 employees, mostly enthusiastic young people from what I can see, has brought us into the age of commercial space travel. It's a great story. (It is a great story, and one I'm glad to see unfolding. I do hope for some caution against reading this development as another Grand Triumph of the Market Where Government Failed, because without a government to do the blunt-force to get there first, the market never would have gone there at all. Still, it's time for governments to get out of Low-Earth Orbit and start moving out farther, and let the Market follow as it will.)
:: There are what? 7 billion people in the world now? Statistically speaking, there has to be at least one person in the world who hates puppies, Harry Potter, chocolate, AND bacon. *shudders* (This person must be found. And eliminated. The existence of such a person threatens everything that is good about the human species! New blog to me, btw...by Beth Revis, author of a SF book for teens called Across the Universe, which I just started reading. The first 40 pages are pretty good...but I'm keenly interested in the market for which this book is written, because it just might be the target market for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title).)
:: Ever wondered how big the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos are compared to the real-life USA and UK? (I was actually planning to figure this out for myself, given that in A Dance with Dragons, GRRM provides a specific 300-mile distance between two points on the Westeros map, but now I see I don't have to. Huzzah! Basically, while Westeros is significantly skinnier than the continental USA, a journey from the Wall to the southern coast of Dorne would be roughly equivalent to going from San Francisco to Boston.)
:: There’s no magic curtain you get to hide behind on the Internet, people. Think twice about just how public you are if you don’t want to embarrass yourself. And when you do, hey, you have to do what we all did in high school and we embarrassed ourselves: live with it.
:: Instead, as we’ve seen so often before, we recognize that there seem to be no boundaries as to what people seem to have been given permission online. (These last two cover similar ground. I'll be interested to see what Presidential campaigns are like in, say, fifteen or twenty years, so that candidates have to answer for their blogs and whatnot. It'll be interesting to see some person who ran a rabid war-blog in 2003 running for office.)
:: So I’m giving us credit for helping out Santana by not having been there. (Heh. Finally getting that first no-hitter...maybe I just don't get it because I'm a Pirates fan and they've got a few no-hitters, but it strikes me as odd that such an event could be as big a monkey on the back of a franchise as the commentary has indicated since Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in Mets history the other night. I mean, a no-hitter is awesome and all, but...well, would you trade a World Series win for a no-hitter in some regular season? I sure wouldn't. The Mets have two World Series wins to their credit. Was a no-hitter that big a thing? Or was it just that it became a big thing once the game reached, say, the seventh inning and Mets fans all over realized what might be happening?)
More next week!
Sunday, June 03, 2012
"Ah, speaking of crusty New England relics!"
Actress Kathryn Joosten has died, which is a sad thing. She was one of those people who can show up in a teevee show or movie and make me smile immediately, with the thought, "Hey, something nifty is about to be said!" And that's because she was, in turn, one of those actors/actresses who just seemed to wind up with the best lines. She might only appear in one scene and get two or three lines, but damned if they weren't often the best lines.
Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: OK, this thing is already viral, so you've almost certainly seen it. But if you haven't, witness one of the finer acts of marriage proposing in a long time.
It's thirty-one years since I last saw Portland, OR, but wow, do I still miss it.
(My favorite thing about this? The punning of 'dancing juice' and 'dancing Jews'.)
:: This photo (stolen from Tumblr) confirms, on several levels, that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is, in fact, 12.
:: Well, I have a new contender for Worst Thing I Have Ever Seen. There was a disturbing black-comedy book some years ago called 101 Uses For a Dead Cat, which was a set of cartoons depicting...exactly that. I have no idea if this (video not in English, but it doesn't matter) was one of the 101 uses. Nor do I wish to know. I just...you know what, on this one, my descriptive powers are utterly defied. The gob, she is smacked!
More next week. Maybe. That last one has me rethinking this whole enterprise.
:: OK, this thing is already viral, so you've almost certainly seen it. But if you haven't, witness one of the finer acts of marriage proposing in a long time.
It's thirty-one years since I last saw Portland, OR, but wow, do I still miss it.
(My favorite thing about this? The punning of 'dancing juice' and 'dancing Jews'.)
:: This photo (stolen from Tumblr) confirms, on several levels, that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is, in fact, 12.
:: Well, I have a new contender for Worst Thing I Have Ever Seen. There was a disturbing black-comedy book some years ago called 101 Uses For a Dead Cat, which was a set of cartoons depicting...exactly that. I have no idea if this (video not in English, but it doesn't matter) was one of the 101 uses. Nor do I wish to know. I just...you know what, on this one, my descriptive powers are utterly defied. The gob, she is smacked!
More next week. Maybe. That last one has me rethinking this whole enterprise.
Friday, June 01, 2012
Film Quote Friday
In honor of Morgan Freeman, who turns 75 today, here's a bit from my favorite thing he's done. (Which is probably everybody's favorite thing he's done, but...)
Here's the first scene where Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) starts to bend prison life to his will, manipulating prison guard Vernon Hadley (Clancy Brown), with Red Redding (Freeman) narrating. (Via.)
Here's the first scene where Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) starts to bend prison life to his will, manipulating prison guard Vernon Hadley (Clancy Brown), with Red Redding (Freeman) narrating. (Via.)
HADLEY
...so this shithead lawyer calls
long distance from Texas, and he
says, Byron Hadley? I say, yeah. He
says, sorry to inform you, but your
brother just died.
YOUNGBLOOD
Damn, Byron. Sorry to hear that.
HADLEY
I ain't. He was an asshole. Run off
years ago, family ain't heard of him
since. Figured him for dead anyway.
So this lawyer prick says, your
brother died a rich man. Oil wells
and shit, close to a million bucks.
Jesus, it's frigging incredible how
lucky some assholes can get.
