We've been watching the (very gentle) Stephen Fry country-lawyer show Kingdom, also available on Hulu. Featuring MI5's ice princess Hermione Norris as Fry's deranged, man-hungry half sister!
Isn't Veronica Mars a detective for children?
I kind of fucking LOVE IT, because I am a sap. (Note that MI5 is only called that in the US, because the powers that be decided it wasn't a racially sensitive idea to air a show called Spooks.)
Well, Strictly Come Dancing has just started again ...
And we, as a family, have started on Friends from the beginning - we're about halfway from the first series.
Veronica Mars was awesome. (I can't bring myself to keep watching Season 3.)
Before The Good Guys, Bradley Whitford was cast in a pilot called Off-Duty in which he also played the dissolute mustachioed cop, then to Romany Malco's straight man. I saw the pilot, which NBC passed on, and it was one of the funniest things I've ever watched on a television screen. I hope I can someday obtain a copy of it and put bits on youtube for you.
5.first - Really, I thought the quality dropped significantly even in season two. But the first season was amazing.
Isn't Veronica Mars a detective for children?
The character yes, the show no. At least not in the first season.
I haven't watched anything, in like, forever. The Breeze family, back when there were but two of them, watched the first series of Desperate Housewives on a whim, and came away a bit annoyed at how obviously the scriptwriters were manipulating the audience w/ cliffhangers etc.
didn't heebie say that her husband is the first season of veronica mars of her heart? (what the fuck is his nickname, I am blanking despite having read it 1000 times: dishspice? mushsmash? hedgepin? thingy? greebles?). high praise, which is merited.
I am watching dexter season 2 by myself and nominally watching mad men season 1 with husband x, but we somehow don't get around to doing it much. he has been exercising after the kids go to bed and also practicing guitar for an hour, which doesn't leave much time for tv. it turns out that if you exercise for over an hour every day and practice guitar every day for another hour or so you will be in great shape and also improve on the guitar fairly rapidly. news at 11.
sometimes when I'm sick I wish I were at home to watch law and order all day on cable. I love law and order. CHUN-CHA!! somewhow I would never think of buying it, though; I feel it's a utility, like water, it should just come out of the tv all the time. I'm not as huge a fan of law and order: creepy perverts doing shit that will keep you up at night unit, but I'll watch it. I love how they have to tweak the cheesy, oddly late 70s opening soundtrack for the spinoffs. more tenor sax! less bass slappin'! slightly different keyboards!
||
Amusingly, after Unfogged meetup jokes past, I got invited to an actual knife-fighting seminar, today.
>
an actual knife-fighting seminar
Answers my question about "what do they actually do at the University of the West of Scotland".
re: 11
Heh. It's an HND course at Falkirk.
Suggested titles for papers read at a knife fighting seminar, please.
Slash!: towards a transformative ontology of macho-queer in post-colonial Philippine culture.
The Chib: the broken bottle, or the Stanley-blade; a double-blind trial.
dissolute mustachioed cop
I love this phrase. Would that make him a particularly moral cop following the first textual principle? (See Tia's blurb. I can't find text's original comment.)
one of my sponsees had her dad threatening to kill her with a screwdriver the other day, and he's the one she's closest to in the family, such that she's bummed he'll be out of town for a while! I had to really take her through how not cool that was. "but I knew he wouldn't really do it. but of course it was very scary." mother fuck. she's financially dependent on them, can't just move out. I'm not letting her move here, because she's fucking nuts, love her as I do. I don't know that "try not to get stabbed to death with a screwdriver" is sufficient advice here. maybe the knife-fighting seminar will have tips? or I should buy her an ice-pick? a machete, maybe?
Despite lame mysteries with plotholes big enough for large vehicular traffic, Psych is pretty awesome, and will make you realize that Dulé Hill was wasted playing a serious character on West Wing. Dude has serious comic chops, and the whole cast is funny and plays off each other really well.
Also, the first season of Community was great. The second season seems off to a slow start maybe but we'll see how it goes.
19: Really? I thought the first two episodes of the second season have been great. They aren't paintball-episode or mafia-episode great, but still.
I really enjoy Castle but that might be my man crush on Nathan Fillion talking.
I've watched the first three episodes of Running Wilde, hoping it would go further toward being Arrested Development-ish, but it's not. There are a few nice things about it, but the rest is irritating.
I don't know that "try not to get stabbed to death with a screwdriver" is sufficient advice here. maybe the knife-fighting seminar will have tips? or I should buy her an ice-pick? a machete, maybe?
Learning how to recognize the signs of the impending blow-up would be such a great skill.
"You need to find shelter when the clouds start to form, and not wait until the lightning and rain start."
The Good Guys isn't bad, but it's, you know, kinda dumb. I'd watch it when it comes on above anything else in its time slot, but if I record it I won't watch it.
Castle is way worse. It's...both dumb and predictable. I was surprised to see that the generic goofy sitcom guy on that show was the legendary Nathan Fillion that nerds love.
