The Art of Swearing

When I was little my dad was very careful to substitute tame words for expletives. His favorite expression was “shoot fire,” which made me giggle. My mother never cursed that I remember. Or maybe the occasional dammit surfaced under duress. I was never quite so disciplined, so between me and TV I’m sure the girls have a working familiarity with colorful language.

I have nothing against swearing. I’ve always felt that people squeamish about it were just too prissy for words. Sorry if that’s you. I spend most days biting my tongue to spare your sensibilities, so be sure to applaud me for my incredible restraint. I know a reliance on profanity can reveal a poverty of language and an inability to properly express oneself. Profanity can also be very aggressive, integral to bullying or verbal abuse. But in general I think life can be difficult enough to warrant a few expletives. God won’t spank you for it.

When the BBC announced that the 12th Doctor (and yes I was ferociously interested in this) would be Peter Capaldi, I decided I would have to investigate the series he’s best known for - The Thick of It. If you don’t know the series, it’s a satire about the British government, in particular the fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship. Peter Capaldi plays Malcolm Tucker, the party's spin doctor. His character, and the show in general, is known for its liberal use of profane language. In fact, I think its MA rating is based purely on language, as I haven’t yet seen any sex or nudity.

I’ve never heard anything quite like The Thick of It. This isn't just letting fly a few curse words. This is extravagance. This is a luxurious jungle of swearing rooted in rich loamy earth. I’m not sure there is a single character who doesn’t participate, but the king is Malcolm Tucker, who uses it like a crowbar to prise open every opportunity that comes his way,  a whip to punish his coworkers, and a bludgeon to beat down objections. And he does it in a Scottish accent. It’s downright mellifluous. I gather that they actually have someone who acts as a "swearing consultant" on the scripts. Imagine that job.

In any case, the show is bitingly funny in a particularly British way. I suppose you could think of Fawlty Towers wed to The Office. Mishaps, misunderstandings, and misdirection accumulate while everyone teeters on the edge of disaster and chaos. If they didn’t swear constantly they would probably leave a trail of blood and bodies behind them.

Everyone wonders what Capaldi will bring to Doctor Who. All the doctors have a catch phrase: Fantastic! (9th), Allons-y! (10th), Geronimo! (11th). Makes you wonder what the 12th will say.

You can actually get this on a T-shirt. There's also an "unbleeped" version, if you're brave.

Everything Bad Is Good

I'm reading this right now. Dear Husband complains that I never read nonfiction. So I checked out nonfiction. I have a dozen books on various TV shows and philosophy. Didn't know there were series like that, books with easily digestible bits of popcultural goodness and a dollop of Socrates and Lacan.

This book I picked up because I like the contrarian view that TV and video games are good for you because the complexity forces particular kinds of thought processes that are beneficial (there are two "becauses" in that sentence but I just can't deal). God knows TV is a lot better than the One Day at a Time and Love Boat that I grew up with. I don't have a lot of experience with video games, but I worked my way through Myst (remember that?), and it was HARD. I remember drawing a friggin map of the subway, for pete's sake. I took notes.

I also don't think our ability to socialize will be degraded by Facebook, or that we will all forget how to spell because of texting. I don't worry about e-books usurping printed books. Speaking of that, I wonder if anyone boo-hooed the loss of illuminated manuscripts when the printing press arrived. Because of the printing press, hardly anyone knows how to write entire books of intricate calligraphy and decorative marginalia.

But now I'm off to watch some TV.

The Monday Report - Angels and Insects Edition

If I don't come up with some sort of weekly feature, I'll never write on this blog with any regularity. I'm all over the place in my subject matter. I'm all over the place generally. So I've decided to bounce in on Monday with a report of all the interesting and important stuff I do over the weekend.

Here's the weekend recap.

