sundries

[rm]

Despite Patty's hatred of Costco, I've lured her into going with me today. YAY. This mitigates, slightly, the pouring rain factor.

Last night I said to myself, "don't forget to post about ANZAC Day tomorrow," and then, of course, forgot. wcg reminds us all.

Don't be fooled by this article. While plastic surgery may be out for actors, impossible beauty standards still reign. So if you didn't win the genetic lottery, you can forget about going into the business, at least on screen, in the United States. Also? the ratio of period films for which natural breasts are a must have to everything else? Yeah, not so much.

I told you the UK was a very drinky country. Because, holy crap, Cardiff! I can't believe this is where Patty's going to be for 10 - 12 weeks.

Last night on Buffy we watched "Shadow" and "Listening to Fear".

- OMG, Riley, REALLY? You're patronizing vampire hookers so you can be dark enough for your girlfriend? This is the most fucked up plot ever, and, quite frankly, sort of a stupid one. But I've always thought Riley was such a dumb lug, that I'm not riveted by this complete absurdity Wheedon has visited upon us.

- Aliens! There are canonical aliens! Man, that thing, that whole ep, was TERRIFYING. Except, you know, the part where Riley was being distracted because he wanted to go visit some more whores.

- Willow was AMAZING in "Listening to Fear"

- This whole arc in which Joyce eventually bites it (yes, I have that spoiler and the Tara spoiler) is going to be really hard for me to watch. I have an acute medical phobia that manifests in weird ways -- it's not about the gore, it's about the lack of control, medicine as punishment and my own probably not so awesome genetic odds. And this is punching those buttons hard.

- I really don't like Glory. She's just not a bad guy I find interesting and I think I really dislike the actresses performance, although it's clear she's just following directions. I am, however, really curious about Ben and the whole cosmology around her now.

- And I forgot to mention about "Fool for Love" the other day that hey RTD, you really liked SPike's little "you're connected to people and that keeps you alive" speech, didn't you? Well, good to know that Torchwood isn't _just_ about the Angel/Wesley Jack/Ianto loving. Wow, now if only Torchwood fandom could remember that. *snerk*

Royalty in New York. Really.

Sainsbury's gluten-free cherry bakewell tarts? AWESOME.

We think Cricket's squeakiness may be cat sonar.

Comments

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

OMG the DRINKING! One of my best friends spent her last two years of High School at American School London and got used to a couple of pints at lunch and after school and going out after dinner. When she came back to the States and started school at St. Mary's she was routinely drinking Norte Dame frat guys under the table. Sort of a wake up cal!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I expect that Hollywood will develop a narrowly defined "natural" standard which still won't be much like how actual people look. And actors will game the system to look as "natural" as possible.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Your getting to some of the best bits of Buffy. The Joyce arc kills me. I was just shy of my 14th b-day when my mom was killed in a car wreck and I have a little sister. Some times it's just too close to my real life.

Glory was sort of a lifeless big bad. I didn't much like her but she collected some really creepy pseudo-minions. Not to mention Ben.

I'm not allowed to go into Costco/costco-like places. The fumes overcome me and I get goofy and decide that, no, really, I desperately need 10 lbs. of popped popcorn, 5 lbs. of M&Ms, and balls of cheese big enough to be bowling balls. I have to go in with a friend designated to keep me on task or else it's a disaster. ;-p

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

Riley is such a fucktard. I hated him the moment he stepped on the scene.

Damnit. I was all ready to watch some Xena and now you've got me wanting to watch Buffy instead. And I'm trying to clean my apartment.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

The Body is a hard Buffy ep to watch, but so pivotal. There's at least one really hard ep coming your way...

Oh, Riley and the vampire hookers. *shakes head* There's actually at least one jammin' Riley fic I should rec to you, though I'm not a giant fan of the character.

Re: the plastic surgery article, I'm so glad they mentioned Jennifer Grey, who looked adorable before changing her nose and turning into someone unrecognizable. We want to recognize people! Meg Ryan has had work done, and hey, Meg, it's ok to have thin lips, because your lips are Meg Ryan's lips and we like Meg Ryan's lips. We like Angelina Jolie's lips on Angelina Jolie.

I do think too many of the Hollywood crop look like clones of one another. I like unique-looking people.

[(Anonymous)]

you might find the crime mapper useful
http://maps.police.uk/

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD - you haven't watched these episodes before? I'd been assuming that this was a rewatch, but - crikey! And, yes, it's blatant that RTD is a Whedon fanboy, and fond of Spike/Angel as well as Angel/Wesley.