Scientific papers don't have titles that lend themselves to parodying. If my lab wrote a paper about knives it would be called "CRKT is a Combat Knife which Upregulates Tissue Damage and Sepsis Through a Puncture-Dependent Pathway".
We're way behind in all our shows, but man is there a lot of fantastic TV out there.
Weekly (except we're behind): The Office, Community, Parks & Rec, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights
Seasonally (ie between seasons of the above shows): Weeds, It's Always Sunny, Mad Men, Ugly Betty, Big Love, How I Met Your Mother, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.
Daily Show and Colbert irregularly; Jammies watches those way more than me. When I've caught an episode of Psych I thought it was really great.
didn't heebie say that her husband is the first season of veronica mars of her heart?
I did! I forgot I said that! What fun.
Well, riffing on the actual West Scotland vaginal-orgasms-are-best-when-induced-by-my-massive-artisanally-hand-stretched-penis dude:
- Overestimation of heterosexually attributed AIDS deaths is associated with immature psychological defense mechanisms and clitoral masturbation during knife fights
- A man's history of being stabbed in the thigh is discernible from his walk.
I knew a guy who drove a screwdriver through his palm (the one on his hand, this was before PDA meant anything but frenching where everybody could see you). He finished doing his work and didn't seek medical care until his wife and kids made him go.
In an unrelated accident, or at least a different accident, the same guy also lost the tip of his finger. Before you do work on a lawn mower, remove the spark plug.
A man's history of driving a screwdriver through his dominant hand is discernible from his masturbation technique.
I like this article about procrastination. Which probably has something to say about why I'll often watch even bad TV.
I'm probably repeating myself from an earlier thread, but I like Chuck; it's just good fun. I'm not sure about how well this season is starting out, but they have a good track record.
AFV might have lost a step in the YouTube era, but it's still a great value.
32: Without Bob Saget, the show really declined.
I'm watching The Wire again. Everyone should watch The Wire again!
I'm also watching Futurama, but I don't think it's all that great. Sometimes I watch/read/listen to things because of what I imagine they could have been like.
And 30 Rock is fun.
I like The Venture Brothers. Most television is almost indistinguishable now from the cloud of discussion that surrounds it,* which sucks,** but VB manages to surprise me now and then.
* When did "comedy," undifferentiated, become to SWPL what moving to the Sunset Strip and trying to get a gig at the Whiskey was for Midwestern longhairs in 1987?
** I heard once of a sort of professional wrestling fan called a "smart mark": i.e., the sort of fan who takes pride in announcing when a wrestler cuts himself with a hidden razor blade for a dramatic splash of blood or knowing why an intended plot angle was dropped (a backstage feud, a contract dispute, an injury, an arrest, etc., etc.). It wasn't a compliment.
32: The great virtue of AFV (and in which it has indeed been surpassed by YouTube) is that showed the environments in which people actually live rather than the stylized consumerist nirvanas (or ersatz dystopias) as shown on other TV. Even good TV.
I'm watching The Wire again. Everyone should watch The Wire again!
I tried to but I couldn't! All those kids! And knowing exactly what becomes of them!
sometimes when I'm sick I wish I were at home to watch law and order all day on cable. I love law and order. CHUN-CHA!! somewhow I would never think of buying it, though; I feel it's a utility, like water, it should just come out of the tv all the time. I'm not as huge a fan of law and order: creepy perverts doing shit that will keep you up at night unit, but I'll watch it. I love how they have to tweak the cheesy, oddly late 70s opening soundtrack for the spinoffs. more tenor sax! less bass slappin'! slightly different keyboards!
almeida, did you change your mind about law and order in the course of writing this paragraph? Or is the 2nd reference to law and order supposed to say CSI? Future historians will need to know this.
Suggested titles for papers read at a knife fighting seminar, please.
Bring a gun: the application of the Powell doctrine in knife fights
I think "LaO:CPDSTWKYUANU" means "LaO:SVU" as opposed to other "LaO".
Are people still watching Glee?
Somewhat terrible, and yet still pretty fun, is my confused verdict.
43: Oh! Thanks, CN! I forgot about that show!
42: Alternately, from the same flick*:
Just Like a Wop: Knives and the Construction of Mediterranean Masculinities
*A flick in which it is a Scot extolling the virtues of guns over knives, whilst doing the worst Irish accent** committed to film.
**Boreanaz in Angel was video.
44: This season has been excruciatingly terrible. People liked the most recent ep, but mostly it gave me hives.
I just finished the first season of True Blood, and it's pretty entertaining for soft-core cableporn.
I forgot Party Down and Louie. What good shows. Jammies watches Glee and I'm hit or miss on it.
Suggested titles for papers read at a knife fighting seminar, please.
"Wear Comfortable Shoes: The Doctrine of Strategic Retreat in the Vanishingly Rare Situation When One Meets the Sort of Twitching Psychopath Who Actually Carries and Intends to Fight with a Knife."
"I Will Cut You: Meaningless Internet Tough Guy Talk and the Construction of Bourgeois Masculinity."
