I stumbled into watching this show on Apple+. “Physical.” It stars Rose Byrne and it’s set in the ’80s, about a woman who finds her calling in teaching aerobics. (Remember aerobics, ladies? Grapevine left, grapevine right, all that? Ah, memories.) The main action is set in 1986 and 1981, and I keep spotting what I’m calling linguistic anachronisms, i.e. people using words and phrases that they didn’t use in 1981. Hey, I was there. I know.
Such as? The main character says to herself, “I will eat clean,” an expression that is very, very recent, not 40 years old. Her husband, a professor at a crappy college, has one of his students as the last guest at a party and tells his wife, privately, “I think she wants to hook up with us,” another wrong-o. A 1981 man would have used the term “menage a trois,” the term of the era; hookup is a hip-hop era term. Some surfers call her a “bee-yotch,” another nope from me. And one more: “Impactful,” which is so recent it still sets my teeth on edge.
I guess there are two schools of thought about this. One is that, as a writer, you want to reach the audience you have, so if it takes eating clean and bee-yotch to do it, no one really cares. The other is that a period piece is a period piece, and people need to speak in the language of the time you’re portraying. (Except in strange in-between spaces that are almost a form of magical realism; I tried to watch the Emily Dickinson thing, also on Apple+, and the language was so jarring I just couldn’t, as the kids say. I couldn’t handle Emily telling her pals, “You’re so extra.”)
But it bugs me. “Mad Men” was famously loyal to all that stuff. There was some hoo-ha early on where Don was wearing a watch in 1960 that didn’t hit the market until 1961, and I recall Laura Lippman saying something about a character noting a driving time between Manhattan and Rehoboth Beach that was insanely incorrect, but I only noticed a few linguistic anachronisms that took me out of the action, and now I can’t even remember them.
One final note about “Physical” – the husband character loses his job at the crappy college and dispiritedly tells his wife the only school that seems to be interested in him is Denison. “In Ohio?” the wife says, with the same misery in her voice. OK, sure, there’s snow, but given that he’s a student-fucking sleaze bag, ending up at Denison would be like driving your car off the road and landing in the master suite at the Ritz-Carlton.
Pretty dumb show, yes.
Speaking of Laura Lippman, I have her new book and would rather be reading it than doing this. So I leave you with just this, an advance look at yet another Trump book, this one about the pandemic:
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil.
“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the president reportedly asked those assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020, before the U.S. outbreak would explode. “What about Guantánamo?”
“We import goods,” Trump specified, lecturing his staff. “We are not going to import a virus.”
Kiiiiinda wish we’d known this earlier, but OK, whatever. Guantanamo. I ask you.
OK, one more. Tonight’s dinner, an asparagus/ham/shallot/mushroom souffle, and the best one yet:
It was delicious.
Julie Robinson said on June 22, 2021 at 9:44 pm
Wait, after that big Saturday night meal you’re cooking again? I would have hung it up for the week and proclaimed it Costco chicken/lasagna/pizza week.
Like Nancy, I am really bugged when the details are wrong, be it language, flowers blooming in the wrong season, or coffee cups and luggage that are light and obviously empty. If you can’t be bothered to even present a coffee cup of the correct weight, how can you be trusted to get the big stuff right?
So here’s a good example: the contractor bought and installed the wrong toilet today. On the original specs he had your basic stupid cheap toilet, one that will cost him nothing but cost you over and over on the water bill. We wanted a tall, dual-flush model, discussed it at length, and had it included in the specs.
Today, they sent a picture–you guessed it, they installed the stupid toilet. It’s getting fixed, at huge cost to him. In a nutshell, our building experience.
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Deborah said on June 22, 2021 at 10:09 pm
Good for you Julie, stick it to the contractor when they get it wrong, they are often scammers. Installing a toilet isn’t a big deal we had a new one installed in the condo in Santa Fe and they moved our toilet around multiple times in Chicago when they were relining the pipes in the building. It seems like a horrendous undertaking but it’s really not. Don’t get me wrong, i wouldn’t want to do it but it’s totally doable.
