Finally tried that sitcom "Louis" on F/X....

Okay, whomever it was who rec'd the F/X sitcom Louis? You were right. It is hilarious. Haven't laughed at a sitcom that hard in quite some time. Was thoroughly amused. Of course this impression is based on one episode, it's a rare rare thing for me to laugh at a sitcom for more than one episode in a row. [ I think Monty Python is amongst the few. I have very odd sense of humor.]

Regarding Louis? Now, that's how you do sexual comedy, folks. Seriously, that's how you do it. The last time I laughed that hard at a sex joke - was Must Love Dogs rom-com, no wait, it might have been Misfits... yeah, it was probably Misfits.

Louis is sort of NC-17/X-rated version of Seinfield. Except with much more realistic and likable characters and gritter more realistic, less sanitized version of NYC. This is my city!

And yes, I obviously have a very dark sense of humor. Louis is not for everybody. If you didn't like Seinfield or Taxi or well Misfits, you'd hate Louis.

( spoilers for this week's episode )

Now, I need to hunt down other episodes of Louis and DVR them. Because that was hilarious.

[To be fair, Big Bang and Subrogatory were also pretty good this week both got laughs. But not as big a laugh as Louis and American Horror Story - which says a lot about my sense of humor. ]

Turnip and Leek Soup

Was a cooking mood this weekend, so made a great turnip and leek soup with apples/bacon/onion garnish. Picked up peeled turnips, leeks, garlic, onion, and apples from the farmers market for the soup. Only draw-back, it heated up my apartment something fierce, so now I'm hot.

Found the recipe here and video demo here:

http://www.ny1.com/content/ny1_living/cooking_at_home/148704/recipe--turnip-and-potato-soup
( recipe below the cut )

Also made gluten free sugar cookies with orange food coloring and orange icing so they sort of look like poorly shaped pumpkins. Didn't turn out quite the way I wanted. But oh well.

Critical analysis is there a point?

Is it worth commenting when you disagree? Or saying anything at all? I suppose depends on the situation. Felt compelled to correct people on the false Warren Buffet chain mail - because I knew the facts were horrifically and dangerously wrong.
But with cultural tastes? It's not worth it. People have different tastes. For example - some people love sweet potatoes, others find them way too sweet and gross. Same with tv shows and books. No amount of arguing or critical praise is going to convince me to watch XYZ - if I don't like it. And no amount of arguing or critiquing is going to make me stop watching or reading XYZ if I love it. I will just ignore/dismiss the critic as someone who does not share my taste.

But this begs the question - where does critical discussion supersede pointless argument? ( Read more... )

Once Upon a Time...a review

Should hop off to bed, it's late and I got to get up early tomorrow - sort of dreading tomorrow. Work has not been easy lately, lots of negotiating with difficult folks. But got a compliment last week from a head honcho. So that's something. Was about how I handled a complicated negotiation meeting. Take the compliments where you can.

Finished watching the Good Wife and Once Upon a Time - had to watch Good Wife live, because set-up DVR went wonky again.

Once Upon a Time is one of those rare tv shows that plays with my imagination. The sort of thing I'm likely to write meta on and fanfic. Most tv shows - really don't. I mean there's no reason to write meta on 99% of them or fanfic for that matter, because well the story is all there up on the screen. There's no gaps, no...I don't know what it is exactly that triggers my imagination. Buffy did, BSG did not. Nor did Veronica Mars. The Wire did...actually. I came very close to writing McNulty fanfic. And so did Farscape. Game of Thrones didn't - because I have incredibly detailed books.

It doesn't have to be brilliantly written. Often that will turn off the imagination. Example Game of Thrones and Lord of Rings. The denser written stories tend to turn off my imagination. No...it has to appeal to something subconsciously, tweak it.

The story has a rather interesting set up, the most interesting and innovative that I've seen to date. Fairy tale characters have been sent to the real world as a sort of weird purgatory. But their memories of their past lives, the fairy tale world, etc are gone. All they have is their new identities. And much like the inhabitants of the island in LOST, they can't leave the town they have been sent to. The town of Storybrook, Maine. No one visits. No one leaves. Except Emma Swan who was brought there by her son, who she gave up for adoption, and Mayor Regina who adopted the boy. If you try to leave the town - bad things happen. And the town has been to a degree frozen in time. People don't really age there. It's a sort of perpetual purgatory. Much as the island in LOST was a perpetual purgatory. The idea that our lives here are well...spent "doing time" in a sort of weird-ass purgatory. We are, as Robert R Walsh once stated..."just characters in a story of hope".

The idea of being characters in a Story-book isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, but it is an interesting philosophical view. Here, the evil queen in the Snow White story, that is so ingrained in our cultural folklore that we pretty much know the tale by heart, is the villain and Snow White - the reason for her vile deeds. Snow White or rather the version we are most familiar with is a Grimm folktale, collected by the Brothers Grimm in Germany. As stated in The Annotated Brother's Grimm:

More than Beauty in Beauty & the Beast, Snow White has become the quintessentially fair - both beautiful and just - heroine of fairy tales. The innocent, persecuted heroine par excellence, she succeeds in living happily ever after despite the plots designed by her wicked stepmother....[In addition] only the Grimm's version of the story alludes to the heroines complexion in her name. Their fair-skinned heroine became, through the Disney film, an icon of feminine beauty for the latter half of the twentieth century. Sneewittchen, Snow White's name in Low German, is a diminutive form and can be literally translated as "Little Snow White". Disney's film title - by including the seven drawfs with Snow White, dilutes the importance of the heroine and shifts the tale's center of gravity from the relationship between the heroine and her wicked stepmother to the relationship between the heroine and the her seven comic sidekicks.

What is interesting is now, over 50 years later, the relationship is shifting back in the opposite direction.

Again, according to the Annotated Grimm - the Walt Disney version so overshadowed other versions of the story that it is easy to forget that the tale is widely disseminated across a variety of cultures.

Fairy tales were the first urban legends. Told orally back and forth over time. They are largely tales of survival. Simplestic on the surface, but with strong archetype's and psychological themes lurking underneath. The Snow White tale is essentially one about two women. The men are not the main characters. While the seven dwarfs and Prince Charming save her in the folk-tale with the evil Stepmother Queen fading into the background or in the Disney version falling off a cliff, in the tv series...there appears to be another ending or should we say beginning, for here the ending of the fairy tale, which does not end with happily ever after, is the beginning of the tv series. It is worth noting that not one, but two Snow White films are being released next year - and in those as well, the hero is the female. A post-modernist and revisionist view of an old tale?

( plot spoilers )

Definitely sticking with this one.