 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at yetanotherjournal (at) mindspring (dot) com |
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» Thursday, May 15, 2008
Missing in Motion
I noticed that our Movies/HD channel listing (on the Dish box you can keep up to four "favorites" lists—we have one for the channels we watch regularly, one for movies and HD, one for other channels we watch occasionally, and one for favorite music channels) was looking rather skimpy tonight. It was...a bunch of the channels were just gone: Family Festival, Treasure HD, the animation channnel, and others we never watched. There was a "preview" of the new HD channels, though, and that's when I noticed the little message that said they had removed some of the lower-rated channels to include the HD ones. Well, drat. There goes my chance of ever seeing the Paul Revere or Eleanor Roosevelt Chasing History Home episodes again. And the Family Festival channel used to show Flipper, Thunderbirds and UFO, and occasionally had on really odd movies, like A Feast at Midnight and the Quebec-made Christmas movie North Station.
On the other hand, they'd been showing some of these things for the past two years, over and over again, so it's no wonder folks got tired of them and quit watching. Looks like we get an MGM movie channel now, too, and a Smithsonian channel. So where's BBC America in HD already? Labels: television  Birdie Bytes
Saw something lovely this morning: the male cardinal perched in one of the small maples in the back yard. Since the tree is various shades of bright green, the vivid crimson of the cardinal was quite beautiful against it.
I am still trying to identify which bird outside sounds like a cricket. It is extraordinary. In the meantime, the house finches continue to eat us out of house and home. "Arlo and Janis" did a strip last week about "why St. Francis is poor," showing the saint rushing out to buy birdseed, and I know how he felt! The poor male finch is quite harassed because there are two fledgelings that are still demanding to be fed. They can fly just fine, and perch on the deck rail not a foot away from the feeder watching the other finches, sparrows, titmice, chickadees, and nuthatches availing themselves of seed, but still demand that "Dad" feed them, fluttering their wings and persistently chirping. They gobble the seed as fast as the male can shove it in their mouths, then beg for more. Labels: birds It Figures
I was going great guns yesterday morning. Got two orders advertised and had planned out a third, did a modification, answered e-mail and phone messages. About noon had to get dressed and go in for an All-Hands meeting. This was at one of the new buildings on the Chamblee campus and was quite pleasant. Several people I knew received awards or warrants or years of service plaques (gack! I'll be due for my 25 in 2010!).
I noticed the way they had the fluorescent lights in the meeting room: instead of bare bulbs glaring down, they had the fixtures set to point upward and reflect off the ceiling. This gave a nice diffused light—however, despite that, I still arrived home with a screaming migraine (my own fault; since I didn't have the brimmed eyeshade I usually wear in the office, I should have put on my sunglasses). Needless to say, I had to medicate and lie down in a dark, quiet room until the throbbing quit. It didn't exactly make for a productive afternoon. So here I am this morning trying to make time and the connection is doing its infamous imitation of a sloth during high summer. I've had dial-up connections that were faster. In the meantime another storm is stalking in from the west and is presently dampening Birmingham. My sinuses feel like a flamenco dancer is doing a routine on them. Sadly, at this point I am better off than James, who has a persistent cough which got worse working in all that leaf mold and pine straw on Sunday. We finally drove to CVS last night to confer with the pharmacist and get him some appropriate cough medicine and after his shower I slathered his chest with Vicks. I've asked him to drink hot tea today, which reminds me that I need to add peppermint tea to the grocery list... » Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Silence of the Trees
The gusting winds quieted almost abruptly from when I got home from work last night at 5:30 to bedtime, so it wasn't nearly as nice to sleep last night; I had to put the fan in the window. I'm sure all those who had trees down from the wind, and the poor family of the Smyrna woman who was killed by a falling tree as she walked to a friend's apartment, are glad to be rid of it, though.
Anyone catch House last night? More creative storytelling alà "Three Stories." I find it disconcerting now that House is on Mondays; makes me think it's later in the week than it is. And interminable Tuesdays are even more so now that there's not House to look forward to. Labels: weather » Monday, May 12, 2008
Take Me In to the Ballgame
When I arrived home from work, there was my DVD from Australia. Once I had Willow walked and the bed made, I sat down to watch it, my first time ever seeing it intact and the first time seeing any part of it for fifteen years.
