Barkerburgh

It’s pronounced as ‘Four Double-Six Six Four” and it was Nelson Mandela’s prison number, indicating he was the four-hundred-and-sixty-sixth person imprisoned in 1964, this according to Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith who were hosting

Mandela has turned that number around (not literally, c’mon) and created an HIV/AIDS charity organization for which this concert was a fundraiser/benefit.

Himself is 90, and when he came out on stage, he needed a cane, and an arm from (I assume) his wife. He looked great, for an actual, true, real superhero, even though his frailty was heartbreaking.

(FY yer I and just so’s ya know, I don’t follow a lot of modern popular music…)

Peter Gabriel was there. Amy Winehouse made it. And Queen showed up; with Doctor May, and the new lead singer is no Freddie Mercury, but he’s really good. There was a children’s choir called Agape (three syllables, the Greek word, not the English), and lots of African singers and performers. I think I might like (not African that I know of) Josh Groban. What a voice.

What got me was this. At one point early in the concert - I had the sound off between numbers - this middle-aged white woman came out on stage. I thought maybe she was like a housewife from like Slough who’d won a contest to introduce an act or something. She’s kinda ordinary looking, but pretty, and very earnest and enthusiastic, which I could tell even with the sound off. I wonder why a housewife from Slough gets to introduce an act at the 46664 concert. Enh, the English. Who’s like’em?

So I turn the sound up to hear this woman. She’s got that light, delightful Scottish accent that I like (and can do), and I’m thinking she now looks maybe familiar, and sounds familiar too.

She introduces the Agape Children’s Choir and starts to hum along with them and a tag jumps up on the screen; my middle-aged housewife from Slough is Annie Freekin’ Lennox!

I know.

I was always a big Inspector Morse fan, both the books and the series, and was sad when all ended as all human things must end.

Now, Kevin Whateley, who played Endeavour Morse’s faithful sidekick, Sergeant Lewis, has returned to PBS’ Masterpiece as Inspector Lewis, and is welcome. There was one episode (as far as I know) a few years ago, but with last night’s episode and next week’s promised one, there are least two more. The ads for DVDs during the show suggest there’s an entire series; whether PBS will carry it all, I don’t know yet.

Seven words you won’t be able to say on TV anymore.

I will always laugh about Cardinal Glick.
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So I tried to watch Oliver Stone’s Alexander the other night. There was so much about it I wanted to like, and so much that was good about it, but what a synergetic suckfest. Almost as bad as Star Trek:Enterprise.

Colin Farrell was good, surprisingly. Angelina Jolie as Olympias was good, even with the 1960s “Mission:Impossible” generic Eastern European accent. Rosario Dawson was achingly beautiful as Roxane. Stone even handled the gay thing between Alexander and Hephaistion better than I expected. The battle scenes were glorious and splendid, and just what you want battle re-creations to look and sound like. If Stone had had Smell-o-Vision(tm) - which the Japanese have been working on for 30 years - the battle scenes would have been perfect.

But you know that really burned my ass? (more…)

(Does anybody else empathize with how hard it is to use the correct HTML spelling for ‘center’ when you’re Canadian?)

I’m just sayin’.

And if you could too, that would be great.

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I just discovered that Buffalo’s PBS station, WNED, broadcast 17, cable 61 (Rogers, downtown) is rerunning The Vicar of Dibley and the exquisite mid-1980s Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett in the title role.

Dawn French is almost flawless in The V of D, (en passant, closing credits include “Dawn French supplied by: Saunders and French Productions”) and Jeremy Brett is the best Sherlock Holmes ever. Ever.