Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
-- The Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass
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.
In my ongoing quest to do anything except what I’m supposed to be doing, I have discovered .... a German soap opera! Or rather, bits of a German soap opera. I can’t find full episodes, not in English anyway. Instead, fans of particular characters pull out those story lines and post them on YouTube. They’ve even provided subtitles, bless their obsessive little hearts.
The soap opera is called Verbotene Liebe. It seems pretty much like an American soap opera, but because everyone is speaking German, it sounds sophisticated and poetic, like Rilke. It almost makes me want to learn German. Oh wait, I tried that in college under the influence of Wings of Desire. One semester made me grateful that most Germans learn English so they can communicate with idiots like me. I haven’t watched a soap opera since high school, when I used to moon over Robert Scorpio on General Hospital. He had an Australian accent, you see. Which just goes to show you that an accent will go a long way with me.
Verbotene has a gazillian storylines, I gather, but so far I’ve investigated just two: Oliver and Christian, and Carla and Hanna/Vanessa/Stella/Susanne. Carla seems to get around, the minx. I last saw a portion of the story about Carla and Suzanne, the smitten taxi driver. Suzanne’s love for Carla was unrequited. It was unrequited for a whole lot of episodes, which was getting really tedious, until the plot finally propelled Carla into Susanne’s arms, knocking her lunch to the ground and startling the passersby. They go on to get married, have a baby, invite a viper into their home, and, well, I haven’t gone further. Carla and Susanne are both kind of insipid and have a phenomenal lack of chemistry. Honestly, any couple that kisses like that is doomed to a life of flannel nighties and Ovaltine. The L Word definitely does it better.
The Olli and Christian story has been much more enjoyable because they are most definitely not doomed to flannel and Ovaltine and yet they are so adorable you wish they were available as plush toys.
Their story goes something like this:
Olli and Christian don’t like each other
Olli and Christian are friends, sort of
Olli begins to like Christian a LOT
Olli kisses Christian’s girlfriend
Olli kisses Christian
Christian freaks out and gets confused
Olli tries to be a good friend.
Christian continues to freak out.
For several more episodes Christian freaks out
Olli continues to be really nice to the jerk
Olli and Christian hook up
Christian freaks way the hell out
Olli (who was already exhibiting signs of emotional masochism a few steps back) tries to be understanding and supportive
Christian finds nearest girl to date
Olli decides to screw understanding and support, and maybe the hot guy he meets at the club
Christian is madly jealous
Olli is ever so slightly impatient
Christian has a revelation: I’m gay!
Tender love scene to “Breathe Me” by Sia
Everyone’s happy.
Until formerly uptight Christian comes out in the most dramatic way possible. After a boxing competition. In the boxing ring. By kissing Olli. For a very long time. Audience looks stunned at this unexpected entertainment, which is only supposed to happen in Bruno.
Olli gets beat up by – you’ll never guess – a homophobic boxer
Olli lies in hospital at death’s door
The non-homicidal boxers rally round Christian and even hug him without worrying about cooties
Olli survives
Olli and Christian live happily ever after in abiding adorableness
Awwwwww
Except, it’s in my nature to skip ahead, so I know that somewhere along the line Christian has to give up boxing due to a heart defect and Olli opens his own bar and starts wearing one of those Israeli scarves that I associate with the smell of clove cigarettes and earnest discourse.
(Note: Good gravy, the official Verbotene Liebe website actually has a Christian and Olli blog. I found it by locating the words “blog” and “English” on the all German site. It's so nice they've made accommodation for us language slobs. Oh, lordy, I think this may be almost too cute.)
This being a soap opera, I imagine there will have to be a terminal illness, a death, an affair, a double-crossing intruder, a dark secret from the past, embezzlement, a long-lost twin, amnesia, a baby, or perhaps all of those to keep the story going.
