The Saga of a Sedentary Life

I know, I know.  I've been remiss in my blogging duties of late.  I blame...well, I was going to blame the holidays, but it's a little late for that.   I blame my general need to sleep so much.  I think it must be unnatural.  I think I also need to blame this bloody golden age of television.  When did shows just get so damn good?  Even the bad ones.  And with the beginning of a new year, new seasons dawn.  I'm in the midst of the new Downton Abbey season, Game of Thrones approaches in April, the second season of Broadchurch should be available soon, and sometime in the next year or five, the new Sherlock.  I'm in the midst of watching the second season of Peaky Blinders, and the second season of the Fall.  Then my brother decided I should start watching the Blacklist, one of those it's-not-that-good-but-it's-so-great kind of shows.

In the midst of all this, I've started renting movies again, from the oh so awesome Scarecrow Video.  If you are unfamiliar with this magical place, it's a film addict's dream with roughly 110,000 titles.  If it exists on any format, they most likely have it.  Last Monday, I went in for my weekly hour-long perusal of the shelves and decided to rent an anime I've been curious about, Naoki Urasawa's Monster.  Thinking it was only 15 episodes long, I figured I could knock it out in a week and have another series under my belt.  I started it and all other viewing ceased.  I would actually anxiously look forward to getting home from work, so I could watch a couple more episodes.  Imagine my delight when I found out that this show isn't merely 15 episodes, but 74!  What joy!  In true serial fashion, episode 15 left me with a cliffhanger.  I trekked happily back to Scarecrow today to check out the next set, but it wasn't there.  Surely someone checked it out.  I look at the database, nothing.  I recalled reading that it was streaming somewhere.  I check my roku at home.  I'll explain this if you don't have a roku.  It houses all the available streaming channels so you can watch them on your TV.  It has almost everything, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, PBS, Funimation, etc.  You can search on your main roku page, and it will look for the movie or show on all the channels and give you a list of options to watch it on.  So I searched.  None of the channels had it.  After some interweb digging, I find out that the company that released it, only released those first 15.  *imagine me, on my knees, screaming to the heavens "WHY?!"*

I have no legal means of watching the rest of this show.  And I felt the need to share my despair with the empty void of the internet-verse.  Now I will scour the globe for the rest of it, or resort to reading the books.  Only time and my patience will reveal which path I take.

Rant: over!  

A Lady Beheaded

Today is my last day as a lady of leisure.
Having become unemployed on Oct. 26th and now starting back up in the work force after over three months, I find myself reflecting on the time spent (or wasted, see previous blog) and what the future holds.   Well, it's more that I sit wishing and hoping that work will not take over my life and will leave me time for a fraction of the leisurely activities that I have enjoyed the past few months.
There is another thought that dogs me.  Work, as I have known it, is something that must be done out of necessity.  If it is more stressful work, it consumes time and energy, leaving little energy for life's pleasures.  But, what about the possibility of getting pleasure out of your work?  It seems like such a foreign concept, to build a career out of a passion, especially when, like me, your passions are mostly artistic.  It has been almost four years since I graduated college.  When I was in school, surrounded by people who were determined to move to LA and make it work for them in the film industry, I felt inspired to work in film and maybe even theatre.  I was determined that I would become a producer and make films that were artistically old-fashioned.  I think that sort of mania is catching.  I made the decision not to move to LA when I graduated and spent the last three years working in a doctor's office.  The further removed I am from those school chums, the less appealing working in the industry is to me.  The reason for this is, of course, a story for another day.
Needless to say, I see myself approaching 30 and floundering for an idea of what it is I want to do with my life.  Landing a parttime job in a retail store at the age of almost 29 has brought this all home for me, aka I feel like a failure!  And I just needed someone to share it with.  So, thank you faceless internet, for listening to me moan for a bit.
And don't worry about me.  Things are looking up.  After all, series 3 of Luther just wrapped, and series 3 of Sherlock will begin filming soon.  As long as the BBC is around, life really can't be that bad.


Post-script:  After nearly three weeks at the job, I would like to say that I feel much better about myself.  There are other women who work there who are around my age.  In fact, there are some women who are in or around their 40's.  I appreciate this fact beyond words.
That is all.

The Art of Nerding

I am a nerd.

There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I tend to be more subtle in my nerd-dom then others, but it is there.  Always lingering.

I usually nerd out over British things.  You know, the usual suspects:  Sherlock, Downton Abbey, Luther, Pride and Prejudice (the '95 version of course),  French and Saunders, Fry and Laurie..not Harry Potter, sorry....but my latest nerd out is over something very American.  This is, of course, the latest and last installment of Nolan's Batman films.   There was something about this last one that made the nerd in me blossom like my inner nerd hasn't in quite a while.  This led me to scour various Tumblr pages for information regarding the film, which in turn revealed to me the greatest insight of them all.  As with all things American, they are usually inspired by something fantastically British.  The Dark Knight Rises is no exception!  One blogger claimed that there were numerous references to A Tale of Two Cites and, being the ardent anglophile I am, I delved right into the book to see for myself.  I read the book in a record 18 days (yes, I am a meticulous reader) and now report to you my findings:

Exhibit 1:

Barsad.  Yes there's a character named Barsad in TKDR
and if you don't know which one he is...

this is he. 

           

Exhibit II:

Have we started the fire? Yes brother, the fire rises!
Need I say more?

Exhibit III:

There are so many things mirrored in this film:  the storming of the Bastille, the storming of Black Gate Prison for one

Exhibit IV:

The felons were trying the honest men...

Scarecrow anyone?

Exhibit V:

A great storm coming

I think this line is famous enough right now that I don't need to explain it

Exhibit VI:

Mme Defarge infamously knits through the entire book.  I scoured the
internet to find a pic of Bane and his rope knotting during the sentencing
scene, to no avail.  And let me just add this, if I was an actress and was told
that I could plan any role of my desiring, it would be a toss up between
Lady Macbeth and Mme Defarge.  

Exhibit VII:

Eulogy of course, the most obvious connexion.  I decided not to post pics

of all the lines in the eulogy, but they were all taken from the last few 

paragraphs of the book.  

Case closed.