TROUT
A million bucks? Jeez-Louise! You
get any of that?
HADLEY
Thirty five thousand. That's what
he left me.
TROUT
Dollars? Holy shit, that's great!
Like winnin' a lottery...
(off Hadley's shitty look)
...ain't it?
HADLEY
Dumbshit. What do you figger the
government's gonna do to me? Take a
big wet bite out of my ass, is what.
TROUT
Oh. Hadn't thought of that.
HADLEY
Maybe leave me enough to buy a new
car with. Then what happens? You
pay tax on the car. Repairs and
maintenance. Goddamn kids pesterin'
you to take 'em for a ride...
MERT
And drive it, if they're old enough.
HADLEY
That's right, wanting to drive it,
wanting to learn on it, f'Chrissake!
Then at the end of the year, if you
figured the tax wrong, they make
you pay out of your own pocket.
Uncle Sam puts his hand in your
shirt and squeezes your tit till
it's purple. Always get the short
end. That's a fact.
(spits over the side)
Some brother. Shit.
The prisoners keep spreading tar, eyes on their work.
HEYWOOD
Poor Byron. What terrible fuckin'
luck. Imagine inheriting thirty
five thousand dollars.
RED
Crying shame. Some folks got it
awful bad.
Red glances over -- and is shocked to see Andy standing up,
listening to the guards talk.
RED
Hey, you nuts? Keep your eyes on
your pail!
Andy tosses his Padd in the bucket and strolls toward Hadley.
RED
Andy! Come back! Shit!
SNOOZE
What's he doing?
FLOYD
Gettin' himself killed.
RED
God damn it...
HEYWOOD
Just keep spreadin' tar...
The guards stiffen at Andy's approach. Youngblood's hand goes
to his holster. The tower guards CLICK-CLACK their rifle
bolts. Hadley turns, stupefied to find Andy there.
ANDY
Mr. Hadley. Do you trust your wife?
HADLEY
That's funny. You're gonna look
funnier suckin' my dick with no
fuckin' teeth.
ANDY
What I mean is, do you think she'd
go behind your back? Try to
hamstring you?
HADLEY
That's it! Step aside, Mert. This
fucker's havin' hisself an accident.
Hadley grabs Andy's collar and propels him violently toward
the edge of the roof. The cons furiously keep spreading tar.
HEYWOOD
Oh God, he's gonna do it, he's
gonna throw him off the roof...
SNOOZE
Oh shit, oh fuck, oh Jesus...
ANDY
Because if you do trust her, there's
no reason in the world you can't
keep every cent of that money.
Hadley abruptly jerks Andy to a stop right at the edge. In
fact, Andy's past the edge, beyond his balance, shoetips
scraping the roof. The only thing between him and an ugly drop
to the concrete is Hadley's grip on the front of his shirt.
HADLEY
You better start making sense.
ANDY
If you want to keep that money, all
of it, just give it to your wife.
See, the IRS allows you a one-time-
only gift to your spouse. It's good
up to sixty thousand dollars.
HADLEY
Naw, that ain't right! Tax free?
ANDY
Tax free. IRS can't touch one cent.
The cons are pausing work, stunned by this business discussion.
HADLEY
You're the smart banker what shot
his wife. Why should I believe a
smart banker like you? So's I can
wind up in here with you?
ANDY
It's perfectly legal. Go ask the
IRS, they'll say the same thing.
Actually, I feel silly telling you
all this. I'm sure you would have
investigated the matter yourself.
HADLEY
Fuckin'-A. I don't need no smart
wife-killin' banker to show me where
the bear shit in the buckwheat.
ANDY
Of course not. But you will need
somebody to set up the tax-free
gift, and that'll cost you. A
lawyer, for example...
HADLEY
Ambulance-chaaing, highway-robbing
cocksuckers!
ANDY
...or come to think of it, I
suppose I could set it up for you.
That would save you some money.
I'll write down the forms you need,
you can pick them up, and I'll
prepare them for your signature...
nearly free of charge.
(off Hadley's look)
I'd only ask three beers apiece for
my co-workers, if that seems fair.
TROUT
(guffawing)
Co-workers! Get him! That's rich,
ain't it? Co-workers...
Hadley freezes him with a look. Andy presses on:
ANDY
I think a nan working outdoors
feels more like a man if he can
have a bottle of suds. That's only
my opinion.
The convicts stand gaping, all pretense of work gone. They
look like they've been pole-axed. Hadley shoots them a look.
HADLEY
What are you jimmies starin' at?
Back to work, goddamn it!
59 EXT -- LICENSE PLATE FACTORY -- DAY (1949) 59
As before, an object is hauled up the side of the building by
rope -- only this time, it's a cooler of beer and ice.
RED (V.O.)
And that's how it came to pass,
that on the second-to-last day of
the job, the convict crew that
tarred the plate factory roof in
the spring of '49...
60 EXT -- ROOF -- SHORTLY LATER (1949) 60
The cons are taking the sun and drinking beer.
RED (V.O.)
...wound up sitting in a row at ten
o'clock in the morning, drinking icy
cold Black Label beer courtesy of
the hardest screw that ever walked
a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
HADLEY
Drink up, boys. While it's cold.
RED (V.O.)
The colossal prick even managed to
sound magnanimous.
Red knocks back another sip, enjoying the bitter cold on his
tongue and the warm sun on face.
RED (V.O.)
We sat and drank with the sun on
our shoulders, and felt like free
men. We could'a been tarring the
roof of one of our own houses. We
were the Lords of all Creation.
He glances over to Andy squatting apart from the others.
RED (V.O.)
As for Andy, he spent that break
hunkered in the shade, a strange
little smile on his face, watching
us drink his beer.
