zdashamber: painting - a frog wearing a bandanna (Default)
Madeline the Edifying ([personal profile] zdashamber) wrote2006-12-03 01:04 am

I lift my remote beside the golden door!

Some of you noticed that I haven't updated in a month... Me, I generally don't notice for a couple months, and then I think, "Hm, I wonder where X has gotten to?" and I think about them about once a month after. So if you didn't notice, no worries. :)

What have I been up to? Well, I decided not to be a cop, and I soaked up a hell of a lot of good media. For point one, there were of course many reasons to be a cop and many not to, but as I approached the end of the process the unwelcome aspects of it loomed larger. For example, in pretty much every interaction you have as a cop, you're causing someone to have a bad day. Bah!

For media: The shining, glorious stand out has to be the BBC miniseries adaption of John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, and a bunch of excellent British character actors as other major characters. The atmosphere of not knowing and the focus on character are demonstrated by the ballsy way that out of six episodes, the first just begins to set things up, and only towards the end of the second does the plot starts rolling. That kind of understated determination is also seen in the characters... Really, it's the best miniseries I've ever seen, better than the BBC Pride and Prejudice, very, very good.

I'll probably talk about all the rest of the stuff I watched/read later, but for the nonce, does anyone local have a PocketPC or a Palm or a hackable PSP? Apparently all I need to make my DVD player region-free is to enter a code with a remote, but the code includes things no normal remote has buttons for, so I need something that produces IR that can pretend to be a remote.

Then I can see what the British version of Tinker, Tailor looks like... I hear it's cut differently from the American version, so there are seven episodes instead of six. ;) Bearer-of-the-ersatz-remote can watch with, and we can drink along with the characters on screen. :D

[identity profile] zdashamber.livejournal.com 2006-12-03 07:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Oho! Brilliant! Let's meet up sometime this week and twart The Man! :D (I don't think I have any other-region DVDs to test it with at the moment, though.)

Today I have to wrap things to be mailed, and go see Cliff's band (http://obadiah.livejournal.com/50257.html)...

[identity profile] aiyume.livejournal.com 2006-12-04 02:31 am (UTC)(link)
Holy crap!!! We just played in a Serenity with that guy Friday night. I was wondering if it was the same Cliff, but didn't think to ask. And obviously I'm terrible with faces. Wish I was in the mood to be more spontaneous, but I'm being a slug this weekend.

Let me know next time you're going to see him, though. In the meantime, I'll hope his recordings come out well, and I can listen to some mp3s.

[identity profile] zdashamber.livejournal.com 2006-12-04 05:51 am (UTC)(link)
I was wondering if you guys were in that Serenity group! Cliff mentioned it was mostly poly people, but I was like, eeeh, there are bound to be lots of Serenity-playing poly people in the Bay Area... :)

He's playing again next Sunday, but I will be at gaming then. However, his stuff is good, particularly if you like the George Harrison stuff the Beatles did. Also, they do a neat cover of the Dr. Who theme...

[identity profile] obadiah.livejournal.com 2006-12-07 09:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Serious small world, yep.