By that time I will have moved on to something else. I hear Hollyoaks has its merits…
I feel horrid. I don't have anything useful to say. I have no energy to be amusing. I just feel awful and tired and yet can't seem to rest. For the last two nights I have to sleep on the sofa in a semi-upright position. In other words, not much sleep going on.
1. I can't seem to read books anymore. Or rather I read them by starting at the beginning, skipping almost to the end, going back to where I left off near the start and working through a bit more, then skipping to the end. The bulk of the book never actually gets read.
2. I hate laundry. We live in mutual antagonism.
3. I burned myself with the iron in a mad rush to press Dear Husband's shirt one morning. You're welcome, sweetie.
4. DramaQueen is obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an obsession I'm indulging a bit too eagerly. I tell myself that a kick-ass female protagonist is good for a girl. Also, I'm really tired of Demi Lovato.
5. We're renting out a number of cubicles in our office to a call center. We have been a very quiet office up until now. I've been snuggled in a little cocoon of silence for months now.
6. Dear Husband thought Children of Earth rocked. He's probably the only person I know whose response to the deaths of Owen, Tosh and Ianto was, "Finally!" I think I heard him breathe a sigh of relief when Ianto collapsed. Sometimes he is a Bad Man.
7. Dear Husband is eagerly awaiting Battlestar Gallactica. I thought it was fair play for him to have someone he could oggle for a while, namely:
Thing is, I'm happy to oggle her, too. I think this annoys him. It makes payback more difficult. But it's not my fault I'm so versatile.
8. I'm convinced I will never have another original thought and will never write anything interesting ever again. It's all gone. Kaput. Thpppt. I will have to curl up in the fetal position and bemoan my fate.
Nothing more. I'm going to go rest. Either that or investigate Warehouse 13. Full episodes available online.
Just warning you – don’t expect anything profound, deep, or spiritual. So if you’re looking for that, move along. I’m not up to it.
Instead I’m going to write about sex.
Not really. I just couldn’t resist saying that.
But it might crop up later, if you stick around.
The thing is, I have finished season 1 of Torchwood. Give me a sec - don’t stop reading now. You don’t have to be a Torchwood fan. You just have to be willing to let me rattle on for a while. It’s very edifying, and good for my soul. My brain is humming and sparking like it used to do in my college class on postmodern literature, thinking on themes and subtext. In other words, I’m itching to take something from pop culture and give it the sheen of respectability, thus justifying my absurd infatuation with my shiny new TV show.
Dear Husband is not particularly enamored of Torchwood. He has started calling it "Torturewood." He thinks it’s a bit silly and cheesy. From what I can tell, the British have an affection for spectacularly cheesy special effects. I’m willing to go with that. Dear Husband probably would, too, if more people were naked and there was more sex. I can’t really argue against the value of more naked people, particularly a naked John Barrowman, and who's going to balk at more sex? If you are, then you might as well close this right now and go read something serious.
But let it be said that my liking for this series has nothing whatsoever to do with Captain Jack’s unholy good looks or even that adorable gap between Gwen’s two front teeth that I can’t help staring at. But I digress.
I admit season 1 was a bit uneven, and I think we do CGI much better than the Brits. Also, I think they must shoot on videotape, because their shows look more like our soap operas than our TV shows. Some people prefer videotape, but I think our TV shows look more polished and cinematic and those qualities definitely works better for paranormal subject matter, in my opinion. Oh but who cares. So what if a man with a ridiculously fake fish head is driving a car around Cardiff? Everyone seems to be having a jolly good time even if they don’t remove their clothes often enough.
So far I thought the strongest shows involved time travel. It’s hard not to feel for the displaced and confused, such as the characters who flew in from the 1950s and got stuck in the 21st century, where they have to cope with the loss of their families and with the culture shock of their new era. One man, after finding his son in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, gives up. How would you feel if the only part of your child’s life you got to see was the bitter end? He can’t find a way to adapt, and Jack, after an attempt to keep him from suicide, finally sits with him as he dies. I was about ready to weep, except that Jack looks tasty and noble when he’s helping people die.
