Things I discovered on my 1AM Visit to Wally World, Part 1

Look who's on the cover of TVGuide! Only my... I was going to say my favo[u]rite Irishmen but that might be an exaggeration. Definitely in the top ten, which makes me think I should probably make an official top ten list in that vein. Anyhoo, it's Jason O'Mara, who I will once again be able to see weekly come fall, supposing his show doesn't suck. And in the meantime, I'm off to watch Ned/Mattie Berkeley Square montages on Youtube.

 

Sssnake Style

I felt like wearing my new hot coral dress today just for the hell of it.  And then I decided to try my Mamaw's vintage 1970s adjustable, skinny, black metal mesh snake belt with gold details and red rhinestone eyes (whoosh, that's a mouthful), just because.  Heck, I could even make it a necklace if I felt so inclined!  I love finding family leftovers.  I feel closer to Mamaw by wearing it.

I've also been enjoying my simplistic gold snake ring from Charlotte Russe.  I'm not a big fan of actual snakes, although I'd rank them above spiders, but in accessory form, they're quite lovely.  

Damn, I should better moisturize my hands.

Coincidentally, I was wearing this ring when driving to my friend Julie's house a few weeks ago to watch True Blood (the summer guilty pleasure I mostly watch for the hot Swede) and accidentally ran over a black snake.  Then, on the show, there was a snake sacrifice.  Weird.  I worried briefly that it might have been an omen, but I'm not particularly superstitious.  I did find something about Navajo snake taboos with #23 "Do not run over a snake in your car or you will have a bad life."  I'll also take this moment to point out that 23 is my birth date and lucky number.  But you can't trust the Internet, right?  Right??

Aforementioned hot Swede.

Lost Girl Is Found

I don't watch a lot of television, at least not mainstream television.  My newest obsession is a little Canadian show called Lost Girl.  Yes, yes, I know the "fae" thing is waaaaaay overdone, but I don't care.  The show's entertaining, the stars are hot (and can act!), and major points for the killer soundtrack!  It kind of reminds me of the cheesy early days of Buffy.  Sadly, if you're not in Canada, you're kinda screwed, unless you're sneaky like me. ;)  But GOOD news for the U.S.!  Syfy bought rights to the first two seasons (season 2 airs in CA in the fall).


Now for some music from the show, including phender, You Say Party, The Kills, and Neverending White Lights.

Pumpkin-flavored good-byes

In case you didn't hear, today was the Oprah finale.  I didn't watch, not because I have anything against Oprah personally -- I SWEAR I have vague childhood memories of her pre-celebrity presence on WJZ-TV in Baltimore, so what if I was 3 when she moved on -- but because, since I can think for myself and choose my own reading material, I don't have much need for her show. (I haven't watched since someone drew my attention to her annoying habit of interrupting her guests, which is now impossible to ignore.  Equally annoying? Herself on every damn cover of her magazine. So I guess I have a bit against her personally after all.)

Image via Pumpkin Passion

But I have said good-bye/godspeed in my own way, and that way was using my Bath and Body Works Pure Simplicity purifying pumpkin face mask.  Like many a person, I was first introduced to it via Oprah's Favorite Things

(see Jezebel for a sobering account of the cost of Oprah's Favorite Things) , where it featured on the affordable end of the list for 2003. After which it become one of MY favourite things. (Be sure to include the U.)

Sadly, it (and the entire Pure Simplicity line) have been discontinued for a number of years now. BUT, I happen to have in my possession the dregs of one container and, thanks to Emily, another unopened (that I could probably sell on Ebay if I felt so inclined.) I've been rationing it, forgoing its use in favor, lately at least, of the Original Mint Julep mask (see here).

But today is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion dammit. So here's to you Oprah. The awesomeness of the pumpkin mask almost makes up for your unleashing Doctor Phil upon the world. And also, this Pink Sister anyway liked your pink dress.

Upstairs, Downstairs, etc.

I have fond (if very, very vague memories) of watching early episodes of the original Upstairs Downstairs when I got home from school - the most vivid being the episode in which Rose is force-fed (off camera thank goodness) while imprisoned as a suffragette.

That being said, my level of anticipation and excitement at the prospect of the updated series was inevitably mellowed by the awesomeness that is Downton Abbey. And the first episode did nothing to improve my excitement, as evidenced by a rather lackluster live tweet and my near failure at watching the second episode on air (Because I was rather meh about the whole thing and NOT, sadly, because I was watching Game of Thrones).

Oh I'm glad I did. I'm not going to delve too heavily into plot details (You can watch the full episode --and you should-- here until May 24. Thank you PBS). I just wanted to say...

