TV & RL randomness

[bironic]

Finally remembered to watch Blackadder on TV last night. One of the local PBS stations picked it up a month or two ago, and I keep -- well, kept -- forgetting to tune in. It seems they're running "Blackadder Goes Forth." Hugh Laurie will forever and always be the jovially dim-witted, "Hurrah!"-crying Prince Regent in my heart,* but George is a close second, and this is the only series I've seen in full, so I feel particularly attached to it. Of all possible episodes, it was the one with the music hall skit starring "Georgina," followed by the one with the brash airplane pilot who keeps bucking his hips and going "Woof woof!" Ha. It was fun to see D'Arling again and enjoy HL in full drag for the second time this week and hear Stephen Fry bleat and try to follow the endless similes and ponder the irony of how HL now plays the exasperated cynic instead of one of the idiots surrounding him.

* It's still freakin' hard to reconcile Blackadder-Laurie with House-Laurie.

Speaking of good times, I saw my sister for about 20 minutes yesterday for the first time in a few weeks, since she's been all over the country tour-managing for/with Ryan since Rock Star: Supernova ended in August, and when she is around she keeps different hours so I still don't see her. We put our limited time together to good use by chatting about this week's House, heh. Now she's in Montreal -- and she just told me the guy they're staying with is David Shore's cousin. WTF. Unfortunately I can't think of a way to use this to our advantage.

In other news, the NEPCA conference went well last weekend, though it was poorly attended in part because of the bad weather. Paper topics ranged from gender and sexual-orientation stereotyping in What Not to Wear and Queer Eye to images of women and singleness to "egocasting" on MySpace to Buffy fans to fostering professor/librarian cooperation when it comes to acquiring pop culture materials for permanent collections; met some very cool and interesting people; and the eight-hour round-trip drive was pretty, including some fairly impressive cloud formations on the way back as the storm cleared, though the foliage had already dimmed down to the late-season browns, orangey-browns, reddish-browns, mustard yellows and evergreens, with occasional white birch trunks. This weekend I'm taking synn to the ballet to see "The Green Table," which ought to be fabulous even the third time 'round. And besides that, hopefully finishing up some writing projects.

Comments

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* It's still freakin' hard to reconcile Blackadder-Laurie with House-Laurie.

Or how about Bertie Wooster?

the guy they're staying with is David Shore's cousin.

*gaggles incomprehensible sounds*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I'm a little proud of her, actually, because if that fact came up it's probably because she mentioned House. I mean, I assume the guy doesn't go around introducing himself as "David Shore's cousin [Name]."

I haven't seen any Jeeves & Wooster! Woe. I've read a few but never had the opportunity to watch the show.

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If *I* were David Shore's cousin-- I'd probably stay shut up about. (I'd be more impressed if she knew why she should be impressed with the name David Shore.)

If you use bittorrent and if you do a search for "wooster" here, you'll find four well-furnished seeds. If not, I could upload. It's light innocent fun. :3

[bironic.livejournal.com]

(Oh, she knew. And she told me straightaway to share the thrill, because she loves me.)

I should probably learn how to use bittorrent. We'll chat. I'll have my guy call your guy.

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(I don't suppose you convinced her to concince him to convince David Shore to make the show behave and not fuck up with all of my nightmares, did you?)

How to use bittorrent? Install a bittorrent client (search on google, you'll get plenty of options)-- once that's done, look for torrent seeds on search sites like scrape torrent. Download the seed, open the seed in the bittorrent program, and voila! Wait for the good results.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

(Naw, it was just one email exchange. She may do it on her own, though; don't give up hope. Though secretly I suspect you enjoy getting upset at the show sometimes.)

I'll have my guy send your guy a fruit basket as a thank-you. :)

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Though secretly I suspect you enjoy getting upset at the show sometimes.

Hey!

...I don't mind being teased, or when the show gets coy, but I have no enjoyment out of weak/inconsistent writing. I'm much happier loving the things I love.

I'm gonna go steal my guy's fruit basket now.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Of course it's better to love what we love. I wish House were excellent every week -- I wouldn't miss being critical in exchange for perfection! But sometimes it's fun to get up in arms about things.

Your guy was supposed to give you that fruit basket, so if he didn't, go give him a slap on the wrist in the tradition of House protecting his precious pancakes and enjoy whatever he hasn't eaten.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, Blackadder... I have the whole shebang on DVD. J&W, too. Oh, Hugh Laurie, I love you. ♥ XD

And that conference sounds awesome. I'm jealous.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm holding out for our library -- or, less likely, one of our local Blockbusters -- to pick up the series. I'd like to watch them but don't know if I want to own them.

The papers at the conference were mostly excellent. Sorry for causing jealousy; I didn't know you were interested! synn almost came with but she couldn't make it in the end. You can check out the full draft version (http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA%20Program%20Fall%202006.htm) of the conference program online. (I attended #2, 7, 13 and 15.) I must say, though, that while the panels and company were stimulating, it was the smallest and shortest conference I've ever been to.