HEYWOOD
(approaches with a beer)
Here's a cold one, Andy.
ANDY
No thanks. I gave up drinking.
Heywood drifts back to others, giving them a look.
RED (V.O.)
You could argue he'd done it to
curry favor with the guards. Or
maybe make a few friends among us
cons. Me, I think he did it just to
feel normal again...if only for a
short while.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Something for Thursday
American classical music written prior to, say, Gershwin tends to not be terribly familiar to audiences, as much of what was written prior to that time was deeply indebted to European musical traditions; it took time for truly American musical idioms to emerge (such as jazz) and be incorporated into classical music. But one of the finer American 19th century composers was Edward MacDowell, whose music is still heard today. Here's a solo piano piece of his, the "Scotch Poem". I actually played this piece as a high school senior.
The lyric tune in the middle is lovely, but it's also a bit clicheed, right down to the "Scotch snap" (a rhythmic device that is common to Scottish folk music). But still, an entertaining piece of music from an era of American classical music that tends to be underexplored.
The lyric tune in the middle is lovely, but it's also a bit clicheed, right down to the "Scotch snap" (a rhythmic device that is common to Scottish folk music). But still, an entertaining piece of music from an era of American classical music that tends to be underexplored.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
The Final Teevee Report
So, with perhaps a couple of exceptions, the entirety of the 2011-2012 teevee season is now in the books. How was it? It was like all teevee seasons, it turns out: a mixed bag. Here are thoughts on specific shows.
:: OK, might as well start with Castle. In general, I liked this season, although it honestly felt like they were deliberately stretching the main story out as long as possible. Here I'm referring to the ongoing investigation, such as it is, of the murder of Joanna Beckett, mother of Detective Kate Beckett. It was my firm belief going into this season that this storyline really needed to get wrapped up this year. Did it? No. And worse, the ball barely got moved. So now we drag it onto next season, when my hope will still be the same: that this tale gets closed out and done, so we can move into more interesting territory. The murder of her mother is what has defined Kate Beckett, it's the event that has motivated her life more than any other. So what will she be like when it's done? What will that mean for her? That's a fascinating question, and I hope the writers embrace the chance to find out. I'm afraid they won't, however.
The season also kept the "will they or won't they" nature of Castle and Beckett's relationship going for far too long, as I complained about in my open letter to Castle a while back. I was willing to see where they went with the season finale, on the assumption that maybe the obstacles thrown in between them would turn out to just be ways for the writers to postpone any major developments to the finale episode, because many such shows are total captives to the teevee season schedule and will only do BIG events on the final episodes of a particular sweeps period. And yet, that does seem to have been the case, as the finale ended with Castle and Beckett finally coming together. (Well, it almost ended that way. More on that in a bit.)
Anyway, yes, I'm very glad that they finally stopped playing coy and making sly references to feelings they both know the other has and all that rot. And you know what? The scenes where that happened were actually very well written and superbly acted. So why they felt the need to postpone it and put it off with all manner of goofy "I'm mad at Kate so I'm not gonna talk to her and I'm gonna play around with a flight attendant instead, neener neener neener!" stuff really does seem to have been what I called it back then: a Love Boat third act, a fake complication designed to do nothing more than drag things out. That was awful writing, but at least it resulted in a well-done outcome. Nathan Fillion's acting in the final confession was great; he made Castle's simultaneous anguish at trying to pound his way through Beckett's determination and his relief at finally ripping off this stupid Band-aid very real. And I continue to think that Stana Katic plays Beckett very well, with relentless focus. Her mindset is very much "one thing at a time", and when life does its thing of forcing her to confront more than she wants to confront, she tends to want to shut it down. This time it led to (for her) disastrous results, but it also forced her to a place where she finally had to admit what she's felt for Castle. This was all very well handled, and I hope that the preceding nonsense was just an aberration born of the rigid mindset of American teevee that you can only do Really Big Things in season finales.
As for the developments in the Joanna Beckett case, I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand, the tale is still out there, waiting to be resolved. On the other hand...when I really think about it, Andrew Marlowe and company actually didn't muddy the waters much more than they already have. They didn't introduce yet another element or layer to the case; they simply put a face on an old one (the sniper who nearly killed Beckett last year) and gave a tiny bit of revelation about another one that's been around a bit (the shadowy figure who's been informing Castle). So, even though nothing has been resolved, I'm at least glad that we didn't peel away another layer of this story's onion just to find yet one more layer.
My Open Letter actually got quite a bit of attention from several Castle fan forums across the Interweb, which I was interested and sometimes amused to follow along. Two forums in particular gave it quite a bit of discussion, and interestingly, I was right in the middle of the prevailing opinions of each forum! On one forum, I was "too caught up in my own idealism" to see that Castle's reaction to learning that Beckett had heard what he'd said months before, as she was bleeding in the grass, was totally realistic and respectable and consistent with who he was, as if my desire to have seen some kind of character growth over four years of storytelling was just too much to ask! But on the other forum, I was giving the writers too much credit; over there, the Castle showrunners are little better than the million monkeys at the typewriters, hoping to use their infinite time to produce the works of Shakespeare. Clearly, I was in between those extremes...although I found the former more disappointing than the latter, because the folks there struck me as being insufficiently critical. But who cares? I'm just me.
Anyway, I'm glad that Castle ended on at least some of the notes it did, and I'm not entirely annoyed that it ended on some of the other notes it did. But really, guys: wrap up the Joanna Beckett murder mystery. Trust me, it's just not that interesting anymore. They've already promised a return to the more 'fun' atmosphere of the first few seasons, so here's hoping. One thing I noticed this year that if he wasn't saying it outright once in a while, there was almost no real mention of use of the fact that Castle is a writer. I liked it back when he would have a poker game with his mystery writer buddies and bounce his theories off them about his current case. They should get back to doing that sort of thing.