---

Lady Persephone, played by Claire Foy, is my least favorite character who gets all the best clothes. And when I say "all the best clothes" (because it's not like her sister, played by Keeley Hawes, is lacking in jaw-droppingly gorgeous wardrobe) I mean, all the RED clothes.

via fromasinkingboat

via recyledmoviecostumes

via Beyond the Pale

Why does she get all the red? Well, I'm sure part of the reason is that Claire Foy looks utterly fabulous in red. As production designer Eve Stewart notes (discussing sets, but the same holds true for costumes I'm sure):

...sometimes you have to tweak the colours that you've chosen once you know who has been cast. The cast will all have different skin tones and ultimately it's our job is to help make them look good.

And the other reason? (Maybe.) What better way to visually represent your character's budding  fascist sympathies than to put her in a lot of red and black. I must say, it's a pretty visually stunning shot when Lady Persephone is en route to an Oswald Mosely speech; the screen cap doesn't do it justice.

via claire-foy.org

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The title of this episode,"The Ladybird",  is derived from the German lullaby that new parlormaid Rachel teaches to Ivy. I'd never heard of it, though Ivy says "oh, we have that in English." Like I said, I'm not getting into plot, but the song is all symbolic and foreshadowing and whatnot, in a way that is the opposite of subtle. (Hint: The swastika kind of looks like a spider, doesn't it?)

The lyrics (German and English) follow (Translation copyright © by Emily Ezust,
from The Lied and Art Song Texts Page -- http://www.lieder.net/):

Marienwürmchen, setze dich auf meine Hand, Ich tu' dir nichts zuleide. Es soll dir nichts zuleid geschehn, Will nur deine bunten Flügel sehn, Bunte Flügel meine Freude. Marienwürmchen, fliege weg, Dein Häuschen brennt, die Kinder schrein So sehre, wie so sehre. Die böse Spinne spinnt sie ein, Marienwürmchen, flieg hinein, Deine Kinder schreien sehre. Marienwürmchen, fliege hin zu Nachbars Kind, Sie tun dir nichts zuleide. Es soll dir ja kein Leid geschehn, Sie wollen deine bunten Flügel sehn, Und grüß sie alle beide.

Ladybird, sit on my hand I will do you no harm. No harm shall come to you; I only wish to see your colorful wings: your colorful wings are my joy. Ladybird, fly away, your house is burning, your children are crying so much, so much. The evil spider is spinning her web around them; Ladybird, fly home, your children are crying so. Ladybird, fly to the neighbor's children, They will do you no harm. No harm will come to you: they only wish to see your colorful wings, and greet them both for me.

I mention it here because I liked the song; it's sad, German, and about a ladybug/ladybird. Seems like something I should know, right?  I spent the after hour of Sunday night's broadcast scouring the Internet and learned a couple of things.

1.  There are actually two versions of Marienwürmchen - one with a melody by Schumann and the other by Brahms. They seem to get confused a lot. Brahms is the one we're interested in.
2. It's well nigh impossible to find free sheet music to said tune. It's not like buying one digital copy of the sheet music is going to break the bank - it's more the principle of the thing, i.e. why is this one song of Brahms (who died in 1897) is NOT in public domain.

So, I guess I'll be listening to the song on repeat and learning it by ear. Thankfully, the Internet came through with this video of the Southern California Children's Chorus singing it. Enjoy.

Countdown to Doctor Who - Look behind you Mr. President

The new series of Doctor Who begins at Easter with The Impossible Astronaut. But before that we have a short scene written by Steven Moffat that reveals a little of what we can expect from the adventure … and what the Doctor will be facing! via the BBC

Also, behold my new wallpaper (i.e. the newly revealed "iconic image") - available here.

 Oh Amy Pond, how I've missed you!

Alexz Johnson - Trip Around the World

I like to amuse myself by clicking on twitter trending topics and reading the ridiculous tweets of amazingly dimwitted people, but yesterday I noticed Alexz Johnson was trending and surprise surprise I actually know who that is and like her! If you've never caught an episode of the Canadian show Instant Star, you should. It's good teen soapy stuff. Best of all, the girl actually has musical talent. Shocking in today's pop music world, I know.

Remember the Triangle Fire

One of the first non-fiction books to bear the nameplate of my personal library was The Pessimist's Guide to History ("An irresistible compendium of catastrophes, barbaraties, massacres and mayhem"), which I bought for myself in the 7th grade.