Apparently it's quite the contrast to the PCA/ACA national conference (http://www.popularculture.org/), which people were saying attracts something like 7,000 people with 10 panels running at any given time over three days. If you're interested, it's going to be in Boston this year, over Easter weekend. I'm seriously thinking about going. They've just closed the various calls for papers (which sucks, because I only found out last weekend and it would've been cool to submit something for the Internet Culture or brand-new Vampires area) so they're nowhere near getting a program up, but it's sure to be a fantastic experience no matter what the panels turn out to be. And for non-presenters who don't want a program or name tag, it only costs $5, or maybe it's $5/day. Still, cheap.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Oh, Blackadder, how I love thee...! Mind, that show was my first encounter with Steven Fry, Hugh Laurie, Rowan Atkinson, Miranda Richardson and a few more :-) Wonderful stuff!
I can't remember titles, but I'm guessing that "Blackadder goes forth" is the last series - the WWI one? Because that is my favourite - it is wonderfully dark and sarcastic. My favourite quote from the series is from that part of it.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's the WWI one. And likewise, the show exposed me to Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Miranda Richardson, Tim McInnerny (D'Arling) and Tony what's-his-name who played Baldric. I knew Rowan Atkinson from Mr. Bean. So yeah, when casting was announced for Rita Skeeter, I was all, Hey, it's crazy Queen Elizabeth!

What's your favorite quote from the series?

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Yay :-) I really need to get the DVDs...! I was thrilled about Miranda Richardson too *G* "OMG, it's Queenie!" ;-) But I do adore her from other things too. I saw Blackadder before I saw any Mr. Bean and he never really got to me. Mainly, I find that show annoying...

Baldric: "Sir, what d'we do if we step on a landmine?"
Blackadder: "Jump thirty feet into the air and scatter over a large area."

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ha, excellent.

Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder > Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually > Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English > Rowan Atkinson in Bean. 'F you ask me.

Miranda Richardson was also in The Crying Game and the Merlin miniseries with Sam Neill, I think. Which would be everything I've seen her in other than the above.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Apart from not having seen Johnny English, I agree! :-D

That she was, yes. And Sleepy Hollow and The Hours, to mention two you may know.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I know of them but have not seen them. Promised myself I'd read Mrs. Dalloway (and possibly, y'know, The Hours) before seeing The Hours, and that hasn't happened yet. Sleepy Hollow with Johnny Depp? Tried a few minutes of that once, got bored.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

I just started "Orlando" because I love the film of that. I haven't actually seen The Hours either, but I probably will at some point. And yep, it's the one with Johnny Depp, for whos sake I'll try anything once ;-) I even like Sleepy Hollow, it's exactly quirky enough for me to like it.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

So it's quirky and you like it.... I'll keep that in mind next time an opportunity arises to watch it.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Ohdear, now I hope you don't hate it! *G*

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Word to the reconciling. I thought the ep or so that Hugh was without his cane, his body language became far more familiar too. I guess you'd expect that, but I hadn't fully realised how much the "walk" helped changed everything.

the one with the brash airplane pilot who keeps bucking his hips and going "Woof woof"

Aw, Rik Mayall. I'm guessing you've never seen "The Young Ones". He'll always be "Rick" to me.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Nope. I will have to go look that up because sadly I don't even know what it is. Unless you enable my laziness and tell me in your reply.

Yes, his "old self" definitely made a big comeback in those couple of episodes, like when he ran away from Cameron and slid into the patient's room. It's like comedic Hugh Laurie is coiled in wait within dramatic Hugh Laurie as much as athletic House is trapped within crippled House.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_%28TV_series%29

Naturally, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, etc. etc. all guested on the show.. :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're the best. I just skimmed the article looking for the bits relevant to our conversation. That's funny about the Footlights College team.

(And hey look -- it's Ben Elton and that guy who played the "twenty-minuter" on Blackadder. :) )

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understood the bit about Ben Elton, but OK :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my ability to write fuzzes out at this time of night. I just meant that I was looking at the article about the "The Young Ones" and recognizing people from "Blackadder" where you were watching "Blackadder" and remembering people from "The Young Ones."

[bironic.livejournal.com]

And as for reconciling, first of all, I thought the guy looked familiar but I didn't recognize HL in the commercials for House before I started watching, and then after I did see my first episode, having missed the credits, I looked up some articles and did a metaphorical double-take when they said it was him. Even after learning that, it was hard to believe. I even tried watching an episode of Prince Regent-series Blackadder immediately before an episode of House last year but it didn't help. His ability to become a completely different person in this role -- accent, mannerisms, appearance, most of his expressions, the works -- was what made me respect him enormously as an actor instead of just giggling at him as a comedian.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Well, House was already most of the way into its first season before it premiered here, so I'd read articles, and made a mental note to watch because I'd always adored him as George (my favourite character from Blackadder). Then I saw the first promotional trailer and was OMG... Hugh?

I mean, yes, House obviously contains a fair number of lovely comedic elements brought to him by HL, which really helps in shaping the character, but his ability to effectively completely rearrange his facial expressions is amazing.