Barkerburgh

A delightful tongue-in-cheeky docu-drama about Mrs Mary Whitehouse, an early 60s English housewife and her reaction to the type of new ‘with-it’ programming on the BBC of the day, as presided over and encouraged by Sir Hugh Greene. It’s been on WNED, the local PBS channel before, but I missed it, finally seeing it this past weekend.

Julie Walters plays Mrs Whitehouse and Hugh Bonneville plays Sir Hugh. Their characters never meet:he refuses to see her, despite her many letters and his colleagues’ advice.

From the production company Wall to Wall’s own page about the film (with my link):

“Armed only with good Christian values and a sharp tongue, Mary Whitehouse’s^[wikipedia] mission was to stop filth entering family homes via the media. Remarkably in 1967, the epicentre of the most liberal decade in history, she forced the resignation of the BBC’s director general after a row over the Beatles’ use of the word “knickers”. This film shows us how she did it.”

The opening credits are run with a song playing that I guessed must be Flanders and Swann (thank you Leslie), and I was right. The refrain was a variation on “Pee, Po, Belly, Bum, Drawers”, a sort of humorous Tourette’s Lite petillant reference to the story itself. Interestingly, and relevant, the title of the song on their album, according to the wikipedia page, is ‘P** P* B**** B** D******’.

Mrs Whitehouse’s obituary from the Guardian.

From Michael Moore’s Wednesday, November 5, 2008 newsletter:

“But today we celebrate this triumph of decency over personal attack, of peace over war, of intelligence over a belief that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs just 6,000 years ago. What will it be like to have a smart president? Science, banished for eight years, will return. Imagine supporting our country’s greatest minds as they seek to cure illness, discover new forms of energy, and work to save the planet. I know, pinch me.”

Pinch him, not me.

Oh hell, pinch me too!

(Read the whole thing here.)

Well, it’s finally got cold enough outside for me to pull out my winter bedding and my big comfy pillows, which are generally too hot to use during the warmer months in our climate.

I haven’t slept at all well for a very long time, but with my window open a bit, 5-7 layers of blankets, and my big foam-core with chipped foam pillows, I have slept like a rock for several hours more than a few times over the last few weeks.

¡Qué raro!

The Yahoo News AP story about how the title of Kevin Smith’s new movie offends people, especially Dodgers’ spokesman Josh Rawitch.

Quote: Commercials for the film during Los Angeles Dodgers games on Fox Sports were dropped at the team’s request after some viewers complained, said Dodgers spokesman Josh Rawitch.

One complaint came from a man watching a game in September with his young son, who did not understand a suicide-squeeze bunt the Dodgers tried, Rawitch said.

“He was explaining to his son what a squeeze bunt was. Commercial break, the ad comes on, and the kid asks, ‘Dad, what does porno mean?”‘ Rawitch said. “Dodgers baseball has always been about family (emphasis Himself’s), and we’ve always been sensitive to the type of advertising that runs on our games.”

Unquote.

So ‘porno’ is worse for a child than ’suicide’. Yeah. Great fuckin’ dad.

I freakin’ love this Discovery Canada commercial. It’s based on an American version but ours is better.

I find myself humming the tune at odd moments, and even ones too.

I sing along with it and laugh and clap, then prowl the airwaves searching for it just to hear it again. Now though, I’ve downloaded it to hear as often as I like until I am sick to freakin’ death of it.

Boom-di-yada!

(Added Thursday, September 25, 2008, 17:55:
wikipedia entry
xkcd: XKCD Loves The Discovery Channel)

Go to YouTube and enter ‘Planet of the Apes’ in the search box. Browse.

Enter ‘Terminator’ in the search box. Browse.

Type in ‘Land of the Lost’. Larf.

Go to retrojunk.com and waste time.

Go to Google and type in something like ‘24.5 kilometres in miles’ or ‘1 hogshead in litres’.

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

I will always laugh about Cardinal Glick.
(more…)

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.

Over the last two nights, on Space (Rogers Cable 50, downtown) they showed a two-parter that took place entirely in the ‘Mirror, Mirror’ universe from the classic series.

There was the usual duplication of people in nearly identical capacities or roles (but working for the Empire not the Federation), and the link to our universe was the Defiant, which had been lured through a transverse spatio-temporal discontinuity (I made that term up) by the Tholians.  They captured the Defiant, killed the crew and began to dismantle the ship which was technologically advanced.

Mirror Archer (no evil Cartman beard) and his crew captured the ship from the Tholians (no beards), and so on.

Scott Bakula’s acting was horrendous, but the show was good.  Grim and sad, even the ending, but much more satisfying than the other episodes that I saw before I just stopped watching it.

Okay, score one (and only one) for Braga and Berman.  Lucky dummies.

…while I was housesitting for Peter and Leslie. Go on. Guess! (more…)