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.

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’m just sayin’.

The A&E Andromeda Strain Remake

If nothing else, it’s got a good cast. Updated, it nevertheless follows the general storyline of the original movie and book (which I think stands up better than a lot of science adventures from the same era), and of course, there’s iPhones and cellphones and references to WMDs, North Korea and Homeland Security (how 1984 / Brave New World / THX1138 / Sleeper is that name anyway?).

You probably know that the action starts in the isolated Utah town of Piedmont, where townspeople find a recently fallen satellite and take it to the firehall, where they open it, exposing the entire town to an immediately deadly pathogen, killing almost everyone. Soon there are vultures.

What got me was a Ford commercial about 20 minutes in during the first episode. A couple is driving a Ford vehicle through a town identified on-screen as Piedmont. They see a vulture right beside them and they hightail it outa Dodge (Piedmont). Struck me as real tasteless.

& Et Cetera.1

There’s this Cialis commercial with a bathtub overflowing, a turkey burning in the oven, a dog scratching to be let out and a lawn sprinkler flooding the front yard. There’s a nice little Spanish ditty playing as we see all this.

The husband and wife run around and turn off water and save the turkey, but don’t let the dog out.

Since they’ve been off carpe dieming thanks to Cialis, shouldn’t they have first turned off the sprinkler and the bath, and turned the oven down? Or is Cialis just that compelling?

And it’s just plain irresponsible not to have let the dog out first.

& Et Cetera.2

Egad! CBC will be carrying Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune in the fall. Rest easy, all, though. Coronation Street is safe.

or

“48 Hours Notice Of A Strike, My Ass, You Bastards”

Was it J. Lauren Pryor?

Was it Ayesha, She Who Must Not Be Named?

Was it Rich Hall, inventor of the snigglet?

Was it this blogger, who probably gave too much away in the title of this post?

Let us agree that he was me.

Having had a fun afternoon babysitting Simon, then staying for a fine barbecue, I left the hospitality of Peter and Leslie’s home shortly before midnight and got to Dufferin and St. Clair soon after, intending to take either the Dufferin bus or the St. Clair temporary-abomination-while-they-complete-the-new-street-car-right-of-way-along-the-Corso-Italia-and-move-on.

Kind passersby began to tell us that the Amalgamated Transit Union had voted down the new contract and had called a strike for midnight. Rrrr.

I started to walk eastbound while I waited for perhaps one last bus or streetcar but NSFL.

Even though I couldn’t really afford it, I decided I would have to take a cab, mostly because I was really tired, my foot was sore and spending two hours at the playground with Simon is an adventure and a workout.

Suddenly there were no cabs. I resigned myself to walking home, estimating it at about 2-2.5 hours, but expecting it to take longer, and to get mugged.

However, a cab came by. Along the way, I asked the driver to stop at two groups of people who were waiting for cabs on St. Clair and asked if anyone was going near Sherbourne and Bloor (which is where I asked the driver to take me). We got three more people so it didn’t cost me a whole hell of a lot really. It only took me an hour altogether to get home.

Bob Kinnear is a liar and a hypocrite, and should be caught by a tabloid photographer in a brothel wearing a red vinyl teddy, with a ball-gag in his mouth, being called ‘Service Slut’ by a faux lesbian dominatrix.

The union should be legislated back to work and the TTC should be declared an essential service.

Fuck. No weeknight Coronation Street for two months because of the hockey playoffs (and again during the Olympics), and now this.

Life sncks.

“Union officials said the strike was called immediately rather than allowing 48 hours’ notice because they feared a public backlash against transit workers.”

Bob Kinnear, president of Local 113 of the ATU, is quoted: “We have assessed the situation and decided that we will not expose our members to the dangers of assaults from angry and irrational members of the public.”

Does he not think this tactic increases the chance of a public backlash, increasing the danger to his union members?

Is his head up his ass? Don’t answer that, even though the best defense against an accusation of libel or slander is the demonstration of truth.

(that last paragraph edited by Himself, Monday, April 28, 2008)

So I go to sign in at this government sponsored think-tank work-shop job-search internet cafe at Parliament and Wellesley.

There’s a bit of a line up, so I wait. But the staffer proceeds to take my card and sign me up on a computer. She tells both me and the client she’s already talking to that she can multitask. Predictably, I tell the other client that she’s a robot from the future. She says, and new paragraph

“Oh, you’re sweet.”

So I say, again predictably, “the last time I told a woman she was a robot from the future…” but I never finished the sentence because what she said caught up with me.

1. Make a longhand list entitled “Ten Things To Do During A Power Failure While You’re House-sitting.”
2. Read an entire book. (”X-Treme Latin! Unleash Your Inner Gladiator”; it’s basically a phrase book. From the Country Music Favourites page - ‘Sine Te Tam Miser Sum Ut Videaris Etiamnunc Adesse‘, which translates as ‘I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Like Having You Here‘.)
3. Read Monday’s Globe and Mail, front to back, even Sports.
4. Ingenuously ask the neighbours if their power’s back on.
5. Disingenuously ask the other neighbours if their power’s back on.
6. Worry about the old lady across the street who seems okay but you’d feel bad if you found out something happened to her when you didn’t check.
7. Stare longingly at the blind TV. It can’t see you, so it’s not fulfilling its destiny. (Me! It can’t see me!)
8. Believe Reality when the power comes back on for about 3 minutes but then, haha, goes off again.
9. Try to teach yourself piano but give up when you realize that while you may never be the new Keith Jarrett, you just might be the new Charles Ives and that’s dissonantly disturbing.
10. Clean out the freezer. By eating.
11. Add some items to the list after #10.
12. Phone some local friends to ask their voice-mail, in all seriousness, “Is your refrigerator running?” But use a funny voice and an accent.
13. Read an entire Mad magazine. (March, 2007)
14. Make anagrams in fridge magnet letters out of “Squarebob Spongepants” (”Barges Squab Opponents”, “Abbess Pang Toque Porns”, etc) and “You talking to me?” (”Image Look Nutty”, ” Teat Ugly Kimono”, etc).
15. Return from the Stone Age when the power comes back on after almost exactly 3 hours.

and bows and keyboards and frets and woodwinds and…

Happy 14th Anniversary, Urban Tapestry. I’ve only ever heard you live once but you’re still hot.

Y’all should do a calendar!

The bastards have cancelled ‘Jericho’ too.

Just when I was really getting into it.

‘Everybody Loves Fucking Raymond’ gets renewed for 23 years and they gang-probe us on this.

Well, I hope all their walls come a-tumblin’ down.

(Moments later: Then there’s this response from the fans. It’s in a response to a line used in the last episode based on this true story.)

Want to generate near-real but faux quotes from real movies using a word or phrase you input?

Try this for a laugh.

The phrase ‘naked cheerleaders’ was mine.

I also tried ‘dirty underpants’ and got this. “Gort! Klaatu barada dirty underpants!” Guess what movie that was from.

Now choose your own word or phrase.

(Try using dirty words…it’s funnier!)