Deadwood2, Syriana, an unsettling encounter at the paintless-dent shop, Journey to the Center…, Black Narcissus (posted from home)
(this post covers the period 20-24 June)
Saturday, 24 June-
Today was supposed to be rainy and it did sprinkle a little early on but by late morning I was restless and decided to go by motorcycle anyway. I rode down to Rocky Ridge and tried the end-to-end jog again to see if it would kick my butt as badly as it did last time. I was in much better shape at the end this time but then it occurred to me that the temperature was more moderate—the kinda-sticky Seventies versus the horribly-sticky Nineties—so the comparison was probably invalid. I’ll try again!
It never did rain on me on the motorcycle despite the fact that the weather guys were calling for 90-per-cent chance of rain all day. We need rain though the corn across the street from our house is doing well. The old saying is that corn should be ‘knee-high by the fourth of July’ but the corn near us is already about thigh-high.
That evening we watched ‘Black Narcissus’ on cable, one of the Turner Classic Movies
‘Essentials’ series. I can’t say I’m a fan of this 1947 film. It was strange. The commentators emphasized the beauty of the Technicolor photography yet IMDb summarizes the plot as follows:
----
“Five young British nuns are invited to move to a windy "palace", former house of the concubines of an old general, in the top of a mountain in Mopu, Himalaya, to raise the convent of Saint Faith Order, a school for children and girls, and an infirmary for the local dwellers. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is assigned as the superior sister, and her liaison with civilization is the rude government agent Mr. Dean (David Farrar). The lonely and exotic place and the presence of Mr. `Dean awake the innermost desires in the flesh of the sisters, and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) becomes mad with the temptation.”
---
Whew, is THAT what we saw?
Friday, 23 June-
Today I made a quick trip to the farmers’ market for essentials (fresh orange juice, apples, and Lebanon bologna!) then we spent the afternoon in Camp Hill for Labashi’s doctor’s appointment, another of the baseline exams we all need to get in our Fifties. Back home we watched Deadwood Season 2, Episodes 3 and 4. Good stuff!
Thursday, 22 June-
Today I went shopping for a long Ethernet cable. We’ve had a problem with the wireless router hanging up once in a while and I’d just like to see what kind of difference a wired connection makes, if any, in speed. The latest problem occurred while I was watching a longish Google video (video.google.com) and I had to reboot the router to get out of it. I picked up a 50-footer at Office Max and will give it a try soon, probably some rainy day.
Today I also finished the book I had borrowed from the freebie shelf at Starbucks the other day, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Jules Verne. I loved it! I got quite a kick out of reading not only the old science but also the view of how people lived and interacted as well as the descriptions of Iceland and of course the adventure itself. In writing this blog entry I thought I should verify the date of the book, which I thought had been written in the very late 1800’s. It was written in 1864! Here’s a link not only to info about the book but also an online version of it: http://www.online-literature.com/verne/ .
My freebie paperback copy of the book is a 1973 Scholastic Book Services edition. I am surprised to see that the editors apparently not only abridged the book, they changed the names of the major characters. The professor is Professor von Hardwigg in the Scholastic edition and Professor Lindenbrock in the original. The protagonist is Harry in the Scholastic edition and Axel in the original.
The other interesting thing about the paperback is that it has a bookplate in the back cover identifying it as a traveling book on Bookcrossing.com. I spent a few hours on Bookcrossing and believe I’ve found yet another little fun thing to do. By entering the serial number on the bookplate I learned that this copy of ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ had been placed at the York Starbucks by ‘tgyardbird’. Here’s a copy of his entry:
---
Journal entry 1 by tgyardbird1 from York, Pennsylvania USA on Friday, January 06, 2006:
This book came to me through Scholastic Book Services; I didn't read it, though...guess the "classics" just didn't ever make a great impression on me.Lovers of Verne and such books as these will have a free one and I'm sure a good read of this.
