#61: Eight years of freakishly fun tours...and yes, he's still the one!

[ldyjocelyn]

BWAH couchie! I hope you are sleeping right now!

Fortunately, I save practically all emails, so I was able to get us up and going again quickly. I wasn't sure how long it would take before I sent the money in to get the board back up and running. Fortunately, it was a short time!

Still drooling over the picture from yesterday.

Off to a family reunion this weekend. It's usually 105 degrees in the shade for this reunion -- but this weekend, it's supposed to be a high of 80. I LOVE it.

[shortyjill]

Ldyj thanks for getting us back up.

Couchie you poor thing, you sound so frazzled! lol Take it easy this weekend!

Fear hope your hubby recovers quickly.

So I spent this past week with a marathon watching of the BBC's Being Human, which I had wanted to see for a while and Xfinity finally had the whole series (3 seasons) available. I don't think I'll be too interested in seeing the 4th season cause the creator and writers screwed up royally with what they did at the end of the 3rd. But now I'm feeling a vampire void and am going back to re-reading Twilight and thinking of stocking up with the Interview with a Vampire series to remedy it...

[jamar1700]

But now I'm feeling a vampire void and am going back to re-reading Twilight and thinking of stocking up with the Interview with a Vampire series to remedy it...

I loved Linda Lael Miller's Vampire series

Forever and the night

For all eternity

Time with out end

Tonight and always

She was sort of ahead of the curve. After Anne Rice, before Twilight and Buffy. She also had a few interesting time travel books but then went on to write mostly cowboy romance. Shame.

Wish someone would discover them and turn them into movies. Valerian could be the best vampire character ever. I always pictured Julius Carry in the role. Sadly too late for that. But that type. Yeah.

---

Couchie

I laugh because I've done that before. And vice versa.

[shortyjill]

Thanks for the rec. I looked her up and the vampire series... is it all really fluffy romanticy or is there anything else to it? Is it comparable to Twilight (which is also major fluff with a bit of darkness, IMO)? I like a little more meat to my books, romance novels never really appealed to me though that's about all my mom reads besides the occasional celebrity memoir/autobiography. She'd probably love all that author's cowboy novels! lol

I mentioned Interview because I've never gotten the chance to read it. I did get to read The Vampire Armand though ages ago and looooooved that one!

[aikim]

Interview with the Vampire is a great book..I have read other Anne Rice books and really enjoyed them. I too like more meat to my books; I tend to read more non-fiction than fiction but if I am going to read about vampires, the more realistic the better. There is a reason Stephen King is my favorite author!

Back to Interview..greatest travesty was having Tom Cruise star in the movie..worst casting ever...I hate when they cast movies based on name recognition rather than finding someone who actually fits the character.

Kim

[Lotus]

So I spent this past week with a marathon watching of the BBC's Being Human, which I had wanted to see for a while and Xfinity finally had the whole series (3 seasons) available. I don't think I'll be too interested in seeing the 4th season cause the creator and writers screwed up royally with what they did at the end of the 3rd. But now I'm feeling a vampire void and am going back to re-reading Twilight and thinking of stocking up with the Interview with a Vampire series to remedy it...

I have really enjoyed the BBC's Being Human, the American version, not so much. I will definitely watch the 4th season to find out how they will proceed given the shocking ending of the 3rd season.

[jamar1700]

is it all really fluffy romanticy or is there anything else to it? Is it comparable to Twilight (which is also major fluff with a bit of darkness, IMO)?

Well there is romance I won't deny that. One major one per story. Each book builds on the past book but tells a different characters story. Her Vampires are "good" but in a different way then the Twilight vampires. There are also lots of bad vampires & warlocks & other demonic things to save humanity from and also some humor.

I don't think I could ever read Anne Rice's books. They seem too dark.

I read Salem's Lot (Steven King) in HS and it scarred me for life.

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Anyone ever seen the BBC Series Survivors (remake not the older one)? I'm just getting started but it seems good.

[shortyjill]

aikim I was thinking of watching the movie too when I was finished, but maybe I'll steer clear. lol

I have really enjoyed the BBC's Being Human, the American version, not so much. I will definitely watch the 4th season to find out how they will proceed given the shocking ending of the 3rd season.

Yeah..... definitely not happy with that. Let me know what they do, if it's worth catching to see what happens.