It was worth the wait and the trip. :-) Labels: DVDs » Sunday, May 11, 2008
They Call the Weekend Eventful
• Friday
Bad afternoon at the computer: just after noon, I was working on an order that I hoped to have ready for Monday morning. In ICE, first you enter all the information, then you tell the system to build the order in Word by pressing a button. It's automatic. I was having a bit of trouble, so it was a perfect time to abandon computer to use the bathroom since I don’t dare touch anything when it's building—it's that ticky. When I returned ten minutes later, the computer was still in the middle of the build. This was peculiar since the build usually takes less than a minute. I waited a few more minutes and nothing else happened. Unfortunately, it just locks up like this occasionally. The only thing to do is log off, and completely shut off the computer so the lock-up disengages. If you just log off and log on again, or turn the computer off and on again immediately, the connection doesn’t release and when you log back on, you are taken directly back to the locked-up document. So I turned off the computer and had lunch. Unfortunately, as part of my lunch hour, I started a load of clothes and then vacuumed the stairs. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I stepped on the plug for the Dirt Devil. I was in stocking feet—damn, that hurt! The place I stepped with swelled up a little, and I limped around for the rest of the day and about half of Saturday. Ready to get back to my order, I logged on. Everything worked fine, except that when I tried to get back into ICE, the application never came up—just Microslop Word with the stuck document. Weird—turning off the computer has always worked previously. It never worked, all afternoon. I rebooted the computer and left it twice more. Both times the document, still stuck, came up when I tried to get into ICE, but not ICE itself. I noticed that Word was still writing to the stuck document (there's a little icon at the bottom of a Word document that shows you when activity is going on). So I answered e-mail and telephone calls and did follow-up work on the orders I had, but never could work on that document again or any other order in ICE. Pissed as hell about it, too. Thank God I’d done my purchase authorizations this morning! After supper at Oriental Café, we went to Lowes. We had a $10 off $50 purchase card, so we bought the three new shades we needed (I got cream-color for the bedroom) and then three rolls of that wire fencing that you put around trees or flower beds. The back fence to our yard, which was put up when the complex was built, is high up off the ground rather than hugging it like the one we had installed. In most places Willow can easily get under it. We are going to edge that fence with the wire fencing to keep her in. When we emerged from Lowes, it was pitch dark, but what looked like a bird was flying around one of the big light fixtures. It had to have been a bat, swooping and diving after the insect smorgasbord being offered it! We stopped at Borders because we had 30 percent off coupons and I had many, many Preferred Reader Coupons. I got a copy of one of the Torchwood books; this is supposed to have a subplot about Gwen and Rhys. I love Rhys. I figured I married the American version. :-) • Saturday We struck out for Trader Joe's today, to replace supplies and also bought some wonderful tasting chicken salad. It doesn’t taste totally of icky mayonnaise like a lot of chicken salads, is low fat, and also has tiny currants and slivered almonds in it. From there we stopped at the Borders at the Avenue at East Cobb. They were the only Borders that had a copy of Only Yesterday, the Frederick Lewis Allen book about the "Roaring 20s" that was written in the 1930s and which is supposed to be a classic. We made a couple other stops, then it was the usual Saturday visit to the hobby shop. I sat reading Tasha Alexander's And Only to Deceive, a Victorian mystery, and by the time I was quite into it knew I wanted the sequel. On the way home we stopped at MicroCenter. I received a performance bonus a few weeks ago and wanted to use some of it to buy a new laptop. We noticed that several Lenovo units got good ratings in Consumer Reports, and since James works for IBM he gets a discount. I wanted to look at some Lenovos to get an idea of the keyboard. We also bought a new router for the computer setup: we found one that supported both wired and wireless connections. This we installed before chat, and, although it gave us some trouble during setup and a little more next morning, it seems to be working okay (cross fingers). We had dinner at Oriental Café again since we had a coupon expiring, stopped at BJs for granola bars for our lunches, had our dessert (ice cream at Bruster’s with another coupon), then stopped at Lowes to pick up something we had forgotten and Borders to pick up the And Only to Deceive sequel. When I downloaded e-mail yesterday I had gotten a big surprise. Biz, on the Yahoo group for Remember WENN, had passed on some information about a Kentucky theatre that was doing a