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1. Conversation with mother on the phone after work about my twelve-year old niece's television viewing habits. (She lives in South Carolina, I live in NYC. Sort of akin to the distance between England and Greece. Or in other words, 2-3 hour plane flight, and about a day and a half in a car.)
Mother: Your brother has your niece watching Bewitched. It's interesting he has her watching television series that aired in the 1960s.
Me: Well, they were what we watched in the 1970s - we lived on the East Coast, went to bed at 8:30, only television shows I saw where reruns of 1960s and 1950s television shows in the afternoon. It wasn't until I became a teen that I saw prime time shows.
Mother: Yet, he won't let her see "Leave it to Beaver" -- apparently there is too much wrong with that show.
ME: That's ironic, considering it was his favorite television show when he was her age. (Much to my considerable annoyance.)
Mother: It's the advertised perfect family - she wears pearls, the kids are perfect, house with picket fence, and it's sexist...
Me: Well duh. That was the case for most of the 1950s and 60s family dramas.
Mother: And for some reason, he dislikes the Waltons.
Me: Why?
Mother: No clue. But, apparently there are kids in her class watching "Game of Thrones".
Me: What the heck? How old is she? 10 or 11?
Mother: Turning 12.
Me: That's...I mean, yes you took us to Excalibur around that age by accident, but Game of Thrones is about 100 times worse.
Mother: I know it has all this exploitive sex, language, and violence. (She's become hooked on it. Currently watching the 4th season. Her favorite characters are Danerys and Tyrion. She keeps asking me if Tyrion will survive. I said, of course, the writers adore him.)
Me: People bewilder me. Some kids are watching The Walking Dead (which is equally bad). And I remember when we were wondering why my cousin was letting her kids watch Glee...
Mother: Speaking of which, he said that he can't wait until she's old enough to start watching Buffy.
Me: Oh cool! Neither can I. Tell him that I have the DVDS! Of course, that's going to be a while, at least 14 or 15.
My brother was also a Buffy fan, albeit not to the extent that I was. Also, we had a bit of a difference of opinion in regards to various characters and relationships on the Series. (He liked Angel, I preferred Spike. He was Bangle, I was Spuffy. He preferred Angel the Series, I preferred Buffy. He thought Angel was hilarious, I thought Spike was hilarious. This is hardly surprising.
But hey, we both liked the series.)
2. Wed Reading Meme
Nothing new to report, still slogging my way through The Palace Job -- which reads a little bit too much like a Dungeons and Dragons role playing game or video game. (Same issue I had with Ready Player One, too much like a video game. It should be noted that I'm not fond of games. So I'm guessing this book probably appeals more to video game enthusiasts and D&D enthusiasts than folks like me, who, well aren't into games.) I like the characters and their relationships, I just wish there was a bit more of it and less running about fighting people, which can get repetitious and confusing after a while. The fight scenes are confusing in this book, endless, and overly busy. In short, dear reader, I appear to have run into the same problem that I was running into with the romance novel genre, too much of this, and not enough of that. Except I've traded navel gazing/sex scenes for political banter/action sequences.
LOL!
I'm thinking I might like Lies of Lock Lamora better? I was flirting with Issac Asimov's Foundation series at lunch, but it's hard to get the original version...apparently they've copy-edited the hell out of it. Was also flirting with Arabian Knights as translated by Sir Richard Burton.
3. ETA: Found this New Yorker article on FaceBook: Batman vs. Superman is Democrats vs. Republicans.
Interesting take on how our media is reflecting our political campaign, which is grim and appears to be mainly fueled on fear and anxiety. I haven't seen the film, and I'm not sure what I think about what the critic states or if I even agree with him on any of it ...but it's definitely interesting and intrigues me enough to make me want to see the film.
Mother: Your brother has your niece watching Bewitched. It's interesting he has her watching television series that aired in the 1960s.
Me: Well, they were what we watched in the 1970s - we lived on the East Coast, went to bed at 8:30, only television shows I saw where reruns of 1960s and 1950s television shows in the afternoon. It wasn't until I became a teen that I saw prime time shows.
Mother: Yet, he won't let her see "Leave it to Beaver" -- apparently there is too much wrong with that show.
ME: That's ironic, considering it was his favorite television show when he was her age. (Much to my considerable annoyance.)
Mother: It's the advertised perfect family - she wears pearls, the kids are perfect, house with picket fence, and it's sexist...
Me: Well duh. That was the case for most of the 1950s and 60s family dramas.
Mother: And for some reason, he dislikes the Waltons.
Me: Why?
Mother: No clue. But, apparently there are kids in her class watching "Game of Thrones".
Me: What the heck? How old is she? 10 or 11?