:: You know what else isn't interesting? Patrick Jane's quest for Red John on The Mentalist. And to be honest, the show itself isn't that interesting anymore. This was a really down year for that show...I'd always found it entertaining, before, but this season just did not produce too many memorable episodes, and the Red John storyline is starting to get ridiculous. I read an interview the other day with the show's creator, in which he indicated that Red John has become more of a 'Moriarty' figure than an elusive serial killer, which is fine, but the show's writing staff just doesn't seem to have the chops to pull this off. It continues to be increasingly unbelievable that a violent murderer like Red John could continue to command the utter, unwavering loyalty of so many underlings. If they could explain that, then maybe it would be believable. But really, this show needs to wrap up its long mytharc, too...but we all know it's not going to. Sigh.
:: House had a fairly uneven season, I thought, but overall it was a satisfying last year, and I for one really liked the way the show ended – it was bittersweet (Wilson's cancer), but also optimistic (House finally finds a way, albeit drastic, to put all of his demons behind him).
:: The king of uneven seasons, however, was turned in by The Office. Wow, was this year a mixed bag. Sometimes it was as great as ever, but other times it was cataclysmically bad. Just...weird. I generally liked the dynamic of Andy Bernard as the boss, but the show got away from that too quickly, with goofy shit like Dwight's possibly being the father of Angela's baby, the Robert California character, and in the last third of the season, a very strange character named Nellie who took over the office despite having apparently no business acumen whatsoever. It was just a terribly odd year, and I think that's mainly because the writers have almost totally run out of ways to make the show a satire of the soul-crushing world of just-getting-the-work-of-business-done. (Plus, Dwight should never, ever, ever, get the upper hand on Jim. Any time Dwight scores a victory, it feels completely false.)
:: CSI: Miami is canceled. This disappoints me, but what are you gonna do. The other CSI shows have been off my radar for years.
:: Not too many new shows captured my interest. I followed Two Broke Girls, not terribly religiously, as it's a show with an appealing concept but whose sense of humor tended to stay in the Two and a Half Men end of the pool, and that's a show I've never been terribly warm about. I mainly like Two Broke Girls for the two leads, one of whom is Kat Dennings (otherwise known as the Newest Love Of My Life). But the show is just OK.
So, too, is The New Girl, the Zooey Deschanel vehicle that puts Her Quirkiness at the service of three bachelor dudes in an apartment. It's not a bad show. Nor is it a great one. It's rarely better than mildly amusing, and the quirky Deschanel effect is hit or miss. There were moments when I loved it – an episode where the cast all joined on the dance floor at a wedding and slow-danced the 'Chicken Dance' together to 'Groovy Kind of Love' was a nice moment – but the show rarely rises above being a vehicle for occasionally-endearing quirkiness. (The pilot was, for me, an enormous tease, showing Zooey Deschanel I decked out in a wonderful pair of overalls that, as far as I could tell, she never donned again. Aieee!)
The best new show this year at Casa Jaquandor? That would be Person of Interest, which has rapidly become a big favorite of ours. We love this show. It's exciting, its stories tend to be character driven, its characters are interesting people with pasts and histories and motivations, its humor is character driven which shows the high degree to which the creators understand the people with whom they've populated their show. Sometimes the action and intrigue is a bit hard to believe, but mostly, I'm willing to go with it, and even the show's backstories are complex in a welcome way. There isn't one central 'mystery' to the show, a la Red John or Beckett's Mom's Murderer, but instead we have several characters whose shadowy pasts are threatening to rear their ugly heads again. The finale episode gave us a cliffhanger, as expected, but I was truly excited that the cliffhanger we got wasn't even close to the one that I expected. Person of Interest is a terrific show.
:: I pretty much abandoned Hawaii Five Oh, or however it is they actually type it out. The show's still what it is – a reasonably entertaining cop show that takes itself too seriously – but it generally lost my interest, and I found myself with the show on but not paying any attention whatsoever. Not a good sign for a show's longevity as a going concern of mine. And its own long mytharc, why Jack Lord Jr.'s father was killed, is still unresolved as they continue to chase 'Wo Fat'. I have a goofy conspiracy theory that Wo Fat, Red John from The Mentalist, and whoever is ultimately responsible for Joanna Beckett's murder on Castle are all the same person! I think that would be funny. Weird, but funny. But anyway, the show itself just doesn't command my interest in a big way, and that's even with the addition to the cast of Terry O'Quinn, who is starting to develop a pretty depressing track record of being my favorite actor on shows I don't much care for.
:: Boy, has Bones descended into self-parody and soap opera silliness, hasn't it? Ye Gods. It's The Daughter's favorite show, so we still watch it, but it's been incredibly cheesy. That said, the season finale was actually excellent, as it dialed down the goofiness and focused instead on the mystery, which has led to Dr. Brennan having to go on the run and Agent Booth having to clear her name for a murder she didn't commit. I hope they keep to that episode's tone more next season.
:: We really enjoyed The Finder, which was a quirky and fun and entertaining. And canceled, because apparently we were the only ones watching it in its shitty Friday timeslot. I'll never understand why networks greenlight shows that they don't believe in and have no intention of supporting.
:: I finally gave up on American Idol. I couldn't take it anymore. The ship has sailed. And f*** X-Factor, while we're at it. It's time for these competition shows to go away. This season of Idol was excruciating, and the end came the night of the Final Two and their performances. I turned on the show, and The Daughter said, "Gee, Dad, what's the worst thing that happens if we don't watch this?" I thought, and then I said, "Nothing, I suppose," and turned off the teevee. Thus do I leave Idol behind. Oh well. Seacrest, out!