mystery festival. One of the plays being produced next month is one written by Rupert Holmes, a combination of two of his Remember WENN stories in musical form. I looked up info on the show and where it was, only a six-hour drive from here. I started thinking how we had not gone away for the weekend last November for our anniversary as we had planned because of Schuyler and this sounded like it was going to be fun. So I talked to James about it and we decided we might like to go. We were talking to Rodney about it tonight on chat, thinking he might be interested, and were discussing where to stay (we found a host hotel, but after reading about twenty really awful reviews of the place, decided to pass). We have reserved rooms at the Sleep Inn instead, through Pets Welcome.com. It ended up being very late when we signed off; we had some "weather" of the bad sort predicted and the thunder had already begun by the time we headed off to bed. Rain was pattering on the chimney cover as we shut the computers down. No sooner did we leave her than Willow started to bark after each thunderclap. She quieted a bit after James spoke to her, then the weather radio began to shrill. We woke up each time the tornado watches slid east over Georgia. It was not until after five that we got to sleep. Which brings us to today. Today was a nice day for us, but not for others. The storms that crawled south of us created six tornadoes and left damaged homes and property in its wake. Some houses are complete write-offs. One tree smashed into a house and just missed someone sleeping on the sofa. Two other trees devastated a family’s house and their three cars—but they got out alive, thankfully. One house looked like a giant can opener peeled off the top, then a huge spoon came down and scooped the inside out. Six counties have been declared disaster areas. As usual after these storms, the sky is a beautiful blue and everything looks washed clean. The wind was quite wild all day and is still blowing; it sounds like the surf on a stormy afternoon and the trees are just as tossed as the water usually is. I don’t know how the birds will sleep tonight in those wildly tossing branches. James had forgotten to get up and go to Kaiser for a doctor-ordered blood test yesterday; since our office is the after-hours treatment center, the lab is open on weekends. So we rather staggered up this morning to take him to the lab. We decided not to try to go out for breakfast since it was Mother’s Day. Instead, from there we went to Costco for gas and then inside for milk. They fed us pretty well, including "popcorn chicken" and full quarters of black Angus burgers. I found Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods on the book pallets as well as a book I have been considering, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about a family who lives off the land for a year. When we came out of Costco, as nice as the weather had been upon entering, it was even better: the cold front had come through and the air was delicious, in the low 70s and almost no humidity. We reveled in it for the rest of the day. Once the milk was put up, I told James that this nice cool weather was something God had given us today and we ought to take advantage of it. First we opened all the windows wide and then I put up all the new shades. James fixed the problem that showed up with the router this morning, and then we went out into the yard. We did the really necessary thing first: placed handles on the inside of both gates to the yard. They have a handle on the front, but not on the back, so that we were having to handle the bare wood and getting splinters when pulling the gate closed. Then, since the woods and the back fence were in shade, we put up the wire fencing. This was...fun. ::snort:: Nothing bad, just fractious wrestling with the wire. We’d unroll a reel, straighten it a bit, then I would set it into the earth as best I could and James used the staple gun to staple it to the fence. We broke the wallpapering rule. We thought we needed three reels and thus should have bought four, just in case, and returned the fourth if we needed. Instead we needed the fourth, so we had to run to Lowes and back before we could finish. But it was all done by three-thirty and now we will feel a little more secure if Willow takes off after a squirrel if she’s off-leash. We decided we needed a reward after all that sweat equity. James had seen a good deal on an SD card, so we swung back by MicroCenter for it. I bought myself a tiny, inexpensive .mp3 player to take on walks. It’s about two inches square and looks like an old-fashioned pillbox. Previously I have played .mp3s on my PDA, but the poor thing is almost seven years old and the battery doesn’t keep up well anymore. Plus this gadget clips on and I don’t have to worry about it falling. Then we had ice cream at Bruster’s on Cobb Parkway and I told James I wanted to stop by Borders again. We had one more coupon and I wanted to get a book about green housekeeping I had seen. So we did so, then came home. So it was an unconventional Mother’s Day (but then since I didn’t get blessed with kids I’m just an unconventional mother of fids anyway). We had the rest of the lobster ravioli and a cucumber salad for supper and just chilled. The breeze is now almost downright chilly. Should be nice to sleep tonight and tomorrow night and then it’s back to the A/C according to the weather report. Labels: books, computers, events, food, housework, shopping, weather, work » Friday, May 09, 2008