• Buckets of rain with lots of thunder and lightening - very thrilling. I am always slightly uneasy that a gigantic ball of hail will crash through our bathroom skylight and our house will be invaded by wasps before we get it fixed.
• I thought about calling some people I should call, and then I didn't. I plan to do the same thing next weekend.
• Finished reading the awesome A Madness of Angels, which I plan to write about at some point. I'm in love with the protagonist, who is resurrected two years after his death to find that he is sharing his brain with blue electric angels.
• Had to take Firecracker to the doctor on Saturday for some nasty-looking mosquito bites. Abby is very sensitive to mosquito bites, which usually swell up to the size of her fist and turn red.
• No sooner did we step out of the car with a bottle of antibiotic than a bunch of ants swarmed over Firecracker's foot, inflicting multiple bites. Abby is even more sensitive to ant bites, so we had to go to the doctor again on Sunday, this time for steroids to bring down the swelling. She now looks like a medieval plague victim.
• Firecracker is not very happy.
• When Firecracker is injured or sick, we are all treated to a minute-by-minute account of every ache and pain. And I do mean minute by minute.
• Why do insects target Abby? DramaQueen can go an entire summer without any sort of bite.
• I hate summer in Georgia.
• Sunday night was the True Blood season premier, hurrah. This season I'm rooting for vampire Eric, who gave the best ever public service announcement (wish I could post the whole thing, but there's a bit of it at the beginning).

• I'm doing fine going gluten free, except that bread is very expensive, with a loaf having maybe 10 slices at about $5 a loaf, making it more expensive oz by oz than some illicit drugs. I'm not sure that's entirely true, but I'm not going to research it.
• There are parts of our backyard I know nothing about. We spend absolutely no time there. See comment above about summer and ants. I would be perfectly happy with no yard at all. If I want grass I can go to the park.
• We are in the process of killing two plants. I had the genius idea of the girls going on a field trip to a nursery and getting plants. One is impatiens - Abby remembers the name because, as she says, "I'm impatient." Liz got something she said is called a "David something". I imagine they're annuals and slated to die anyway. 
• Dear Husband is, I hope, bringing home a treat.
• Oh, and here's another treat.

Game On, Swords Out, Heads Off

Beautiful sets are part of the appeal of the series.

Every summer we get HBO so we can watch True Blood. This year we happened to get it a bit early, so I thought I would check out Game of Thrones. I'd never heard of the books, since fantasy epics have not generally been part of my literary diet. I am not apt to pick up a book set in another world where the characters have weird names like Cl'ad or M'rn. But there was so much buzz about this show that I had to check it out.

Tyrion should have his own series.

Daenerys deserves a dragon.

First I will say that HBO has created a remarkable series. Even the opening credits are gorgeous. The set design and costuming work well in creating mood and place. The cast is good to excellent. At first I found the story intriguing, but after a while I'm like, meh. I've read reviews praising the moral complexity of the characters. Um, yeah, right. Oh, she is fiercely loyal to her family; too bad she kills people. That's what is meant by "complex" I guess. The bad 'uns are pretty much bad to the bone and the good 'uns are, from what I can tell, en route to being corrupted or killed. I like Eddard's feisty daughter Arya and Tyrian, the dwarf, who has been given the best lines (and Richard Dinklage, a marvelous actor, obviously relishes his role). I'm also fascinated by the character Daenerys, daughter of the assassinated former king, now in exile, who starts out as a fragile, ethereal victim but becomes increasingly kick-ass. But most of the characters are annoying, willfully blind or downright vicious. The only really stand-up guy, Eddard Stark, screws everything up because he can't outmaneuver all the other power players. Here's a piece of advice, you shouldn't tell the queen that you know her deep, dark secret after the king, your only ally in the court, is dead, particularly not after your wife has kidnapped her brother. Also, when your crazy-ass wife kidnaps a member of the queen's family based on questionable evidence from a third-party and puts him on trial at the crazy-ass family headquarters, you should not be supportive. This is a good time to play the "I'm so sorry but my wife is unhinged with grief" card. Just sayin'.

