2009 — 29 October: Thursday
Well, that's "Carnivàle" re-watched, though I'm left not much the wiser about what exactly happened. Such a shame the series came to such a brutally abrupt end. Right! Time (00:37) for tonight's picture of Christa, from the long hot summer of 1976, a couple of months after we'd moved into our first house:
Mr Postie dropped off a trio of items through the venetian blinds while I was out on the walk but, rather worryingly, a fourth item (the Para Handy book) seems to have been returned (I assume by the PO) as Amazon have refunded the price of it and marked "Customer returned item" against the updated order details online. Curious.
G'night.
Crawling sluggishly back...
... up to some form of consciousness, I see the world is at least as crazy as it was yesterday. Faintly reassuring, I suppose. Time (09:57) to let the second cuppa and the breakfast work its revivifying magic.
Golden Oldies
The trio from yesterday's delivery — a pair of 22 year olds, and one even older:
- Fatal Attraction
As on previous occasions, I bought this bargain replacement copy to supplant the DVD-R I cut from my original LaserDisc - The Witches of Eastwick
Simply a gap in my collection - 48 Hrs.
An attempt, replacing my original NTSC Region 1 DVD, to get a "better" transfer, though I also had this on LaserDisc "back in the day". It's still an amazing film 27 years on, and a remarkable début from Eddie Murphy
Better go do something about the state of Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Ho hum.
A word of caution?
Having been sent off in search of a 1957 film ("Across the Bridge") by ex-colleague Nick (my ex-colleagues enjoy spending my pensioner's mite) Amazon suggested "Elegy". Now I quite enjoy Philip Roth, so I looked at this (Blu-ray) version (of his novel "The dying animal"). An Amazon reviewer in Switzerland clearly shows that...
... confusion between resolution,1 interlace, progressive scan, and frame rate reigns supreme. Perhaps we should bring back monochrome interlaced 405-line to show people what the UK's first "high-definition" broadcast standard was like back in 1936! (Good stuff here.)
It's 14:25, the shopping is done and lunch is already a distant memory. What's next, Mrs Landingham?
I've hatched a cunning plan. I shall nip over in a little while to blag a cuppa from Roger and Eileen. Excellent wheeze. Meanwhile, I recall that I first heard the noun "docent" from my New York chum Carol2. So this amused me. (I like things that amuse me — not that it takes much.) Source and snippet:
An inescapable presence in the Museum's galleries, inevitably equipped with formidable vocal equipment, The Docent takes groups of guests on tours of the Museum's collections. Less familiar is her other responsibility: visiting local schools, where she strives to instill a love for fine art in pop-culture-obsessed young minds. The Docent never gives in to feelings that this may be a hopeless endeavor and remains staunch in her conviction that Art is Always and Everywhere A Good Thing.
Much to giggle at here, too! Gotta love that "bigoted comestible"!
Later
It's 21:03, the dishes are done, the latest batch of plums has been stewed and is now cooling. I've watched, and greatly enjoyed, episode #1 of "Tutti Frutti", and the iMac downstairs seems to have forgotten how to talk to my local network. Unbrilliant. Wonder if you can put Ubuntu onto an iMac?
Well, iTunes is finally upgraded — yet again — and now seems prepared to quit when asked nicely (instead of ignoring even a "Force Quit" kick up the dark side). But (of course) the newest variant has demanded a reload of the entire music library. My Amstrad CP/M system was better behaved than this. So I watched the BBC4 programme about the steady decline of ship-building on the Clyde while the iMac started sorting itself out. What a saga. And it's still beavering away, just on the first 3,000 or so MP3s. Unbelievable.