My Favorite Commercial
I ignore most of them, but this one is too good to resist:
Discovery Channel - "The World is Just Awesome" Labels: television » Thursday, May 08, 2008
Stormy Weather Approaches
Checked the weather report about ten minutes ago, and the storms coming in from the west were approaching apace, so I dropped everything and took Willow out (probably providential since I checked the radar again when I came in and the storm had moved at least eight miles more south in those ten minutes). Right now it is just high overcast clouds, but the wind has been freshening all day and the trees are tossing, the leaves making soft hissing sounds. Approaching weather like this always makes me think of the "mysterious" background music that used to play during approaching storm scenes in the Timmy episodes of Lassie. (These shows had great background music—you could listen to the stories without setting eye on the screen and know what was going on simply from the dialog and the background music. There was "running for help" music, "danger" music, "morning on the farm" music, "saying prayers" music, "going out to explore" music, "threatening music," and more.) The mystery music had a great woodwind and background strings arrangement; always very spooky, and perfect for today's tossing trees.
Labels: weather » Monday, May 05, 2008
::sigh::
I was reading e-mail this afternoon when there was a thump from out on the deck. We have a squirt bottle out there for use with the grill and I thought it had fallen over, but I didn't see it on the deck.
What I did see was a little sparrow crumpled on the deck floor. His eyes moved a few times, but by the time I got out there it was dead. It must have been flying around and smacked into the window glass, breaking its neck. I put it into a box and James disposed of it tonight. Labels: birds Deal
The charge for the DVD from Australia just appeared on my credit card—only $17 and some change. This includes postage. Not bad considering it's coming halfway around the world!
Labels: DVDs » Sunday, May 04, 2008
The Right Place at the Right Time
It was a leisurely forenoon and early afternoon, as I am still attempting to load things on the laptop. Eudora loaded fine, as did Shockwave, and I only had a minor bobble with the wireless network card, but RealPlayer continues to confound me: Real11 would play on Win2000, so I downloaded and installed Real10.5 at RealPlayer.com's suggestion, only to have it not play because it couldn't find one file. Urgh.
So we went to Borders and I was not only pleasantly surprised to find Earlene Fowler's Tumbling Blocks on the paperback display (release date is Tuesday according to Amazon.com), but also the May-June Yankee magazine without having to search. As I looked through the history books, I saw the volume Little Heathens (about kids growing up on a farm in the 1930s), which I have been wanting. I wondered when it would be out in paperback and passed it by. At the checkout it turned out I had Borders Bucks, so when I used my 25 percent off coupon and a Rewards coupon, the entire purchase was $1.35. I haven't paid that for a paperback book since 1976! :-) So we went to Costco for milk and had lunch :-) (Costco has the best samples!) and there in the stacks of books was the paperback printing of Little Heathens! Wow. On the way home we stopped at CVS to see if they had double papers. I'm particularly interested in the sale flyers this week because I need both B-12 and potassium gluconate. Not only did CVS have doubles, but right on the front page of their ad flyer were vitamins buy-one-get-one-free, and they did have both B-12 and potassium gluconate! I prefer 50 percent off to buy-one-get-one because it's less expensive, but thems the breaks... On the other hand, someone had a really bad day...James was waiting for me to look through the bargain books at Borders when he exclaimed "Oh, my God, there's a bus on fire outside!" I came to stand next to him and sure enough, there on US41 right outside the shopping center a MARTA bus was on fire, not just smoke, but flames coming out of its engine compartment! While I was checking out a soothing female voice came over the intercom: "Just to let those folks know who are parked in the row near the street, there's a bus on fire out there and you might want to move your car. There's just been a small explosion." We didn't hear anything explode, so James wondered if maybe it was a tire, and by the time we left, the fire department was containing the worst of it; only the acrid smoke remained. Smelled just like the day Tune-Up Clinic caught my Dodge Omni on fire...flashback time... » Saturday, May 03, 2008
Vexing
Not this morning. Hair Day was good.
