Tag: TV

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Make it Sto-o-o-p

Shelly

As I’ve spent the afternoon transcribing more letters, and have had the teevee on in the background, I’d like to take a moment to share a few words about commercials.

First, KFC needs to pull the plug on their new “Music to a mother’s ears” ad. It features a family sitting around the dining room table, chowing down on crispy, chickeny goodness. The idea is that A) shutting the hell up is what a mother wants her family to do and B) the noise of people smacking, chewing, and swallowing is preferable to that of normal dinner conversation. Not only is the premise bizarre, but the smacketty-smack sounds of folks eating is sickifying. And, need I add that it’s something that even my uber-lax mother would not have tolerated at the dinner table? Not only is it all sorts of bad manners, but KFC (and Hardee’s) really ought to rethink their plan to entice diners by inducing them to vomit. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a very good business plan to me.

O ick!

Second, an old anti-smoking commercial is currently being recycled. I don’t know if these are Indiana-specific, or if they’re being run nation-wide, but there’s a whole series of similar ads. This one begins with a music box-like tune tinkling away as a mother straps her young daughter into a car seat. We see the kid sitting in her car seat. Then, the mother gets into the car and the camera pans to the rear-view mirror, where we see the child looking back at us. The expression on the child’s face throughout the commercial is unreal. The first time I saw the ad, I thought it was a PSA about mentally disabled kids. The depiction of the child is so distracting that I have a difficult time even registering that the commercial is about smoking. Now, I assume that they were going for a china doll sort of concept, in order that the viewer understand that the child is helpless; but, they’ve gone too far, making the kid look so vacant and vacuous that the point of the sermonizing is pretty well lost on me.

Music, Poetry

Remember Me

Shelly

I finished the second season of Little House over the weekend, and started on the third. One episode contained a funeral scene in which a sweet little poem was read. It reminded me of a song, but even though the lyrics and melody were on the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t identify which one. It nearly drove me to distraction.

Then, this morning as I was packing my lunch, it came to me. Class, please compare and contrast:

Remember me with smiles and laughter,
for that is how I will remember you all.
If you can only remember me with tears,
then don’t remember me at all.
— Julia Sanderson, Remember Me
Little House on the Prairie season 2

And now, Mr. Cuddlygoth:

Treasure, by The Cure
She whispers
Please remember me
When I am gone from here
She whispers
Please remember me
but not with tears
Remember I was always true
Remember that I always tried
Remember I loved only you
Remember me and smile
For it’s better to forget
Than to remember me
And cry

Remember I was always true
Remember that I always tried
Remember I loved only you
Remember me and smile
For it’s better to forget
Than to remember me
And cry

Now, as much as I’d love to think of CuddlyGoth Robert Smith as a closet Little House fan (and I dearly would, just for the absurdity factor), I’m having a small amount of trouble picturing it. More likely, both Robert Smith and the writer of that Little House episode were both inspired by the Christina Rosetti poem, Remember.

Remember, by Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

It Makes the Baby Shelly Cry

Shelly

If I hear one more person say that the soldiers in Iraq are “fighting for our freedom,” I am going to scream. Iraq was never, ever a threat to the U.S. That it may now pose a threat to us is our own damned fault, but that still doesn’t justify the ignorant parroting, ad nauseum, of the “they’re fighting for our freedom” party line. That’s a big, fat, fucking lie

And don’t get me started on Iran. Why on earth are we ramping ourselves up for another war when we are stretched too thinly as it is? It’s deja vu all over again, and I’m feeling a little nauseated.

In unrelated news from the Things That Make the Baby Shelly Cry file, I noticed that Ford has stopped with the illiterate “less stops at the pump” nonsense. Their newest commercial is grammatically correct. Praise be! Now, if only the “manly men crave greasy slabs o’ meaty meat” trend in food advertising would just go the hell away, I might be able to sleep at night.

Art, Crankypantsing

Two Picts to Bone

Shelly

The season finale of CSI (the good one) was on last night. One of the story lines involved a Civil War re-enacter. A heavily corseted US Civil War re-enacter. According to the show, Victorian men favored a small waist, and would often corset themselves to achieve an exaggerated hourglass figure. Not exactly. While it is true that there was a period in which men commonly wore corsets, the extreme wasp-waist was fashionable between 1820-1835, which preceded both the Victorian period and the Civil War.

