Emma Thompson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this week, flanked by Nanny McPhee costar Maggie Gyllenhaal and Cambridge classmate and House star Hugh Laurie. Seeing Thompson and Laurie together reminds me, besides Peter’s Friends (which I’ve not seen in far too long), of a House story I would love to see.Continue reading “On Emma Thompson and House”
On Counterfactual Doctor Who Musings
Over the weekend, with the world still in the afterglow of “A Study in Pink,” Sherlock‘s debut episode, reports began to surface in The Sun and The Daily Mail that Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch had been offered the role of the Doctor after David Tennant decided to leave. Really? The Sun? Really? The Daily Mail?Continue reading “On Counterfactual Doctor Who Musings”
On Sherlock’s “A Study in Pink”
“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” I first read this line, from the opening chapter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, when I was ten. It was the meeting between Sherlock Holmes, soon to be the famous consulting detective, and Dr. John H. Watson, recently invalided home from the front dueContinue reading “On Sherlock’s “A Study in Pink””
On Things I’ve Been Reading
I have a long-standing habit, I call it the “binge read.” In college, I went on binge reads of Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven and Orson Scott Card and Ernest Hemingway, where I would gather as much of an author’s body of work as I could, and then I would read all of itContinue reading “On Things I’ve Been Reading”
On Sarah Palin and the 2012 Election
Should Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 2008 and the former governor of Alaska, run for President in 2012? Some Republicans want her to. And, curiously, some Democrats want her to as well. At the Netroots Nation Convention, a gathering of progressive activists, over the weekend, a straw poll there gave Palin theContinue reading “On Sarah Palin and the 2012 Election”
On Daniel Schorr
I have a routine on Saturday mornings. I fix coffee. I listen to Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. And one of the things I listen for each week is Simon’s weekly discussion with Daniel Schorr. Simon tweeted a few minutes ago that “My longtime friend and colleague Dan Schorr has died. Please find aContinue reading “On Daniel Schorr”
On the Loss of a Watch
Yesterday, I lost my wristwatch. There’s nothing profound to the story. It’s a case of simple human mistake-making. This happens. At some point, maybe five years ago, I stopped wearing a watch on a regular basis. Actually, it was more recent than that, come to think of it. After I moved to Baltimore. I hadContinue reading “On the Loss of a Watch”
On Stephen Fry’s New Television Series
Stephen Fry — writer, actor, all-around personality — has revealed that he will be making a series for BBC2 on language — Planet Word. I haven’t seen a good documentary about language, where it comes from, how we speak it, the variations of it, whether languages are dying, whether we are better at speaking thanContinue reading “On Stephen Fry’s New Television Series”
On Movies When I Was Twelve
Courtesy of Dayton Ward, “The ‘When I was 12’ movie meme thing.” Here’s how it works: go to Wikipedia (as the most convenient resource), and copy the list of movies that were released in the year when you were 12 years old. Mark in italics the movies that you’ve seen. (Not necessarily that year.) MarkContinue reading “On Movies When I Was Twelve”
A Tale of Two Baseball Caps
Yesterday, the Stars & Stripes Washington Nationals Baseball Cap arrived. Baseball teams started wearing patriotic baseball caps on national holiday weekends a few years ago. (And yes, the Toronto Blue Jays have their own patriotic cap, with the Maple Leaf instead of the Stars and Stripes.) Despite my love of the Cubs :cubs: I don’tContinue reading “A Tale of Two Baseball Caps”