And, heh, yes, we really are a very drinky country. Those Brits who were anti-drink all got on the Mayflower, leaving the rest of us to drink their drinks.

Having just lost my father two weeks ago (er, in a permanent way, rather than a down-the-back-of-the-sofa way...'lost' is a bit of a crap euphemism, really), I found myself thinking a lot about this narrative arc. I do think Whedon handles it, and the suddenness of loss, and the flailing sense of how-is-one-supposed-to-behave??!! and all that weird emptiness very well. I always did, of course, but now it's particularly resonant.

I agree that Glory is a far from compelling villain. I like the notion of Buffy versus a deity, because by this point it's difficult thinking of a villain who Buffy WOULDN'T outclass, but the whole ditzy evil ubercheerleader thing is just not that funny to start with, and her performance is pretty flimsy. Part of that is the writing - it's so very rooted in the here-and-now, rather than trying to portray her as a shallow, venal, TIMELESS kind of monster - she comes across as a petulant teenager, a sort of lazy CordeliaLite.

[frodo-esque.livejournal.com]

My thoughts on the NYT article on plastic surgery:

The most vulnerable to the messages sent forth from Hollywood (and so much of how we see ourselves as Americans begins there) are our children, and as parents we need to reinforce the belief that beauty comes from within. So many will argue that outside beauty is important no matter what-- but how many of you have met a gorgeous woman/man and been instantly turned off when they've opened their mouths? As Americans, we've been told that outside beauty is incredibly important, that men are visual creatures, however, this is wrong in so many ways. sure, there are vapid, shallow people who will focus exclusively on the outside image-- but that is not what people desire. Psychologically, with healthy people, what we find beautiful is so much more complicated than that. In fact, it's known that what we find attractive is linked to those who have treated us nicely in the past. The outside is only a fraction of what draws and keeps two people together.

Beauty is truly less about what is seen, and so much more about what is heard and felt.

[frodo-esque.livejournal.com]

I wonder if 'binge drinking' in London is a new fad that's been picked up by their American neighbors? I know drinking has always been huge in England, but has binge drinking?

I also wonder what rates of cirrosis are in that country. Is alcoholism raving families apart? Do people have interventions there?

[andrewducker]

I've been hearing people complaining about binge drinking in the UK for a good twenty years so far.

[frodo-esque.livejournal.com]

Ahh, good to know. Was starting to feel that ol' American guilt sweeping over me. We seem to be screwing the world over with our influence quite a bit lately.

[andrewducker]

Naah, good old British attitudes are sadly responsible for this one.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

It's not really a new fad, we've always been a nation with a big drink-to-get-drunk culture, though some of the related issues are more recent (as in, last couple of decades, not super-recent) developments, probably due to alcohol being cheaper and more widely available. And regulations being very poorly enforced - I remember being surprised, when I visited Canada when I was 23, that I got ID'd in pretty much every bar I went in, but at home I'd been buying alcohol without much challenge pretty much consistently since the age of 15. And there's also an element of reportage creating the truth - what the doom-mongering papers have suddenly got their teeth into as a symptom of our broken society is actually something that's been around for ages which just hadn't previously considered newsworthy. The term "binge drinking" is a relatively new one, but the practise isn't.

I only know what an intervention is via Buffy but I know lots of families affected by alcoholism.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I like to pretend that the Riley period didn't actually happen.

I hate that you're spoiled about the deaths. :(

[djfanboy.livejournal.com]

if you didn't win the genetic lottery, you can forget about going into the business, at least one screen, in the United States...

why I continue to work in radio theatre... image isn't everything.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

I've seen some arguments that alcopops are partially responsible for the rise in greater numbers of younger people drinking more over about the last few decades. It's more appealing to get drunk on something that's cherry-tasting or like Smirnoff Ice than ale or a more expensive "acquired taste" mixed drink.

Kids have always made mixers out of stuff in parents' liquor cabinets, but when you can get blue WKD that tastes like kiddie punch, there's no "I can't get drunk - gin tastes disgusting!"

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Omigod, Riley's vamp!hooker habit. Yeah. So dumb, and yet, not entirely implausible.

Cardiff has mounted one of the most comprehensive responses, stepping up scrutiny of irresponsible pubs, parking ambulances on the busiest drinking streets and closing them off to traffic, and hiring extra city workers to maintain an orderly taxi line for drinkers trying to get home.