Well there is romance I won't deny that. One major one per story. Each book builds on the past book but tells a different characters story. Her Vampires are good, in a different way then the Twilight vampires. There are also lots of bad vampires & warlocks & other demonic things to save humanity from and also some humor.

---

Anyone ever seen the BBC Series Survivors (remake not the older one)? I'm just getting started but it seems good.

That sounds a little better than I imagined, thanks.

Haven't heard of Survivors, but there's other BBC series I want to see including Downton Abbey and Pride & Prejudice.

[aikim]

Some tweets yesterday and FB posts indicated that Clay may have been in Victoria, BC, Canada this past week. Possibly celebrating Parker's Birthday with the Fosters?

68 Days until The Gala!

Happy Birthday to all celebrating!

Everyone have a great day!

Kim

[Lotus]

Haven't heard of Survivors, but there's other BBC series I want to see including Downton Abbey and Pride & Prejudice.

I just finished watching the 3 episodes on Masterpiece Theatre called Zen, based on the detective novels by Michael Dibdin. They take place in Rome and are very well done. Rufus Sewell plays Zen...mmm..very attractive.

They are available on PBS Seattle in their video section until August 31st.You should have no trouble seeing them as you live in the US but for Canadians you need a programme to connect to the internet that disguises your IP address.

[aikim]

67 Days until The Gala!

Happy Birthday to all celebrating!

Everyone have a great day!

Kim

[FearofH2O]

Although I read Anne Rice, I'm just not a fan of vampires books. I did like the Handmaid's Tale which had no vampires in it. I've been reading or rereading the 100 classics that came with my Kobe reader ( cheap version of an ebook). So far I finished Uncle Tom's Cabin and I'm reading Emma now. I was really impressed with Harriet Beecher Stowe's amazing fight against slavery in the mid 1800s. She was also one of the first feminists. Learning about her life made the book so much more alive.

On topic- I hope Clay is having a fabulous summer doing whatever he wants to do.

[luckiest1]

I went and saw "The Help" on the weekend and I loved it! I have not yet read the book, but I want to now. I hope that it will garner some Oscar nominations.

I had another Clay dream last night. In it, he gathered the 'Claynation' together and basically told us that the last 6 months were the best thing he had ever done, so he had decided that he was quitting, because it was the right thing for him. It was like a bus line but we were all behind a railing, and he was shaking everyone's hand and some people were crying and he was trying to console them. It woke me up as it ended, and I couldn't get back to sleep, because it felt so real. I half expected to log in this morning and read some really bad news!

I hope and believe that he is having a great summer and will come back refreshed and revitalized and with great news for us all. <cough>Broadway, Broadway, Broadway </cough>

[keepingfaith]

Just to throw in my two cents ... I haven't read "The Help" -- and don't intend to, or to see the movie. I listened to Melissa Harris-Perry's review and then read an article from the Society of Black Women Historians, then got a personal review from my friend who saw it and found it embarrassingly bad. So, that's three strikes. I was at one time considering a download of the book, but when I read that it's written in dialect, that ended that.

What? Y'all didn't know I was opinionated?

[luckiest1]

Embarrassingly bad? Are you kidding me? To each her own, I guess. Any movie that can make me laugh and cry in the span of 2 hours is pretty damned good to me.

[shortyjill]

The Help was on my list after I saw a trailer and found out it was a book first. The movie looks really good, but I have this thing most of the time where I'd rather read the book before seeing the movie. Exception to the rule is if the book isn't something I think I'd enjoy reading and I'd rather watch the movie to find out what happens. It's shorter. LOL

[keepingfaith]

Melissa Harris-Perry (who I ADORE!) argues that the movie makes it seem like Real Housewives of Jackson, Mississippi when it was actually rape, lynching and other horrors. "What kills me," she concluded, "is that in 2011 the great Viola Davis is reduced to playing a maid."

These were her tweets from the theater:

Melissa Harris-Perry

#TheHelpMovie reduces systematic, violent racism, sexism & labor exploitation to a cat fight that can be won w/ cunning spunk.