"Swis[h] Army Faction or, Red Knife, Blue Knife, Pink Knife, Your Life: Manifest and Un-Manifest Post-Sexuality from Victorinox to Wenger, with Notes on Boy Scout Camp."
re: 50.1
... Vanishingly Rare ...
I may be an outlier, but I've encountered people with knives intending malice a couple of times ...
51: My statistics may be distorted by my residence in the Land of the Surprisingly-Freely-Available Glock-and-Concealed-Carry-Permit-Combo.
I haven't yet watched the first two episodes of the second season of Eastbound and Down, but I will. Other than that... well. I just won't share my TV preferences with you judgmental bastards.
I haven't heard anyone other than a critic say they like "Louie" before. Comedies where every character is a miserable person doing depressing things and nobody ever cracks a smile are just not my cup of tea. Especially in "Louie" where literally nothing funny happened in the four episodes I watched, except in the standup segments of course. I don't know what was even supposed to be funny.
53: I watched the first episode and it was a bit of a letdown, but I'm reserving judgment since it was mostly just setting up the storyline for the season.
OT: Have we discussed the recent Duke grad's thesis on horizonatal academics?
Poor Duke lacrosse guys cant catch a break.
I haven't heard anyone other than a critic say they like "Louie" before.
I think I have a crush on all comedians who I find the least bit funny, so I'm willing to grant them tons and tons of slack. It is unbelievably depressing. But I still adore him.
I haven't heard anyone other than a critic say they like "Louie" before.
I love Louie, but I suppose YMMV.
I've gotten to the point where I really can't bring myself to watch more of It's Always Sunny. I enjoyed it for a while, but past a certain point it just got to be like "ok, I get it, these people are irredeemably awful", and I stopped finding it very funny.
And maybe I just have a soft spot for pudgy, divorced, cranky, redheaded guys in their 40s.
50: Almost forgot:
"Contemporary Artists are Pussies: Benvenuto Cellini Stabbed a Dude in the Eye. Whoa, Did You Hear What Caravaggio Did?"
On the other hand, I didn't like "In the Loop" either. Maybe I just can't enjoy unending misery where the bad guys always win and nothing funny happens except the occasional smart-aleck quip until I have children.
re: 52
And I've lived in the knife-crime capital* of Knife-Crime Island...
* maybe.
63.last: CN's Unfogged experience in a nutshell?
63: Which reminds me that I hate the superstition that British television is superior because of EU human-rights laws quotas for ugly people the authenticity of British actors' and actresses' faces and bodies and the crushing misery of post-industrial urban Britain. If I wanted to see ugly people being ugly in ugly places, I'd visit the Rust Belt and ask them about Barack Obama.
If I wanted to see ugly people being ugly in ugly places, I'd visit the Rust Belt and ask them about Barack Obama.
Angry elitist anti-colonialist!
I was surprised to see that the generic goofy sitcom guy on that show was the legendary Nathan Fillion that nerds love.
Castle is pretty bad (I mean, not Law & Order: SVU terrible, but pretty bad) but I watch it sometimes anyway, thinking the whole time that Nathan Fillion needs Joss Whedon and that I fucking HATE Fox for canceling Firefly. Idiots.
Speaking of television, has anyone mentioned the death of Stephen J. Cannell? A friend tried to estimate the number of hours that she had spent watching Cannell-produced television since our childhood '70s-'80s and thought it probably reached four figures.
64: You should get a sword-cane or a loaded riding crop.
They aren't paintball-episode or mafia-episode great, but still.
The paintball episode was Just. So. Awesome.
Plenty of ugly people, but I don't know about ugly places (in fictional tv stuff). Mostly even the places that are supposed to look rough look nicer than my street. You should probably never come here.
Calling all L&O lovers and all anglophiles!! BBC America has L&O: UK up and running now. It's like watching L&O high or in a dream or something. You can almost understand the language and the plots are the same (they are simply reusing classic L&Os) but the lingo ("brilliant result") is different; the judges are WAY more snarky and some of the crim pro is different. I highly recommend.
66: As someone's who is on the record as advocating acid being thrown in Cindy Crawford's face in service of the envy of ugly people everywhere, I suppose this is no surprise, but I really like the broader range of faces on UK tv. They're still prettier than average, just not all up to the American tv standard. And it makes the genuinely wildly attractive actors stand out more by contrast, if looking at pretty people is what you want out of your tv.
In other works, Flippanter is banned!
re: 70
Both illegal, and, tbh, it's been 15 years since the last incident, so it's not something ever-present in my mind. I'm pretty quick over short distances, too; in a sort of stumpy-legged kind of way.
I have trained in a tiny bit of canne, though, so the weighted cane idea does appeal.
69: http://www.cannell.com/television-tvList.php
That is an impressively long list. Not many shows I remember watching regularly though-- just The Rockford Files, and reruns of Adam-12.
re: 73
FWIW, LO:UK is seen as a bit of a pathetic joke here in the UK.
