Been under the weather.....

as my tendency to vomit daily suddenly returned. So I tend to stay in, go out once in the mornings, and then stay in, sleep a lot, and generally try not to get myself aggravated.

Although the news still riles me up, but never vomit over that. It's just spontaneous eruptions. And the news drives me to depression, so I try to balance it by watching other things.

So this channel I can get on the intertubes is expanding quickly, and of high quality at times, and am always up with the latest episodes of things I like and explore a bit of what I don't like, and it has a movie section.

Of the latter, I wasted 90 minutes or so watching one called 'You Again'. It was about high school bullying which turns out to be over three generations, and it was mildly funny, and well thought out, in that of the two, bully and victim were mirrored. The last third, I wanted to up-chuck, because in the Disneyfication of the world, (yeah it was from Touchstone, a subsiduary), everyone forgives, and everyone forgets, and 'happy ever after'. Well I was bullied, and I will never forgive my main tormentor, and that was so utopian 'Disney', well, just forget it. If I were to run into him, I would want to rearrange his face, he ruined a part of my life. The sick fuck. And so it really ruined it for me.

And the recent 'The Tourist' was up. Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, starring the city of Venice Italy. It was supposed to be an action thriller. So devoid of chemistry between the headliners, you could start yawning after about half an hour, and if you were in the back row of a movie theater with a date, totally forgettable, and you would be doing things you shouldn't do in public.

I kept watching because of the real star, Venice, and remembering. And tsk-tsking at the editing. Now some of you have been there with me. And we know that the famous estuary part beyond Piazza San Marco going toward the Lido to the west has the ultra-famous Hotel Danieli, which is one of the few Peter and I never stayed in. In one scene, Jolie comes out and looks right... and sees the Rialto Bridge. Uh-huh. Anyone who has been there knows that is impossible. There is an S curve in the canale grande, and it is at least forty-five minute's walk away if you are hoofing it from Piazza San Marco... although I did know a short-cut that could get me there in five minutes at a brisk walking pace. They made the airport look as if it were next to the train station, which is bosh... it's really far away. Screwy editing. In the end I decided not to be sour, and reminisce as things I recognised and loved about the city came to the fore. Gawwd, dining in style on the terrace of the Hotel Monaco, just across that weird looking basilica that glimmered so white across the way... So it was a trip to reminiscing. Left me sad. And the end of the film was so lame, it only irritated me.

Showtime has begun a series about the Borgias. Now that was 'fun'. Let's see: in the first double episode, Rodrigo becomes Pope Alexander VI. I hadn't known the family was of Spanish descent and hated by the Italians, who considered the Spaniards sort of ape-like. (What does that remind me of?)

His son Cesare, and yes, Preciousses, Cardinals and such like had mistresses, and sired children, and the eldest son was to be in the Church, the second in the Army and daughters were to be married off to form alliances with countries or fiefdoms who would bring more power and prestige to themselves. So Alexander makes his son a Cardinal, there is revolt among the cardinal's college, and an attempt to poison him backfires, when Cesare is able to flip the assassin.

(As historical 'evidence', the clergy had pleasure palaces on the island of Giudecca in Venice, after evicting the Jewish populace there and re-populating them in a part of the city called Ghetto, from where the name comes. It was walled, closed in at night, and only the Jewish poplulation were able to make loans and conduct bank business, because the Catholics thought it 'dirty'. One of the most profligate Cardinals going had a palace built for his mistress in Salzburg, with some water-works in his gardens which beguile tourists to this day. It was 'normal'. They had power.)

The second part ended with an assassin killing the maid of the mistress of the pope in another cardinal's chambers, one who was plotting against him. (Think Clinton hires a papparazzo to photograph Newt Gingrich in flagrante while he was married to his then-wife. So much cleaner...)

This has lots of blood, but the values are really very good. Jeremy Irons makes a good Pope Alexander VI. Chilling and interesting, and entertaining all at the same time. Worth seeing if you have Showtime. But not for kiddies...

And I started toing some comparative viewing of Soaps. as my site expanded to include ones from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. I haven't checked much on the latter two yet, but enough of three others in the UK to notice some major differences so far.

I'd always HEARD of 'Coronation Street', so I tried that one first. I. didn't. understand. one. word. Not a word. But if you are IN the UK, they offer subtitles, so I guess it wasn't my fault. So I ended up sticking with three other half-hour long-running ones there. Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, and East Enders.

And find some very MAJOR differences between what is shown there, and what is in the US. Whereas in the US, everyone is wealthy, glamourous, and the things that worry them are more or less trivial, and they go on a sexual merry-go-round, the UK ones are far more reality based.

All feature people struggling to get by in a recession. Emmerdale is in a farming community, East Enders is in a rough part of London, Hollyoaks is also rural, and no one seems to be getting anywhere in the sense of financial success, but trying very hard.

The one thing the three have in common, and the US ones for that matter, is that the men are criminally stupid. And the women are very smart and conniving. But in the UK versions, the women are hard and scratching at every opportunity to lift themselves and their men up. And they aren't very nice about it. But in both cultures, the men are basically saps. In the UK they bond more.

I find it culturally interesting that the UK ones refer to a best friend as a 'mate', which is telling. They seem to regard their spouses as some sort of 'necessary evil', and the children a nuisance. No treacly family values stuff to be seen so far....

The guys hang out in pubs. In the US versions, they go to fancy restaurants, and vent on rivals, in the UK, they go to pubs, where their spouses and girlfriends show up and give them grief, and whereas in the US the waiters and waitresses are polite, in the UK, the barmaids all seem to have had their tongues sharpened on a whetstone made for swords.

In the US, only one show I have ever seen that REALLY put a gay theme out there unvarnished was One Life to Live, which a lot of people liked, but the right wing got so vocal, they had to cut the characters out of the show last year. And it was harmless.

In the UK, gay couples seem to be a matter of course. Just today, on Hollyoaks, one kid came out to his sister, she was delighted, and thought him 'snogging' his new friend in a pub was just fine, but there is some back-story, because she learns her brother had abused and beaten him till he fought back with a bat, if I understood it correctly... And in the East Enders, this second generation couple of Pakistani descent is getting married, and the groom's brother is gay, the family has disowned him, and at his bidding, Said goes to the engagement party, which provoked some extreme behaviour from his father and mother.

I wouldn't say one or the other is 'better' in any sense. Interesting? Yeah.

Soaps are definitely a mirror of the society in which they are produced.

And I wouldn't 'prefer' one to another, it is just 'interesting'.

Thank whomever I never settled in the UK, however. I'd be swallowing syllables, or coughing on my vowels. Or something.

And now that I've BOREDJa...

Night.