But even better was the episode in which Captain Jack Harkness (with his colleague Tosh) slips through a time rift into WWII Cardiff and meets the real Captain Jack Harkness, whose identity Jack had assumed.
This episode is just beautiful. For one thing, they got all the period details perfect. The music, the costumes, the set – they’re gorgeous. And the 1940s segments have this delightful warm glow to them.
Jack knows the Captain will die the next day in the line of duty. There’s nothing Jack can do about that, and the more he learns about the Captain, who is an honorable, kind, and courageous leader - and remarkably handsome to boot - the more that hurts. There’s quite a lot going on in this episode. When Tosh asks him how he came to take the Captain’s name, Jack refers to himself as a conman. He won’t say what his actual name is, and he has to make up a fake one on the spot. The Captain is the sort of heroic leader Jack would like to be but isn’t quite. Jack’s life is hidden, a mystery, and now we find that even his name is a lie. He can be loyal, kind and brave but also ruthless and sometimes cruel, willing to kill without hesitation or, it seems, guilt. The episode moves between the 1940s and modern day Cardiff where the rest of the Torchwood team are searching through the now derelict dancehall. Events and time overlap. We see the hall full of happy soldiers and their girls, and then the hall as an abandoned and empty wreck, a reminder of mortality and the cruelty of time.
Now for the sex part. I WAS getting to that. Well, it's not exactly about sex, but if you've got this far you might as well continue.
This episode is known for the kiss between Jack and the Captain, which I have to say was beautifully done and possibly one of the sweetest screen kisses I have ever seen.
(Dear Husband, on the other hand, choked out an irritated “OH GOD” before looking unhappily into the distance. Is this still the typical straight guy reaction? Do straight women get all weird when women kiss? I certainly don’t. Then again I can hit most of the notes on the Kinsey scale so what do I know? Women still seem less squirmy though. Nothing seems to freak out straight men more than male gay intimacy, and then they feel they need to go do something manly, like dismantle a car.)
The final scenes in the dance hall are achingly sad, full of yearning and loss. I was delighted that the Captain asked Jack to dance. So what if no one in their right mind would have done that in a crowded 1940s dance hall full of soldiers? - it serves very well as a symbol of emotional courage and honesty. It costs Jack nothing to love whomever he wishes, but for the Captain, the cost would be very high indeed. He chooses to be honest, while Jack is veiled in layers of deceit. The Captain has broken through Jack’s carefully constructed persona. Jack cares that this man, whose name he took without much thought, will die. When they embrace the dance music fades and is replaced by a more haunting theme. This isn’t simply attraction, or rather the attraction isn’t merely sexual, but a recognition of the other’s truest self and an attempt to hold to that in the face of inevitable loss. I think that final kiss transcended any sort of hip nod to gayness, or the sad knowledge of impending death, and became something transformative or maybe restorative.
I mean, besides being totally hot.
The clip from the BBC is excellent but includes a portion of the scene prior to the one at the dance hall. The dance hall scene starts around 1:04:
Since I'm channeling a thirteen-year-old, I thought I would just go ahead and run with it. I think as long as I don't put posters on the wall, Dear Husband will humor me.
Of course it isn't just the actor, but the character he plays, that is so appealing. Castiel is an angel who has begun to have doubts and to question the hierarchy that seems to be running the world.
For those who don't know the show, Supernatural is about two brothers, Dean and Sam, who are demon hunters. It's a good ol' good vs. evil show. Castiel only appeared at the beginning of this season, to rescue Dean from hell (too long to go into). In Supernatural, heaven is a sort of corporation with an absentee CEO, and Castiel has been more than happy to be one of heaven's warriors, trusting that his missions were guided by a loving God. But in fact the orders come from mysterious higher levels, without any seeming reason or logic, and sometimes with a complete disregard for human life. It's pretty much heaven as imagined by Franz Kafka.
