Muse: Linky Love
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That was highly entertaining.
Well, kinda. It was a bit like watching people on Jersey Shore/Macaroni Rascals choose their clubbing outfits: the WTFness burned my eyes.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
And with the marketing and hype backing of Puff Daddy I thought it might get big, but I wonder if he doesn’t know what to do with actual bona fide talent.
To be fair, he could have forced her to ditch the tux and go for a more obviously "commercial" sound and image. What I really love about The Arch Android is the kind of fearless "fuck you" to genre boundaries that made Prince at his prime so thrilling. Is every track equally successful? No, but anyone who cites "Princess Leia's cinnamon buns hairstyle", Salvador Dali, Philip K. Dick, Mary Poppins, and Bob Marley's smile as inspirations is never boring.
And, yes, anyone who is going to invoke such an iconic moment as "getting caped" -- and pulling it off -- has serious chops.
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(ETA: Or do you mean ‘themes’ of success within the show itself? In which case: of course. American work culture is a whole different, weird-ass beast…)
Yep, that’s it. What struck me about the US version of the Office is that it didn’t really seem like that bad a place to work in. Oh sure, the jobs were pretty menial, and their boss was a walking gaffe machine, but there was none of the soul-crushing claustrophobia and toe-curling management-beauracratise that was such a hallmark of the original version. It seemed like people actually want to get ahead in that particular environment, whereas in the UK version, the two “heroes” ,Tim and Dawn, can only fufil their dream if they manage to escape.
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If we were searching for an overly trite comparison of UK vs US television, it might be that British shows take horrible characters and intentionally make them sympathetic, while American shows take sympathetic characters and unintentionally make them horrible. Curb Your Enthusiasm is surely the exception that proves the rule.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Yep, that’s it. What struck me about the US version of the Office is that it didn’t really seem like that bad a place to work in.
True enoiugh. But after the non-troversy over Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes, here’s another question: How would the delicate petals handle an American Office that was twenty six episodes of relentless, cringe-making humiliation like the original? I’m probably going to get slapped for another ridiculous generalisation, but there’s a reason why shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development and The Larry Sanders Show are cults in no risk of becoming a major religion.
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I have to disagree - sometimes it happens the other way around - Alf Garnett/Archie Bunker for example
My fave American "let's just use the first year's script of the UK show" was 3's Company in which many of the jokes were because the male character was named "Robin" and people kept assuming he was female - the 'Merkins named him 'Jack' and then were sort of stuck, which resulted in a bunch of mincing and "people keep assuming I'm gay" fudges to try and get around it
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"yank” once got me accused of being racist or demeaning or somesuch, whereas I meant it no differently than “Kiwi”
An acquaintance from Texas once got very grumpy about being called a Yank. Which of course meant that absolutely everyone referred to him that way all the time, even when it wasn't necessary.
My understanding is that Americans from the South and South-West use 'Yank' to refer to those from the North-Eastern states.
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soul-crushing claustrophobia and toe-curling management-beauracratise that was such a hallmark of the original version....the two “heroes” ,Tim and Dawn, can only fufil their dream if they manage to escape.
The use of the clunking photocopier as a sort of between-scenes punctuation to really ram that point home was quite inspired, i think.
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Andre Alessi, in reply to
I have to disagree – sometimes it happens the other way around – Alf Garnett/Archie Bunker for example
True, but it's rare, and that approach stands out on American telly as unusual. I mean, it's hard to argue that the main characters in Friends were supposed to be pleasant and inoffensive, but I would seriously consider murder-suicide over having to inhabit the same room as the lot of them. Probably the best example of all this is Will & Grace, I guess-the titular characters were meant to be sympathetic in their normality, but they were so bland that the quirky offsiders, Jack & Karen, carried the show because they were allowed to be unpleasant (as much as anyone could carry such an awful piece of tosh.)
On the UK side, you have brilliant creations like David Brent, Alan Partridge, the Royle Family, Malcom Tucker etc
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Tom Beard, in reply to
I've often been puzzled by anglicised/americanised editions that localise the spelling - as if one couldn't deal with the few differences.
I've been having a different but related problem: if one's writing is set in a deliberately unspecified country, how does one deal with spelling and vocabulary differences? And vernacular is even more difficult.
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Steve Parks, in reply to
[Rich Lock said:] My understanding is that Americans from the South and South-West use ‘Yank’ to refer to those from the North-Eastern states.
Mine too, but I also thought when used by non-Americans it was simply slang for Americans, but not nasty per se.
Interesting. I think of ‘Yank’ a bit like ‘Pom’: not particularly nice. It always calls to mind a lot of ignorant people pontificating meanspiritedly around a BBQ (and then shutting up awkwardly as soon as they work out my background). But that could just be my issues. :)
Yeah I can see it. Burly obnoxious types talking of “bloody Pomies”, and “bloody Yanks” while flipping burger patties and swilling beer, that kinda thing. My accuser may have had a point. On the other hand, I don’t think ‘Pom’ per se would be enough to get an English person calling racism.
And Yankee Doodle is the official anthem of Connecticut:
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I picked up an ereader in the weekend mainly because it seemed the best way to keep buying books while not running out of space. I buy about one book a week so they tend to stack up (a standard paperback in the UK seems to be about 7-10 pounds, so 15-22$NZ, which is cheaper than NZ, iirc, where they were about at the 25-35$ mark in 07 when I left) and selling, gifting, shipping or otherwise disposing of books when moving countries was not fun and I don't want to repeat the experience.
The Kindle has a few magazine and newspaper subscriptions on offer, so I've trialled a couple and I suspect this may be one of the more useful functions. That and the 3G coverage in 100 countries included in the purchase price
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