On the other hand, we tried to get new shades for the bedroom. We had the original ones cut wrong and we used them on other windows, but Lowes only had the cheap shades when I went back to get more. We had to have shades that night to sleep, so I got the cheapies. After two years, they are now developing holes. Lowes had actually restocked the shades—usually when I go there there are two left—but it's probably why they had so many: the cutter was broken. So we'll have to drive to another Lowes if we want new shades or just wait. We reformatted the laptop tonight to run Win2000 and the stupid thing won't network with the other computers. It connects to the internet, but it won't see the other two computers. Gah. As I remember, this is one of the reasons we discarded Win2000 in the first place. But I don't think WinXP will fit on the laptop; it only has 6GB on the hard-drive. But yeah, it does get online, and it does run WordPerfect. Can't have everything. » Friday, May 02, 2008
Off and On Again
I said when the temp in the house reached 80°F I would put the A/C on, so I have just done so. The fans did yeoman work, but living upstairs has its disadvantages, and this is one. It's still only in the mid-70s down in the library.
Since I knew it was going to be warm this afternoon I did all my errands this morning; got home before 1:30, which was a first. I bought something we needed at JoAnn, plus a pretty gift to put away, picked up some piroulines for dessert at Linens'n'Things, and grabbed some of those "green bags" at Bed, Bath & Beyond (we talk online with someone who has used them and have been told they actually do work). I then went to Costco to "re-up" and got some of the new generic Prilosec (omeprazole) and some Breathe-Right strips. I would have liked that to have been the end of the errands, but alas, things were needed at Wally World again. Stopped at the one near Sam's Club, which I keep forgetting is there. They actually did have the small-size low-carb whole-wheat tortillas, so I bought some of those along with the usual yogurt and bananas. Since I had perishables in the car, I passed up the trip to the library; after seeing My Son Jack, I would like to read a biography of Rudyard Kipling. Had salad for lunch and watched the Paul Revere segment on Chasing History Home. This program is telecast on Treasure HD and visits the homes of famous Americans, from George Eastman to Margaret "Molly" Brown. Naturally, being done in HD, the homes are showed off to the best advantage, but I find the host(ess) irritating. Her name is Cat Greenleaf and she's...well, probably she isn't stupid. She can't be that stupid and host a television show...can she? The creators of the show have tried to make it "light" and not weighted down with ponderous declamations of history, so Greenleaf's approach to her hosting duties are semi-serious. I don't expect ponderous and humor, in small doses, is occasionally welcome. Greenleaf, on the other hand, acts like a middle school student, presumably not the brightest bulb in history class, bouncing around the historical sites. In this one she simpers and teases the curator at the Paul Revere House to allow her to touch things, acts stupid (let's call her a really nitwit Companion allowing the Doctor to do the explanations), and resorts to childish rhyming of the Longfellow poem. This is all done, I expect, to make history "accessible"; unfortunately they appear to think their viewer has the mental capacity of a six-year-old. Still, the HD presentation wows in every episode, which is why I put up with the "chick light" view of history. If the producers of this show would like to make a slightly more mature multi-part HD history of Boston, I certainly would watch it: the visuals are stunning. Greenleaf, on the other hand, needs to change colors a bit and fall off the tree. Labels: shopping, television, weather » Thursday, May 01, 2008
From "Down Under"
I have put in an order for an Australian DVD.