In its pages, I was introduced to a range of horrific historical events and natural disasters. Some would inspire further research, i.e. the Albigensian Crusade, subject of a 10th grade Regional Studies paper. Others would become more real to me through the course of my travels, i.e. the Halifax Explosion, a permanent exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, visited as part of the Great Canadian Tour of 2001. (Incidentally, their collection also includes a permanent exhibit on that more famous clusterfuck of the 20th century, the sinking of the Titanic; being the nearest major port, Halifax became the final resting place of the majority of the recovered detritus, human and otherwise.)

And there on page 193: The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire.

Just ten minutes before quitting time on March 25, the six hundred employees of New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Company were startled by the ringing of a fire alarm. The employees -- mostly sixteen to twenty-three-year-old immigrant girls -- panicked as flames broke out in a pile of oil-soaked cotton rags on the eighth floor and spread rapidly to piles of cotton cloth and hanging shirtwaists, the fitted shirts for women manufactured by the company.

Screaming employees on the eighth floor rushed between the closely spaced sewing machines to the narrow exit and raced for stairways and the elevator. Workers on the ninth and tenth floors saw flames shooting from the windows below, and soon the fire spread to those floors. There was only one narrow fire escape, and many were trapped on the upper floors. A number of girls burned to death while waiting in vain for the elevator. Others forced open the elevator doors when it stopped running, and thirty women leaped into the shaft to escape the fire, their broken bodies piling up at the bottom.

Other employees rushed to the windows. Crowds on the street watched in horror as girls, their hair and clothes on fire, threw themselves out the windows and crashed through the sidewalk covers into the basement below... Fire nets were useless as girls toppled into them four and five at a time.

Thirty minutes after the fire began in the supposedly fireproof building, 145 [now officially 146] employees, mostly young girls were dead. (Flexner 1992)

***

Fast-forward some twenty years and I meet one Rebecca O'Leary -- ginger-haired dancer, historian, Clark Gable aficionado and all-around awesome person -- and become peripherally aware of her interest in said tragedy.

Which brings us to... today.

March 25 will mark the centennial of the Triangle Fire. In light of this anniversary, two new documentary films explore the background and aftermath of the incident. The excellent Triangle Fire, which recently aired on PBS (see preview below and/or follow the link to view it online in its entirety), and Triangle: Remembering the Fire, which will air on HBO on March 21.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

In addition, a consortium of organizations and individuals calling itself the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is spearheading commemorative events in New York City and beyond. In Central Pennsylvania, Gettysburg Stage will be performing The Triangle Factory Fire Project by Christopher Piehler and Scott Alan Evans, which "uses eyewitness accounts, court transcripts and other archival material to create a dramatic moment-by-moment account of this historic fire and the social upheaval that followed." The production is directed by, you guessed it, Rebecca O'Leary. (Follow the link for performance and ticketing information.)

Outrage in the wake of the Triangle Fire paved the way for government oversight of working conditions. Then again, that oversight is only consequential when and where it can be actively enforced. Triangle Fire premiered on PBS on the same day that the FBI arrested the security chief at Massey Energy on charges related to last year's deadly mining disaster in West Virginia. The indictment

accuses Stover of lying to federal agents about an apparent systematic effort to deceive federal mine safety inspectors...Stover and his guards used a special radio frequency to warn miners underground when inspectors arrived at the mine. That gave the miners the chance to mask or fix serious safety problems and avoid citations, fines and closure orders.

29 workers died.

And as Eileen Boisen Nevitt touches upon in her reflection on the life of her grandmother, a Triangle Fire survivor, the majority of American clothing is still manufactured by young women under harsh if not life-threatening working conditions, whether in Bangladesh, China, or still in the United States. "A century later, the Triangle Fire remains an enduring legacy with global implications."

A police officer and others with the broken bodies of Triangle fire victims at their feet, look up in shock at workers poised to jump from the upper floors of the burning Asch Building. The anguish and gruesome deaths of workers was witnessed firsthand by many people living or walking near the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place. Others read about it in the many newspaper reports circulated during the following days and weeks, bringing the conditions of garment worker into public scrutiny as it had been during the shirtwaist strike of 1909.
The Triangle Factory Fire
Photographer: Brown Brothers, March 25, 1911 Kheel Archives, Cornell University

Headphone - Ghostwriter

I'm digging this song "Ghostwriter" by Belgian band Headphone.

And the song title makes me think of one of my favorite PBS shows.

Remember this intro?

Samuel L. Jackson is Jamal's dad? Awesome.

Did you try turning it off and on?

You know that variety of procrastination where, instead of working on what you're supposed to be working on you watch an entire TV series until you run out of available episodes?

Welcome to my world.

Introducing my new favourite television series, The IT Crowd, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny (seriously, I keep getting chided to be quiet) combination of two of my favourite things: Britishness and nerdiness.  (I'm slightly ashamed to report that I ONLY got 92% on the official IT Crowd quiz.)

