Hello, Dolly is a catchy musical. I still have that song in my head.

Seriously, spoilers may be after the jump.

At first I wasn't sure I wanted to see this, which may mean that they aren't marketing it effectively. I am glad we went because it is really cute. Pixar just seems to get better and better with their animation effects, and I liked how there was a visible difference in the landscape on Earth and the more sterile world of the spaceship. The message -- as with any kid's movie -- was oversold in my opinion. But in comparison with Kung Fu Panda, which we also saw recently (and which also has a blatantly obvious message), Wall-E has subtlety, as well. I think because the main characters couldn't use a lot of dialogue, it forces the viewer to make connections on his or her own. I did like Kung Fu Panda too, but there was absolutely no subtlety there. I haven't seen any in animated movies other than Pixar's.

Biggest shout-out: having Wall-E's start-up sound be the Apple computer's start-up sound, or using the Blue Danube waltz and Also Sprach Zarathustra in the soundtrack?

Posted by Victoria at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Pay attention or are you too poor.

Posted by Buddy at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Confirmed by Jason Bateman, via Defamer.

Posted by Victoria at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

here is an interesting link. it has nothing to do with george carlin, though.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Posted by Mike at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

so rob and i saw the incredible hulk today. let's just say the franchise has been ruined.
please note that the rest of this entry must be read in a nerd's voice (like comic book guy).

i do not know why people think this one had more action. it had less and the story was very uninteresting. insiders had been saying it was going to move faster than the first one. i thought the pace was just as slow (although ang lee's was rewarding in the way it was told). the director did transporter 2 and i'm hearing that the general masses (i.e. non-comic book readers) can relate to this hulk better. what? i guess because it looked more like a movie and less like a comic. ang lee's direction was excellent for the style he chose. the multiple angles and cuts. the blocks depicting different scenes of the story.
the other nitpick was the hulk, himself. i liked the first rendered hulk better. this one had cuts from his fights. the comic book hulk has a quick healing ability. that is why he cannot be harmed, yet in this movie he suffered cuts that could use some iodine.
also, the ending was not tied up well. hulk beats the abomination and then jumps, exit stage left, from what looked like the final set from the first spiderman movie. he leaves the abomination there on the ground. it looks like the abomination has just been flattened, but if he's like the hulk, he'll be up in a minute or two. no problem, we'll just cut to the next day.
then there is the whole heart monitor thing. banner can't have sex? he works out to keep his heart healthy, so as to avoid triggering spikes in his rate. okay, that's fine. keep in mind under extreme exertion in a workout, his heartrate probably won't go over 170. i'm sure sex is fine. i guess liv tyler is supposed to make him race more.
finally, there is the acting. the only one worth somewhat noting is tim roth. edward norton and liv tyler have no chemistry and they sleepwalk through their lines (especially tyler, who can't act anyway).
oops, one other mention, tyler's hairstyle was awful.

Posted by Mike at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

How I was addressed in England:

• Madam
• Miss
• Mum (as in Ma'am, not as in Mummy)
• Luv
• Lass

I was kind of hoping for "milady," but it didn't happen. Also, the already-mentioned Scottish waiter called my beverage a "wee half-pint" (since everyone else ordered full pints). I believe there may have been collective swooning at that. Except for Mike, of course.

The last day might be the easiest day to recap, because we weren't allowed to take photos in the morning, at Westminster Abbey. If you want to see what it looks like, just go back a few entries. Or, you know, use Google.

Westminster Abbey was kind of amazing, because the whole time I kept thinking, "There are countless numbers of dead people all around me." We saw all the famous dead people there were to see. We stopped in Poet's corner, where I touched the plaques for Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters (none of whom are actually buried there), and stomped a little extra hard on the gravestone for D.H. Lawrence (who is). I hadn't bought any souvenirs from the other places we visited, but I did get the tour guides for Westminster, because I wanted to see exactly how many dead people I had walked over, and who they were.