:: The Amazing Race was boring this last time out. The final three teams were two teams I didn't care about, and one team I hated. So the rooting interest wasn't much, there. But at least they managed to avoid what's happened in a lot of recent seasons, when one of the final three teams is basically done in by a crappy cab driver who can't find where he's supposed to go. Other reality shows? Kitchen Nightmares quickly becomes same-old, same-old; ditto Undercover Boss. I'm still annoyed with Survivor for the Boston Rob fiasco (and I remain utterly convinced that we haven't seen the last of him or Russell), and The Amazing Race's new habit of casting people from other CBS reality shows (a couple from Big Brother being the last) is incredibly irritating. Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef return soon; I'm hoping for a bit of a break from formula in the former, which has become all-too-predictable the last several seasons, to the point where I can actually predict the challenges each week. Still, I hope for fun watching from both.
We've been watching Cake Boss on Netflix, which is kind of fun, although I always wonder how people eat those cakes. (Another bonus is that, being as it takes place in a bakery, there's an occasional pie in the face, which is always nice.) There's a barbecue challenge show (whose name I don't remember) that we've watched a bit. And I really wish that Pawn Stars would get more episodes on Netflix, but that's not up to me.
:: Finally: kudos to The Big Bang Theory, which showed signs of creakiness but has managed to reinvigorate things by actually allowing its characters to grow a bit. The final episode of this season, which combined the wedding of Howard and Bernadette and Howard's space launch, was as good an example of ensemble-cast comedy as I've seen in recent memory. I still love this show!
:: So, what about summer teevee? I'm already watching Battlestar Galactica (the new one), and I need to get back into rewatching The X-Files. We also plan to watch Once Upon a Time and Grimm, now that the seasons are complete. I'm wondering if I should try out stuff like Mad Men, Downton Abbey, and The Wire, as well as some SF stuff like Farscape, and frankly, I wouldn't mind doing a Star Trek re-watch one of these years, as it's been over a decade since I've seen many, if not most, of the episodes of all the series. I am not watching Game of Thrones; re-reading the books has been trial enough for me, thank you very much.
And that's the state of teevee at Casa Jaquandor.
:: OK, might as well start with Castle. In general, I liked this season, although it honestly felt like they were deliberately stretching the main story out as long as possible. Here I'm referring to the ongoing investigation, such as it is, of the murder of Joanna Beckett, mother of Detective Kate Beckett. It was my firm belief going into this season that this storyline really needed to get wrapped up this year. Did it? No. And worse, the ball barely got moved. So now we drag it onto next season, when my hope will still be the same: that this tale gets closed out and done, so we can move into more interesting territory. The murder of her mother is what has defined Kate Beckett, it's the event that has motivated her life more than any other. So what will she be like when it's done? What will that mean for her? That's a fascinating question, and I hope the writers embrace the chance to find out. I'm afraid they won't, however.
The season also kept the "will they or won't they" nature of Castle and Beckett's relationship going for far too long, as I complained about in my open letter to Castle a while back. I was willing to see where they went with the season finale, on the assumption that maybe the obstacles thrown in between them would turn out to just be ways for the writers to postpone any major developments to the finale episode, because many such shows are total captives to the teevee season schedule and will only do BIG events on the final episodes of a particular sweeps period. And yet, that does seem to have been the case, as the finale ended with Castle and Beckett finally coming together. (Well, it almost ended that way. More on that in a bit.)
Anyway, yes, I'm very glad that they finally stopped playing coy and making sly references to feelings they both know the other has and all that rot. And you know what? The scenes where that happened were actually very well written and superbly acted. So why they felt the need to postpone it and put it off with all manner of goofy "I'm mad at Kate so I'm not gonna talk to her and I'm gonna play around with a flight attendant instead, neener neener neener!" stuff really does seem to have been what I called it back then: a Love Boat third act, a fake complication designed to do nothing more than drag things out. That was awful writing, but at least it resulted in a well-done outcome. Nathan Fillion's acting in the final confession was great; he made Castle's simultaneous anguish at trying to pound his way through Beckett's determination and his relief at finally ripping off this stupid Band-aid very real. And I continue to think that Stana Katic plays Beckett very well, with relentless focus. Her mindset is very much "one thing at a time", and when life does its thing of forcing her to confront more than she wants to confront, she tends to want to shut it down. This time it led to (for her) disastrous results, but it also forced her to a place where she finally had to admit what she's felt for Castle. This was all very well handled, and I hope that the preceding nonsense was just an aberration born of the rigid mindset of American teevee that you can only do Really Big Things in season finales.
As for the developments in the Joanna Beckett case, I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand, the tale is still out there, waiting to be resolved. On the other hand...when I really think about it, Andrew Marlowe and company actually didn't muddy the waters much more than they already have. They didn't introduce yet another element or layer to the case; they simply put a face on an old one (the sniper who nearly killed Beckett last year) and gave a tiny bit of revelation about another one that's been around a bit (the shadowy figure who's been informing Castle). So, even though nothing has been resolved, I'm at least glad that we didn't peel away another layer of this story's onion just to find yet one more layer.
My Open Letter actually got quite a bit of attention from several Castle fan forums across the Interweb, which I was interested and sometimes amused to follow along. Two forums in particular gave it quite a bit of discussion, and interestingly, I was right in the middle of the prevailing opinions of each forum! On one forum, I was "too caught up in my own idealism" to see that Castle's reaction to learning that Beckett had heard what he'd said months before, as she was bleeding in the grass, was totally realistic and respectable and consistent with who he was, as if my desire to have seen some kind of character growth over four years of storytelling was just too much to ask! But on the other forum, I was giving the writers too much credit; over there, the Castle showrunners are little better than the million monkeys at the typewriters, hoping to use their infinite time to produce the works of Shakespeare. Clearly, I was in between those extremes...although I found the former more disappointing than the latter, because the folks there struck me as being insufficiently critical. But who cares? I'm just me.