But in the course of interacting with Dean, Castiel starts to change, veering between towing the party line to outright disobedience. The good guys, the angels, aren't always good, and the demons aren't always bad, and in the heavenly spheres it's hard to know exactly who is calling the shots and where their loyalties lie.
I love this clip. I think Dean's speech about peace versus pain and life is wonderful. And then Castiel breaks ranks entirely, casting his lot with the humans. Also, I think the line "It's better than being a Stepford bitch in heaven" is an excellent line, and I would like the opportunity to use it in conversation.
One of my friends pointed out to me that I left Ciaran Hinds out of my list of beautiful actors. It is, indeed, a sad oversight. I must admit, though, that he does not always look as splendid as he did in Persuasion. I just saw him in Escape to Witch Mountain, in which he looked a bit like my old high school English teacher with a buzz cut. If you listen closely, you can hear his accent peeking through. Not that I mind the lilting sound of an Irish accent, but then again I don’t think Homeland Security would be hiring anyone from Northern Ireland, either. I had a peek at his IMDB entry and was startled to find that he was Herod in the Nativity Story. He was? How did I miss that? And I forgot that he was Lord Tarleton in Amazing Grace. Besides being a baddie, he didn’t look nearly as good in a wig as Ioan. It also took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to pronounce his name using the odd phonetic notation on Wikipedia. Since he’s Irish, I can’t assume that I know how to pronounce his name by sight. For all I know it could be pronounced “Carson” or “Warren” or even “Cadwalleder.” In Gaelic the word on the page never seems to bear any resemblance to the way it sounds. Imagine the difficulty I had with Ioan Gruffudd. Welsh seems to think that if there’s one letter, there should be a duplicate, just for fun. Still, Mr. Hinds is a man with fabulous bone structure and should be celebrated. Huzzah, Mr. Hinds!
I also somehow left out Gary Oldman. Dear Husband makes fun of me when we watch the Harry Potter movies with Sirius Black, because at some point I was a bit too exuberant in my appreciation. Apparently I called Mr. Oldman “delicious.” I blame my MIL, who brought it up in the first place. Then of course there was Dracula, in which he mostly looked great, with the notable exception of his doppelganger with the weird updo. I still don’t know what that was about. But my first memory of him was in the film Prick Up Your Ears, as bad-boy playwright Joe Orton. He channeled self-centered jack-ass really well. And he threw himself into the role with great, uh, enthusiasm. You would think he was born to meet young men in public restrooms. If he captured anything like the real nature of Orton, no wonder his lover offed him. I find that movie has an odd staying power, particularly the final scene of his funeral, with the Beatles song “A Day in the Life” playing.
As it happens, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are friends. How did I find this out? Why, by wasting time on a Tim Roth fansite. Yep, while other people were creating great art, feeding the poor, writing sermons and generally getting on with life, I was wasting time surfing a fansite. One with a nice selection of photos, I might add. Anyway, I found out about this rather odd exchange between Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, involving messages inked on their bodies. I won’t put the photos here in case someone at these magazines gets ticked at me, but you can follow this link to view them. Here’s how the site described the correspondence:
“Do Tim and Gary Oldman really write messages to each other on their body parts? Yes, at one time they did. This is because, according to Tim, that's the best way they could communicate with each other with their busy lives. Some history: In a magazine interview, Gary Oldman was asked to name certain people who he found to be attractive, Tim Roth being one of them. Tim must have read this, because Tim wrote something on his arm (or his head?) that read something along the lines of "G.O. I think you're sexy." Oldman then on the cover of the May 1994 UK edition of Premiere wrote on his arm, "Tim Roth I think you are sexy too!" Then in the April 1995 issue of Detour, Tim wrote on his forehead, "Gary Oldman Let's Do It" … Many of these pictures can be seen on this web site.”
