Hickory, ash, and oak
2021-02-05 18:13My week has continued to consist primarily of coughing and capitalism, but the last thirty-six hours have also contained a concentrated shot of Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007) and Stargate Atlantis (2004–09) and while there are ways in which I am beginning to think it is not actually good for me to have ready access to heaps of syndicated television, I really like Robert Picardo. Have some links.
1. The first thing I saw when I woke was that Christopher Plummer had died. I must have seen him first in The Sound of Music (1965), but I liked him ever since discovering in college that he had played the original Nickles in Archibald MacLeish's J.B. (1959). I don't think I ever wrote about him except in passing mention of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) or The Silent Partner (1978) or sharing that wonderful, all too suddenly relevant gif of Captain von Trapp tearing the Nazi flag.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
minoanmiss linked to a clip of him singing "Edelweiss" in his own, un-dubbed voice. He was of a reasonable age for dying, but when people have a renaissance at the age of eighty, you expect them to go on forever.
2. Courtesy ofasakiyume: the paintings of Gabriella Mirabelli. I rather desperately covet Aquinnah Shallows (2018). Her oceans look like woodblocks and themselves.
3. Courtesy of a friend who is not on DW: "My favourite species of birds are the ones named by people who clearly hate birds." I had never encountered some of these names before. Like the rest, the fluffy-backed tit-babbler is entirely real.
4. I was looking for a gifset of the scene in Victor/Victoria (1982) where Julie Andrews steps literally out of the closet in men's clothes and decks Robert Preston's no-good ex, but I found these posts instead and maybe it's just the chalk stripes, but my brain is now attempting to persuade me to fancast Andrews as Peter Wimsey. I still need to see Viktor und Viktoria (1933) and First a Girl (1935).
5. From conversation withhandful_ofdust: it has been wild to watch TV from the '90's and even the early-to-mid-2000's and realize just how rapidly I acclimated to the existence of canonically queer characters in popular media when for decades it was not to be expected—if anything, the opposite. I didn't know enough about TV in 1995–96 to recognize that it was groundbreaking of Babylon 5 to imply a romantic relationship between Susan Ivanova and Talia Winters and then confirm it textually, even after the fact; I took the representation of a bisexual Russian Jewish main character for granted. (It was plausible to me!) Now I realize that however much of a tiny sketch it looks to a modern viewer, it was a big deal to present as canonical when DS9 was still doing its first same-sex kiss with a bodyswap plot. Watching the first two seasons of Torchwood this past fall, it struck me as refreshingly normal that no one on the team is straight, but the show took real flak for it in 2006–08. The Legend of Korra only ended in 2014 and its finale with the endgame f/f pairing holding hands and looking deeply into one another's eyes was a game-changer for children's/YA TV. These things move so fast and it's so easy to forget what existed before.
I had the misfortune to be awake for a spectacular sunrise this morning, so I took a picture. It really doesn't capture the full Krakatoa. I am a little disappointed we didn't have a storm.
1. The first thing I saw when I woke was that Christopher Plummer had died. I must have seen him first in The Sound of Music (1965), but I liked him ever since discovering in college that he had played the original Nickles in Archibald MacLeish's J.B. (1959). I don't think I ever wrote about him except in passing mention of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) or The Silent Partner (1978) or sharing that wonderful, all too suddenly relevant gif of Captain von Trapp tearing the Nazi flag.
minoanmiss linked to a clip of him singing "Edelweiss" in his own, un-dubbed voice. He was of a reasonable age for dying, but when people have a renaissance at the age of eighty, you expect them to go on forever.2. Courtesy of
asakiyume: the paintings of Gabriella Mirabelli. I rather desperately covet Aquinnah Shallows (2018). Her oceans look like woodblocks and themselves.3. Courtesy of a friend who is not on DW: "My favourite species of birds are the ones named by people who clearly hate birds." I had never encountered some of these names before. Like the rest, the fluffy-backed tit-babbler is entirely real.
4. I was looking for a gifset of the scene in Victor/Victoria (1982) where Julie Andrews steps literally out of the closet in men's clothes and decks Robert Preston's no-good ex, but I found these posts instead and maybe it's just the chalk stripes, but my brain is now attempting to persuade me to fancast Andrews as Peter Wimsey. I still need to see Viktor und Viktoria (1933) and First a Girl (1935).
5. From conversation with
handful_ofdust: it has been wild to watch TV from the '90's and even the early-to-mid-2000's and realize just how rapidly I acclimated to the existence of canonically queer characters in popular media when for decades it was not to be expected—if anything, the opposite. I didn't know enough about TV in 1995–96 to recognize that it was groundbreaking of Babylon 5 to imply a romantic relationship between Susan Ivanova and Talia Winters and then confirm it textually, even after the fact; I took the representation of a bisexual Russian Jewish main character for granted. (It was plausible to me!) Now I realize that however much of a tiny sketch it looks to a modern viewer, it was a big deal to present as canonical when DS9 was still doing its first same-sex kiss with a bodyswap plot. Watching the first two seasons of Torchwood this past fall, it struck me as refreshingly normal that no one on the team is straight, but the show took real flak for it in 2006–08. The Legend of Korra only ended in 2014 and its finale with the endgame f/f pairing holding hands and looking deeply into one another's eyes was a game-changer for children's/YA TV. These things move so fast and it's so easy to forget what existed before.I had the misfortune to be awake for a spectacular sunrise this morning, so I took a picture. It really doesn't capture the full Krakatoa. I am a little disappointed we didn't have a storm.