After that, we boarded the short train for Hampton Court Palace, which Henry VIII appropriated from Cardinal Wolsey (again, a spoiler for The Tudors). The palace started to be renovated in the Georgian era, but they ran out of funds. So today it is half medieval and half Georgian.

It says on their brochure that you can see Hampton Court Palace in three hours, but I am here to tell you that is a lie. We did not see all of the house tours in three hours, and you need even more time if you want to go into the gardens. There are a lot of gardens.

We also went in the real, honest-to-God hedge maze, where we discovered French high school students snogging, but no Goblet of Fire. Unfortunately.

Posted by Victoria at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Things I miss about England:

• Cider with ice
• Hobnobs
• Having a pub down the street
• Mars Planets candy
• Everyone being polite
• Cadbury chocolate bars (Can you get those here?)
• Trashy British celebrity news. Explanation: For the week we were there, the Daily Mirror was offering Doctor Who stickers every day in the paper. So we bought it, and sometimes I read it, and I became kind of fascinated with the crazy British celebrities that we never hear about over here. How will I find out what Peaches Geldof is up to? And what about Roo and Coleen's wedding?

On Thursday morning, I took an informal poll of the group: what of the things on our list to do was the most important to them? The overwhelming consensus was the Tower of London.

Because it was expected to rain and because I was a little sick of lugging it around (I don't mean that, baby, I love you!) I left my 20D at home, and contented myself with my little PowerShot for the day. We got to the Tower and had breakfast in a forgettable little diner place. Its most important quality was that it had seating. By this day, as I remember it, the pace was catching up to us. The periods of time that we could actively sightsee without resting were getting shorter and shorter.

As we were passing by, they had actors doing a comic historial re-enactment for the kids about a Scottish prisoner who escaped from the Tower dressed as a maid

A faux-CNN report on the Gunpowder Plot

Prisoners' graffiti from the cells

Where the Crown Jewels (real or fake?) are kept

These schoolchildren in their oddly archaic uniforms -- kneebreeches for the boys, skirts for the girls, covered with almost a cassock -- were everywhere

This was a memorial on the execution site to the people who had died there

Spoiler alert! Now you know how the second season of The Tudors ends

I kept calling the White Tower White Castle, to which Mike responded, "Where are Harold and Kumar?" Inside the White Tower: guns and more guns

Part of the original Roman city wall

After the Tower, we went to Bloomsbury for lunch, and then the British Museum. On the way there, we got a little sidetracked, which will be explained when you see this:

Can Mike pass up a comic book store? No, he cannot

We did eventually make it to the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone, people!

A piece of the Elgin Marbles

Posted by Victoria at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey Rob: now THAT'S the cycle of life.

Posted by vegetable at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you had asked Mike a few weeks ago where he would most like to live out the rest of his days, he probably would have said somewhere in New England or Arizona. Now, I am fairly sure the answer would be Edinburgh.

I wasn't sure at first if it made sense to take a day trip up to Scotland, because we had a packed schedule as it was, and the train takes four and a half hours. So in the best case scenario, which is how it ended up working, we caught the 8 a.m. train, arrived at 12:30 p.m., and walked around until the 5 p.m. train back. But everyone who has been to Scotland convinced me that I had to go, and I think in the end, everyone was glad we went. It was also nice that we saw the three parts of the island: England, Scotland, and Wales.

But I do think Wednesday was when our hectic pace began to catch up with us. I thought originally that we should leave a free day to catch up and relax, but there were so many things to see, and no one wanted to leave anything out. Next time I plan a trip like this, remind me to schedule in some down time, internet.