I stumbled upon it on Netflix (remind me to rant about their unruly habit of making all the seasons available instantly save one), where it's introduced as follows:

Enter the glamorous offices of Reynholm Industries, then take the elevator to the basement, where you'll find the decidedly unglamorous IT support team: slacker Roy (Chris O'Dowd), social misfit Moss (Richard Ayoade) and technically ignorant supervisor Jen (Katherine Parkinson). Together, they find nerd-tastic adventures in this hilarious British sitcom from the producer of "The Office." The program won a 2008 International Emmy for Best Comedy.

As it turns out, IFC is currently airing the original episodes.
(I picked a clip at random -- it's so hard to choose:)

 

Which is a far, far better idea than NBC's ill-fated (the pilot never aired) American version, which used the same scripts and 1/3 of the original cast. As Chris O'Dowd explains in this 2007 interview:

"They approached us all around the same time to do it," says O'Dowd, "and I couldn't do the pilot, so I couldn't really do the show, because I was shooting something else. I was gonna play American and Richard was gonna play English, but I'm not sure how they're doing it now. And I'm not 100% sure it's still gonna go, to be honest... [They] commissioned it, and then a new head of the network came in, and I don't think he's so sure about it...The guy in the pilot, I saw the press shots for it, and he's wearing the same T-shirt I'm wearing. It's quite creepy."

He's not kidding. RTFM, indeed.  In NBC's defense, they DID change the color.

Chris O'Dowd in the original

Some other dude in NBC's unaired pilot

Apparently, NBC is going to have another go at it.  As reported by Comedy Central UK, the show’s creator Graham Linehan said in a webchat for The Guardian:

‘They’re working on [a remake] at the moment. I’m waiting to see the first script. I have encouraged them to do their own thing and not try to slavishly copy the original...As long as there’s no hugging, no learning, and big set piece moments, I’ll be happy...But if the show moves too far away from what I consider to be the IT Crowd ‘brand’, I’ll be asking them to change the title.’ 

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I love you Richard Ayoade. Wikipedia would have you believe that he is the son of a Nigerian father and a Norwegian mother.  As for me, I'm convinced he's the love child of Jemaine Clement and Malcolm Gladwell.

	Do you see the resemblance?

I'm thinking Moss for Halloween this year. 

On a final note, I made the theme song B's personalized ringtone. Between the theme of the show and the badass synthesizer, it's kind of perfect, except that I feel compelled to let most of the song play before I actually pick up the phone.

Team Bates!

I now interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this brief, Boyfriend of the Week-esque fangirl squealfest.

But first... some context. Are you watching Downton Abbey on Masterpiece? Why not? Because I'm here to tell you...

YOU SHOULD BE.

No offense (or as the Brits say... offence?) To the folks at PBS, but the original ITV trailer is vastly more compelling:

 

Kilwillie getting his kilt on!

This isn't your Grandma's Masterpiece Theatre. Written by Julian Fellowes (who wrote the equally awesome Gosford Park and was, once upon a time, Kilwillie on Monarch of the Glen), Downton is an epilogue-of-sorts to another Masterpiece, The Buccaneers.

Based on an unfinished novel by Edith Wharton, the eponymous title characters of that series are "nouveau riche" American girls on a quest to legitimize their money by forging mutually beneficial matches with land rich, cash poor British aristocrats.

In Downton, Elizabeth McGovern plays Cora, Countess of Grantham, who in her youth was just such a "buccaneer" and is now the happily married daughter of three grown daughters. But no son, which, in the primogeniture-happy land of the English aristocracy, is a bit of a problem. It's even more of a problem because the sizable chunk of change she brought to the union has been, unfortunately, entailed to the estate, meaning that it will go, not to her daughters, but to the next Count of Grantham. And after an unfortunate incident involving a White Star ocean liner and an iceberg, the next Count of Grantham is a third cousin who happens to be a staunchly middle class solicitor from Manchester.

In Downton Abbey there is an upstairs and a downstairs, whose intersecting lives form much of the drama.  But despite the obvious correlation to the original Upstairs, Downstairs (which also, as I recall, featured a story line centering on Titanic - upper crust Edwardian society was nothing if not insular), Downton Abbey most reminds me of Manor House; the level of intrigue is on par with the best of reality television.

But to get back to the promised squealing, every Count needs a mysterious valet, right?

Clive Owen in Gosford Park

Brendan Coyle in North and South

Bates (Brendan Higgins) and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) share a moment.

Half an hour later....

Sorry... I'm not sure if that was appropriately squealy; should have used more exclamation points.
I'll try again. Dear Brendan Coyle: You are awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!