Where'd all that nice weather go?

After unseasonably warm weather for most of these week, we're back to clouds and showers. Oh well. Here's a photo from my garden:

Eddie Albert, RIP

See Cal Lanier's excellent write up on the Football Fans for Truth site. Well worth reading. Eddie Albert was much more than that guy in Green Acres.

Disappointing Christie

I have to say I'm disappointed in the lastest Miss Marple adaptations on Mystery!. The period is okay and the actors are pretty good (although Geraldine McEwan isn't old enough for the part), but the changes they made to the plots are pretty bad.

Giving Miss Marple a past with a married lover in one episde is probably the worst plot change I've seen so far; the changes they made in A Murder is Announced were just irritating in comparison (conflating two characters, with the effect of eliminating one of the better characters in the book).

Weekend videos

This past weekend, I watched Passport to Pimlico, the 1949 Ealing Studio comedy of a London street that declared independence from Britian after an ancient Burgundian treaty was found. Margaret Rutherford is especially funny in the minor role of Professor Hatton-Jones, a loopy professor. Also a good luck at post-WWII Britain's world of rationing and black market.

I also watched the documentary Lost in La Mancha, about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to bring Don Quixote to the big screen. An astonishing number of unfortunate events, from a severe back injury that sidelined the lead actor for months to a freak rainstorm that almost washed the set away, doomed the effort, but there are glimpses of the genius that was going into the movie.

I recommend both movies - the first for a great British comedy and the second for the inside view of filmaking it gives.

T-Shirt with Mixed Message

If you saw this t-shirt on the street, what you think?

1. She's emphasizing her breasts
2. She's planning on getting really drunk
3. She's pregnant with twins
4. She's committed to 2 alcohol-free days a week

Answer:

T-shirt campaign to reduce binge drinking

Latest stop smoking technique?

Great tit makes home in ashtray

A great tit has made its home in an ashtray outside a tool-making company in Birmingham.

Smokers at Guhring in Castle Bromwich found the bird, which has five eggs, nestling among the cigarette ends.

The box, which hangs on a wall outside the firm, is now off-limits until the great tit leaves.

Birds of prey, on the other hand, have more sense than to build a nest among cigarette butts.

Should Yogi Bear live in the "Zone of Death" to avoid prosecution?

Areas of Yellowstone might be beyond law

"Say that you are in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone and you decide to spice up your vacation by going on a crime spree," Kalt writes in a forthcoming paper for the Georgetown Law Journal.

"You make some moonshine, you poach some wildlife, you strangle some people and steal their picnic baskets.

"But the Sixth Amendment then requires that the jury be from the state - Idaho - and the district - Wyoming - in which the crime was committed.

"In other words, the jury would have to be drawn from the Idaho portion of Yellowstone which, according to the 2000 Census has a population of precisely zero.

"Assuming that you do not feel like consenting to trial in Cheyenne, you should go free."

More WWII stuff

I spent this weekend watching Went the Day Well? a 1942 Ealing studio war movie about a Nazi invasion of a small British village with the help of a fifth columnist, and the village's efforts to thwart them. This was in contrast the first 4 episodes of Danger: UXB that I watched, a PBS mini-series set in the same time period, with Anthony Edwards as a new leftenant assigned to a bomb disposal squad.

Went the Day Well? is part of the British War Collection DVD package. I found it very interesting -- it was framed as being filmed after the war ended, but was actually filmed during the war. The villagers are initially taken in by the German soldiers disguised as British troops, and are fooled by the plausable and charming fifth columnist, but work to resist the invasion and warn the outside world. The characters are great. The soldiers are little typecast as nasty Germans, but the villagers go a little beyond the stereotypes. One of the characters was probably the inspiration for the Tessie O'Shea's role as the telephone operator in The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, but was a much stronger character.

Danger: UXB (UXB = unexploded bomb) was entertaining, but not as riveting as Went the Day Well?. By the end of the 4th episode, though, it seemed pretty clear that any member of the bomb squad (other than the lead, Anthony Edwards as Lt. Ash) who as given a back story would be blown up at the end of an episode. I will continue to watch the series, and it will be interesting to see if this holds true.

I wouldn't rate Danger: UXB: as highly as Foyle's War, the mystery set in the same time period, with Michael Kitchen as Christopher Foyle, a police officer solving crimes in the south coast town of Hastings.