Working girls in training.

Since HBO can, they dump as much blood and brutality as possible into every episode. Within the first few minutes of episode 1 I was treated to a scene of hacked up corpses arranged is some sort of mysterious symbol (at this point I don't really care what it means or who did it) and in every episode since I've had to close my eyes at various points to avoid having some new horror seared into my psyche. Most recently a scene took place while an animal is being butchered and skinned, which I'm sure conveyed the utter coldness of the Lannister patriarch, but I could have got that with less squishiness, thank you very much. And it being HBO there's lots of gratuitous sex. Seriously, is there ever a really sound narrative reason for an explicit sex scene? Oh, puhlease. No, there isn't. I don't get, for instance, why a scene of two women practicing "the business" is dramatically necessary. While the whore training was in session, the brothel owner was busy telling his life story to one of the "trainees," who turned out to be very good at multi-tasking. I suspect he may have alluded to something important in that little talk. Or not. In any case, I gather the character of the prostitute Ros was written specifically for the TV show, because, you know, an epic without whores is kind of like popcorn without butter and salt.

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

You must have to find Machiavellian politics and strategy much more interesting than I do to really enjoy this series. Or you have to really enjoy stories in which family loyalty trumps morality and humanity nine-tenths of the time. Not filial affection, mind you, just cold-hearted, unthinking, brutal loyalty.

So, next season, I might give Game of Thrones a miss. Except now they have dragons.

“Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”

"I'm not a psychopath, Anderson. I'm a high functioning sociopath. Do your research." - Sherlock

I. Want. That. Coat.

I recently saw the last episode of the BBC Sherlock series, and I am so full of delight that it naturally spills over into boring everyone to death with my enthusiasm.  Sometimes you encounter a work of art (I guess some folks would not call a TV show a work of art, but I will) and it makes you all giddy and happy and astounded at the immense creativity of everyone involved. It reminds me that when I was younger I would sometimes literally tremble while reading a particularly wonderful book or watching a movie that had entranced me. Tremble. I don’t do that so much anymore, and perhaps it’s a shame. But I still get a rush from such encounters, and boy did I get a rush watching Sherlock.


If you haven’t been lucky enough to catch the series, you can still view it on PBS Masterpiece - just go here. Sherlock has been re-imagined into the 21st century. He was already making use of forensics in the Victorian era, and now he has at his disposal more sophisticated forensic analysis and access to the latest technology. John Watson is back from the war in Afghanistan, assigned by his shrink to blog about his traumatic experience, but his real problem is sheer boredom. They meet and immediately begin to weave that wonderful symbiotic bond that is so quintessentially Holmes and Watson.


The actors playing Sherlock and Watson OWNED those roles. Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is brilliant, abrasive, manipulative, socially oblivious one moment and calculating the next, sometimes predatory and a bit scary. (As an aside, the moment he walked on screen, Dear Husband exclaimed, “He’s cute!” That’s the first time he’s ever beaten me to the punch in that regard. He is very cute, with his floppy, curly dark hair. Cumberbatch is not what I would call conventionally handsome, but he looks smashing). Freeman’s Watson is just adorable. And by adorable I mean hot. Really hot. You might not think so at first, but, um, give it time. He has such an expressive face, such wonderful comedic presence. He makes it believable that an average self-respecting man would put up with a sociopath like Sherlock. He’s never overshadowed. Best. Watson. Ever. And Moriarty – well, I think I watched him with my jaw hanging open. Not everyone liked the actor’s take on him, but I thought it was original and definitely frightening. What some found over the top, I found eerie and creepy.  It seemed clear that Moriarty’s performance was deliberately pitched to freak out everyone. Usually he takes pains to blend in, but in revealing himself to Sherlock he unleashes all his mockery and venom. 

Everyone thinks the other guy's the hot one.