What am I watching? Season One of The Vampire Diaries via Netflix. It's good, or certainly better than it sounds, not that that's saying much. Once we finish Season One we'll probably move on to Season Two via Hulu. I haven't seen the latest episode of Chuck or any of the new season of Castle yet, but I'll probably get around to them before they're off Hulu.
I remember reading somewhere or other that gift certificates with limited expiration dates actually make better presents than ones with long-term expiration dates or no expiration at all, because with no deadline people are more likely to regift them or put them off until they've forgotten what occasion the gift was a celebration of or forget about them entirely. That seems to describe my TV-watching habits. Everything I watch already comes through Hulu, Netflix or torrents. There are a bunch of shows I'm curious about and I enjoy them when I happen to watch them, but I rarely actually do, just because I can do it anytime so do it right this minute?
My girlfriend watches a lot more TV than me. At least, that's the theory, or she used to. I'm waiting for her to find some show I couldn't care less about and really get into it so I can make some real progress in World of Warcraft again...
I saw a trailer for Castle the other day and wondered whether Nathan Thingy was enough to get me to watch it. Doubt it. I don't watch Law and Order UK and Jamie Bamber's on that, and my crush on him is about 7 million times as big as that on Captain Malcolm.
75: It's illegal to put lead in one end of a stick?
Sorry, was distracted by thoughts of Jamie Bamber ...
69: I just looked at his filmography (TVography?) and yeah. Put together him, Donald Bellisario, and Aaron Spelling, and you've accounted for 95% of the time I've wasted in my life.
re: 81
In the UK? Yeah. Wouldn't be illegal to do it, but it would be illegal to walk about with one without good reason. Just in the same way that dudes in an iado club can have schmancy swords, but if you walked down the street with one, it'd be illegal. UK weapons laws are strict.
An ordinary walking cane would be fine, but I expect if I was to walk around with one, and end up using it to smack someone round the head, the cops would be asking why an otherwise healthy person was carrying a stick. And you'd be running the risk of an offensive weapons charge if you didn't have a good excuse.
84: And I complain about the whole "no hand grenades" rule we have here.
British cops don't need no guns..
I really enjoyed the UK show "Night Cops". The stakes are much lower than our "Cops", and it's so much less depressing.
UK weapons laws are strict.
How does that, if at all, affect the legal treatment of self-defense?
In some U.S. states, various doctrines affecting self-defense cases have been hot topics recently (i.e., can Joe Six-Gun shoot a retreating burglar?), but I have no sense of how other countries treat the issues.
77: Those two are it for me as well.
No helpful recs for anything that's currently on television, but everyone should be eagerly awaiting the November 2 DVD release of the Larry Sanders Show.
88: The PA legislature is working on expanding the zone where you have no duty to retreat. Right now I can only shoot somebody in my house* and some people want me to be able to shoot people on my porch. If I had a porch, I think I'd be happy about this.
*Unless it looks like I can't run away.
re: 85
Having a good reason is exculpatory: so if you are carrying some weapon because you are on your way to a sports class that uses it, or a historical reenactment or whatever, that would be fine. But otherwise, the definition of a weapon is very broad, and weighted canes are one of the things that'd count as they've been modified to function as a weapon. Context is all, here.
Gay Blades: Performative Phallogocentrism in The Mark of Zorro
This seems a decent summary:
http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8233
Typical episode of "Night Cops":
- PC Abel and PC Baker subdue a drunken lout who's threatening other drunk people in downtown Leicester.
- PC Charles and PC Doogan subdue a drunken lout who's threatening other drunk people in downtown Bristol.
- PC Edmonds and PC Fatwa subdue a drunken girl who's urinating publicly in downtown Nantwich.
- PC Abel and PC Baker break up a fight between two drunken louts and convince one of them to pay his cab fare.
94: I'm sure Theodore Dalrymple is a regular viewer.
88: reasonable force to prevent harm to yourself and others, or to property. What's reasonable or not is up to the jury. Lethal force only to prevent immediate lethal risk to yourself or others, and even then you'd better be careful.
If the burglar's already retreating, you can't shoot him, because there's no immediate threat.
The effect of the weapons laws is just that you're less likely to have a gun on hand to defend yourself with.
If the burglar's already retreating, you can't shoot him, because there's no immediate threat.
If he's in your house, you can in some states.
The effect of the weapons laws is just that you're less likely to have a gun on hand to defend yourself with.
"Now, Hank, say someone breaks into your house. You do not have a gun. How are you going to shoot him?"
FWIW, I have a friend who got mugged by two blokes. One of whom, I think, had a knife. This was a big mistake on their part, as J is well over 6ft and weighs about 17 or 18 stone. He broke, I think, one guy's arm and the other guy's ribs. Or maybe he broke two arms, and some ribs. I can't remember the exact details, although I've told this story here before. The upshot was that he ended up in court on an assault/GBH charge. It was flung out and I don't think the jury even got to decide on it, but even in a case where two men attacked/mugged another, the police/CPS will prosecute if they think excessive force was used.