Journal entry 2 by tgyardbird1 from York, Pennsylvania USA on Friday, January 06, 2006:
Released about 6 mos ago (1/7/2006 9:00:00 AM BX time) at Starbucks Market Street inside in York, Pennsylvania USA
And this is from his profile:
---
I'm a 40 year old radio person...I've been in the biz 20+ years, but I doubt anyone would know who I was...in a way, I really rather like it as such.I'm currently working for XM Satellite Radio, and it is a place we all dreamed of in our minds, but it is now a reality.I have also loved to read ever since I was a child. My book collection became too much over the years, and my mother is forever asking me to remove as many as I can when I come to visit!They are a diverse bunch, which you'll find if you read this. Enjoy!
---
Today I also took a little jog, this one at Rocky Ridge from the Keep on Biking bench to the far eastern end of the park and back to my motorcycle. About 75 minutes, I’d say.
Wednesday, 21 June-
Today was to be a hot one so I left a little earlier than usual, this time in the Miata. I went to my local garage to set up an appointment to have the clutch release bearing replaced since it has been noisy lately. I then drove to an auto dealership in New Cumberland which advertises paintless dent repair but that turned out to be untrue. However, they referred me to a shop in Mechanicsburg which does this type of work. (Paintless dent repairs are done by pushing/massaging the dent out from behind rather than by filling the dent and repainting that area of the car.)
I explained my problem to the service manager: I had lent the Miata to my nephew last Fall and the next time I drove it I noticed a new dent; a very small one but it’s on the upper curve of the right-rear fender in a very visible location. The guy chuckled, said “Been there, done that” and told me he had, as a teenager, lost one of the T-top panels to his uncle’s Firebird and when he returned the car, he declared the panel must have been stolen. I replied with a story of my own just as another customer, a middle-aged woman, came in to the shop’s office and joined us at the counter…
“I had a dent in the very same place on my MGA when I was in high school in the late Sixties. I was dropping my girlfriend off at her home after a date. She got out of the car with an empty coke bottle and a sweater or something in her arms. She turned to me and said, for the first time, “I love you”. And at that instant the coke bottle slipped out of her arms and whacked the fender. Now I ask you, what do you do with that?”
The lady, who hadn’t said a word to us by that point, answered my rhetorical question… “If you were married, you probably would have hit her.”
I was speechless…and so was the other guy. When I finally managed to talk, I said, “Well, it mustn’t have too big of a problem for us. We’ve been married for 35 years now”. She didn’t seem to be impressed. I told the guy I’d see him next week (for my appointment) and got the heck out of there.
On the way home I stopped at Pinchot Park and jogged a new path, this one from the Conewago Day Use area back the Pinchot and Ridge trails to the campground, then back to the car via the Lakeside Trail, a jog of about an hour.
That evening we watched “Syriana”. IMDb.com’s plot summary of it follows:
“From writer/director Stephen Gaghan, winner of the Best Screenplay Academy Award for Traffic, comes Syriana, a political thriller that unfolds against the intrigue of the global oil industry. From the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, the film's multiple storylines weave together to illuminate the human consequences of the fierce pursuit of wealth and power. As a career CIA operative (George Clooney) begins to uncover the disturbing truth about the work he has devoted his life to, an up-and-coming oil broker (Matt Damon) faces an unimaginable family tragedy and finds redemption in his partnership with an idealistic Gulf prince (Alexander Siddig). A corporate lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) faces a moral dilemma as he finesses the questionable merger of two powerful U.S. oil companies, while across the globe, a disenfranchised Pakistani teenager (Mazhar Munir) falls prey to the recruiting efforts of a charismatic cleric. Each plays their small part in the vast and complex system that powers the industry, unaware of the explosive impact their lives will have upon the world.”
Roger Ebert says “I think ‘Syriana’ is a great film. I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film's overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will. The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation.”
I’m not sure what I think of it yet. My gut instinct right after seeing the movie was that it didn’t ‘satisfy’. But is that just because I’m used to movies following a nice linear storyline and handing me a conclusion all wrapped up with a nice bow? We’ve decided to watch it again with the commentary and to do some reading about it. One of the nice things about Netflix is we can just hold on to it until we’re ready to let go.
Tuesday, 20 June-
This morning I spent some time making a few small changes to the blog which are summarized in the admin note below. In the afternoon I took Labashi to a medical appointment, a baseline colonoscopy. The procedure went well. Afterwards at home we watched the first two episodes of Deadwood, Season Two. I love the language. I’m not talking about the cursing and use of nasty words which the show is known for but rather the almost-Shakespearean stilted language of the late 1800s.