Anyway, I'm glad that Castle ended on at least some of the notes it did, and I'm not entirely annoyed that it ended on some of the other notes it did. But really, guys: wrap up the Joanna Beckett murder mystery. Trust me, it's just not that interesting anymore. They've already promised a return to the more 'fun' atmosphere of the first few seasons, so here's hoping. One thing I noticed this year that if he wasn't saying it outright once in a while, there was almost no real mention of use of the fact that Castle is a writer. I liked it back when he would have a poker game with his mystery writer buddies and bounce his theories off them about his current case. They should get back to doing that sort of thing.
:: You know what else isn't interesting? Patrick Jane's quest for Red John on The Mentalist. And to be honest, the show itself isn't that interesting anymore. This was a really down year for that show...I'd always found it entertaining, before, but this season just did not produce too many memorable episodes, and the Red John storyline is starting to get ridiculous. I read an interview the other day with the show's creator, in which he indicated that Red John has become more of a 'Moriarty' figure than an elusive serial killer, which is fine, but the show's writing staff just doesn't seem to have the chops to pull this off. It continues to be increasingly unbelievable that a violent murderer like Red John could continue to command the utter, unwavering loyalty of so many underlings. If they could explain that, then maybe it would be believable. But really, this show needs to wrap up its long mytharc, too...but we all know it's not going to. Sigh.
:: House had a fairly uneven season, I thought, but overall it was a satisfying last year, and I for one really liked the way the show ended – it was bittersweet (Wilson's cancer), but also optimistic (House finally finds a way, albeit drastic, to put all of his demons behind him).
:: The king of uneven seasons, however, was turned in by The Office. Wow, was this year a mixed bag. Sometimes it was as great as ever, but other times it was cataclysmically bad. Just...weird. I generally liked the dynamic of Andy Bernard as the boss, but the show got away from that too quickly, with goofy shit like Dwight's possibly being the father of Angela's baby, the Robert California character, and in the last third of the season, a very strange character named Nellie who took over the office despite having apparently no business acumen whatsoever. It was just a terribly odd year, and I think that's mainly because the writers have almost totally run out of ways to make the show a satire of the soul-crushing world of just-getting-the-work-of-business-done. (Plus, Dwight should never, ever, ever, get the upper hand on Jim. Any time Dwight scores a victory, it feels completely false.)
:: CSI: Miami is canceled. This disappoints me, but what are you gonna do. The other CSI shows have been off my radar for years.
:: Not too many new shows captured my interest. I followed Two Broke Girls, not terribly religiously, as it's a show with an appealing concept but whose sense of humor tended to stay in the Two and a Half Men end of the pool, and that's a show I've never been terribly warm about. I mainly like Two Broke Girls for the two leads, one of whom is Kat Dennings (otherwise known as the Newest Love Of My Life). But the show is just OK.
So, too, is The New Girl, the Zooey Deschanel vehicle that puts Her Quirkiness at the service of three bachelor dudes in an apartment. It's not a bad show. Nor is it a great one. It's rarely better than mildly amusing, and the quirky Deschanel effect is hit or miss. There were moments when I loved it – an episode where the cast all joined on the dance floor at a wedding and slow-danced the 'Chicken Dance' together to 'Groovy Kind of Love' was a nice moment – but the show rarely rises above being a vehicle for occasionally-endearing quirkiness. (The pilot was, for me, an enormous tease, showing Zooey Deschanel I decked out in a wonderful pair of overalls that, as far as I could tell, she never donned again. Aieee!)
The best new show this year at Casa Jaquandor? That would be Person of Interest, which has rapidly become a big favorite of ours. We love this show. It's exciting, its stories tend to be character driven, its characters are interesting people with pasts and histories and motivations, its humor is character driven which shows the high degree to which the creators understand the people with whom they've populated their show. Sometimes the action and intrigue is a bit hard to believe, but mostly, I'm willing to go with it, and even the show's backstories are complex in a welcome way. There isn't one central 'mystery' to the show, a la Red John or Beckett's Mom's Murderer, but instead we have several characters whose shadowy pasts are threatening to rear their ugly heads again. The finale episode gave us a cliffhanger, as expected, but I was truly excited that the cliffhanger we got wasn't even close to the one that I expected. Person of Interest is a terrific show.
:: I pretty much abandoned Hawaii Five Oh, or however it is they actually type it out. The show's still what it is – a reasonably entertaining cop show that takes itself too seriously – but it generally lost my interest, and I found myself with the show on but not paying any attention whatsoever. Not a good sign for a show's longevity as a going concern of mine. And its own long mytharc, why Jack Lord Jr.'s father was killed, is still unresolved as they continue to chase 'Wo Fat'. I have a goofy conspiracy theory that Wo Fat, Red John from The Mentalist, and whoever is ultimately responsible for Joanna Beckett's murder on Castle are all the same person! I think that would be funny. Weird, but funny. But anyway, the show itself just doesn't command my interest in a big way, and that's even with the addition to the cast of Terry O'Quinn, who is starting to develop a pretty depressing track record of being my favorite actor on shows I don't much care for.
:: Boy, has Bones descended into self-parody and soap opera silliness, hasn't it? Ye Gods. It's The Daughter's favorite show, so we still watch it, but it's been incredibly cheesy. That said, the season finale was actually excellent, as it dialed down the goofiness and focused instead on the mystery, which has led to Dr. Brennan having to go on the run and Agent Booth having to clear her name for a murder she didn't commit. I hope they keep to that episode's tone more next season.