Why do you think Sherlock Holmes remains such a favorite character? I know I’m not the first to ask that question. I’ve never read much on the subject, and I’m sure there’s lots of speculation. Perhaps he was just one of the first detectives, and the detective genre has never fallen out of favor, lucky for Doyle. Among the Victorians, detectives must have stood as an example of the scientific method – science seemed to alternately enthrall and horrify them. The worship of reason remains strongly embedded in Western culture, so Holmes remains fresh and contemporary, and therefore so amenable to being transferred to the 21st century, as the writers have done in Sherlock.


And Sherlock, why is he so appealing? He’s not very nice. He’s cold and aloof. He’s often condescending and unappreciative. Cases are puzzles; he’s oblivious to the human element. He uses everyone around him. What exactly keeps him from jumping the wall and becoming a Moriarty isn’t really clear. A good English upbringing? A whim? The Sherlock series highlights the similarities between the two – Moriarty is Sherlock’s doppelganger. Both are brilliant, cold, calculating, and manipulative and both harbor an abhorrence of boredom and a craving for distraction, mental challenges, and a worthy opponent. A police officer warns Watson that she wouldn’t be surprised if Sherlock one day showed up as the criminal rather than the detective. There but for the grace of Watson goes Sherlock. Sherlock is the mind and Watson is the heart and moral center.  Pure, cold science is made fit (or at least tolerable) for civilization, harnessed for good rather than evil.


There has been some speculation around the Sherlock series that Watson and Sherlock are gay, because everyone seems to speculate about such matters these days. Have we ever lived in a time more focused on gayness? Who is, who isn’t, how can you tell, is it good, is it bad, what do they do in bed and can we watch? Maybe it’s the final frontier. The writers and actors have stated that Watson and Holmes aren’t a couple, although in a contemporary setting the characters surrounding them would be bound to speculate or assume, so that is written in. Cumberbatch has called the relationship a bromance, which is as good a description as any, I suppose. As you watch, though, you’ll find the writers are pretty damn playful. When a restaurant owner mistakes Watson for Holmes’s date, Watson tries to correct him and Sherlock … does nothing. Maybe he doesn’t care enough to correct the mistake. Maybe it amuses him. Maybe he rather likes it. Maybe he didn’t even notice. Moriarty, in contrast, is deliberately campy – “Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?” His snaky flirtation is a goad, as if he were saying: Admit it, Sherlock, you find my villainy irresistibly attractive. Resistance is futile; I will seduce you to the dark side. Mwaahaahaa.


For my part, looking back to the original stories, I’ve always thought that Holmes was in love with Watson, within his limited understanding of love. Watson seemed to regard Holmes with something like hero worship and feel a responsibility to take care of him. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, because the Internet is littered with fanfic shipping Sherlock and Watson. The people have spoken and taken matters into their own hands. I can’t read fan fiction; it makes me feel squirmy. Some things really don’t need to be spelled out. Subtext, folks, learn to appreciate it.


And really, friendship is a big enough challenge for Sherlock. It’s lovely to see that develop in the series. At one point, in response to Watson’s criticism, Sherlock says, “You’re disappointed in me…Don’t make people into heroes, John. Heroes don’t exist, and if they did I wouldn’t be one of them.” The ending of the last episode is particularly sweet, when Sherlock struggles to express his admiration for Watson’s heroic actions. I think Sherlock is so used to thinking of himself as a sociopath that he is rather surprised to find himself caring about anyone. And alarmed. After all, it will be used against him, as Moriarty insinuates.


Jim Moriarty: "I will burn the heart out of you."
Sherlock: "I have been reliably informed that I don't have one."
Jim Moriarty: "Oh, but we both know that's not quite true."

Sherlock, your gun is so big!