I took a few minutes to Google for “Deadwood” + “language” and found the following review that sums things up nicely:
“As a former historian, I tend to cringe when Hollywood tries to portray actual events and since "Deadwood" takes place during my area of concentration (Civil War to present), I was very concerned. Well, I've been delighted. Certainly there's been some playing with history but the basic thrust has been accurate. I wondered if they would be willing to have such a dominant character as Wild Bill die but they did. The struggle for control of the camp's destiny is a reasonable portrayal of what took place. The main characters did exist (the real Al was an even more viscious person than in the series) and largely were of the type portrayed. And the language... What happened in the 19th Century was that publishers refused to print accurate portrayals of frontier language, a curious mix of earthy profanity and deliberate efforts to appear of a higher class (you see some of this with the large number of people who dress formally with coats, ties, and vests even when manual laborers; this is far more so than today where the reverse is true and people try to portray themselves of a lower class than they are). In any case, the literature of the 19th Century frontier is utterly free of profanity because of that censorship and, as a result, we've seldom heard an accurate portrayal of their language. Bringing this element into the series must have been a tough decision but it gives "Deadwood" a unique, historically accurate sound. Undoubtedly some will find this at least initially shocking and distracting but it is hardly the most important thing about the series. The complex story lines and brilliant acting, at least for me, more than off-set any disturance I might have had at first hearing their crude yet elegant language. One other point - the lovely thing about the DVD set is that you can go back and see things again and often I have found myself picking up on bits of dialogue and nuances of acting that I had overlooked the first time (or two) through.”
(back to Bezabor…)
Deadwood Season One was a winner but Season Two has made a quantum leap forward in its use of complex language. We watch the episodes with the subtitles turned on because the language is too complex for us to pick up its full meaning by ear. I do believe they sometimes stray a bit too far over the line between decency and indecency but overall, we love it and can’t wait for the next disc. Highly recommended (if you aren’t offended by some of the earthiest language you have ever heard.)
(this post covers the period 20-24 June)
Saturday, 24 June-
Today was supposed to be rainy and it did sprinkle a little early on but by late morning I was restless and decided to go by motorcycle anyway. I rode down to Rocky Ridge and tried the end-to-end jog again to see if it would kick my butt as badly as it did last time. I was in much better shape at the end this time but then it occurred to me that the temperature was more moderate—the kinda-sticky Seventies versus the horribly-sticky Nineties—so the comparison was probably invalid. I’ll try again!
It never did rain on me on the motorcycle despite the fact that the weather guys were calling for 90-per-cent chance of rain all day. We need rain though the corn across the street from our house is doing well. The old saying is that corn should be ‘knee-high by the fourth of July’ but the corn near us is already about thigh-high.
That evening we watched ‘Black Narcissus’ on cable, one of the Turner Classic Movies
‘Essentials’ series. I can’t say I’m a fan of this 1947 film. It was strange. The commentators emphasized the beauty of the Technicolor photography yet IMDb summarizes the plot as follows:
----
“Five young British nuns are invited to move to a windy "palace", former house of the concubines of an old general, in the top of a mountain in Mopu, Himalaya, to raise the convent of Saint Faith Order, a school for children and girls, and an infirmary for the local dwellers. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is assigned as the superior sister, and her liaison with civilization is the rude government agent Mr. Dean (David Farrar). The lonely and exotic place and the presence of Mr. `Dean awake the innermost desires in the flesh of the sisters, and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) becomes mad with the temptation.”
---
Whew, is THAT what we saw?
Friday, 23 June-
Today I made a quick trip to the farmers’ market for essentials (fresh orange juice, apples, and Lebanon bologna!) then we spent the afternoon in Camp Hill for Labashi’s doctor’s appointment, another of the baseline exams we all need to get in our Fifties. Back home we watched Deadwood Season 2, Episodes 3 and 4. Good stuff!
