Barkerburgh

A few months back, my friend Greg, a guitarist with a flair for the above mentioned Rock’n Roll with a heavy metal bent, went to Toronto’s Necropolis cemetery for some moody album cover shots.

I was the art director and photographer. Greg brought his guitar.

I thought the cemetery closed at 8:30pm but they had just changed the closing time to 6:00pm for the winter, so when it began to rain and we decided to leave, we discovered we were locked in and had to climb over the high wrought iron gate in the rain.

Good times. Good times.

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’.

Spent 5 days/4 nights in the Wasagas, at Vala’s Villa, the Tolkien themed ancestral summer cottage of the Ellis-Perrella family of Guildwood.

Just about here:

View Larger Map

It was taken by Reid, total serendipity. I get hit in the head repeatedly (every time somebody watches the damn thing) and I still think it’s funny. Maybe that’s why…

I had a great, relaxing time, with frisbees, thunderstorms, standing in the lake up to my neck for an hour at a time, and an engineering project at the mouth of the Saint David’s River, which flows mightily into Nottawasaga Bay somewhat north of the villa.

After returning from the Wasagas, Anneli took me, as a somewhat belated birthday present to see the “Facing Mars” exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre. While I had some issues with the interface for some of the exhibits, and some just didn’t work, it was still highly cool. Then we went to see the IMAX film “Roving Mars“, which was so kick ass I can’t tell you. It was basically about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and their missions on Mars, a combination of live shots and splendid CG. One hypothetical shot showed an ancient Martian desert of rolling dunes dotted with saline lakes, and was quite spectacular, stirring in fact.

We had lunch, wandered around the other exhibits a bit and then we went to the tiny planetarium to see a show about Toronto’s night sky, although we also went out into intergalactic space for a quick peek. Beside the line-up, there was a sign telling us that if we were past it, we might not get in because space was limited. I pointed out that space was in fact infinite, got a general laugh except from a snotty 10 year old girl who said “I think they mean that seating in the planetarium is limited.” I couldn’t let her get away with that so I kidnapped her and sold to the greys from Zeta Reticuli for scientific experiments said “I don’t think so!”

Yes sirree, had me some fun.

…and I’ve got diagnosed osteoarthritis in both hips so I figured, for Wetstock this year, I’d just go easy.

But my people do not go easy into that good night. And this was in the afternoon.

I didn’t run around too much with the general ruck and rumble of the water-gun fight itself, although I wanted to. Luisa came to be, with water balloons, in the upstairs john which is always a target as it is overlooking the backyard wetting-fields, and I went up to tag her, but I got suborned to her side. We got Jeff R. and a couple of young people who I’d just met that day, (and bravo for the next generation, God bless’ em), and we won the day. We did. We did so.

Reid, with a high-powered water-rifle, employed a ladder to climb up to the bathroom window, in spite of the absence of one of our dear family of friends, partly, in part I’m sure, due to a ladder accident a few weeks back, with a head thing. And Baby H. Jesus, Reid, what were you thinking? But since he didn’t fall. it was genius, and hilarious. And he pulled open the window nearest me and I took the brunt of his humid and humorous assault.

This was Simon’s first Wetstock, and he needs experience, God love’im, he’ll be three in November.

Later, in the round backyard pool, we did the traditional whirlpool, with two reversals. K. A.

As always, the company was great, the food was great and I look forward to several next years.

What’s hilarious, seriously, is, that right now, two days later, when I was expecting one or both hips to be almost literally killing me, WTF and NGOOHA, it’s my thirty year old chronic back condition that’s bugging me, not my hippage.

At this same age, my parents did not have this suite of experiences or concomitant consequences. But they didn’t have waterguns.

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.