"These measures have also led to a steep decline in the number of fatal weevil attacks." Seriously, that was something that always drove me nuts about Torchwood -- that apparently, no-one ever suggested instituting cordons or curfews in weevil hunting grounds. Because it's better to let -- holy shit, really? -- between 40,000 and 140,000 weekend drunks run the risk of wandering down the wrong alley than to admit there's Something Nasty in the Woodshed Sewers.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

glory was just so so so boring and irritating, ugh.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm 37 and I still get ID'd at pretty much every bar I go into here, sometimes to even go into the bar! Now, I look young for my age, but under 21? No way.

I think it much be a product, in part, of different liability laws here vs. elsewhere, and also this sense of "if you have sex or drink before the age we say you can, soon you'll be a drunk-driving heroin addict fucking animals in front of the elementary school." We're very high strung here.

I only know what an intervention is via Buffy but I know lots of families affected by alcoholism.

This is the most stunning thing I have ever heard. I assume part of it must be that American culture has a self-help book of the week streak and an airing of dirty laundry in public streak that make interventions right up our ally, but I'm still stunned by this.

I'm also interested in your casually uttered "broken society" -- I heard that phrase constantly in the rhetoric when I was in the UK and it's not one we use here. It was hard to hear it as an American and understand that it wasn't code for "women in pants not going to church enough and homosexuals roasting our babies" which is what it would be code for here.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Tara I knew about before I ever even started watching it. With Joyce, I eventually figured it out as people kept trying to talk to me about "The Body" without describing the episode, but wanting to talk to me about it because of the mourning for fictional characters project.

Patty is more shocked that I never knew about Angel turning evil and then Buffy having to kill him.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about your dad. I think I caught the edge of it before he passed in your journal and then we went into volcano mode.

And yeah, Patty's a Buffy and Angel fan from way back and I started watching it both as a way to connect to her (and apologize for her life adjacent to the Whoniverse -- for someone who hates Doctor Who, she knows waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much about it thanks to me), and then sort of got really into it. And that whole "ecstasy of grief" voiceover from Angelus is now taking a pretty central place in the paper I'm doing about mourning for fictional characters.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

At the beginning, Riley deeply annoyed me. Then, in one instant he became interesting - earlier in Season 4, when he turned to Xander near the end of an episode and told Xander that he knew that Buffy didn't really love him. That was perfect, and I actually grew interested in Riley - until the stuff with the vampire hookers started.

I found the whole arc with Joyce's death amazingly powerful, and the ep dealing with her death is (at least to me) one of the three most powerful eps of the show - along with "Hush" and "Once More, With Feeling".

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I sincerely believe that much of alcoholism in the US is caused by the availability factor that rm describes above.

While I would never describe myself as the most overwhelmingly responsible of drinkers, there was also never a mystery around alcohol for me. I was allowed to have wine with my family as young as 13 or 14, and starting as young as 17, I knew of bars I could go to on my own and be served.

But yeah: America has a terrible alcohol mystique, and it causes no end of problems when people get to college and suddenly, perhaps for the first time, have access to it.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

How does this intervention thing work, then? I got the basic definition from context in Buffy, but I didn't realise it was like an institutional thing? Or is it?

And yeah, broken Britain - I did use that self-consciously. As you say, it's a big buzzword in the press at the moment, mostly, if you'll forgive me being cynical, designed to convince us we're about to slide into anarchy if we don't all vote Tory, and/or get out of Europe, lock up all teenagers, treat people on benefits with the mistrust they deserve, stop immigration, and hang paedophiles. Perhaps not really that different from how an American might understand it, except we have different focuses for our national paranoia :)

Re IDing, our laws are, to be fair, much stricter now than when I was a teenager - I get checked a lot more at nearly 30 than I ever did when I was underage. But yeah, I think there is more of an attitude here that it's normal and healthy to push those age boundaries a bit, plus a layer of laddish pressure that you ought to want to, or at least that's the case within my typical peer group - I've worked in pubs for years, so I've had a lot of exposure to booze-centred culture (and seen some lovely people dead from liver disease, and my ex's dad drank himself to death, and my mother married an alcoholic, so I can see both sides here).

[rm.livejournal.com]

Dude, we even have reality TV about it: http://www.aetv.com/intervention/index.jsp

But the idea of "staging an intervention" for any type of addiction or related self-destructive behavior (i.e., an eating disorder) is ubiquitous in the culture here. I wouldn't say everyone I know has been to one, but I don't know if you could find anyone in the US who didn't know what one was, or at least have a friend of a friend story about it.