Actually, the movie is American; it's just never been released to DVD here, never been rerun on television, and the VHS copy sells for around $50 if you can actually find it on E-bay. It's called Cooperstown, starring Alan Arkin and Graham Greene, and it was broadcast originally about fourteen years ago. It's an experience I remember with frustration because both times I tried to record it, TBS did not air it at the time TV Guide said it would be on. The first time it began late, so I missed the end, the second time it began earlier, so I missed the beginning (had I recorded it on two different tapes, I'd have a copy now). All I remember is that I loved it, and the only place to find it is in Australia, so I'm taking the chance. » Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Aieeee!
We didn't change the channel after Jeopardy! tonight because I was giving Willow a bath, and caught some of a show called Under One Roof.
Wow. Makes you long for the intelligent humor of Amos'n'Andy. Labels: television From Every Pore
When I finished with work today I did some tidying then sat down and watched part of a DVD I hadn't cracked since I bought it: the Disney Treasures set of Nine Lives of Elfego Baca and The Swamp Fox. Rusty at the hobby shop said he watched the latter a few weeks back, having loved it as a kid, and was so disappointed. I've never seen either, but understand Swamp Fox is pretty stodgy.
But I loved the first episode of Baca and the interview with Robert Loggia. Elfego Baca, like Francis Marion, was a real person with a rather amazing career. Of Mexican heritage and born in New Mexico in 1865, he was brought up in Kansas, but later returned to New Mexico after the death of his mother. One of his most famous exploits was his first: as a temporary deputy, he arrested a cowboy who was terrorizing the Hispanic businesses in his small town. The cowboy's Anglo pals were not amused, and when Baca defended himself after the cowboy was released from jail, the man's horse reared, threw him, and then fell on him. His companions, several dozen in number, chased Baca to a house, where he held them off for thirty-three hours until help arrived. The cowboys shot 4000 bullets into the house, threw dynamite in one corner, even attempted to set it on fire, and still Elfego Baca escaped. Word got around that he was like a cat, with nine lives. He went on to have a colorful career that included being a sheriff while he read law, practicing law, even working as a school superintendent. He achieved his goal of gaining justice for Hispanics in a time when the white majority was against them. Robert Loggia says in the interview that he insisted on showing Baca's ethnic heritage rather than making him a "whitebread" Hispanic and Walt Disney agreed. He was shown as an intelligent, resourceful, "mild-until-riled," virile man in an era when most Hispanics were still comic or lazy characters, so the show holds up well today. Not to mention that, damn, he was sexy. We are talking about yum factor from every pore. Looking forward to seeing the other two. Hey, Disney, where's the other seven episodes???? Labels: DVDs Background Twitters
It has been a very pretty day despite the fact it got up to 70°F! I have got to get my sunglasses out of the car on sunny days when I take a walk; the glare from the pale concrete sidewalk is blinding. A very nice day to work at home, although pretty chilly this morning; it's possible the heat came on last night even though the thermostat is down to 64. By Friday we will have to put the A/C on again because the night temps will be over 60.
The birds have been going at it wildly this afternoon. I thought the wild flutterings indicated a territorial dispute between a house finch and a house sparrow until I had the time to watch the two...I think courting behavior better describes what's going on! » Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Figures--Nice Weather and...
...here I am trapped inside. We had a cold front come through yesterday after it being wonderfully cloudy and windy—even Willow loved it; she bounced out in the yard like a puppy—and I slept like a rock. I must have because the alarm yammered for fifteen minutes before I realized it. Dash, dash, dash to get dressed, you betcha.
Tomorrow when I can go for a long walk it will be back in the icky 70s. Labels: weather » Saturday, April 26, 2008
You Can Go Home Again...
...and find some things may be as disappointing as you remember.
