Tag: blackadder

Halloween 2008: The Shadow

Halloween 2008: The Shadow (mleiv.com)
image © 2008 mleiv
Medium: fabric Size: 8
This is a highwayman costume - specifically The Shadow, from BlackAdder's "Amy and Amiability."

I purchased the pieces form various websites and altered them to fit me. Since women only wear slutty costumes for halloween, apparently these were all made just for men. Tall, fat, broad-shouldered men.

More photos and Jeffrey's costume at Flickr.com.
Posted 2008.10.31 18:45 | Last modified 2008.10.31 18:45 | 1 Comment

Surprise Appearances, Courtesy of the Internets

When I first saw Annie Lennox's "Walking on Broken Glass" on MTV, I remember feeling this sort of breathless anxiety: here was something so stunning and gorgeous and heartbreaking, and I could only see it for a few minutes before it was gone forever (this was the early 90s, when MTV couldn't spare time from 24/7 rap music and country to show alternative music). It's hard to explain this to an audience in the Aughts, where everything is so easily available online, where Wikipedia provides all the backstory and sources a person could ever need. But at the time, there was a void, and when you found something beautiful, chances are you would never see it again. And time eventually erased most of those moments from my mind, and even the ones I do remember to look up today seem to have lost their titles and identifying information in the mess that is my brain.
Walking on Broken Glass - screenshot
So when I was reading about Annie Lennox's new album in the NYT this week, it was with some chagrin that I abruptly remembered "Walking on Broken Glass." And technology had finally advanced enough that I could retrieve this particular moment of my past.

"Walking on Broken Glass"

But there was a little bonus. I start the video on youtube and within two seconds, I see a familiar face. I didn't need more than two seconds, because I am, you see, a HUGE fan of Rowan Atkinson's BlackAdder. "OMG!" I yell to the Significant Other (whom, as noted in previous posts, I often torture with my BBC obsessions), "OMG! It's Hugh Laurie! Did you know Hugh Laurie was in this video?!?" And of course he didn't, so we had to watch all 4 minutes and then look it up on Wikipedia to be sure. It was like a real-life DVD Easter Egg.
Posted 2007.10.20 17:49 | Last modified 2011.03.02 13:41 | Leave a reply

Favorite Movies

I love a lot of movies. I don't go see movies, mind you, but I acquire DVDs and watch them at home... over and over and over again. I have tried other categorizations, but here they are under What I Liked Best.

Wickedly Quotable

I love witty reparte and a bit of dark humor.

BlackAdder - "Cold is God's way of telling us to burn more Catholics."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

Army of Darkness - "I got news for you pal, you ain't leadin' but two things right now. Jack and shit, and Jack left town."

Office Space - "It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care."

Firefly - "Oh, I'm gonna go to the special hell."

The Long Kiss Goodnight - "Are you just stupid or did you take lessons?" "I took lessons!"

L.A. Story - "With a financial statement like zis, you think you can have ze duck?"

Old French Toys

You know those French dolls, with the little painted china faces and 19th century costumes: harlequins, ballerinas, and aristocrats. And complex machinery with big dirty spokes and pulleys and more twists than a Durer labyrinth. If you like Gilliam, you know what I'm talking about. I love that whole look, the grimey, broken, abandoned ambience made all the more shocking by its innocent and playful origins.

Labyrinth - The Venetian masked ball.

Batman Returns - An old-fashioned Christmas, abandoned Zoo, evil circus clowns, and the ballerina with her poodle.

Lexx (Season 3) - The planet Fire.

The Crow: City of Angels - Beautiful, but run-down.

Abandoned Buildings

I am a sucker for scary movies with abandoned buildings... or abandoned ships, or abandoned cities, whatever. This means I also love most zombie flicks. The distinction between this category and the preceding one is often blurred, which is just more awesome, IMO.

The Frighteners - The hospital scenes.

Event Horizon - The abandoned language is a special bonus.

Resident Evil - The progressive nature of abandonment - building, city, planet - is fucking awesome.

Anything with Bruce Campbell

Runners-up in the Will-Watch-For-Cute-Guy are Jean Reno, Jeremy Piven, Scott Cohen, John Hannah, Seth Green, Malcolm Mcdowell, and Danny Elfman (well, I mostly watch movies for his soundtracks, but he was in The Gift).

Cartoons

Lilo & Stitch. Yup, I am a total sucker for cute widdle alien pets.

Invader Zim - "They're made of WAFFLE!"

Posted 2005.10.27 14:06 | Last modified 2005.10.27 14:06 | Leave a reply

Old Quotes

gravitas

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck i've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down. Simone Weil says simply, "Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love." Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.
Perchance it may be so--at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty.
Oscar Wilde, Apologia
I think that the dying pray at the last not 'please,' but 'thank you,' as a guest thanks her host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate.

context Hooptyrides
Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves, and in their struggle to solve their own problems they're solving problems for the culture as well. Robert M. Pirsig, Lila
You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them. So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. Marcus, Babylon 5 
A person of sense ought never to have his children
Brought up to be more clever than average.
For, apart from cleverness bringing them no profit,
It will make them the objects of envy and ill-will.
If you put new idea before the eyes of fools
They'll think you foolish and worthless in the bargain;
And if you are thought superior to those who have
Some reputation for learning, you will become hated.
I have some knowledge myself of how this happens;
For being clever, I find that some will envy me,
Others object to me. Yet all my cleverness
Is not so much.
Euripides, Medea
For every complex problem, there's a simple solution: and it's wrong. Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

levitas

The history of every major Galactic civilization has gone through three distinct and recognizable phases--those of survival, inquiry and sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?', the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'

The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, though here the phases are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy--Thus Retribution: 'I am going to kill you because you killed my brother', Anticipation: 'I am going to kill you because I killed your brother', and Diplomacy: 'I am going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.' Douglas Adams, The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts
Does life ever feel like you're standing in the grocery store checkout line to buy a six-pack of gum and in front of you are six people with cartloads full of food, and nothing has price tags on it, so the checker who's new and doesn't speak any English, has to run a price check on everything while in the background is playing an instrumental version of Olivia Newton John's "Let Get Physical." Dawn Pulispher, letter, 1989

one liners

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the Devil's own herd. BlackAdder, BlackAdder II
I'm not used to the laughter of children. It cuts through me like a dentist's drill. Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control. emily Ivie
I'd really like to tell this damn government what I think, but thanks to the Patriot Act, they already know. American Voices, The Onion
Posted 2004.01.26 12:00 | Last modified 2004.01.26 12:00 | Leave a reply

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