Reading: Middlemarch

Listening: How Green Was My Valley. When I do walk to work, which I tell myself I'm going to do tomorrow.

Watching: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season two. Also, holy shit, "Attack of the Clones." Also "In the Heat of the Night." I'm not reading Middlemarch very quickly. I wonder why.

Moving: Yo. 30' on the NT this morning and 2K in the pool. However, that NTing should have been yesterday, when instead I flopped about like a mattress.

21 July 2002: Too much screen time

This morning RDC told me we weren't going to have HBO for the next two weeks because of contractual problems. He waited for me to freak and I did not. I wouldn't've froke even if I'd known, as he did, that the new "Sex and the City"' season begins tonight. I just figured I had plenty o' Buffy to tide me over. I've got the first four episodes of the third season queued in the tivo, which I want not to have to capitalize. I've decided it's an indispensable appliance. Maybe I should call it Blaine.

Did anyone get that? It will be the first of much movie-itis.

His telling me that reminded me that there were two 1999 episodes of S&tC also queued and I should delete them for Buffy's sake. I went downstairs and almost had a mattressy morning but that RDC also told me that when he arrove in Boston yesterday, a coworker he hasn't seen since May's first words were "You've lost weight!" (Actually he's probably gained, net, since he's beefed up his chest and arms.)

So I got off my mattressy tush and Nordic Tracked for 30 minutes while watching "In the Heat of the Night" (because I haven't finished with season two Buffy yet). I think that movie came up during the Oscars, during Sidney Poitier's acceptance of whatever that award was. (And while he embodied class and style, his face was scarily skeletal. He looked like the woman on the ship in the beginning of (the real) "Planet of the Apes."

Which reminds me, the murder victim's wife exclaims at one point, "What kind of a place is this?" and I shouted at the television, "It's a madhouse, a madhouse!" Because I am all about the Planet of the Apes love. Oh, and that's a Buffy reference too, from "When She Was Bad."

Make me stop.

"In the Heat of the Night" reminded me of "Planet of the Apes" again and I think Our Mutual Friend or whichever Dickens has all the dumpgleaners. Dump = whatever Dickens book I mean (which I haven't read but a scene of which I remember from Masterpiece Theater), and the first item in the dump I saw was a white human doll. "Heat" was a lot better than I expected. An Oscar winner, it shouldn't suck, coughBraveheartcough. Sidney Poitier was great of course. It had close-captions, which is what made it exercise fodder.

Speaking of Charlton Heston, I saw "Attack of the Clones" today. There's a scene in an arena ("Ben-Hur," The Man in the Arena, keep up with me here) in which the critters Our Heroes have to survive look like Sid in "Toy Story" had been at them. Also, George Lucas has fucking got to stop letting Maxfield Parrish design Naboo. Also, I'm pretty sure the battle between Count Dooku and Yoda would have reminded me of Sarukan and Gandalf even if Christopher Lee hadn't played the former of both pairs. Actually Count Dooku and Obi-Wan made me think of "The Fellowship of the Ring" first. When Yoda went medieval on him, I was thinking only of Yoda. And of Kermit. And of the killer rabbit in "Holy Grail." Also of Mother Abigail Freeman in The Stand.

(Come now, OMFB. A wizened character older than dirt, decrepit and hairless and leaning on a cane, channeling the Forces of Good. I am going to write my dissertation proving how you could swap Yoda for Abigail in The Stand or Abigail for Yoda in "Empire Strikes Back" without material change to the text in question.)

I regret to say I did care, cf. my spasmodically clutching Clove's arm when Obi-Wan was injured. Because apparently I thought he might die or something. And do a Gandalf in the third episode, see. Except that Gandalf does his Gandalf in Two Towers, which in my opinion is one of the few good points of that second book.

"Chicken Run" is a fine, fine movie. Apparently Lucas believes that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Remember Rocky and Ginger in the pie machine? Amidala and Anakin have a scene in a foundry that's almost exactly like it. Pie has hot gravy, a foundry has molten metal. Pastry is cut with a mold; parts are cut with a mold. There was even a door like the grate in the beginning of "Raiders of the Lost Arc" or the locks between the furnace rooms on the "Titanic" Titanic.

Is Boba Fett such an important character that we needed that much backstory on him? Did C-3PO need lines as stupid as "This is such a drag" and "I'm beside myself" (hint: they're literal)? Was there no one better to play Anakin? Did Anakin have to say, "I have a really bad feeling about this," pre-echoing Han? It wasn't as bad as "Mrs. Doubtfire." But lord, it wasn't good.

(Thank goodness, a "Bloom County" quote instead of a television or movie quote. But it was what Opus wrote in one of his movie reviews.)

There's a bit on Planet Maxfield Parrish where Amidala crests the top of a hill, and--did Lucas really not notice?--I seriously expected, especially given her costume, for her to bust out, "The hills are alive with the sound of music."

Oh yeah, and then Obi-Wan could have shown up and exclaimed "Hey, that's my line."

I crack me up.

Okay. I'm off to bed to watch the two-part finale of the second season of Buffy. With this new computer I am doing what I have long maintained I would never do: watch television (though a television show on DVD) in the kitchen and worse, in the bedroom. I hang my head.

But not as low as George Lucas ought to hang his.

---

Buffy questions (watching the end of season two):

• Why must Buffy sleep in her WonderBra? Does anyone that reasonably-sized need to sleep in a bra?
• Could Juliet Landau look any more like her father?
• Willow would be my favorite character if I could get over what happened to her flute at band camp.
• If vampires hate crosses and holy water, what the hell was Angel doing in a confessional as the confessee?
• Especially when there was clearly daylight, specifically clear sunlight, falling through the ceiling of the confessional on the vampire?
• Hm, Angel backstory means his costume makes him look even more like Colin Firth. Excellent.
• I do love the angsty ethics of the Buffy-Angel relationship but I do the television equivalent of skimming during the monster-of-the-week ones (I call them "non-conspiracy," because those were the pointless "X-Files" ones too). Overall, my reflexive nitpicking means that I see details as pointless inconsistencies and incongruities that I should either overlook or accept as part of the Buffyverse.