Xenon's Seventh Circle

I have dug everything. Everywhere. If there was something you didn't want dug, sorry. It's too late now, you should have said. Everything is now planted in the allotment, but turns out that watering is accomplished by hanging over the riverbank, and dipping a bucket into the water. So that's my job, as there's no way my mother can do that. If you hear a splash, it's me.

Elsewhere (a different river), I was out walking again, watching the bouncing fishes, and look look!

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Well, maybe not recs as such. I have especially enjoyed these three books just recently, but I do admit that the first one is a bit niche, and it seems that most of you have read the second one anyway. But still! Book recs!

( Books! )

I hated 2003. It was officially the worst year ever. Blanking on it almost totally, although that doesn't seem to be unusual lately! The 2000s, scientifically proven to be the most forgettable decade on record. I do know that Bob Hope died this year. He was 100. I was listening to Mark Goodier on Radio 1, and heard it announced there (that's not an amazing feat of memory - I'd been listening to him since the eighties, and if I heard something on the radio, it's pretty much guaranteed it was from him). Sheb Wooley died too, though with far less fanfare. He played Pete Nolan on Rawhide, the 1950s Western series that gave Clint Eastwood his big break. Everybody remembers Eastwood, but Sheb Wooley was far better! He had a website way back in the 90s, and was very hands on with it. I remember him announcing there that he had leukaemia, probably in '01 or '02.

Otherwise, I had to resort to Wiki to help me out with 2003. Mick Jagger was knighted apparently! Boy do times change. Even as recently as twenty years previously, he was still seen as the bad boy of rock music. Or one of them anyway. It was also the year of David Kelly, the guy who blew the whistle on the fact that the government had lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to press for a war. Or a not war. They were still insisting that it wasn't actually a war, although quite what they think the difference is, I don't know. Twelve years on, I don't think anything has happened about that yet. Tony Blair still seems to be walking around free anyway.

It was the year when Buffy The Vampire Slayer ended! Two years too late, one might argue. I was sorry to see it go though, even if I was largely left cold by those last two years. It's a show that I haven't seen in ages, and I would love to do a rewatch sometimes (it can join a long and growing list - where did all the time go?! Days used to be twenty-four hours long. I'm sure they did), but I don't know if I would bother with seasons six and seven again. Except for the musical episode, obviously. Still, everything tails off eventually, and it was a heck of a series.

I had a look through the year's top #100. Ouch. When did SClub7 become SClub8? Like seven of them wasn't already too much? How many people do you need to do synchronised movements to a rubbish song?! Anyway, they split up apparently, so the poor eighth member clearly didn't have a very long career. Um. Oh, I give up!

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In an attempt to make Remington Steele last a bit longer (blasted old shows, and their finite number of episodes!), I have been mining YouTube for Robert Young films. I don't think he's terribly well known, but he's one of my favourite actors. America apparently knows him best for a TV show that he did in the seventies, but I've never seen that, and instead know him for the string of above average B-movies that he made in the forties and fifties. Anyway, one of the ones that I've watched is one that I thought might appeal to a few people.

It's called Relentless, and it dates from 1948. Young plays a wandering cowboy trying to clear his name of a murder charge, but underneath that it's like Feminism: The Western (well, okay. Not really). The heroine gets a great speech about how being expected to give up your life to look after a husband is a rubbish goal for a young woman. Usually this would be followed by the hero buying her a dress, at which point she would gasp at its beauty, and realise that actually there's nothing she'd like more than looking after a man for the rest of her life. Oh, the power of a tight bodice and a few frills. In this film though, the hero agrees. She then basically spends the whole film bailing him out of trouble, including one terrific, high-speed wagon sequence, where she gets to be properly heroic (and he doesn't save her once). Then it all ends with her pretty much proposing to him. Sometimes, ye olde movies get it right.

( The film's embedded beneath the cut )

Mind you, just to ram home the fact that old TV and movies do love making us wince, I followed it up with Second Woman, from 1950. Is Robert Young paranoid, or is somebody really out to get him?! It's actually a nice little film for the most part, but about halfway through, when Young is worrying over whether a Mexican waiter has been lurking in his garden, his ex-father-in-law tells him to think nothing of it, because "these fellows all look the same unless you know them". Gee, thanks 1950. There's nothing quite like ruining a movie with a little throwaway racism.