I expect I'd need to be vary careful. I'm not remotely tough, but the fact that I'm a 'martial arts instructor' might mean that, if I did end up battering some arsehole, I could find myself in trouble.
99: I dimly recall a NYC case of a mugger suing his intended victim for resisting in a fashion that left the mugger with a concussion, but I'm inclined to doubt memory on that because it seems too close to a Republican anti-tort talking point.
I dimly recall a NYC case of a mugger suing his intended victim for resisting in a fashion that left the mugger with a concussion, but I'm inclined to doubt memory on that because multiple concussions cause memory loss.
My son is watching Top Gear, the BBC test-drive-fast-cars show, on Netflix. It's good-natured enough although a little too dependent on teh fossil fuels.
Suing for anything is possible. Winning is less likely.
103, 104: I am inclined to sue Top Gear's May and Hammond for the intentional infliction of shirt-related emotional distress.
105
shirt-related emotional distress
I was dealing with that this morning. When I moved into the new apartment last month I thought it was pretty cool to have a dry-cleaners in the same building. I took clothes there last week, including a shirt. This morning I tried to put it on and found that they had stapled a number to a tag on the shirt. We probably own an alligator staple-puller or whatever those things are called so I can probably get it out myself, but still, what the hell kind of policy is that for a dry cleaner's?
Which reminds me that I hate the superstition that British television is superior because of EU human-rights laws quotas for ugly people the authenticity of British actors' and actresses' faces and bodies and the crushing misery of post-industrial urban Britain
The thing is though, most of the best dark British comedy of recent years hasn't been set in crushingly miserable post-industrial towns. It's usually been set in middle class London or suburbia. There are exceptions (people seem to rate Shameless, though it doesn't do much for me, and there was a brief Rab C Nesbitt revival).
In some U.S. states, various doctrines affecting self-defense cases have been hot topics recently (i.e., can Joe Six-Gun shoot a retreating burglar?), but I have no sense of how other countries treat the issues
A retreating burglar case was a huge story in England a while back thanks to the likes of the Daily Mail, complicated by the fact that the killed burglar was just 16. The shooter was convicted of murder but it was rather dodgily reduced to manslaughter on appeal.
107: If the 16 year old was in the house, the shooter wouldn't have faced charges in much of the U.S.
107, 108: Murder would be an unusually harsh charge in the U.S., unless the shooter happened to be provably lying about the circumstances of the shooting. Was the defendant patently racist or otherwise self-undermining?
If he's in your house, you can in some states.
Which is, frankly, lunatic. In Britain you wouldn't even be allowed to do that in Afghanistan, if you see what I mean. Retreating = no threat = no justification for shooting.
rE: 1009
Iirc, he shot him in the back while he was running away.
110: Brit rules of engagement forbid firing on retreating combatants? That seems unusual, given the circumstances (counterinsurgency, non-uniformed irregulars, etc.).
It would be ashame to miss an opportunity to defend yourself against Hinder/aker.
109: see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_%28farmer%29
The defendant was clinically nuts, and had been lying in wait with an illegal weapon, which didn't help his case.
I don't think U.S. law ever specifically says you can go ahead and shoot someone in the back. It just says you can shoot to stop a crime, including a property crime, in your own home. Also, it isn't every state.
115: There were two of them, only one shoot in the back. I don't think this guy would have gotten charged around here. (A pump-action shotgun is a bog standard weapon around these parts, primarily a hunting and skeet weapon.)
112: yes. And it's exactly because of the confused circumstances: people running away may well be civilians. You're certainly not supposed to shoot to protect property; kill one thief and his entire extended family will be after you.
The rules in question are "Card Alpha", described in court here
www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk/.../al_skeini_hc_judgment.doc
CARD A - GUIDANCE FOR OPENING FIRE FOR SERVICE PERSONNEL AUTHORISED TO CARRY ARMS AND AMMUNITION ON DUTY
GENERAL GUIDANCE
1. This guidance does not affect your inherent right to self-defence. However, in all situations you are to use no more force than absolutely necessary.
FIREARMS MUST ONLY BE USED AS A LAST RESORT
2. When guarding property, you must not use lethal force other than for the protection of human life.
PROTECTION OF HUMAN LIFE
3. You may only open fire against a person if he/she is committing or about to commit an act likely to endanger life and there is no other way to prevent the danger.
CHALLENGING
4. A challenge MUST be given before opening fire unless:
a. To do this would be to increase the risk of death or grave injury to you or any other persons other than the attacker(s),
OR
b. You or others in the immediate vicinity are under armed attack.
5. You are to challenge by shouting:
"NAVY, ARMY, AIR FORCE,
STOP OR I FIRE." Or words to that effect.
OPENING FIRE
6. If you have to open fire you are to:
a. Fire only aimed shots,
AND
b. Fire no more rounds than are necessary,
AND
C. Take all reasonable precautions not to injure anyone other than your target.
So if someone's running away, they're not "committing or about to commit an act likely to endanger life", so you can't shoot them.
You can own pump-action shotguns here, too, but you need a license, and there are restrictions that apply.
