A long weekend wasted…

…is a long weekend enjoyed.

Got very little accomplished, but watched loads of old Brady Bunch and Family Affair episodes courtesy of RetroTeeVee at Youtube. (Just load the playlist you want and you’re golden for hours.)

Family Affair in particular was a favourite show when I was a kid. I loved Mr. French. We lived in and around Sidney, BC, in the early 70s and one house we lived in was down the road from where Sebastian Cabot lived. That was more exciting than pretty much anything I could imagine at the time. Weird to think that most of the episodes I saw were probably already in reruns by the time I saw them originally.

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Are you free, Mrs. Slocombe?

I was very sad to learn that Mollie Sugden, who played Mrs. Slocombe on “Are You Being Served”, died today. She’d had a good run, but it’s still sad to see her go. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen all of the AYBS episodes over the years.

Mollie, you will be very missed but we have loads of great, fun stuff to remember you by.

Television nostalgia from a more innocent age

Back when I was a kid, cable television, video players, home computers, and the Internet were still far in the future. (I know, hard to imagine for some of you, but it’s true.) If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to wait until it came to your local movie theatre or aired on CBC or CTV. And certain television specials became annual rituals.

The most heartbreakingly bittersweet specials were three created by Readers Digest Canada in association with Potterton Productions. (I was an odd child — I loved to watch shows that made me cry.)

The Selfish Giant, which was created in 1971, was a 25-minute animated film narrated by . It told the Oscar Wilde short story of the giant who didn’t like children playing in his yard.

The Happy Prince, which was created in 1974, was a 25-minute animated film featuring the voices of Christopher Plummer and Glynis Johns. It told the Oscar Wilde short story of the statue of the Happy Prince and the little swallow who stayed with him until winter. I still bawl when I watch it.

The Little Mermaid, which was created in 1975, was a 25-minute animated film narrated by Richard Chamberlain. It told the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the mermaid who wanted to be human as it was originally written (in all its sadness), not as Disney would rewrite it many years later. I still remember the music and it can still make me cry buckets of tears.

Mad World

I usually stop watching American Idol when the auditions are done. I find the early weeks of the actual competition dull. Sometimes I start watching again when it’s down to the top 10 or so, if someone I liked in the auditions is still in the game. XUP’s mention of Adam Lambert singing “Mad World” on the April 7th show resparked my interest. (He’s been one of my faves since he auditioned with Bohemian Rhapsody — and parts of the snippet of Cher’s “Believe” that he sung during the Hollywood auditions were just chilling.) 

“Mad World” one of my favourite songs of all time. It’s not a happyhappy song in the first place, but Adam’s performance of it — both live and in the full studio version — is incredibly sad, more haunting, for some reason, than even the Gary Jules‘ cover, on which Adam’s was based. Very much the kind of music you listen to when it’s rainy or foggy or you’re in “one of those moods”.

Even though you probably shouldn’t.

America’s Next Top Model Cycle 12

Wasn’t ANTM just on?

Seems like we’re being drowned by reality TV these days. Usually they wait until the summer to save us from rerun Hell but right now we have Survivor, The Amazing Race, Project Runway Canada, Celebrity Apprentice, and now America’s Next Top Model. There must surely be a Big Brother lurking around the corner.

I couldn’t stop myself. I had to watch it. Tonight, the show aired at the same time here as it did in the US. Last time, A Channel stopped doing that part way through the cycle and switched it to Thursdays, which is about when I lost interest — no fun taking part in a live online chat if you aren’t actually watching it at the same time.

Tonight’s online chat with Erin was, as always, fun. We’ve decided that Cycle 14 should be Jesus Christ Supermodel.

Questions related to this episode from Top Model Gossip:

Is London’s street preacher gimmick for real or a cry to get attention?

The Christian part of it is probably for real but she’s amping it up to get noticed. She’s a poor street preacher if her performance in front of Tyra for the first time was a sample.

Did Sandra’s bitchiness turn you off?

It turned me off her, but you know she’ll be there for awhile because they need the friction she causes…and because Jesus clearly doesn’t love me.

Should Angelea made into the house? If so, instead of who?

I really didn’t see enough of her to have an opinion either way. Having both her and Sandra in the house would have been loads of bitchy fun, though. I loved Sandra’s bitchy bumping into Angelea when the 13 girls were picked to move into the house. The Dark Side truly was with her. 😉

Has your opinion of anyone changed because of this first episode?

I didn’t have any opinions before because I didn’t even know the show was back on until today.

What did you think of McKey’s Cover Girl commercial?

Haven’t gotten to see it yet.

What did you think of the photo shoot theme?

Lame. The little girls playing theme was a little creepy, like adult women dressing up as children for porn sites. Very oogy. The bad girl extras did pretty good jobs, though, better than the model hopefuls in some cases.

Woohoo!!!

Accidentally caught the end of the first results show for American Idol, just in time to see Tatiana Del Toro NOT make it into the first nine chosen of the final 12.

{{{{{dance of joy}}}}}

I shouldn’t celebrate too much just yet — there’s still a chance that she’ll make it into the three wildcard, judge-picked wildcard slots.

Well, there’s another Idol I won’t watch

Watched American Idol tonight as they picked the final 32.

I’m ever hopeful that I’ll be excited by a season of the show again, but the last time I watched with any interest was Season 4. (Go Constantine Maroulis!) This season looks to be shaping up to be more of a farce than usual. Keeping Nick/Norman (not just keeping but strongly encouraging him to stay in his alter ego), the Most Incredibly Annoying Woman on the Planet (otherwise known as Tatiana Del Toro), and the headband-addicted cryer (aka Nathaniel Marshall) while letting more talented singers go says everything about what the coming season has in store.

If watching a train wreck is your kind of entertainment, then you’ll no doubt be glued to your TVs. Me? I’ll be giving it a miss again this year — I’ve lost enough hours of my life to the auditions. There are a few singers I’d like to see again but not enough to weather the Annoying Three to see them. Tell me when all three are gone and maybe I’ll look in. 😉

Say it ain’t so, Grissom

Has it really been nine years?

I’m going to miss William Petersen on CSI. I hated it when Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) left. The only thing that would make it palatable is if Grissom was leaving Las Vegas CSI to join Sara. I loved them as a couple, and it would be OK if the two were together “somewhere else”.

Him happily trekking through a Costa Rican rainforest to find her was brilliant. The perfect ending to both of their stories and exactly what I wanted.

I’m all squishy happy inside.

♥♥♥♥♥ 

Celebrity Big Brother begins again

The latest series (Celebrity Big Brother 6) begins airing tonight.

I watched most of the episodes of Celebrity Big Brother 5 (2007) when it aired. It was so bad it was brilliant. I didn’t watch the last episodes because, frankly, it was apparent from the beginning of the controversy who was going to win and why so there was no point watching. That pretty much killed my interest in the future of the series. And it’s always the same D List celebrities who appear on these types of shows: has-been musicians, reality show celebrities, rehab rejects, freaks, Traci Bingham, Verne Troyer, Brigitte Nielsen, some member of the Jackson family… It’s like a train wreck. Is that why we watch?

If you watch the Extras Christmas special from last year, where Ricky Gervais (as Andy Milman) ends up in the Celebrity Big Brother house, you’ll never watch Celebrity Big Brother the same way again.

You can view the entire episode on Youtube (the version tweaked for the US market, apparently.)

Lee Curreri is still hot

I’ve been watching the documentary “Bring Back…Fame“, in which Justin Lee Collins attempts to bring together all (well, as many as possible) of the original cast members together for a reuinion.