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I am a lass who alas loves a lad who alas has a lass loves another lad who once I had in Canterbury
Yesterday I did almost nothing at all, which considering how much interaction my last four to six days involved (my God, it's like a social life) was actually fine. I had a voice lesson. I watched some Caprica (2010). I got paid for a poem. I proofread a book.
Today was also quiet: I met Matthew Timmins in Porter Square and we got lunch in the form of sushi from Miso Market (very tasty, befitting their nice writeup in the Boston Globe) and talked for hours about a variety of things not limited to alternate histories or umbrellas and including his unpublished, terrific novel, which took off the top of my head over the weekend.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks called while we were discussing either family geographies or Paranoia, but I called them back on the bus.
I came home and seem to have celebrated this year's Valentine's Day by watching The Ladykillers (1955) and eating pizza. I can't tell what conclusions to draw from that, except that Criterion should put out a box set of Sandy Mackendrick. Alec Guinness plays a wonderful Alastair Sim.
Today was also quiet: I met Matthew Timmins in Porter Square and we got lunch in the form of sushi from Miso Market (very tasty, befitting their nice writeup in the Boston Globe) and talked for hours about a variety of things not limited to alternate histories or umbrellas and including his unpublished, terrific novel, which took off the top of my head over the weekend.
rushthatspeaks called while we were discussing either family geographies or Paranoia, but I called them back on the bus.I came home and seem to have celebrated this year's Valentine's Day by watching The Ladykillers (1955) and eating pizza. I can't tell what conclusions to draw from that, except that Criterion should put out a box set of Sandy Mackendrick. Alec Guinness plays a wonderful Alastair Sim.
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That sounds productive. How often do you have them?
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Once a week unless I'm sick or my teacher's out of town. It may or may not have come up in our conversations that I am fairly serious about my singing.
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A discussion on alternate histories and umbrellas sounds fabulous.
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I like when it happens!
A discussion on alternate histories and umbrellas sounds fabulous.
If it inspires you . . .
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Criterion should put out a box set of Sandy Mackendrick.
I concur!
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I'm a little less than halfway through: Yosef is looking for Tamara in New Cap City and Daniel has just begun to suspect that his daughter's avatar is in in the stolen MCP. I'm really enjoying it. The focus with the Adama brothers on assimilation and cultural identity is not strictly speaking a science fiction plot at all, which I like. (When this trope does appear in science fiction, it's usually because aliens are standing in for some real-world minority group. It's not allegorical here: the Taurons do not map onto any singly identifiable ethnicity and none of the characters are any more or less alien than we are ourselves. That turns out to be a refreshing change.) Ditto the tension between Sam's so far well-balanced life as a Halatha hitman and Yosef's eroding ability to convince himself that he's not really a mob lawyer, he just sounds (and bribes) like one in court—it gives so much more texture to the world than if the only issues of any importance were AI, VR, and other acronyms of the future. The show could use a kind of meta-technological consultant—I'm not sure it really knows as much about the way inventions work in the real world as it does about the conventions of fiction—but on the other hand it's still presenting a version of virtual reality that I don't think is terminally stupid and that hardly ever happens. I like the complexity of the characters, the way that some of the most sympathetic by position are some of the most problematic by personality, and I like that the show is aware of different kinds of privilege and deploys them in both our understanding of the characters and the parameters of their actions. I am less convinced of the characterization of Clarice than I am of the other principals, but I will reserve judgment until the show ends. I'm just hoping it doesn't fall apart.
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(I also like Sam's marriage, because the big conflict in that relationship is based on cultural assimilation and the fact that Sam has a husband just is the fact that Sam has a husband).
Eric Stoltzery is on its way for a while, but it gets better.
I also agree on VR not being stupid in Caprica, and how often that does not happen.
Clarice Willow is... Yeah. I don't know if you've gotten to Gemenon with her, but while the Monads and the STO is interesting, and the Mother does something very interesting and subtle the first time, her plan is completely mental, and her STO rival is equally mental and one crazy hand clearly doesn't know what the other crazy hand is doing, which, for me, threw the whole inciting incident into doubt - so why did Ben blow up the train, with his genius girlfriend on it who had something that he gave no indication of not knowing was of tremendous long-term value to his religion and his organization?
I came up with an answer, but it's a weak one.
I'm not sure it really knows as much about the way inventions work in the real world as it does about the conventions of fiction.
True. Technology only becomes more magical, but not as bad as it usually gets. There are a couple of facets of the BSG universe that are just left as magic (head Six and head Baltar in the main series, for example), but it is a little more the exception than the rule.
I like that the show is aware of different kinds of privilege and deploys them in both our understanding of the characters and the parameters of their actions.
I agree, but I wonder what you picked up on.
I didn't think it fell apart as it went on, but some pieces did come off.
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It was still a nice time.
Today I have to write a paper on Isolationism and if I finish by this afternoon, I'm going to the opera (those $20 rush tickets are pretty awesome).
But sounds like you had a great day. Been meaning to watch the original Ladykillers after that Coen Brothers movie which felt like a potentially great movie (even as it was an utter failure)
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The first one is perfectly reasonable to me; I have heard of both of those musicians (especially following Winehouse's death; which is also how I discovered Russell Brand can write. It left me entirely confused about his acting career), but I do not know any of their music. I find it weirder to confuse Frank Miller with Alan Moorse, but if you know both of them only as graphic novelists whose catalogues furnished us with some blockbuster movies recently, I can see how it might happen.
Just people have different tastes and different biases and they might not care about whatever performer might be big at the time.
