Lizkdc Dislocation

Betrayed by the BBC (Inspector Lewis)

Back in the day, Mom and I used to watch a lot of BBC, helpfully imported by the annoying Anglophiles at WGBH.

It was both alien and comfortable, in those days.   Tragedies happened, but to noble, distant sepia characters in bonnets or belted World War One uniforms. 

Well, let me tell you, it isn't like that anymore. We sat down to watch "Mystery!" after many years away, a series named, with a delectable lack of attempted appeal, "Inspector Lewis."

Opening scene, setting is Oxford! Yay! Hurrah for common room teasand punting and tutors! Stately towers!  Handsome, sexually repressed aesthetes!

Here we go! Handsome, conflicted graduate student angsting in a shadowy church at night.  Chubby, timid vicar looking conflicted, right.

Oh, the conflicted graduate student is smashing up marble Jesuses, here comes the chubby vicar to comfort him and . . . oh! Oops!

An hour later.

Dorothy: "Well, that wasn't what I expected."

Me: "Not your grandmother's Miss Marple, no."

Dorothy: "So many fiery explosions."

"Not so much poison in the dons' port as I remember."

"And you know, even with all the clues, I was pretty surprised about the BRAZILIAN SEX CHANGE."

"Let alone the RED HOT POKER THROUGH THE EYE."

"I didn't see that coming."

"No."

"Not a bit of it."

Is there nothing sacred in this ever-changing world? Weeps upon a copy of "The Murder at the Vicarage."

A Holdout No Longer

March 2 Windowsill, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

An Albanian came to the house to install satellite television.

This is not as surprising as it sounds.

Dance With Me

There are at least five things I love intwined in this video.

*BSG,old 97's, Whedonesque, action, irony

Lost with All Hands

If, like myself, you are a fan of the salty goodness of C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, of Horatio Hornblower and Doctor Maturin and Captain Jack Aubrey, then you'll enjoy this story.

"18th-century warship found in Lake Ontario: British vessel carrying 130 sunk in 1780"

Eerie, moving, and yes, for a small set of history fanatics, fascinating.

I heard There Was a Secret Chord

I had the most fun ever watching an American Idol finale with my nieces.  Brigid, Fiona and Minna were finishing up their homework notebooks when I got there.  We had meatball pizza, and I poised sleeping baby Theo on my stomach, and Milo and Annabelle headed up to bed (after Annabelle solemnly instructed me not to take the baby home with me), and the rest of us piled on the couch and the familiar music came on "duh nuh nuh na nuh na."  And it was silly and awesome.

Last night, I wasn't around for the results,  being out having beers with my photo club. Lo and behold, I get home and discover the glorious news that the winner was my favorite contestant, the scruffy, underdog bartender from Tulsa.

How crazy am I that I actually had the thought "Okay, sometimes the right guy wins, even when all the pundits and powers that be keep telling the voters to pick someone else."  Meaningful pause.

Mash-Up

IMG_1516.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

From "Take your time: Olafur Eliasson" at MoMA NYC

Melding of today's results from the PA elections and Battlestar Galactica S4.

Ahem.  Say it with me.

"We're going the wrong waaaaaaaaaay."

Remaking the Box: Hulu.com Remixes TV for the Web

I was excited to get back from Maine and find out I can watch the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica* on Hulu.com.

The Hulu experiment has been intriguing me since it launched this month.  Basically, it's a collaboration between NBC, Fox, and some niche cable channels to find a higher ground for online television than the existing venues.

I like their simple tagline: "Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free."

I like even better that they've focussed on a few key points of value:

• good first offering for content:  Hulu now has NBC's gems Heroes and Friday Night Lights, and also  large chunks of some of the best cult TV favorites of recent years: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly,  BSG.  They also offer a weird  but tasty selection of long-ago gems: schlocktastic 70's hits like Starksy and Hutch, old classics like Alfred Hitchcock. A few movies are thrown in, though most so far are of they type that line the bargain bin at Best Buy.
• improving the streaming video playback experience: higher quality image, more reliable streaming, and improve the usability of the player.  For this to succeed choosing an episode should be very easy, and common tasks like starting, stopping and fast-forwarding should be easy to figure out and should work.
• advertising is incorporated, but is not more intrusive than it is on TV.

Jane, Revisited

IMG_0474.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Not only have I been religiously watching the Complete Jane Austen season on PBS, but last night, my old buddy Bronia organized a little Jane Austen vid night at her excellent mansard-roofed cottage in Cambrige.

Jason (MrBronia) heroically cleared the deck by taking young Ripley out to the IMAX movie at the Science Museum to make way for mom's gal culture night.  When they got back, we were all still yacking and occupying the living room, so they each sighed and retreated to their rooms to wait till the chat fest was over, which was sweet of them.

The little crowdlet was a spoonful of highly concentrated broth o' Massachusetts (1 ACLU fundraiser, 1 MIT development office, 1 homemaker, 1 community development expert, 1 web professional) .  We had wine and pie and watched "Persuasion."

Childhood's End*

I grew in a culture that had a severe hangover of mid-twentieth-century middle class repression and guilt. There were certain things we as a cultural group just were terrible at facing. Sex was one, of course. Class is another, that is to say, money, status, power--and their opposites. And another was, well, the future.

* Cheers, Arthur C. Clarke