Since the trip to Scotland was the farthest journey, the train we were on was the nicest. It had both a restaurant car and a cafe car, and Mike and I splurged on breakfast in the restaurant car. There were linens and waitresses and everything. It also had the first-class seats, which were much more comfortable (in both the squooshy sense and the adjustable sense). I began to wonder if next time, we should upgrade to the first-class tickets for the Britrail passes. I guess when you are on the train as much as we were, it might make sense. In any case, we enjoyed our pancakes with blueberry sauce (Mike) and cheese omelet (me), as well as the latest in a long line of pots of tea, and watched the countryside speed by. I didn't realize this before, but there are quite a few nuclear powerplants in Britain. I think we counted at least eight on the way. They are not so numerous, however, as the sheep.

The best part about traveling by train into Scotland is that somewhere near the border the landscape dramatically changes. We went from typically English rolling green pastures and farmland to suddenly evergreen trees, steep hills, heather and some bright yellow flower that I had never seen before. The colors -- dark green, purple, and golden -- were deep and vibrant, and I hope at least some of the photos Mike was shooting through the window turn out. He was the official train photographer.

Our first order of business in Edinburgh was to eat lunch. We had determined beforehand that we wanted to see Old Town rather than New Town. New Town (established in the 1700s) was rather too recent for us. So we headed to the Royal Mile, where we found a pub that advertised itself as family-owned, and stopped in.

The three of us that were female in the group had already agreed that Scottish accents were incredibly sexy, and this was only confirmed for us by the young bartender who took our orders at the pub. We discussed the possibility of offering him several pounds to stand at our table and talk. Mike was apparently offended by our enthusiasm, and later he asked me rather plaintively if I thought Scottish girls would think American accents were sexy. Besides the Scottish bartender, this place was notable for having the best fish and chips (for those who like them) of the entire trip. Apparently they used haddock instead of cod, or something like that, which resulted in superior tastiness.

We wandered down the Royal Mile afterwards, heading for Edinburgh Castle. Since I am following the site's policy of not posting photos of us, you will not see here the picture I took of Mike in a kilt. If you want to see this picture, and I think you do, I can send it by email upon request. He did ask if he had to go commando under the kilt, and I said I thought that would be most authentic.

The Royal Mile

An alley off the Royal Mile

After a decent climb, we arrived at the Castle.

Looking down on Edinburgh from the Castle

After we finished storming the castle, we turned around to walk the Royal Mile down to its conclusion at Holyrood Palace. So far, we had had wonderful weather the entire time in the U.K., making a mockery of my insistence on buying a raincoat and waterproof shoes [an aside for Rob: I bought four pairs of Keens before embarking. I may be a convert.] The day we went to Bath set record high temperatures at 82 degrees. The only time it had rained was while we were at dinner on Saturday night, and it only rained while we were actually in the restaurant and had stopped by the time we left.

By the time we got to Holyrood, there were sprinkles of rain coming down. We didn't really have enough time to tour inside, so I just got a quick photo.

Then we took a taxi back to the train station, and headed back to London. We did get delayed on the trip back from Edinburgh, so we arrived about twenty minutes later than we expected to. However, we did miss most of the rain by being on the train. On the trip back from Cardiff on Monday, the conductor reported that we were arriving a minute late when we pulled into Paddington, and apologized for the inconvenience.

Posted by Victoria at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After a week in England, I was very nearly assimilated. Although I didn't have the accent, I had adjusted completely to the time difference. I could distinguish between the many coins with ease. I was comfortable ordering at pubs and deciphering train timetables. But two things continued to mark me as an American: I always asked for ice with my soda and I could not correctly pronounce Stratford-Upon-Avon. I didn't pronounce Avon like the American cosmetics company, but I did tend to give equal weight to both syllables, and it is correctly pronounced by stressing the first.

Thanks to the train and the Underground announcements, I also learned how to pronounce other mysterious things like "Madame Toussards" (strangely, Two-Swords), "Marylebone" (Marry-libin), and "Tottenham Court Road" (Tot-nam).

I also picked up the British habit of saying "Pardon?" when I wanted someone to repeat something to me that I couldn't understand. Sometimes this was due to their accent and sometimes due to cultural differences. A nice Frenchwoman asked Mike and I if she could borrow our Helpy (? some kind of cell phone ?) at the Tower of London. We were flummoxed until we told her we were American, which seemed to let us off the hook.