Most of my life's interaction with pop culure is based on this principle.
It was still a nice time.
Good! What opera are you hoping to see?
Been meaning to watch the original Ladykillers after that Coen Brothers movie which felt like a potentially great movie (even as it was an utter failure)
It's brilliant. It's another one of those unclassifiable comedies that hovers between the nightmarish and the absurd: the scriptwriter always said it came to him in a dream and it plays like one. I avoided the remake at all costs, but I would see the stage adaptation if it were not playing on the wrong side of the ocean from me. I like Peter Capaldi.
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I totally need to rewatch The Ladykillers. I have a small Sim crush.
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Apologies are never necessary for a Sim crush. Even when it's really Guinness.
(That sounds like some kind of advertisement.)
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I have seen that on shelves and never read it! If it reminds you of Iain Sinclair, I'll give it a try.
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Also, do you ever hear your own poems in song?
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I don't belong to a chorus; I perform occasionally. I'd like something more substantive, but that will need to be organized.
Also, do you ever hear your own poems in song?
No, but apparently
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I hadn't seen it in years. It was even better than I'd remembered.
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I'm glad you've had pleasant-sounding quiet days.
I came home and seem to have celebrated this year's Valentine's Day by watching The Ladykillers (1955) and eating pizza.
Sounds appropriate enough.
I apparently celebrated SS. Cyril and Methodius Day by sessioning in Hamden. I had a terrible time getting into a parking space because people can't park properly in that perdition of a parking lot and wound up sitting in an awkward place due to lack of chairs; it actually proved to be a fairly comfortable seat, other than getting poked in the knee with a flute every so often, and once the V-day dining crowd left the place proved quiet enough that I could sing "The Errant Apprentice"* without pushing my voice to the point of making myself cough.
*I was on the point of singing Brian McNeil's "The Devil's Only Daughter" ("Now I've had a drink or two, just enough to tell you true/If you'll keep frae interrupting me again./You're quarter saint and quarter witch...") but a friend asked me for the other one and I saw it was a better choice besides.
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I'm always happy!
Brian McNeil's "The Devil's Only Daughter" ("Now I've had a drink or two, just enough to tell you true/If you'll keep frae interrupting me again./You're quarter saint and quarter witch...")
I don't know that one!
"The Errant Apprentice" is a good song for Valentine's Day, though.
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It's a great favourite of mine for certain situations, such as singing sessions where three people in a row have sung utter sentimental rubbish.
Here you be:
Brian McNeill: "The Devil's Only Daughter" (from: The Busker and the Devil's Only Daughter (1990))
And, whiles we're at it, another of his off the same record:
Brian McNeill: "The Busker" (from: The Busker and the Devil's Only Daughter (1990))
"The Errant Apprentice" is a good song for Valentine's Day, though.
I'd like to think so. It's got a comforting touch of cynicism without being a full-bore blast of loathing.
Bill Watkins, who wrote it, actually turns out to be a friend of a friend. Small world, and all of that.
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Thank you!
Bill Watkins, who wrote it, actually turns out to be a friend of a friend. Small world, and all of that.
Hey, you can tell him in person about the suitability of his songs.
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Most welcome!
Hey, you can tell him in person about the suitability of his songs.
I'd have to go to Minneapolis to do it in person, unfortunately.* But I suppose I could ask her to pass it on to him. Maybe, if I said it on her FB, he'd even see it; I'm thinking he might be on there.
*No immediate plans to do that, but if I ever do I'm hoping we'll be introduces.
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Also:
BRAINWORM SUBJECT LINE
MUST CREATE BRAINWORM IN REVENGE
Ding dong! Ding dong! DING dong! DIIIIING DONG! Four bells in the tower of Bray! Dingdong. Dingdong. Ding. Dong. Diii--iii--ing--donnnng.
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Technically he's playing Professor Marcus, but Professor Marcus is clearly being played by Alastair Sim. It's actually rather astonishing: there's not much of a structural resemblance between them, but the fastidious lowering of the eyes, the toothy smile—the voice—are perfect. There must have been several inches in height between them, but Guinness even manages that overhanging crane of Sim's. End result: Sim kept running into people on the street who told him how much they'd liked him in that Ealing film with the little old lady and the crooks.
What have you seen him in? He is my definitive Ebenezer Scrooge, but I also love him in Green for Danger (1946), Cottage to Let (1941), and honestly wherever else I find him.
Ding dong! Ding dong! DING dong! DIIIIING DONG! Four bells in the tower of Bray! Dingdong. Dingdong. Ding. Dong. Diii--iii--ing--donnnng.
Sorry, I've got this one already! It's been in my head since Matthew's novel. A stray line in one of the early chapters snagged it. Doomed.
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Oh! And I have no idea if this is accessible in the US, but supposedly there's a BBC miniseries from the sixties of Cold Comfort Farm with Sim as Amos Starkadder. ("There'll be NAE BUTTER IN HELL!")
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Yes! I've never seen the whole thing; I've seen pieces. It's actually great.
Oh! And I have no idea if this is accessible in the US, but supposedly there's a BBC miniseries from the sixties of Cold Comfort Farm with Sim as Amos Starkadder. ("There'll be NAE BUTTER IN HELL!")
Funny you should mention Cold Comfort Farm—I was just given a DVD of the 1995 film tonight!
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Whatever shall we do, O Lord,
When Gabriel blows o'er field and river,
Fen and desert, mount and ford?
The Earth may burn, but we will quiver.
I want to introduce this to my shape-note group but I'm not sure how they'll take it.
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It's on my list. I keep hoping it will come around on TCM.