Out and about town a bit today; less than successful shopping; a pop-culture evening. I didn’t have much time to think about linguistics today.
I.
It’s the 17th and I haven’t finished my holiday shopping or gift making.
The other day I saw an appropriate gift for Ms. S.’s mother, who like Ms. S. and I rather adores ‘ST:TNG’ (and like me but unlike Ms. S. she also likes ‘TOS’). For Ms. S.’s father I have a gift in mind, but I’ll need to head to a real bookstore to get it. A friend has a birthday coming up soon, too, and I knew what I wanted to get him, but it was ‘used’ and when I returned to the places where I last saw it available all the copies were gone. I happen to have a couple books I think he might like, though, and I bought them a while back with the intention of giving them as gifts.
In the first season of ‘BSG’ Adama tells the president never to lend a book … you give them. I can’t go quite that far, as I have a number of books that I want to share with others but that I do not wish to give up. But there are number of others I want to share but perhaps not read again, and instead of hoarding them I like to pass them along. There several occasions in my life where the passing on of a book was highly productive. A friend introduced me to Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which I then introduced to a friend … and then to another friend, etc. I got Snow Crash in exchange at a Romanian youth hostel, passed it on in Budapest, later got another copy (because I missed the book) and lent it to a friend, getting him into Stephenson in the process.
And most of my favorite books are things that were suggested to me by friends, often by those who lent me their copies. Here I would recommend Robert Grudin’s Book: A Novel (1992), a good deal of Eco but also Perez-Reverte, and Nicola Griffith’s The Blue Place (1998).
In any case, my shopping was mainly unproductive. The thrift store didn’t have the David Albahari volume I wanted (and I don’t want to give up mine yet), nor did Dirt Cheap. The thrift store did have a volume by Sebald, but it’s one I didn’t already have … I’m still in a collecting mode there. I ended up — after a few other non-book trips — at Books-A-Million, which is a sad, sad place to go. It reminds you or Borders (now long gone) and Barnes & Noble without being either. It’s not full of shoppers, its selection is rather pitiful … and even its bargains were a bit less than inspiring. Its new books were no better in terms of price than those at other stores, or online, as as I can’t treat them as a small ‘local retailer’ in my mind, I can’t justify — to myself — blowing money there.
I returned home; Ms. S., who had also been out shopping, was already home. I made lunch. I loved the flavor of liver and onions; the smell made Ms. S. feel nauseated.
Alas.
II.
Tonight Ms. S. has the late shift and so had the afternoon and evening free. She’s rightly fed up with ‘Relic Hunter,’ which so lacks in ambition that it almost feels like a waste of time watching it.
I take that back … it is a waste of time. The question then is: can we use it as background noise to being productive in some other way? I think the answer is yes. Ms. S., for example, manages to knit. I enjoy critiquing (or at least criticizing) the show as we watch it, and sometimes I get some writing in (pen and paper notebook rather than the laptop), but I’m sort of disappointed by it …
… and by us in taking time with it?
There are so many wonderful works of art out there, as well as other cultural products that aren’t ‘great’ but are still interesting or inspiring. Last spring as we finished TNG but were still early in the SG-1 run Ms. S. drew my attention to a Richard Dean Anderson show that also featured John de Lancie, ‘Legend,’ and from that I was drawn to ‘The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.,’ and from there to more Bruce Campbell with ‘Jack of of all Trades.’ From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump to ‘Cleopatra 2525’ and, then, memories of ‘Relic Hunter’ on TV. As Ms. S.’s love of all things Daniel Jackson increased the attractiveness of ‘Relic Hunter’ — one part Indian Jones, one part Lara Croft, a couple parts incompetence, it appears — and its variety of absurdity.
Anyway, fast-forward many months, we’ve taken it up along with ‘The X-Files,’ and we’re yet to be impressed. So today we started by taking a break from it. We began with season two of Mulder and Scully and “Sleepless,” which features Tony Todd, whom we both love, and who was in ‘SG-1’ for a bit. Plus, we have Steven Williams, who was also in ‘SG-1′ (and ’21 Jump Street’ … but let’s forget that), and Mitch Pileggi, who wasn’t in ‘SG-1,’ but did appear quite a bit in ‘SG-Atlantis.’ It’s the whole matter of “if they film in Canada, you will be in it.” See also: Don S. Davis, William B. Davis … and others.
We doubled up and I showed her the next episode, “Duane Barry,” which in a way really gets the mythology arc stuff going. We’ve had Davis as our Smoking Man since the beginning, but here we have a two-parter and Scully’s abduction. While Krycek was introduced back in “Sleepless,” he becomes important to ongoing plot matters here. The metal fragments in Duane Barry’s body reminds us of the pilot episode.
Instead of ‘Relic Hunter’ we browsed a collection of television episodes until settling on giving ‘Veritas’ a chance. I remember it from it’s run back in 2003; it carried the curse of The Balfour and didn’t even get to air its full run in the U.S. Its Wikipedia page includes a ‘See also’ link to ‘Relic Hunter,’ which amuses me. In any case, the pilot episode, “Reunion,” failed to impress that much, and the show hasn’t aged that well. Whether we continue with it or not is anyone’s guess at the point, but I doubt it will become our secondary ‘anchor.’
Dinner intervened and afterward Ms. S. realized she still had an hour and a half before she had to get ready for work … so we continued that ‘X-Files’ two-parter and watched “Ascension.” But Ms. S. was, alas, left without (m)any answers, as Scully remains abducted. I haven’t told her that the extra-narrative reason for all this is Anderson’s pregnancy, and that she’ll be back in just a couple episodes. I’ve hinted a bit about what’s coming up, without mentioning the V-word … vampires!
We’ve already had ‘werewolves,’ after all, as well as ghosts, and so on.
Finally we finished the evening with ‘Relic Hunter,’ which did a nice job misrepresenting Casanova, as is to be expected, in an episode entitled “The Book of Love.” The show almost descended in this episode into self-aware parody … that can only be a good sign!
III.
- Disgusting: “At a loss for an appropriately angry title“
- Crazy USians out-of-touch with reality … “Gun Owners of America hints at armed revolt“
- Better than ‘Relic Hunter’: “2012 in Review: 10 Films Worth Going Out Of Your Way For“
- To read? “José Saramago: Raised from the Ground“
IV.
Newest ‘addiction’?
Cocoa roasted almonds … only a few calories more than regular roasted almonds (and gram for gram about the same, but the serving size is 31g vs 28g) … and almond by almond you just want to suck on them until all the cocoa is gone.
They go well with a neat shot of Scotch while reading and writing.