So, Stratford-Upon-Avon. Apparently some guy named Shakespeare was born there.

And if there is anything in Stratford-Upon-Avon that did not have to do with him or with catering to the tourists who came because of him, I didn't see it.

After we arrived by train, we went over to another tea shop for lunch, but I have forgotten the name of this one. All I remember is that it was on High Street in a half-timbered building, and they served me a lovely vegetable quiche.

It wasn't baked in an open pie crust, but was instead enclosed in crust like a handheld pie. And it was delicious! The other choices were not bad, either. Here is Mike's tea, with a lemon curd bun, a scone, and a tuna sandwich.

After that we walked down to the Courtyard Theater, where we had matinee tickets for a Royal Shakespeare Company understudy performance of The Merchant of Venice. This is where I was reprimanded for taking pictures during the performance. The pictures weren't turning out great, anyway.

Then we headed to Holy Trinity Church. Guess what? Shakespeare's buried there! I kind of made me feel sorry for the other church a few blocks away. It looked like a perfectly nice church, but did anyone ever visit it?

In front of each chair was a cushion for kneeling. They all had different religious sayings, and they all looked like perhaps they had been here when Shakespeare was alive

We had to wait a little while to get close to his grave, since there were plenty of other after-show tourists with us.

Yup, he's dead

Still dead

Afterwards, we walked back along the river to his birthplace, where we passed Shakespeare-themed boats available for rent.

I was in the middle of taking some photo of scenice scenery, when Mike said, "Turn around." And look at what I saw.

That's right, people. David Tennant (and Patrick Stewart) in Hamlet this fall. Do I have enough money to go back to England?

We found Shakespeare' birthplace, surrounding by upscale shopping...

...but we didn't go in. We caught the train back to London, where we were unfortunately seated behind the most annoying group of American teenage girls on the planet. After they tired of playing MASH (and they were older teenagers, college-aged), they took up playing Kill, Fuck, or Marry, engaging in such politically-insensitive rounds as "Saddam Hussein, Osama bin-Laden, or Robert Mugabe?," "Hitler, Stalin, or Mao?," "Scottish, English, or Irish?," and "Barak Obama, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton?" For that last one, they overwhelming decided to marry Obama, fuck Bush, and kill Clinton. Since they were from a Red state (Colorado), maybe there is hope for Obama in the general election.

In the meantime, our group refrained from talking so they wouldn't realize we were American, too.

Posted by Victoria at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wonder how the release times for U.S. movies and television shows are determined in the U.K. While we were there, they were showing in theaters movies that had just been released in the States (like Sex in the City), and movies that had been out of theaters for months here (like Gone, Baby, Gone). They were also advertising TV shows that I had never heard of as "phenomenal hits" in the States. Not that I am always on top of U.S. pop culture, but I suspect some marketing genius at work.

This is all working up to say that I forgot to add something else we did on Saturday night: we watched Doctor Who on one of the BBC channels. The episode we saw was three weeks away from being shown in the U.S. So we have seen the future, and it was pretty awesome.

On Monday, we went to Bath.

Bath was one of the places that I knew I had to see in England. It has been a tourist destination for about two thousand years. The Romans built a bath over the natural hot springs, and Bath got a name and a claim to fame.

The water doesn't look too appealing, but the signs say that's because of the sunlight. The baths were covered in the Roman era, and it prevented algae from growing

The heat coming off of this water fogged up my camera lens. I did dip my hand in the water in the baths, despite the signs saying not to. It was pleasant, and no where near as hot

Part of the Baths is now a Wishing Well

Roman graves excavated near the site

When we got out of the Baths, we were starving. I had read about a teashop named Sally Lunn's that dated back to the 1600s. I really wanted to go there, but I didn't know where it was.