The second point I’d like to take issue with is the claim that folks in old photos were stiff looking because of the long exposure times required by early photographic processes. While that is true, by the time of the Civil War there were newer processes, like ambrotypes, that allowed a much shorter exposure time. Most of the Civil War era photos I’ve seen–and the example depicted in last night’s CSI–were the classic 1/8 plate ambrotypes. My guess is that the serious expressions common in photographs from the period were due more to artistic convention than to the limitations of the technology.

Crankypantsing

Adventures in Advertising

Shelly

Wendy’s has a new television commercial in high rotation right now for something called a Frescata Sandwich.  Now, first, I don’t think I’d make a habit of eating anything with scat in the name.  I’m just sayin’…  Second, it’s advertised as being made with something called “artisan” bread.  Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the descriptor “artisan” imply that one might expect said bread to be handcrafted by an actual artisan?  Highly unlikely, so I’m calling Bullshit.

Crankypantsing

The Grammar Police Never Sleep

Shelly

Paging Wilford Brimley. Would Mr. Brimley please come to the white courtesy phone?

Don’t let on, but I’d like to smack him upside the head. I’ve mentioned before that I’m disturbed–on a near daily basis–by his mangling of the English language. I’ve recently discovered that he has a little friend. I don’t recall what product it’s for, but there’s a commercial on heavy rotation right now for a medication for some sort of “respitory” ailment. That’s right folks. I thought it had five syllables, too, so I’m just as shocked as y’all are. And, amazingly, if you go a-Googling for “respitory,” you get 174,000 hits. It is for to weep.

Uncategorized

Instant Review: Degrassi

Shelly

Since Netflix has decided to start sending me random titles, I spent tonight not watching season 4 of Little House. Instead, I spent it watching Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi. Go ahead, laugh. I know you want to. The thing is, I love, love, loved the original Degrassi shows. They were amazing, in that they treated kids with dignity and allowed their voices to be heard. There wasn’t, and isn’t, anything else like it on television in the US.

I’ve only seen the first season of Degrassi: the next generation, but so far, it seems to have just as much integrity as the originals. So, at one point, I placed Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi in my queue (cuz, why not?), and via the magic of the Netflix Queue Randomizing Elves, it showed up in my mailbox yesterday.

I really enjoyed it. The DVD contains three episodes (plus extras) from the new series. I don’t know which season they were from. Only the first season has been released on DVD, I think, so it’ll be awhile before I’ll have a chance to see them in context. Though they stand alone fairly well, considering the soap opera-esque nature of Degrassi, it would be nice to see how they connect up with the rest of the shows. And that brings me to perhaps the most important point: do not watch the DVD thinking it’s a Jay and Silent Bob story. It’s not. It’s a Degrassi story, and if you aren’t familiar with the show, you’re likely to be a little lost and a lot disappointed.

About the extras: There is an interview with Kevin Smith, in which he talks about being a fan of the old series and how he ended up working on the new one. He makes some interesting points about what makes the whole project is so different from US teen television and about why the same shows could not ever be created here. He also talks about how some folks “get it” and some don’t, and why. It’s funny. My high school was just like Degrassi in some ways, and not in others. It was small and everyone knew everyone else. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s like living in a small town, in that everyone knows everyone else’s business. That level of familiarity can foster tolerance and understanding, but it can also lead to bullying and all manner of meanness. There was a lot of both going on in my school. There were plenty of mean kids (lordy, the girls on the volleyball team were insufferable!), but some really cool ones, too. Luckily, I didn’t have depend on my classmates for social interaction. Instead, because the school was located on a college campus, I spent my free time on campus. College kids were much easier to get along with, I found, and a lot more willing to take you as you were.

So, anyway, thanks to the Netflix Queue Randomizing Elves, I’ve spent the entire evening thinking about high school.

Letters to Esther, Photography

Spring?

Shelly

The solstice was yesterday. Forsythia is in bloom, my baby walnut trees have swellings on their branches, the peepers have been peeping, and birds have been returning. So, of course, it snowed last night. Welcome to spring in Indiana.