Melissa Harris-Perry

Ok wow. They purged the "Imitation of Life" storyline from the film. Just wow... #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

Oh yeah "cute" stunts like the pie incident would have provoked community wide violent reprisals. Not audience giggles. #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

First real moment. Violent arrest of black woman. #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

I just timed it. Miss Skeeter's date got same amount of screen time as Medgar Evers assassination. #TheHelpMovie sigh.

Melissa Harris-Perry

"oh I loves me some fried chicken" this line was just uttered in #TheHelpMovie #Seriously

Melissa Harris-Perry

And man oh man was Jim Crow full of giggling good times in the kitchen!! #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

And thank God plucky white girls could give black women the courage to resist exploitation! #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

Thank God magical black women were available to teach white women to raise their families & to write books!! #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

Hard to tell whether it's the representations of black women or of white women that's most horrible. #TheHelpMovie

Melissa Harris-Perry

I'm one hour into #TheHelpMovie I'm not sure I can make it through to the end.....arrggghhhhhh & I read the book. I knew...but the images...

To each his own, but this just isn't my kind of entertainment, and never has been.

[jamar1700]

I go out of my way not to read reviews of something I plan to read or see. I don't need or want someone else's baggage in my head. I'll be the judge of things for me, thankyouverymuch.

[FearofH2O]

I doubt that I would go see this movie but there really hasn't been a movie that I couldn't wait for it to be on Netflix. Additionally, I can't stay awake in a movie theatre. At least at home I can back it up and watch it again.

A movie that we did watch on Netflix that both Mr Fear and I loved was "Brothers" with Toby McGuire and Jake Glendenhall (sp).

[luckiest1]

LOL Fear, I have the problem about falling asleep in the movie theatre too (just ask cindilu2). It's generally only during action movies, I have never fallen asleep during a drama or romantic comedy. Strange but true!

[FearofH2O]

Action films? Does that include vampires?

Last movie I saw in the theatre was March of the Penguins. Now I love penguins but I fell asleep about 5 minutes after sitting in the theatre. Gave up movie going after that.

[shortyjill]

The only movie I ever fell asleep watching in the theater was Phantom of the Opera, and I hated myself for it! I've been lucky enough to have seen it on Broadway though and it was phenomenal as a live performance. Movie I guess, not so much.

Other than that if I'm in a movie theater, it's something I REALLY want to see since I don't get there very often. Most times I'm at the edge of my seat.

[Couch Tomato]

Lucky that was a nightmare. Ha ha

Just to throw in my two cents ... I haven't read "The Help" -- and don't intend to, or to see the movie. I listened to Melissa Harris-Perry's review and then read an article from the Society of Black Women Historians, then got a personal review from my friend who saw it and found it embarrassingly bad. So, that's three strikes. I was at one time considering a download of the book, but when I read that it's written in dialect, that ended that.

What? Y'all didn't know I was opinionated?

Ooh I've had stuff bubbling up inside me about this movie so I'll take this opportunity to get it out. I respect everyone's opinion but mine will be different I'm sure.

I read The Help and I found it to be a beautiful book. The book is not written from a black person's point of view because the author is white but guess what -- to me everybody has a right to tell their story. I'm mostly a history buff and what I like to do is find a subject (be in Vietnam War, Watergate, slavery) and then read 5 or 6 books on the topic back to back to back from various points of view.

One of my favorite books is "I'm Down" which I highly recommend about a white woman who grew up in a black neighborhood with a white father that thought he was black. It was SO good and funny and it was nice for me to read that perspective which is not mine but runs parallel to mine. And yet I recognized so much of my upbringing in it. Is it wrong that a white person tells the race's secrets? That is something even I fall victim to right now. When Oprah did a topic on "good hair" and the color prejudiced within the race I was like OH NO OPRAH... don't be telling the secrets to everybody. But it's something that is ingrained in us to this day.

I'm not sure what's wrong with a book in dialect. Is that not reflective of the period? And would the book make more sense if it was written in the King's English? Would it ring more true to anyone? Do some black people in the south not speak in dialect? I have relatives in South Carolina that I could barely understand as a child which would be this same general period. Do we want to act like they don't exist?

Some critics that I've read said there were no positive black male role models. Again, why does every book have to address this. And this is the same argument used against The Color Purple. The movie was denigrated by the black press for the very same reason. If I recall correctly the NAACP called for a boycott. And then 5 or 10 years later they are trying to honor the movie that they boycotted. I stood and cheered when Whoopie told them how wrong they were at the award ceremony.