Around the Baths is a maze of crowded shopping streets and alleys. One of my favorite authors, Jane Austen, famously despised Bath. If it was as crowded then with the early 19th-century equivalents of the Gap and Crabtree & Evelyn, I suddenly knew exactly why. I asked two different shop people how to get to Sally Lunn's, but they could only give me vague directions. I was about ready to give up on the idea, but I came across a map affixed to a wall near the Abbey that had it listed.

I was exceedingly glad afterwards that I hadn't given up, because I think Sally Lunn's was the only authentic English teashop we went to. We all ordered pots of tea, which came individually steeped, with an extra pot of hot water to pour into them. They also provided little strainers for the cups to strain out the leaves -- this was the only place we went to that used loose leaf tea and not teabags. I got the light lunch, which included a pureed vegetable soup and a sandwich. The sandwich I chose was Brie with cranberry sauce and it was delicious. You can see the rest of the daytime menu here.

Sally Lunn's also gave me the opportunity to see clotted cream up close. I have never been exactly sure what clotted cream is. Now I know it is something like supercharged butter, even taking into consideration that the regular butter in Britain is much richer than the kind we get here.

After the lunch, we went back to Bath Abbey because I am a sucker for flying buttresses.

We couldn't stay long because we had to catch a train to our next destination. Here's a clue:

Didn't help? How about this one:

That's right, we went to Cardiff. We first tried to visit Cardiff Castle, but we were too late. So we took photos from the outside.

Then we made our way to the waterfront to soak in the sights. Unfortunately, Torchwood and the Cardiff Tourism Board make Cardiff out to be a much more happening place than it seems to actually be. We were not, however, too late to get admission to the Doctor Who exhibition.

The Tardis looks a little worse for the wear

The Dalek was easily worth the price of admission alone. You pressed a button, and its head would swing around, its "ears" -- hey, that's what they called them on the sign -- would light up, and it would shout, "Exterminate!"

But despite all the Doctor Who-themed tourism stops, I did not manage to run into David Tennant.

Stay tuned for Day Seven, in which I eat a lovely vegetable quiche, am reprimanded in a crowded theater, and David Tennant starts stalking me for a change.

Posted by Victoria at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. I did not acquire a British accent while in England. But by the end of my time there, I did notice that my vowels were a little rounder than normal, and I was dropping some consonents. It's hard when you are surrounded by people talking differently. I have perhaps some small sympathy for Madonna now.
   
   After I had been there for a few days -- especially in Oxford, where there were mostly British people about (most of the other places we visited in London were such tourist landmarks that you heard accents from all over the world) -- I did start to notice that my own accent sounded strangely nasal to me. I'd read that was the case with American accents as compared to British, but I had never noticed it until I was actually speaking with my own accent while surrounded by Brits.
2. I did not actually stalk David Tennant while in London.
   
   
   
   However, I did put myself in places where he might be likely to be. Unfortunately, this didn't work.
3. Number of times I was told to Mind the Gap: 6,879,892
   Number of times the gap needed minding: 5
   Number of people tragically injured last year for not minding the gap (at least according to the posters in the Underground): 57
   Number of those that must have been completely wasted at the time: 57
   
   Apparently, you used to be able to carry and drink alcohol on the Underground, and that law was recently changed. I think this makes the Underground the only place in England where you can't get a pint. Seriously, the snack trolleys on the trains carried alcohol.
4. I wasn't listening to a lot of music while I was over there, but the following songs were constantly in my head: various parts of Sweeney Todd (more understandable since we had just seen the movie), "A Foggy Day in London Town," and "Wouldn't It Be Loverly." Apparently these are the songs my brain associates with London.

Posted by Victoria at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So one of the best things I think we did on this trip was buy BritRail passes for the week. We had planned a bunch of day trips, so it was cheaper to buy the passes than to buy the individual tickets, for one thing. It was also more convenient; once you had the tickets validated at a station the first day, you could just hop on and off the train for the rest of the week. It also came in very handy when your plans change suddenly, as happened on this day.