So, I thought I’d share some photos of crepuscular rays I took last week.

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I’ve been working on Letters to Esther. I’ve got nearly everything from the old blog format moved to the new website. Now, I’m in the process of scanning the original letters and adding them to the transcriptions. It’s slow going, because many of the image files need a lot of tweaking to make them legible.

I’m not even bothering to scan the rough drafts of Esther’s replies to Richard, because they’re written on pages from her exercise book, which have seriously degraded. I don’t want to handle them too much, because the paper is brittle and brown. And, because she wrote in pencil, the text is faded. In order to make scans legible, I’d have to do some serious Photoshopping acrobatics. Maybe, at a later date, I’ll scan them, but for now, I’m leaving them be.

Once I get all the currently transcribed letters scanned and images added, I’ll start transcribing new letters. Right now, I’m about half-way finished with scanning the transcribed letters. Just to give an idea of scope, that’s taken me about 50 hours of solid work, not counting time it took to do the original transcriptions.

Tangent Alert!

I’m watching bad daytime court teevee (Judge Alex) while working on the computer. I haven’t been paying close attention, but the defendant–whose off-lead Dalmatian attacked and killed the plaintiff’s on-lead Dachshund puppy–seems to be arguing that she shouldn’t be responsible for the full amount of damages because the plaintiff’s dog isn’t a purebred “Datsun.” I nearly choked on my toast. Lady, if you’re gonna try to mount that sort of defense, you really ought to get the breed name correct. Claiming that the dead puppy didn’t “look” like a purebred “Datsun” does not make you look like any kind of authority on the breed. I’m just sayin’.

Now, I’m debating the merits of digging out my car so that I can drive down to the mailbox to pick up the mail. There ought to be Netflix waiting for me. It would be nice to have something to watch besides daytime teevee, and it would be a good idea to get the car cleaned off, so I’m trying to talk myself into it.

Crankypantsing, Pets

Speaking of Math…

Shelly

I may be math challenged, but my dog is likely some sort of math jeenyous. According to this article, Miss Brown can run and do calculus at the same time. I am uber impressed.

When running from A towards C, the ball at B appears closer and closer as the dog gets closer to C, but its speed of approach to B diminishes (reaching zero at C). At some moment of its run, its speed of approach while running on the beach equals its speed of approach when swimming directly to the ball. If the dog jumps into the water at this moment, the strategy yields the same y value as that provided by the travel-time minimization model (where r is the dog\’s running speed, and s is its swimming speed).

I get a brain ache just trying to figure out what that means.

In art news, I worked on a bunch of ATC-sized mini-collages last night while I flipped between The Amazing Race and Independent Lens. I’m not a drama or theater buff, but the documentary on Oakley Hall III on Independent Lens was fascinating. I hope they re-run it, because I’d like to see the whole thing.

I haven’t scanned/photographed the collages yet. Hopefully, I’ll have time to do it tonight. I think I did 9 or 10 of them, and all but a couple are completely finished. Not a bad evening’s work, I think.

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Happy Friday (Now New and Improved with Kisses!)

Shelly

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Mmm-wah! Harriet Brown sends kisses. (For full effect, I strongly recommend clicking to view at full-size.)

I stayed up late last night to watch the end of the women’s long program. I like figure skating, but for some reason it just wasn’t as interesting as it could’ve been. It was not time well spent, unfortunately. Since I was up way past my bedtime, I intended to sleep in this morning. So when the phone rang at 6:45 ayem, I was not terribly amused. Janet Parker, whoever you are, would it’ve killed you to let the phone ring a couple more times? Because, the only thing worse than being waked up at the crack of dawn is hauling my lazy ass out of bed just in time for the phone to stop ringing. I wasn’t sleeping very heavily, so I know that I heard the first ring. She let it ring four times. Four! At 6:45 ayem! Give a girl time to get out of bed, for crying out loud. Grrr.

On the bright side, the sunrise was beautiful. I was too lazy (I mentioned the laziness, didn’t I?) to go inside and get my camera, so I have no photographic proof, but I promise it was lovely: neon pinky and orangy with streaks of purple and fuschia.

Now, I just need to convince my lazy ass that it needs to clean the house. I’m not feeling very motivated.