We’ve been left on a cliff-hanger. Well, of course Sherlock and Watson have to survive, but still. Is this the Reichenbach Falls? So soon? In fact, the final scene was so excellent– the resolution withheld in a moment of supreme tension – you almost want to preserve it forever. Almost. I wish I could link to just that final scene, but I can’t. It might spoil your fun, anyway. If you insist, you can go here to play the Great Game episode and select the last scene in the scrolling menu below the main screen to experience the full awesomeness. 

ooooo, I found out how to embed this portion of the video. Thank you PBS:

Watch the full episode. See more Masterpiece.

A final comment:  that coat Sherlock is wearing – I want one.

Spooky

The other night Dear Husband and I were watching a show and conversing when he said, “Oh, will I be seeing a picture of him on your blog soon?” And, you know, that annoyed me just the teensiest bit, and so I’ve decided it’s about time for another edition of Extraordinarily Hot Men. Or man, in the case. After all, Dear Husband has been known to reflect on the attractions of Ms. Meagan Fox. I. feel justified. And Megan Fox – seriously? I was kind of hoping for more originality from him. Men can be very predicable. On the other hand, he thinks Zachary Quinto would be worth switching teams for, so I give him points for that.

Onward. We were watching MI5 (Spooks in the UK), the sort of show I would normally enjoy, but for some reason I had not been able to keep up with the twisty plotlines. And then one day I perked up. “That’s Guy of Guisbane,” I said. “Huh?” said Dear Husband. “He was in Robin Hood.” Dear Husband feels none of the simple pleasure I experience when I make connections. I am as delighted as the toddler who finds two shapes that both fit through the same slot on the sorting box.

So, this is Richard Armitage, who can hit a lot of notes on the scale of Dark and Brooding. I’m a big fan of Dark and Brooding when it’s done well. When it’s done badly you end up with Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies, petulant and powder-faced. In Robin Hood Armitage played the bad guy. You could tell right away that he was the bad guy because he wore a lot of leather, and hence he creaked ominously whenever he moved.

I love a man in a high starched collar

He also appeared in North and South, which I have not yet found time to watch. The novel is on my ereader, and I’m really trying to get through it. Elizabeth Gaskell is not, in my opinion, the most congenial writer. Sometimes I’ll run across some bit of infelicitous verbiage and go “Ack!” She was very popular in her lifetime, I think. Maybe she was the Nora Roberts of her day. That’s not the best analogy, but Nora Roberts is one of the few popular women novelists I’ve actually read. But novels with infelicitous turns of phrase can still make excellent film and TV, because the script writers can chop out everything but the dialogue and everyone gets to wear period clothing and carry on romances in that very restrained and sexy way so common to period dramas, culminating with the all important screen kiss, which looks fairly anachronistic to me. Seriously, I sometimes wonder if anyone ever actually french kissed back then, before they married. Maybe even after they married. Did they even get to kiss at all? From what I’ve read courting couples were so closely monitored that they spent most of their time in drawing rooms while great aunt Gertrude darned socks, with possibly a peck under the kissing ball at Christmas. Unless you were lower class. Then I think you got to hump in alleyways after a few swigs of gin.

In any case, from what I’ve seen of stills and such from North and South, Richard Armitage can totally rock a high collar and sideburns. There aren’t many men you can say that about. He looks spectacularly elegant, as if he were born in a waistcoat. Those were the days when men thought grooming and attire went beyond a pair of flip flops and an old T-shirt.

In MI5 Armitage plays a good guy, at least on the episodes I’ve seen. When you least expect it, someone else turns out to be a double agent or a mole, which gives the writers free reign to tart up a character when they get bored, I guess. From the constant stream of assassinations, bombs and chemical weapons, I get the impression that the only thing keeping Britain from complete annihilation is MI5. Never a slow day. There isn’t a lot of eye candy on MI5. Everyone looks a bit clipped and pinched or faded and paunchy. And then there’s Armitage in all his brooding glory.

I thought of including a fanvid from the great shopping mall of fanvids, YouTube (How do people find the time to concoct these things?). Then I thought, that’s so giddy teenage fangirl - have some dignity. Then I thought, feck, who am I kidding?