The night before, over dinner, I had proposed that we go to Edinburgh the next day, since it was one of our less touristy destinations, and therefore I thought was likely to be less crowded. Unfortunately, I did not reckon with the National Rail system's propensity to schedule track repairs and other delays for the weekend. We got to the train station early, before realizing that the first train didn't leave until 9 a.m. Then, we were actually on the train before we realized that with all of the delays, we wouldn't be at Edinburgh until after 3, and we would have to catch a 5 o'clock train to be back in time. So we made the split second decision to get out at the next stop - lovely Stevenage - and catch a return train back to London, where we arrived by 10 a.m.

Once back in London we were faced with another dilemma. What to do for the day that didn't involve travel outside the city? We decided to take an open-air bus tour around the city. But first we decided to sit outdoors at a little cafe near the train station, and that's when we found out that sitting outside in a touristy district is a mistake. Because we got hit up twice by beggars. The first was an old gypsy woman, who targeted me when I had my purse out to pay the check. I couldn't understand her because she wasn't speaking English, but it was pretty clear by the end of the conversation that I was actually being cursed by a gypsy, for the first time in my fairly short life. The second guy was British, and he didn't bother cursing me, although he did berate the table of French guys next to us.

Then we caught our tour bus, and I learned, to my surprise, that it is possible to get sunburned in London.

Marble Arch in Hyde Park

I thought they were getting rid of them, but there still are double-decker buses in London

On the tour, we found out where the necessities of life were located in London -- including the Apple Store

The London Eye sees all

Some of London's modern buildings

On the Tower Bridge

We had lunch at one of the corporate pubs - Mike and I both had falafel burgers, which were pretty good. Then we decided to go back to the Thames and take advantage of the free river cruise that was part of our bus ticket. The sun was so bright during the bus tour that our photos were getting blown out. When we got back in the early evening, the light was much better and we got photos of Big Ben and Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and Tower Bridge, although it was too late to go inside any of them.

Posted by Victoria at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

--
OK, so we are already back in the States. But I am going to post these by days anyway. After we moved on to London, the combination of infrequent internet access and long, long days of sightseeing killed my plans of frequent posting.
--

Day Three

Day Three was the conference day. It seemed to go pretty well, and I have high hopes of coming back next year. There is the chance that this will become an annual event.

I got back to the hotel room after the conference, and Mike and I went out to search for sustenance. We ended up at a faux-Irish pub. I was still nervous at this point about ordering at the bar, but it was the young bartender's first night working, so he was nervous, too. We had Bulmers cider on tap here, and that proved to be our favorite throughout the trip, although Strongbow Extra Cold was a close runner-up.

We amused ourselves back at the hotel by watching television. The hotel made a big deal of the fact that they had satellite TV, which gave us a total of -- wait for it -- twenty channels, two of which were in French. We did manage to see Simpsons reruns, and we inexplicably watched the horrible Godzilla 1998 remake. I told Mike it was because we were missing American culture.

Saturday morning we went to a little breakfast cafe right around the corner, where Mike was introduced to thick-cut English bacon. We then took the train to London with all of our luggage to meet Kris and Barb at our new hotel.

Since the Oxford portion of the trip was funded by my work, and the London portion of the trip was funded only by myself, there was a big stepdown in hotel quality when we got to London. Gone were the soft bed, down pillows, heated towel rack, and fourteen of our twenty channels. The London hotel wasn't terrible, just budget quality as compared to the Oxford one. It was conveniently located near Paddington station, and the neighborhood looked like it was predominantly tourists.

We met up with Kris and Barb, who were slightly bedraggled from their plane ride and Underground journeys. If you plan to travel to London ever, please remember to take a taxi from the train station or airport. I had unfortunately directed Kris and Barb to the Underground, which while it is in many ways a wonderful system, lacks escalators and elevators at many of its stations. If you have luggage to wrangle, you are better off with a taxi.