[WARNING! Spoilers ahoy!] I have often written about the Addie Mills specials in my blogs and even have a web page devoted to the stories. The first special, The House Without a Christmas Tree, is IMHO one of the finest made-for-television movies/specials ever, with an incredible cast and even more involving, sympathetic storyline. The second special, The Thanksgiving Treasure, featuring Barnard Hughes, was also memorable. When I initially watched the final two specials, The Easter Promise and Addie and the King of Hearts, I didn't like them as well. I purchased the VHS tape of the former not long ago, review here, and discovered that it wasn't just that Addie had grown up a bit and I wasn't interested in her becoming involved with clothes and young love; the production values had changed for the worse. Several months ago I had located a copy of Addie and the King of Hearts, but debated ordering it because of the cost versus my original opinion of the story. I finally ordered a copy. I initially watched only the first five minutes and was disappointed all over again. I had not seen the story for years (it originally aired in 1976; I believe the Disney Channel aired it back in the 1980s along with the others in the series, which is where my copy of Thanksgiving Treasure came from, but I didn't see it at that time), so most of my memories of the story are entangled with the accompanying novel. Back in 1976 I remember being unhappy about the story length of only an hour rather than 90 minutes (or rather 51 minutes v. 72). Now that I am able to rewatch it, King of Hearts is also more disconcerting since the storyline immediately diverges from the book as well as television canon by replacing Addie's longtime crush, Billy Wild, with a boy named Danny (presumably because, since they were no longer filming in the original location, actor Brady McNamara was no longer available). The classroom set is also a very cheap knockoff of the original classroom, which was located at a real school in Canada. The first two specials were filmed in prairie areas of Canada, which gave a more authentic look to the setting of Nebraska in the late 1940s, while CBS apparently went chintzy on the final two and filmed them totally on Hollywood soundstages, and, sadly, it shows. I was also amused by the titles, which, while incorporating the traditional Norman Sunshine collages, used the convention of having the credits being "written on the blackboard." Addie, who wouldn't make a card for Miss Thompson with a Santa Claus with a pack on his back saying "To Miss Thompson" because the concept was "too corny," would have certainly thought the blackboard business was the same! Still, I liked the story slightly better this time, and find I really missed what they could have done with the extra twenty minutes. The storyline, linked to Valentines Day, has Addie developing a crush on a male substitute teacher; at the same time, she discovers that her father, after having mourned his deceased wife for so many years, is seeing the rather brassy owner of the local beauty parlor. The book sets up things slightly differently—Addie finds out about her dad from overhearing a conversation, not from classmates; the latter, I think, works better—and takes its time with the story, leaving in scenes where the girls tease Addie about her crush and Grandma talks about her first love. The television show jumps directly in the story and stays with it, leaving no time for those extra scenes or for other slice-of-life scenes like the one in House Without a Christmas Tree where Addie and her friends buy Miss Thompson a Christmas gift or the delightful segment in Thanksgiving Treasure where Addie and Cora Sue are biking out into the countryside telling riddles to each other. Heck, Addie's best friend is gone and the special doesn't even take a minute to acknowledge it. (Also, in the novel Mr. Davenport arrives after Christmas vacation, giving Addie's crush time to develop. Onscreen Davenport arrives right before the dance and the crush develops the day she meets him.) Oddly, though, now that I rewatch the special, I like the way the story is told onscreen better than in the book except for it being so abrupt. Addie learns about her dad and Irene from snooty Terry Sloan, the Tanya Smithers clone (even their initials are the same), which is very natural. She immediately "cases" Irene's "joint." In the book, Addie goes to have her permanent at Irene's beauty parlor and Irene's talk just goes over her head while Addie wracks her mind trying to figure out what James sees in this woman. In the television story, Irene tells Addie stories about her mother, who Irene envied, and also about her marriage and its unhappy ending. It's a much more compelling and sweet scene and changes the viewers' impression of Irene, which is initially "Who is this ditz and why would James Mills be interested in her?" Incidentally, Diane Ladd is great as Irene, but she makes no effort to suppress her Mississippi accent, which is disconcerting since Irene is supposed to be a Clear River native. That's no Nebraska accent I've ever heard. The script tries to explain it by having Irene move to Florida after her marriage. I've been in Georgia over twenty years and, granted, I've lost my New England twang, but I don't have a drawl, either. They just cast Ladd because she was prominent in the media then, and while she fits the role, the accent is a letdown. Later, the night of the dance, James gives Addie a corsage. In the book she wears it, but in the television sequence, in a very sweet scene, Addie carries the corsage when James escorts her to the dance. At the dance she gives the flowers to Irene and tells her they are from James, signifying her acceptance of the relationship. In the end I wish they'd done the television storyline with the book additions and recast Billy Wild instead of creating Danny out of thin air (not to mention at least give a one-line explanation to where Cora Sue disappeared to—it would justify Addie's irritated mood at the opening of the story as well) and better explained Irene's accent (maybe she moved to Clear River right before she started high school) so that the whole of Addie and the King of Hearts would be as good as its various parts, bringing the series to a more satisfying end. Labels: Christmas, movies, television In One Day and Out the Other
The "in" day was yesterday, since I had to work; it wasn't as frustrating as the other day I complained about, but several things were left unfinished and how I do hate that! I also don't like being manipulated, which is basically what was happening.