And even that pales into comparison with Western Union. This is a great fun little Western from 1941, in which a baby Robert Young somehow manages to get top billing above Randolph Scott. It really is very entertaining - until, again about halfway through, which is clearly the danger point with these films - they suddenly dig out the crass "Injun" stereotypes. And if they're not agonising enough on their own, they're made even more so by the fact that there are two highly dignified-looking genuine native chiefs in the cast. I know they needed the money back then, but yeesh. What a way to make a living.

So yeah, that's been my week. A holiday from terrifying bouffants, which started out well, but got sinister thanks to creaky old sensibilities. I shall always love old movies, but I wish they loved me a little more in return. Is it really so hard to go ninety minutes without insulting entire civilisations?! Apparently so.

I still like Robert Young though; even when he keeps being in colour. Being in colour when you're Robert Young is just unnatural. Actors can be strangely uncooperative that way.

Ye gods, with all the thanks in the world to sabethea for putting me on to this one...





Best. Christmas. Song. Ever. :) And two Kronoses. Kroni? At any rate, it's just as well I have eleven piping Methoses to keep them all in order. The mind boggles. But is happy while it does it. And dancing trilobites, hurrah. C'mon, everyone. Let's see yours!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and find out how to milk a megalodon. John Barrowman might know...

Day six, your favourite episode of your favourite TV show. But we already established that I don't have one of them! *grumble* Still, I chickened out last time, so this time I'll behave.

It's not my favourite show (except when it is), but one show that has always been very special to me is Bonanza. It was on a lot when I was a kid, and the character of Joe Cartwright was a pretty major part of my childhood. He and Manolito Montoya, his opposite number over on The High Chaparral, were everything I wanted to be when I was growing up. I thought the world of Joe. And there is one episode of Bonanza which I discovered recently on YouTube - having not really had the opportunity to see the show in years - which just brilliantly sums up everything I used to love about it, and everything that made me think so highly of Joe. The episode is called "Different Pines, Same Wind", and it's the first episode of season ten. It really couldn't be more perfect. Joe is trying to protect some forests from a ruthless logging merchant (the Cartwrights were environmentalists long before it was fashionable), and in the process he finds a lonely old widow living in a log cabin. During the course of forty-seven minutes, he befriends her, saves her beloved forest, defeats a despicable bad guy, helps a doctor to rediscover his calling, and has a splendid no-holds-barred battle with a gang of heavies. Michael Landon was an accredited stuntman, and his fist fights were always awesome. Plus, as a special bonus, Ben and Hoss, the best father and big brother you could hope for, come dashing to the rescue to save the day at the last possible moment. It also has the nice blend of comedy and drama for which Bonanza came to be known.

It's wonderful, it really is. It's everything I loved about the show growing up, and Joe is every inch the hero I idolised so much as a child. So, even if it lacks the depth of a favourite episode of The West Wing, or the brilliant comedy-drama mix of a favourite episode of Buffy, I'm choosing this one. It's awesome. And, for the record, I still want to be Joe Cartwright (and Manolito Montoya). It looks like I always will.

Given some of the utter tosh that I've watched over the years, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me to discover that I've also taped a lot of utter tosh. Mind you, even knowing that, it's weird what colonises the ends of video tapes, lurking in forgotten nooks and crannies, from back in the days when I used to use the things regularly. Some things are reasonable enough, if long forgotten. Others are just downright bizarre.

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In episodes twenty-two and twenty-three, The Time Tunnel suddenly turns into a show tailor-made for me, and comes up with just about everything that I could want. That anybody could want, really. If there's anybody alive who doesn't think that pirates and cowboys are just about the most excitingest things ever, then they're probably somebody confused and disillusioned, and soon to see the error of their ways. Oh yes.

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The time tunnel has some kind of Western fixation, it must have. Naturally I approve of this wholeheartedly. Who can dislike a show that mixes sci-fi, Westerns and enthusiastic silliness, with James Darren and lots of explosions? The command crew have way outstayed their welcome, though. I'm beginning to wish great violence upon each one of them.

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I like James Darren. I don't know what it is about him and his Amazing Green Pullover Of Time, but they make a very engaging duo. He (and the green pullover as well, possibly) should be on TV more. Actually, come to think of it, he should be the next Doctor Who. He'd be awesome fighting Daleks, he really would.

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