Since we couldn't yet check into the hotel, we wandered down the street, where I had learned beforehand was a real neighborhood pub. Apparently in England, and particularly in London, many pubs are being bought up by corporate chains. We only discovered that two of the pubs on the street near our hotel were of this type when we went to both and discovered that they had exactly the same menu. The bar staff was also, strangely, Eastern European.

This pub, the Victoria, was (along with the Kings Arms) the best pub we went to while we were in England. It was here that we discovered that one could buy cider in half-pints (inspiring quite a few Laura Ingalls Wilder jokes), and that in addition, only ladies could safely order half-pints, without having their masculinity called into question. We also had a lovely lunch. I had a baguette with shredded cheddar cheese, and diced cucumber, red and yellow bell peppers, and red onion, along with chips. The amount of chips I consumed in England is truly astounding.

Then we went back to the hotel, checked in and took a long nap. We went to a resturant for dinner that Mike insisted on calling the British TGI Friday's. It was mostly unmemorable, except that they served us apple pie with custard on top, and the custard was delicious. Everyone began scheming how next time they would order apple pie with custard, only hold the pie.

After that - more sleep.

Posted by Victoria at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Buddy at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

THE BPA - TOE JAM FEAT. DAVID BYRNE & DIZZEE RASCAL

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Today I actually had to do work. We ordered in room service for breakfast (scrambled eggs, croissants, toast, oj and a pot of Earl Grey), and Mike and I walked down to the professor's office for a meeting. I didn't mention this yesterday, but I got lost trying to get back to the Business School to inspect the conference room. While trying to get to the meeting this morning, I got lost again. Usually I am pretty good at finding my way around, but Oxford is defeating me. The names of the streets change every time there is a cross-street, my map was incorrect, and there are all of these little alleys and backways that defy comprehension. Fortunately, I left early enough that I got to the meeting on time, despite getting lost.

I worked until a little after 4 p.m., but the cool part was I got taken to lunch in Oriel College by the lady who is helping to organize the conference. Oriel is closed to visitors, so I got an "exclusive." I also got to eat in the students' dining hall, which was stone-floored and stained-glass-windowed, and looked a lot like a smaller version of the Hogwarts dining room. There was a long horizontal table at the front (where we sat, as staff), and two rows of wooden, picnic-like tables arranged vertically in front of us, where the students sat. Afterwards, we went and visited the chapel, with even more stained glass and velvet curtains. Did I have my camera for this exclusive adventure? Of course I did not.

After working, I cam back to the hotel and met up with Mike (who had wandered about the town and parks while I was working). We decided to go back to the pub that had stopped serving last night and try again. This was the Kings Arms on Parks Road, and it was a good choice. I had a baked potato with cheese, and Mike had lentil and carrot soup with chips. We ordered cider from the bartender. He asked us if we were American or Canadian, and we owned up. After that, it was .3 seconds before the topic of American politics was introduced. Were we happy that Barak Obama had won? Yes, yes, we were delighted. Fortunately, this was the right answer. [It was only by a miracle that we knew it had happened. I caught sight of a television playing the news in a restaurant we considered the night before, which had a photo of him, with the banner "Obama Celebrates Nomination."]

Mike got in a ten-minute conversation about the state of politics in the U.S. with the bartender, while I ate my potato and no small portion of his chips. We also got fairly buzzed on the "potent" cider the bartender recommended to us. After that, we wandered the streets of Oxford and took photos.

Just a warning that these captions may not be correct. As I said, Oxford has been defeating my navigation skills, even though I bought a better map.

St. Giles Street. This is around the corner from our hotel. I think from left to right, it is St. John's College, Balliol College, and the Martyr's Memorial.

I will admit that I was under the impression that the Bridge of Sighs spanned a river. Don't make the same mistake, internet.

