Sat 23 Dec 2006
‘Tis the season for debunking Christmas traditions by drawing attention to their pagan origins. If you’re Jana, ’tis also the season for thinking about arranged marriages and complaining about James Bond.
Enjoy the festivities, everyone!
December 28th, 2006 at 2:31 am
I hope you two had a merry Christmas. I had most of my meals made for me and got lots of presents, so mine was very merry indeed.
I always wonder if Australians associate Christmas with snow or picture the ideal Christmas as Dickensian as we do up here. In all of the media and movies North America and Europe produce, it wouldn’t be Christmas without snow. I know in the southern US some people wish they could have a “white Christmas” and some people don’t care at all. I guess my question is, do Australians feel like they’re missing out on anything. Are there any winter-related iconography (snowmen, snowflakes) to go with the season?
On James Bond, I love the old movies. A few of them I’ve seen more than once. They’re just big stupid fun. I like them all up until the Timothy Dalton years. Pierce Brosnan has been hit or miss, and I haven’t seen the new one yet. I never understood why you would want to read the book version of those movies, but if it’s true what you say about the books, that Bond is a comical character, I bet they’d be pretty good.
Also, I know I’m commenting on the wrong show completely, but Jana was talking about a vanity car plate on a Honda Civic that said “My Civic.” I drive a Civic and I love vanity car plates, but I have no delusions about my car. For the role it fills, economy class, it performs perfectly, but it’s nothing more than that. And on vanity plates, ones I see often and hate say things like “SMITH 1″ and are always on a Lexus or something, as if they own multiple luxury cars and need to differenciate them. My favorite that I’ve seen said “MMM CAKE.” I can’t remember what kind of car it was, but I think we can all agree with it.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:54 am
What did Santa bring you kids?
December 30th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Okay, I’ve just got to ask. I don’t remember the exact words or know how many minutes in this occurred, but at one point, Zan broke off completely from his train of thought about Christmas origins, said something like “Oh, the cockney’s trying to eat his mother”, and then just continued on from where he had left off. So was the cockney successful?
January 2nd, 2007 at 7:28 am
[url]http://www.popcultureaddict.com/comicbooks/lamestsuperheroes.htm[/url]
Check out #2 in the lamest comic book heros ever. I say they don’t know squat.
Happy New Year!
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Tvindy,
Zan said “The Cockie’s (Cockatoo’s) come back … looks like he’s going to eat our house” @ about 44:25.
Happy New Year Everyone!
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Happy New Year!
Over the years I’ve seen every James Bond film and read all the books. I don’t feel I’m a saddo nerd though as I don’t re-watch or re-read them, I just enjoyed them at the time.
The films are a lot more jokey than the books, which are much more plain spy novels. The books are very amusingly politically incorrect though, as you would expect of something written in the 1950’s.
Casino Royale has no Q, no ridiculous gadgets, no silly jokes, just a good action story. The only grating anacronistic thing for me was that they used Judy Dench as M; this is supposed to be a prequel back to his origins.
http://www.didyouknow.cd/bond.htm is a webpage with some stuff about 007 including a count of places where James Bond made love:
Hotel room (19 times), London flat (2), at her place (15), someone else’s place (2), on a train (3), in a barn (2), in a forest (2), in a gypsy tent (2), hospital (2), in a plane (2), in a submarine (1), in a car (1), on a motorised iceberg (1), in, around, under, or by water (25 times).
An urban myth is that James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli’s family originally made its money out of importing broccoli for the first time into the US - they didn’t.
Talking of broccoli, here’s a picture of fractal broccoli (or romanesco broccoli as it should be called) that you can get in the supermarket occasionally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fractal_Broccoli.jpg
Great for dinner parties as a “conversation vegetable”; it doesn’t lose it’s shape when cooked. It tastes exactly like ordinary broccoli though. I don’t know what I expected it to taste like when I first bought some, but somehow just tasting of broccoli doesn’t quite seem appropriate for something so gorgeous.
January 4th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Here’s even better pictures of fractal broccoli:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/
January 5th, 2007 at 3:16 am
Happy New Year Zan & Jana and my fellow BYU listeners.