Thursday, 22 June-
Today I went shopping for a long Ethernet cable. We’ve had a problem with the wireless router hanging up once in a while and I’d just like to see what kind of difference a wired connection makes, if any, in speed. The latest problem occurred while I was watching a longish Google video (video.google.com) and I had to reboot the router to get out of it. I picked up a 50-footer at Office Max and will give it a try soon, probably some rainy day.
Today I also finished the book I had borrowed from the freebie shelf at Starbucks the other day, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Jules Verne. I loved it! I got quite a kick out of reading not only the old science but also the view of how people lived and interacted as well as the descriptions of Iceland and of course the adventure itself. In writing this blog entry I thought I should verify the date of the book, which I thought had been written in the very late 1800’s. It was written in 1864! Here’s a link not only to info about the book but also an online version of it: http://www.online-literature.com/verne/ .
My freebie paperback copy of the book is a 1973 Scholastic Book Services edition. I am surprised to see that the editors apparently not only abridged the book, they changed the names of the major characters. The professor is Professor von Hardwigg in the Scholastic edition and Professor Lindenbrock in the original. The protagonist is Harry in the Scholastic edition and Axel in the original.
The other interesting thing about the paperback is that it has a bookplate in the back cover identifying it as a traveling book on Bookcrossing.com. I spent a few hours on Bookcrossing and believe I’ve found yet another little fun thing to do. By entering the serial number on the bookplate I learned that this copy of ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ had been placed at the York Starbucks by ‘tgyardbird’. Here’s a copy of his entry:
---
Journal entry 1 by tgyardbird1 from York, Pennsylvania USA on Friday, January 06, 2006:
This book came to me through Scholastic Book Services; I didn't read it, though...guess the "classics" just didn't ever make a great impression on me.Lovers of Verne and such books as these will have a free one and I'm sure a good read of this.
Journal entry 2 by tgyardbird1 from York, Pennsylvania USA on Friday, January 06, 2006:
Released about 6 mos ago (1/7/2006 9:00:00 AM BX time) at Starbucks Market Street inside in York, Pennsylvania USA
And this is from his profile:
---
I'm a 40 year old radio person...I've been in the biz 20+ years, but I doubt anyone would know who I was...in a way, I really rather like it as such.I'm currently working for XM Satellite Radio, and it is a place we all dreamed of in our minds, but it is now a reality.I have also loved to read ever since I was a child. My book collection became too much over the years, and my mother is forever asking me to remove as many as I can when I come to visit!They are a diverse bunch, which you'll find if you read this. Enjoy!
---
Today I also took a little jog, this one at Rocky Ridge from the Keep on Biking bench to the far eastern end of the park and back to my motorcycle. About 75 minutes, I’d say.
Wednesday, 21 June-
Today was to be a hot one so I left a little earlier than usual, this time in the Miata. I went to my local garage to set up an appointment to have the clutch release bearing replaced since it has been noisy lately. I then drove to an auto dealership in New Cumberland which advertises paintless dent repair but that turned out to be untrue. However, they referred me to a shop in Mechanicsburg which does this type of work. (Paintless dent repairs are done by pushing/massaging the dent out from behind rather than by filling the dent and repainting that area of the car.)
I explained my problem to the service manager: I had lent the Miata to my nephew last Fall and the next time I drove it I noticed a new dent; a very small one but it’s on the upper curve of the right-rear fender in a very visible location. The guy chuckled, said “Been there, done that” and told me he had, as a teenager, lost one of the T-top panels to his uncle’s Firebird and when he returned the car, he declared the panel must have been stolen. I replied with a story of my own just as another customer, a middle-aged woman, came in to the shop’s office and joined us at the counter…
“I had a dent in the very same place on my MGA when I was in high school in the late Sixties. I was dropping my girlfriend off at her home after a date. She got out of the car with an empty coke bottle and a sweater or something in her arms. She turned to me and said, for the first time, “I love you”. And at that instant the coke bottle slipped out of her arms and whacked the fender. Now I ask you, what do you do with that?”
The lady, who hadn’t said a word to us by that point, answered my rhetorical question… “If you were married, you probably would have hit her.”