The only restriction here is that you can't saw the barrel.
As far as I can tell, a standard shotgun license, which doesn't require you to provide a reason for ownership, and is fairly easy to get, requires that pump action guns be modified to allow no more than 2 shells in the magazine plus one in the barrel. So a max of 3 shots. However, there's another category of license which you can apply for, where you could get round that restriction if you can show good reason for owning such a weapon. This second category also entitles you to own rifles [for stalking], and so on. All handguns are illegal.
If you get caught in the field* with a shotgun that holds more than three shots, the game warden will cite you.
*Mostly. Some types of hunting you can have more.
However, there's another category of license which you can apply for, where you could get round that restriction if you can show good reason for owning such a weapon.
My skeet shooting thingy is stuck on "super fast", honest.
Anyway, I don't have a rifle. I also don't have arrows, but I do have a compound bow. Maybe I'll get some arrows for Christmas.
I shoot traditional recurved bows with wooden arrows (targets, not hunting). One of my older bows (55 lb draw) snapped in my hand recently, which was startling to say the least.
Modern Family is hilarious. I have a fondness for Big Bang Theory, but only because it supposedly takes place in my hometown.
This second category also entitles you to own rifles [for stalking], and so on.
I feel I should clarify that by "stalking" ttaM means it in the Scottish sense of "hunting deer" rather than the English and US sense of "obsessively pursuing people to whom one is attracted". I made that mistake myself once.
127: And the deer just ate the flowers.
I used to shoot a mixture of the usual laminate wooden composite recurve bow, and some sort of fibreglass compound bow. It's been a long time, though.
We used to have archery at school, and I used to shoot at a club for a while when I was in high school.
I feel I should clarify that by "stalking" ttaM means it in the Scottish sense of "hunting deer" rather than the English and US sense of "obsessively pursuing people to whom one is attracted". I made that mistake myself once.
Uh-huh. Tell it to the bobbies, ajay.
I'm always curious if The Wire ever made "Stuff White People Like" because verily it is that, but in less charitable moments I'd say it's also the kind of thing liking which makes people think they are not the kind of people who like stuff white people like. I am leaving that sentence exactly as it is.
I really do think this (the past 10 years) is the golden age of TV.
Let me pitch the show I always pitch in these conversations: Heimat, the German miniseries. You can get it on Netflix! It's subtitled and readily accessible! I'd say this is easily the greatest TV program of all time -- I love the Wire and many other shows, but this blows them out of the water, especially if you have any interest in history Story of a village from 1919 to the mid-1980s. There's a sequel of sorts that is set in Munich in the 1960s, which is also phenomenal.
Maybe Blume has seen it? Anyhow, it's incredible and if you watch it I promise to talk about it with you online.
I've already spoken of my deep, somewhat disturbing love for Top Gear. "The Inbetweeners" is another really good Brit show, probably the best teen comedy I've seen since Freaks and Geeks. Mad Men, of course, the new Eastbound and Down is almost matching the genius of the original ("I love your racism bro"!) and I've really enjoyed Boardwalk Empire but that may be because I have a love for the decor that era and have a big crush on the Art
59: I thought my parents were, as I like to say, missing the point in a way that verges on the athletic when they said of Seinfeld "wait but all these people are really awful!" And then I watched the first disc of Always Sunny and turned into my parents. Though I would say that my dislike of the show was maaaaybe less about the people being awful than about the ecole de Southpark thing, the whole "laugh when I say something offensive or you're a pansy" aesthetic.
It seems like cultivating an obsession with not being swpl is basically a doomed enterprise, since you have to be swpl to develop such an obsession in the first place.
Stating the obvious, I know.
131: I don't know if The Wire made the list, but you could probably start a big fight if you were to strongly insist that it should be on there, and then ruminate on what it means to like The Wire.
I just started Heimat, which does indeed look promising. Will join discussion group.
Oudemia (does that have a vocative?) I was curious how you ended up feeling about The Religion Episode of Glee. I was in equal parts pleased and frustrated. On the one hand, two atheist characters and an agnostic in one episode of a mainstream tv show?! On the other, the scene at Mercedes' church struck me as, oh, a little on the charitable side. (But then I am an asshole about this. A friend once said to me "any time you start talking about religion you sound like Pol Pot.")
Completely incidentally I had a moment of hesitation about the choice of "Losing my Religion" because I remembered hearing at the time the song came out that it was a southern idiom for "losing it"/"losing one's shit" and naught to do with religion at all.
"The Inbetweeners" is another really good Brit show, probably the best teen comedy I've seen since Freaks and Geeks
Really? I reckon it's rubbish. Really, really rubbish. Heimat is great though.
Oudemia (does that have a vocative?) I was curious how you ended up feeling about The Religion Episode of Glee
Amanda at Pandagon has a post on the subject, if you're interested.
137 -- awesome! I found the first episode to be the slowest, so it gets better from there.