After being out there moving in past midnight (meaning, of course, Willow kept giving a litany of short barks even though they were not noisy), our new neighbors were there with another load today. Wil and I took our lunchtime walk and the lady of the house waved and said hi and commented on Willow's whiskery face. As they were trotting things into the house, our lawn guy arrived. Well, the landlord hadn't been keeping up the yard of the house next door very well, so by the time the afternoon was over, Paolo had himself a new customer (actually two, since the folks two houses over also got in on the deal). And I was doubly glad I'd insisted on the fence with the wide gate, since they have a riding mower now. After I was done with work I watched Bush Christmas, which I recorded last Christmas Eve and never got around to watching. This is the 1940s version, a charming classic tale of four resourceful Australian children and a British evacuee who go hunting horse thieves before the holiday. James got in late and we went to Oriental Cafe for supper. I got the sesame chicken, which comes with the most meat, so now I have two small meals of sesame chicken and white rice for next week. We also stopped at Borders and I bought the first Guido Bernetti mystery since Dani has spoken so highly of them. After the ten o'clock news was over we watched Jeopardy recorded on the DVR, and when we shut that off, Jay Leno was just finishing "Jaywalking" and announced the next guest would be Hugh Laurie! Woot! Lucky me! (Can you record stuff off the DVR?) This morning James' alarm clock went off at 8:45 since he had to go in to work and I realized with amazement that I'd actually managed to sleep 7 3/4 hours. I haven't done that in weeks! Amazing how much brighter the world seems when you've had enough sleep. I grabbed a SlimFast Meal Bar and had some milk and was off in a long, narrow ellipse of a route, out to East Cobb. Stopped at Trader Joe's for various staples and also bought some microwavable brown rice, plus a demi baguette and some salami slices that had "lunch" written all over them. However, I didn't get to my lunch until way later. After a brief stop at Fuzziwigs, I went to the East Cobb Borders. Bought a WWI-set book that's been eyeing me for a while :-), and also a book I thought my mother-in-law would enjoy, and another: a social history of teenagers pre-1950 from the bargain rack. Then I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond. We are putting together a graduation gift for Neil Butler, who leaves high school behind this year and is off to the wilds :-) of Savannah in the fall for college. We have already bought him something goofy and something he will like, and for the rest I wanted to get him things to use in the dorm. BB&B had a great sale on something he will need, plus I was able to use a $10 off $30+ purchase coupon, so I was able to get something nicer than I had originally planned. I also used a Michael's coupon to get him something else useful and picked up a little thing in Office Depot when I stopped to get a new toner cartridge for my laser printer. (We print so little that the "starter" cartridge has lasted at least three years.) I had to stop back at Trader Joe's when I realized I had forgotten to pick up my favorite friseé and baby greens, and then stopped briefly at Hallmark for a graduation card and a mother's day trinket. I came home through "the back" (Lower Roswell to Terrell Mill to Powers Ferry), which is shorter with less traffic and that's when I hit Michael's and Office Depot. My last stop was at Dollar General, where I didn't find what I wanted, but did get three mystery books for a dollar each, and Food Depot for sugarless ice cream bars. Got home well ahead of the thunderstorm which is now making Willow woof and beating a tattoo on the chimney guard, and after that nice salami and baguette sandwich, am going to watch Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years. Labels: books, friends, movies, shopping, television, weather, work, yard |
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