New College. The girl on the right is wearing the traditional students' robes. The colleges are still in session, and many students (to judge from overhearing their conversations) are taking exams.

Queen's Lane

I'm really not sure of this one, but it is possibly St. Edmund's?

Punts from the Magdalen Bridge

Tom Quad, which is the quad of Christ Church College

Christ Church College

Garden at Christ Church College

Fountain at Christ Church College Garden

Can you spot the student smoking?

Merton College

Postmaster's Hall

St. Mary the Virgin Cathedral, with roses and bicycles

Radcliffe Camera

Then we stopped at Queen's Coffeehouse for some desserts and tea, and made our way back to the hotel. While we were out, the maids had turned down our bed, left chocolates on our pillow, bottled water by our pillows, and classical music playing on the radio.

Yes, traveling does get awfully nice after the sleep deprivation abates.

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We arrived yesterday completely exhausted. The flight can be summed up in two quick sentences: There was an unnecessarily loud group of twenty-somethings seated all around us, and I did not sleep at all. Mike slept for at most 10 minute intervals before waking up. So by the time we landed, I had been awake (with only six hours of sleep on the previous night) for over twenty-four hours. Barb and Kris, I know you are planning to be ready for anything on Saturday after you arrive, but trust me. You will be ready for one thing only: sleep.

Through the foggy haze of the sleep deprivation, we managed to catch the train to Oxford from the airport. For Barb and Kris: first you must walk a million miles to get to border control. The lines there look long, but they move quickly. Then you must fetch your luggage. There is a convenient ATM machine near the baggage claim. Then you go through customs (Nothing to Declare), and follow the signs to the train station. They have vending machines for the tickets, and a big board that tells you which gate for the train.

The train ride to Oxford passed through countryside and towns and sheep, and do I remember anything more than that? No. Sleep-deprived. Finally we arrived at the train station and took a taxi to the hotel. Mike collapsed, but I had to go out and inspect the room for the conference. Then I too fell asleep.

We woke up at around 8 p.m. and went out to forage for food, because we hadn't eaten since the flight. So now, starving and still sleep-deprived. We spent a while looking, and when we finally got to a pub that looked good, they had just stopped serving food. So we came back to the hotel and ordered room service. Mike got fish and chips and I got a Traditional Ploughman: bread and cheese with apples and celery and a pear chutney. We also got Coke with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. Why does every other country get the good stuff and in America, we get the swill?

Also, we discovered that the sun doesn't set here until after 9 p.m. Why? Different latitude? Daylight savings?

After that, we fell back asleep.

Posted by Victoria at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From Sweeney Todd:

Okay, so if you are going to make a movie based on a musical that is almost entirely sung-through, it doesn't make much sense to me to cut out almost half of the score. The score of Sweeney Todd is fairly complex, and even the set-piece "songs" that were extracted sounded strange to me out of context, even though I like the musical and the music taken as a whole.

Also, considering the fact that none of the actors could sing*, why didn't Tim Burton just make a movie of the play that the musical was based on? The atmosphere and the story seemed to be what interested him, and you have gotten that without the music. Either that, or filmed the entire musical, with people who could actually, you know, sing.

* Strangely enough, I wasn't bothered so much by Johnny Depp as I was by Helena Bonham Carter, whose breathy little-girl singing voice was just crazy inappropriate.

From Interiors:

I really, really would like a Long Island beach house. Seriously. I don't even remember anything else about this movie except my lust for the house it was filmed in.

Other stuff:

I put some photos of the Wild Ponies of Corolla from our North Carolina week of vacation up on Flickr (right sidebar). Evan scolded me while we were down there for not taking notes on the witty conversation like I did last year, and I am regretting it now. I feel like there were so many quips that could have been immortalized, but instead have been forgotten.

Also, we leave tomorrow evening for the ten-day England adventure. I am hoping to have internet access so you can play along at home, kind of like Pax did in L.A. However, I am also lazy. We will see which wins out.

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