(I'm not really committed to a full-throttle defense of the Inbetweeners, which is just a sitcom, but I thought it does as good a job of capturing what it's like to be a teenage boy, awfulness and all, then anything else on TV I can think of).
139: Thanks! I'm only halfway through and already found a good expression of what rubbed me wrong: "...the show even went with the annoying 'atheists are just mad at god' route..."
Completely incidentally I had a moment of hesitation about the choice of "Losing my Religion" because I remembered hearing at the time the song came out that it was a southern idiom for "losing it"/"losing one's shit" and naught to do with religion at all.
The song is not about losing relgious faith, but it fit ok because Finn wouldn't be able to figure that out.
My problem was that the rendition of the song was terrible karaoke.
Thing from comments thread @ Pandagon that made me laugh uncontrollably for about a minute, someone saying they stopped watching Dexter because "It was like watching [C]ats. Just couldn't identify with a single character."
My problem was that the rendition of the song was terrible karaoke
This is why I leave Glee to my thirteen year old daughter and American Idol to my wife. That little kid on America's Got Talent could sing, so there is that.
I have been wishing there were an archery range in NYC closer to me than Nowhere, Queens. I liked it quite a bit when I was at summer camp during the Van Buren Administration.
I thought it does as good a job of capturing what it's like to be a teenage boy, awfulness and all, then anything else on TV I can think of
Maybe, but that doesn't make it funny.
That little kid on America's Got Talent could sing, so there is that.
The kid who sang Puccini? I had an opera queen friend absolutely go off on what an abomination that was.
The kid who sang Puccini? I had an opera queen friend absolutely go off on what an abomination that was.
It's OK. Her mom was a stewardess and a Playboy bunny, and now they travel the world.
49: Party Down lives no more; long live Party Down.
140/146: I always heard people say Freaks & Geeks was so great because it showed just how awful it was to be in high school, and my reaction was "that is the easiest thing in the world to portray, and about the biggest cliche I can think of." Yeah, the show portrayed that particular flavor of discomfort with relentless fervor, but for me that made it perfectly unwatchable.
I am having a verbose day and overcommenting.
I am having a verbose day and overcommenting.
It is not possible for you to overcomment!
Unfogged needs every thought you have!
I'm addressing all of you, not just Mister Smearcase.
The show I just adore that no one else seems to watch: American Pickers. I love that show. Likable people who go to interesting places to look at old stuff through HD cameras? Sign me up.
My TV watching is extremely spotty, though, as I spend very little time in front of the TV just looking at the TV. In any given week I probably watch maybe five hours of television drawn from a long list of candidates. The only shows I have the potential to watch while they're actually airing are Venture Brothers, Castle and The Daily Show. The Colbert Report is a regular-but-not-mandatory. The Daily Show's near-total lack of Samantha Bee - the funniest person they've ever had on staff, period - greatly diminishes my interest in it.
There are a few shows I always enjoy - Mythbusters, Ace of Cakes, The Rockford Files - but don't need to watch every time they come on. I really like 30 Rock and Community but I'm extremely picky about comedy; both the Parks & Rec-to-Always Sunny and the Big Bang Theory-to-How I Met Your Mother ends of the comedy spectrum make me want to murder people in public. There are plenty of shows I'll watch now and then - among them Glee, which I find entertaining and frustrating - but which could go away tomorrow without impacting my life in any way at all.
152: I do sometimes watch Pickers (mentioned in a comment on that thread that got on the Hoarders) and that Pawn Shop one. Other than that it is soccer and other sports and Reno 911. I seem to have no capacity for serial entertainment (Twin Peaks is about the last I watched as it aired, plus I caught up on Arrested Development online a couple of years ago), although I agree that it seems to be a Golden Age for TV. The reversal that has taken place between movies and TV over the last few decades is really something.
I like "Pickers", too. Less staged than my show, although they rarely get big ticket items for the wow factor, like we do.
Mmmmmmm, Twin Peaks. I need to watch it again this winter.
Rah has spent a lot of time acting and directing and adapting for the stage, so he enjoys television shows as technical exercises: he enjoys watching writers wrestle with an overtaxed genre or format in search of creative angles and he enjoys watching actors deliver quality performances, especially within a restrictive format. He also has a weakness for police procedurals. A lot of our time in front of the TV is me reading a book and him analyzing a L&O derivative or Homicide or Hill Street Blues.
To some degree I find it very difficult to enjoy any TV at all because I was a Comm Studies major and there's a part of me that is professionally trained to dissect everything in search of potentially bullshit readings and I can only rarely turn that off. I also have a lot of problems with crime dramas in general because the war movie paradox applies: it's impossible to make a cop show that doesn't glorify an authoritarian approach to life. Either the cops are always right or the cops are terrible people but they're the stars of the show so we're supposed to root for them anyway. That's part of why I enjoy Castle, actually, because it's about a non-cop constantly ruffling the feathers of the pros. That probably explains my love of Perry Mason reruns as a child, too, for that matter.