:: We really enjoyed The Finder, which was a quirky and fun and entertaining. And canceled, because apparently we were the only ones watching it in its shitty Friday timeslot. I'll never understand why networks greenlight shows that they don't believe in and have no intention of supporting.
:: I finally gave up on American Idol. I couldn't take it anymore. The ship has sailed. And f*** X-Factor, while we're at it. It's time for these competition shows to go away. This season of Idol was excruciating, and the end came the night of the Final Two and their performances. I turned on the show, and The Daughter said, "Gee, Dad, what's the worst thing that happens if we don't watch this?" I thought, and then I said, "Nothing, I suppose," and turned off the teevee. Thus do I leave Idol behind. Oh well. Seacrest, out!
:: The Amazing Race was boring this last time out. The final three teams were two teams I didn't care about, and one team I hated. So the rooting interest wasn't much, there. But at least they managed to avoid what's happened in a lot of recent seasons, when one of the final three teams is basically done in by a crappy cab driver who can't find where he's supposed to go. Other reality shows? Kitchen Nightmares quickly becomes same-old, same-old; ditto Undercover Boss. I'm still annoyed with Survivor for the Boston Rob fiasco (and I remain utterly convinced that we haven't seen the last of him or Russell), and The Amazing Race's new habit of casting people from other CBS reality shows (a couple from Big Brother being the last) is incredibly irritating. Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef return soon; I'm hoping for a bit of a break from formula in the former, which has become all-too-predictable the last several seasons, to the point where I can actually predict the challenges each week. Still, I hope for fun watching from both.
We've been watching Cake Boss on Netflix, which is kind of fun, although I always wonder how people eat those cakes. (Another bonus is that, being as it takes place in a bakery, there's an occasional pie in the face, which is always nice.) There's a barbecue challenge show (whose name I don't remember) that we've watched a bit. And I really wish that Pawn Stars would get more episodes on Netflix, but that's not up to me.
:: Finally: kudos to The Big Bang Theory, which showed signs of creakiness but has managed to reinvigorate things by actually allowing its characters to grow a bit. The final episode of this season, which combined the wedding of Howard and Bernadette and Howard's space launch, was as good an example of ensemble-cast comedy as I've seen in recent memory. I still love this show!
:: So, what about summer teevee? I'm already watching Battlestar Galactica (the new one), and I need to get back into rewatching The X-Files. We also plan to watch Once Upon a Time and Grimm, now that the seasons are complete. I'm wondering if I should try out stuff like Mad Men, Downton Abbey, and The Wire, as well as some SF stuff like Farscape, and frankly, I wouldn't mind doing a Star Trek re-watch one of these years, as it's been over a decade since I've seen many, if not most, of the episodes of all the series. I am not watching Game of Thrones; re-reading the books has been trial enough for me, thank you very much.
And that's the state of teevee at Casa Jaquandor.
A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Your position on LOLCats: totally annoying, often hilarious, or occasionally funny but mostly overused?
(My own take is the third option here...lots of 'em are unfunny, but sometimes I see one that cracks me up. Like this one:
The look on the lioness's face just makes this all kinds of hilarious, for me.)
(My own take is the third option here...lots of 'em are unfunny, but sometimes I see one that cracks me up. Like this one:
The look on the lioness's face just makes this all kinds of hilarious, for me.)
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
"Words are wind." (or, Please take your time, George. As much as you need.)
Oh my good Lord. I tried, folks. I really tried. I've wanted so much to love A Song of Ice and Fire as much as everybody else does. And after the fairly soul-crushing experience that was slogging my way through A Feast for Crows, I thought that A Dance with Dragons was off to a fairly decent start. But I wasn't even halfway through before that old familiar feeling started to settle in, and by the time I was two-thirds of the way through (with more than 300 pages left at that point), I had pretty firmly reached this point:
Will I finish reading the series? I suppose I will, if George RR Martin finishes writing it. But now it's a certain pig-headedness that's keeping me going, and not much else. It's that sense of "Well, I've got this far", and I have the added comforting thought that the sixth book is probably unlikely to appear any time before 2014. So I have a good, long recovery time ahead of me. Maybe reading the entire series in the space of six months or so was just too much, but rather than the wonderful immersive quality I was hoping for, I instead found myself thinking, "GAHHH get me out of here!"
After finishing Dance last week, I went and read some reviews that came out when the book did, and I'm wondering if those folks read a different book. One reviewer promised that with this book you start to see the signs of where GRRM is going with his story; others are enraptured by GRRM's amazingly poetic prose. I evidently missed the boat on both counts, because I don't yet see this overarching story that's taking shape and aside from a few passages, GRRM's prose does not thrill me nearly as much as, say, Guy Gavriel Kay's. Aside from a few good moments, and one great one, that were all too few and far between, just about all I got from this book was frustration and, eventually, irritation.
The rest of this will be spoilerish, so I'll stick it below the fold.
Will I finish reading the series? I suppose I will, if George RR Martin finishes writing it. But now it's a certain pig-headedness that's keeping me going, and not much else. It's that sense of "Well, I've got this far", and I have the added comforting thought that the sixth book is probably unlikely to appear any time before 2014. So I have a good, long recovery time ahead of me. Maybe reading the entire series in the space of six months or so was just too much, but rather than the wonderful immersive quality I was hoping for, I instead found myself thinking, "GAHHH get me out of here!"
After finishing Dance last week, I went and read some reviews that came out when the book did, and I'm wondering if those folks read a different book. One reviewer promised that with this book you start to see the signs of where GRRM is going with his story; others are enraptured by GRRM's amazingly poetic prose. I evidently missed the boat on both counts, because I don't yet see this overarching story that's taking shape and aside from a few passages, GRRM's prose does not thrill me nearly as much as, say, Guy Gavriel Kay's. Aside from a few good moments, and one great one, that were all too few and far between, just about all I got from this book was frustration and, eventually, irritation.