I was speechless…and so was the other guy. When I finally managed to talk, I said, “Well, it mustn’t have too big of a problem for us. We’ve been married for 35 years now”. She didn’t seem to be impressed. I told the guy I’d see him next week (for my appointment) and got the heck out of there.
On the way home I stopped at Pinchot Park and jogged a new path, this one from the Conewago Day Use area back the Pinchot and Ridge trails to the campground, then back to the car via the Lakeside Trail, a jog of about an hour.
That evening we watched “Syriana”. IMDb.com’s plot summary of it follows:
“From writer/director Stephen Gaghan, winner of the Best Screenplay Academy Award for Traffic, comes Syriana, a political thriller that unfolds against the intrigue of the global oil industry. From the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, the film's multiple storylines weave together to illuminate the human consequences of the fierce pursuit of wealth and power. As a career CIA operative (George Clooney) begins to uncover the disturbing truth about the work he has devoted his life to, an up-and-coming oil broker (Matt Damon) faces an unimaginable family tragedy and finds redemption in his partnership with an idealistic Gulf prince (Alexander Siddig). A corporate lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) faces a moral dilemma as he finesses the questionable merger of two powerful U.S. oil companies, while across the globe, a disenfranchised Pakistani teenager (Mazhar Munir) falls prey to the recruiting efforts of a charismatic cleric. Each plays their small part in the vast and complex system that powers the industry, unaware of the explosive impact their lives will have upon the world.”
Roger Ebert says “I think ‘Syriana’ is a great film. I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film's overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will. The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation.”
I’m not sure what I think of it yet. My gut instinct right after seeing the movie was that it didn’t ‘satisfy’. But is that just because I’m used to movies following a nice linear storyline and handing me a conclusion all wrapped up with a nice bow? We’ve decided to watch it again with the commentary and to do some reading about it. One of the nice things about Netflix is we can just hold on to it until we’re ready to let go.
Tuesday, 20 June-
This morning I spent some time making a few small changes to the blog which are summarized in the admin note below. In the afternoon I took Labashi to a medical appointment, a baseline colonoscopy. The procedure went well. Afterwards at home we watched the first two episodes of Deadwood, Season Two. I love the language. I’m not talking about the cursing and use of nasty words which the show is known for but rather the almost-Shakespearean stilted language of the late 1800s.
I took a few minutes to Google for “Deadwood” + “language” and found the following review that sums things up nicely:
“As a former historian, I tend to cringe when Hollywood tries to portray actual events and since "Deadwood" takes place during my area of concentration (Civil War to present), I was very concerned. Well, I've been delighted. Certainly there's been some playing with history but the basic thrust has been accurate. I wondered if they would be willing to have such a dominant character as Wild Bill die but they did. The struggle for control of the camp's destiny is a reasonable portrayal of what took place. The main characters did exist (the real Al was an even more viscious person than in the series) and largely were of the type portrayed. And the language... What happened in the 19th Century was that publishers refused to print accurate portrayals of frontier language, a curious mix of earthy profanity and deliberate efforts to appear of a higher class (you see some of this with the large number of people who dress formally with coats, ties, and vests even when manual laborers; this is far more so than today where the reverse is true and people try to portray themselves of a lower class than they are). In any case, the literature of the 19th Century frontier is utterly free of profanity because of that censorship and, as a result, we've seldom heard an accurate portrayal of their language. Bringing this element into the series must have been a tough decision but it gives "Deadwood" a unique, historically accurate sound. Undoubtedly some will find this at least initially shocking and distracting but it is hardly the most important thing about the series. The complex story lines and brilliant acting, at least for me, more than off-set any disturance I might have had at first hearing their crude yet elegant language. One other point - the lovely thing about the DVD set is that you can go back and see things again and often I have found myself picking up on bits of dialogue and nuances of acting that I had overlooked the first time (or two) through.”
(back to Bezabor…)
Deadwood Season One was a winner but Season Two has made a quantum leap forward in its use of complex language. We watch the episodes with the subtitles turned on because the language is too complex for us to pick up its full meaning by ear. I do believe they sometimes stray a bit too far over the line between decency and indecency but overall, we love it and can’t wait for the next disc. Highly recommended (if you aren’t offended by some of the earthiest language you have ever heard.)
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 11:12
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