It's available for sale on Amazon, but Netflix is showing the original Heimat series as "DVD Availability Unknown". I can get the second series, but do I need to have seen the first to appreciate it? If not, I'm game, but I'll have to somehow manage not to leave unreturned Netflix DVDs around the apartment for weeks at a time if I'm ever going to get through the whole thing.
I'll put in a plug here for another (and significantly shorter) made-for-TV European family saga, Best of Youth.
156: I borrowed it from the library and, uh, stored a backup on my hard drive. So that I didn't keep other library patrons from enjoying it, you know.
I'll take this opportunity to plug, again, the British series Ultraviolet from the late '90s. It's available on Amazon, possibly on Netflix, and it's the best six episodes of vampire-related fiction ever filmed for television. It's about a team of vampire hunters but the word "vampire" is never used at any point in the show. It stars Jack Davenport (of Coupling and FlashForward) and Idris Elba (The Wire) and Stephen Moyer (True Blood) and the really enjoyably distressingly clinical Susannah Harker who doesn't seem to have done anything else I would expect anyone to recognize. They're all absurdly beautiful, too, so it escapes the fictional fiction (or however deeply that's nested) that all UK TV stars realistic fatties like me.
156 -- that's too bad. I got the first series on Netlix a few years ago -- I wonder what happened. Anyhow, you definitely don't need to have watched the first series to enjoy the second -- they share a single character but are otherwise completely independent, in terms of plot, characters and everything else (other than the style of the show).
Oh, I like The Inbetweeners, those that I've watched anyway. Makes me laugh. Tonight we watched Modern Family with the kids and now An Idiot Abroad is on which is funny too. This one isn't as funny though.
158 - Jack Davenport should always be referred to as Miles out of This Life. Except when talking to children, when you can mention Pirates of the Caribbean.
Let me put in a vote for The League. hysterically funny.
I have no television recommendations, but I can say that Waiting for Superman was one of the cruelest, most emotionally manipulative pieces of propaganda I've seen in a long time. And I say that as someone who agrees with many of its premises.
Wait for someone to YouTube the bits with Geoffrey Canada, and just watch those by themselves.
158: Ultraviolet is terrific, and carefully missed the entire vampire frenzy that started just after it was cancelled. You may recognise Susannah Harker, by the way, from the 1990s BBC "Pride and Prejudice" in which she played Jane Bennet.
In look and feel it's basically Spooks/MI5 with vampires.
You may recognise Susannah Harker, by the way, from the 1990s BBC "Pride and Prejudice" in which she played Jane Bennet
You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.
158/60: Jack Davenport also played the dad half of a suburban Chicago couple who takes up swinging in the 70s. I can't for the life of me remember what the series was called, but it was pretty good, I thought, even if it lasted only 12 episodes or so.
166: I went to summer camp and played sports with the guy who created that (he lived in the adjacent north shore suburb) during the period depicted by the show. I meant to check out the show for that reason but never did before it got axed.
1667 - does he do an American accent?
168: Yes! Perfectly. The show was called Swingtown -- and like I said, I thought it was rather good.
Ah, Swingtown is being shown on one of the freeview channels here. Not watched it, just seen it in the programme guide.
Asilon: ITV1/ITV3 according to the RT website.
Big Bang Theory-to-How I Met Your Mother
This is amusing to me because I really enjoy Big Bang Theory (while conceding that it has all sorts of weaknesses) and I couldn't stand How I Met Your Mother at all (despite thinking that NPH was entertaining).
I just watched the second half of Glee Season 1 on DVD, and I have to say that I like it, even if it's rare to have an episode that truly lives up to its potential (and, god, the one thing that may get me to stop watching the show eventually is that the music choices are so predictable and conservative).
I think Glee has a lot of strengths and a lot of weaknesses and that the best thing you can say for it is that it's willing to just run with that. There's times when I throw my hands up in frustration and then, when the episode ends, I still find myself charmed by it (I say, with some embarrassment, because the show obviously tries way too hard to be charming).
Huh. Reading this NYTimes piece on Swingtown shows me that Blandings' pal likely knows CA or CA's brother, depending. Although New Trier is a big school.
Rfts on Ultraviolet. Her review begins, "Idris Elba remains very handsome."
172: I moved to Minneapolis right before high school, so unless CA attended my extremely not-big grade school and/or Camp Douglas Smith, I probably don't know him.
174: "Blandings' pal." I thought you were from MN. CA went to elementary school in Toronto. And then Central School in Wilmette, I think.
Oops. Perhaps if I'd stuck around to go to New Trier, I'd have learned how to read.
Did anyone here watch Brimstone? A cow-orker whose recommendations I normally like suggests I look for it.
idris alba does, indeed, remain very handsome.
177: It is far from perfect but there is much to recommend it. It's a clever idea and it has appealing leads and its metaplot doesn't get in the way of the popcorn fun of its inherently monster-of-the-week nature. I loved it, but it hits several genre sweet spots for me that, combined, make it almost impossible for me not to like it - including that it was cut short before it had a chance to go completely off the rails.
177: it's not available on DVD. So your co-worker is cruelly mocking you.