The rest of this will be spoilerish, so I'll stick it below the fold.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Remembering (a repost)
Know, all who see these lines,
That this man, by his appetite for honor,
By his steadfastness,
By his love for his country,
By his courage,
Was one of the miracles of the God.
-- Guy Gavriel Kay
Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile 'neath the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that faithful heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enshrined then, forever, behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did they really believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying, was all done in vain,
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Saturday, May 26, 2012
What's an 'old' movie?
I find it interesting once in a while to consider what constitutes an 'old' movie. I've always thought of Casablanca, for example, as an 'old movie'. (Now, a movie's status as an 'old movie' has absolutely no bearing on how much I love it. I can name only one movie that I love more than Casablanca. No points for guessing correctly which movie that is.)
When I was born in 1971, Casablanca was 29 years old, having been released in 1942. That means that right now, movies released in 1983 are as old as Casablanca was when I was born. Here's a list of such films:
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Octopussy
Brainstorm
The Big Chill
A Christmas Story
WarGames
Terms of Endearment
The Right Stuff
Superman III
Easy Money
Flashdance
High Road to China
Krull
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that for me, the concept of a movie being 'old' gets more and more meaningless each year. It's a great thing when one gets over how long something has existed before determining one's willingness to enjoy it.
When I was born in 1971, Casablanca was 29 years old, having been released in 1942. That means that right now, movies released in 1983 are as old as Casablanca was when I was born. Here's a list of such films:
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Octopussy
Brainstorm
The Big Chill
A Christmas Story
WarGames
Terms of Endearment
The Right Stuff
Superman III
Easy Money
Flashdance
High Road to China
Krull
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that for me, the concept of a movie being 'old' gets more and more meaningless each year. It's a great thing when one gets over how long something has existed before determining one's willingness to enjoy it.
Come on get happy!
It's not the Partridge Family, but the Goose Family! This clan of geese has set up camp behind The Store, as there is plenty of grass and some woods and Cazenovia Creek that runs right by, so I suppose it's a good location for geese to raise their young'uns before taking them to Canada for their indoctrination. Or something like that. Anyway, here are some photos of the Goose Family.
Friday, May 25, 2012
When thirty-five years old you reach, look as good you still will!!!
Happy birthday Star Wars! Thirty-five years of the greatest damn movie ever. Huzzah and may the Force be with you!
Film Quote Friday
American Graffiti is a stalwart in the coming-of-age genre, setting a format that would serve the genre well for many years to come. We meet a small group of young people and follow them for a short period of time that nevertheless changes who they are, forever. Some of them go on to bigger things, some don't.
The film follows several teenagers on a single night in Modesto, CA, in the early 1960s, before Viet Nam, before...well, before everything. They still believe that their futures are bright and shining and ahead of them. For some of them, those futures are.
Anyhow, Paul Le Mat plays John Milner, the drag-race king of Modesto. Le Mat plays him with a certain weariness in the face of it all; Milner seems to know that he can't do this forever, and that sooner or later it's all going to come to an end...and not in that great a way, either. In the film he ends up in the company of a thirteen-year-old girl, Carol (played by Mackenzie Phillips), and although he's irritated that he's got this little kid with him, in the course of talking they come to understandings of sorts.
There's a scene where they go to an auto junkyard:
MILNER: Over there, that's Freddy Benson's Vette... he got his head on with some drunk. Boom! Didn't have a chance. 'S a good driver, too. Ah, that's pretty grim when a guy gets it and it's not even his own fault.
CAROL: Needs a paint job, that's for sure.
MILNER: See that over there, that '41? That used to be, believe it or not, the fastest car in the valley. I never got a chance to race Earl, though. He got his, 1955, in about the hairiest crash we ever had here. Jesus, you shoulda seen it. Eight kids killed, and both drivers. Board of Education was real impressed, see, so they come up, and film the whole thing, and now they show it in Driver's Education class. You'll probably see it, if you get lucky. [beat] 'Course, it's pretty tough when they take somebody with 'em.
CAROL: You've never had an accident, though. You told me.
MILNER: Yeah, well, I come mighty close. Almost rolled it a coupla times. But, I've been just quick enough to stay out of this graveyard.
CAROL: Bet you're the fastest.
MILNER: Never been beat. Lotta guys tried. 'Course to me, there's more guys lately than there's ever been.
American Graffiti would kick off a nostalgia craze for, I suppose, a more innocent time, before all the wars and assassinations and riots and unrest. Teevee shows like Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley were direct descendents of American Graffiti, which is a film I love. It's not just the 'coming of age' genre that appeals to me, but just a story that's nothing more than a camera dropping in on someone's life, staying there for a while, and then leaving, while the life that was already going on before the camera got there keeps right on going on after the camera leaves.
The themes are pretty universal, though: a legend realizing that the glory can't last forever; a kid who is out of his depth with a girl; another who is terrified of change...and who discovers that his hero, the outlaw of the airwaves, is just some guy in a little broadcast booth in some crappy little radio station, munching on popsicles as he works his own bit of magic.
The whole film is on YouTube. Just don't watch the ill-advised sequel, More American Graffiti.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Cosplay Love!
Cal regularly posts photos of people engaged in cosplay, a hobby that I find very interesting when done well (and very interesting, in other ways, when done not so well). From his latest such post, I saw this one, which just strikes me as terribly sweet.
Something for Thursday
In honor of the passing of Robin Gibb, here are the Bee Gees with "More Than a Woman".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)