We can not forget slavery. We can not forget separate but equal. We can not forget that just a generation ago there were so few avenues available to black people in this country. In my life time I have seen white and black waiting rooms. But it's also true that my own mother - the big city girl - picked cotton when she was young. Many of my aunts were domestics. Yet any book written about the subject is supposed to be off limits to black actors, the black audience who is supposed to look at it with suspicion and white folks are supposed to feel guilty for enjoying it. Not every domestic is a mammy. And hopefully the movie will let you get inside the ladies' head as the book did.

Now I am talking generally because I haven't seen the movie. I only read the book. But I will go see it and then judge it for myself. Who know if what was put to screen was as good as I found the book. In the book, these black women rebelled against oppression every single day. They fought back with dignity. I also could relate very highly to Skeeter - someone uncomfortable in her own skin and who didn't fit the mold of the other women around her. And this whole idea that it took a white woman to bring out these feelings is certainly not what I got from the book. The Civil Rights movement was not built on just black people but it's somehow wrong to tell that other story.

I loved one of the other white characters that was ostracized because she was "poor" and took some man that someone else thought was there's. Forget her name right now. To me one of the only problems with the book is that a few of the white women came off as cartoonish but that is probably my 2011 sensibility speaking because slavery and Jim Crow could not have existed unless there were people exactly like some of the women in this book.

But also I think part of the problem is that some people are upset that a book on this subject by a white author gets made into a movie while books by blacks don't. Now THAT I can understand but that has nothing to do with the book itself. Those issues definitely exist. I can see "I'm Down" also being made into a movie and people having the same reaction. But I would run to see it.

I don't often agree with the so called black leadership or the hip media. Their focus is often in places I find unimportant. I also don't support black because they are black. And until i hear loud and clear criticism about the junk we put out as representative of ourselves then I'm not likely to listen to their opinion. As for some of the criticism...this isn't a book about Medger Evers. It's not a documentary. It's not all inclusive of the black or white experience of the period. It's one extremely small slice of the pie.

I don't think I've ever read a vampire book. I saw Twilight, the movie, and I hated it. I think mostly because that actress was so unappealing. The guys aren't all that either or maybe I'm just too old. I couldn't believe anyone would fall all over himself for her. Don't like Tom Cruise so didn't see Interview with a vampire. Plus I'm still mad that he hijacked the Mission Impossible franchise and turned it into something it wasn't LOL. I do like True Blood although I've only seen the first season. But now that I have HBO again I'll try to watch the other seasons. Does anyone use HBO GO?

I don't go to the movies much. The last movie I saw at the theater was Despicable Me which I loved. But yep. I fell asleep. And the one before that as Avatar in 3 D -- fell asleep for 30 minutes in that one. Heee. Soon as I get in a car or in a theater...I'm out like a light.

[FearofH2O]

Loved your perspective couchie. My mom was a domestic from the age of 13, when her parents told her she had to help support the family of 12. When she got older she worked in a factory making bras. She wasn't black but was a member of the poor white immigrant class. Her dad worked in a coal mine, on the railroad and was a bootlegger. Their only bathtub was used to make booze. My dad liked to play: baseball, music, dancing as a young man until he finally grew up and got a factory job. We lived with my dad's parents most of my young life. I'm sure playbiller will correct me as she always does. I never noticed poor as we always had food on the table. They worked on the weekends with a caterer and got the leftovers. We grew up as coddled, spoiled children who shouldn't get their hands dirty, so my mom worked from dawn to dusk cleaning and cooking, when she wasn't at work. Now I'm a terrible housekeeper.

In the south white children were often raised by African American nannies. We moved here in 1973 and talking to friends, they remarked that they loved their nannies as if they were their moms. Yet they had a bias against African Americans as a group. I grew up in the north so this situation was new to me. We didn't have segregation in the schools up north but it was rampant in housing. It's pretty easy to see how the political situation turned in the south with busing.

I'll look for the movie on Netflix.

Wake up! :clay: Have a great day.

[aikim]

Wonderful post Couchie, haven't read the book or seen the movie..but I enjoyed your take on it.

66 Days until The Gala!

Happy Birthday to all celebrating!

Everyone have a great day!

Kim