Mother: Turning 12.
Me: That's...I mean, yes you took us to Excalibur around that age by accident, but Game of Thrones is about 100 times worse.
Mother: I know it has all this exploitive sex, language, and violence. (She's become hooked on it. Currently watching the 4th season. Her favorite characters are Danerys and Tyrion. She keeps asking me if Tyrion will survive. I said, of course, the writers adore him.)
Me: People bewilder me. Some kids are watching The Walking Dead (which is equally bad). And I remember when we were wondering why my cousin was letting her kids watch Glee...
Mother: Speaking of which, he said that he can't wait until she's old enough to start watching Buffy.
Me: Oh cool! Neither can I. Tell him that I have the DVDS! Of course, that's going to be a while, at least 14 or 15.
My brother was also a Buffy fan, albeit not to the extent that I was. Also, we had a bit of a difference of opinion in regards to various characters and relationships on the Series. (He liked Angel, I preferred Spike. He was Bangle, I was Spuffy. He preferred Angel the Series, I preferred Buffy. He thought Angel was hilarious, I thought Spike was hilarious. This is hardly surprising.
But hey, we both liked the series.)
2. Wed Reading Meme
Nothing new to report, still slogging my way through The Palace Job -- which reads a little bit too much like a Dungeons and Dragons role playing game or video game. (Same issue I had with Ready Player One, too much like a video game. It should be noted that I'm not fond of games. So I'm guessing this book probably appeals more to video game enthusiasts and D&D enthusiasts than folks like me, who, well aren't into games.) I like the characters and their relationships, I just wish there was a bit more of it and less running about fighting people, which can get repetitious and confusing after a while. The fight scenes are confusing in this book, endless, and overly busy. In short, dear reader, I appear to have run into the same problem that I was running into with the romance novel genre, too much of this, and not enough of that. Except I've traded navel gazing/sex scenes for political banter/action sequences.
LOL!
I'm thinking I might like Lies of Lock Lamora better? I was flirting with Issac Asimov's Foundation series at lunch, but it's hard to get the original version...apparently they've copy-edited the hell out of it. Was also flirting with Arabian Knights as translated by Sir Richard Burton.
3. ETA: Found this New Yorker article on FaceBook: Batman vs. Superman is Democrats vs. Republicans.
Interesting take on how our media is reflecting our political campaign, which is grim and appears to be mainly fueled on fear and anxiety. I haven't seen the film, and I'm not sure what I think about what the critic states or if I even agree with him on any of it ...but it's definitely interesting and intrigues me enough to make me want to see the film.
In Snyder’s new film, Superman appears, from the start, as a hopeless naïf, a battler for good who doesn’t admit to his own capacity to do incidental evil, a blinkered warrior who deploys his nearly infinite powers according to his unquestioned moral intuition rather than to the prudent calculation of results.
Bruce Wayne isn’t alone in his disdain. Superman becomes the target of popular protest, editorial denunciations, and critical hearings in the Senate—a state of affairs that suits a clear-eyed villain, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). Knowing that Superman is the prime obstacle to his diabolical plot for world dominion, Lex acquires a trove of Kryptonite in order to create a weapon that will kill Superman—and he seeks to stoke public and official enmity toward Superman so that the actual attack on the archetypal superhero will be undertaken by others. The leading other, of course, is Batman.
Snyder parses the difference between the two superheroes with an inspired pair of special effects. Both Superman and Batman have eyes that glow with supernatural powers; Superman’s are red, Batman’s are blue. In effect, Superman is the Republican superhero, Batman the Democratic one. The classic distinction between the right and the left is that the right represents the uninhibited force of natural power, while the left represents a check on natural power in the name of an idea. Batman embodies that check—and, because he himself isn’t up to a mano a mano with Superman, he needs allies.
The movie’s one great line comes in the final showdown, when Superman tells Batman, “If I wanted it, you’d be dead already.” (It’s a “Godfather” riff.) The line announces the rules of the game: Superman is stronger than Batman, but his one great vulnerability renders him more tragically destructible than Batman’s multivariable modalities of death. It also explains, in one phrase, the entire plot and its implications: Superman may be able to kill Batman at will, but Batman, in order to combat Superman effectively, has to have help. He has to make an alliance, even an unwitting one, with other forces, which, in the event, turn out to be the forces of evil, at the command of Lex Luthor.
It’s a salacious political charge to suggest that the Democratic left is inclined to dubious and unwitting alliances with evildoers in order to oppose unwarranted authority at home. The notion has no relationship to contemporary politics (despite some Republicans’ claims of that sort). It’s a powerful metaphor, though, all the more so because Snyder realizes it in hectic images.