Tag: television

Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me. . .

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

. . . that Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (whom I adored in Wooster & Jeeves) starred in another show together called A Bit of Fry and Laurie? And that all of the episodes of that show are available for streaming on Netflix?

Here I was, wasting my life on not watching this show, until Rimi, in her kindness, revealed the show’s existence to me.

N. is a huge fan of Laurie, so he will also be super thrilled to find out the show exists.

Thank you, Rimi!

I love British comic shows such as Yes, Minister!, Keeping Up Appearances (which I call “the show about my family”), and Are You Being Served? (it has one of the earliest portrayals of homosexuality in a sitcom.) So if anybody knows any other similar ones, feel free to recommend.

As to Monty Python, I honestly don’t get it at all, so please don’t recommend that one. Well-meaning friends once subjected me to a 5-hour-long marathon of it because, according to them, a civilized person absolutely had to like Monty Python. These were the same friends who later made me sit through The Sound of Music and then a long discussion of the movie scene by scene. That, of course, was the kind of atrocity I couldn’t forgive, so we aren’t friends any more.

How Buffy Changed My Life

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

I told this story before on the old version of the blog but now I have many new readers and I like telling it, so I’ll tell it again. Besides, a fellow blogger wrote about Buffy without the veneration due to this fantastic show, which is something I feel I need to address. (Being facetious here.)

When I was 22, I moved to Canada. Three months later I had to leave my husband because of the utter piggishness of his behavior. I was left in a strange country, with no job, no education, no money, and no friends. Worst of all, I was left without an identity of my own. I had been with this guy since I was 16 and had learned to see myself in terms of “we”, not “I.”

Once, I turned on the television and saw this episode of Buffy where Buffy and Angel, who had turned bad at this point, were fighting.

In that scene, Angel knocks the sword out of Buffy’s hands. She bows her head and closes her eyes as she stands against the wall.

“So what do you have left?” Angel asks. “Now that you are without your friends and without your weapons, what do you have?”

[I was 22, so I was weeping so hard I was practically bawling at this point.]

Then, Angel charges at Buffy with a sword. She catches it between her palms, opens her eyes, and says, “Me.”

And then she gives him the thrashing of his life.

This “I have me” was a true revelation. I realized that I could always find new friends, make more money, create a new life in a new country. Because I had me.

Which is why when you criticize Buffy in my presence, you do it at your own peril. 🙂