As for period pieces there are so many that get it wrong, especially make up on women.
One more day of 90 degrees tomorrow and the the highs are in the low 80s around here, one or two days don’t even make it out of the 70s.
Our artist neighbor who we are letting use 2/3 of our garage to store stuff since he lost his studio of 28 years, to gentrification in Santa Fe has offered LB a print of one of his paintings which is fantastic. He’s offered us more but we haven’t been able to coordinate looking at them yet. LB and I are planning another kitchen project but right now we have so may irons in the fire outside because of all of the planting issues we are putting that on temporary hold.
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Nancy Friedman said on June 22, 2021 at 10:38 pm
Oh, “Mad Men” was full of anachronisms, linguistic and otherwise. Here’s one list: https://www.vulture.com/2013/04/18-mad-men-anachronisms-spotted-by-the-internet.html
Here’s another batch, from Benjamin Schmidt:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/the-foreign-language-of-mad-men/254668/
One of the show’s more glaring verbal anachronisms wasn’t a word, it was a sound–roughly, “awwa,” uttered in a rising-and-falling tone. Totally out of place in 1960s dialogue.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wordroutes/mad-men-capturing-the-sound-of-the-60s/
Back to your regularly scheduled programming! Gorgeous souffle, NN.
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nancy said on June 23, 2021 at 6:57 am
This brought back the one I couldn’t remember: “I need you to be on the same page.” Good lists, all of them.
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alex said on June 22, 2021 at 10:46 pm
Mad Men was about advertising. People I knew in that business were always getting comped with avant bling (although bling wasn’t a word yet). A wristwatch six months ahead of its time? Probably on the person of the person charged with selling it.
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Joe Kobiela said on June 22, 2021 at 10:48 pm
Try being a pilot and trying to sit thru a movie or tv program that has airplanes in it, it’s so unbelievable the things they get wrong or the way they speak on the radio. Don’t even get me started on The Airplane Repo show.
Pilot Joe
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Julie Robinson said on June 22, 2021 at 10:56 pm
There was some nonsense about a 10 inch vs 12 inch rough in, and that it had been done even before the concrete was poured. He had the specs and 50 pages of drawings from the architect in October, and the concrete wasn’t poured until February. Later he claimed it was a single ple clerical order, and then his wife tried to say she had bought the wrong one.
Pick a story, will you?
They had no intention of telling us it was the stupid toilet either. I looked at the picture and noticed the flush handle was in a different place than the one we wanted, or else no one would have been the wiser.
Every single thing has been like this, and I am not exaggerating. We don’t have the flooring or tile we wanted because they don’t buy anything until the day they need it, and they were out of stock. They poured the concrete too high and spent three days grinding it down, right into our pool. The plumber wrecked the existing water heater so that we had to buy a bridge water heater, reinstalled the old one after the concrete was poured, then finally screwed up the installation of the new hybrid water heater and caused a flood.
Sorry, needed a moment to vent.
This is on top of spending all day telling my mother she no longer has time to organize, we just have to get the stuff in boxes.
Plus, can I just say, if we have offered you nice furniture for free and you say you want it, but are always too busy, or on vacation, or don’t actually have a vehicle or people to transport it, then yes, I will be angry. We could simply have had the Habitat for Humanity Restore pick it all up, but we were trying to help out family.
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Dexter Friend said on June 23, 2021 at 1:23 am
Remember “Journey Man”, the excellent show about a man with a family who found himself time traveling at inappropriate times? The most memorable scene was when he found himself aboard a commercial airliner. The “stews” were dressed in skimpy sexy uniforms, the drinks were sloshing around in everybody’s hands, and the plane was filled with thick smoke as nearly every passenger was smoking. The aisle was clogged with drunken smokers socializing. And it was spot on, just perfect. It really was like that. This was when people sorta wore “good clothes” and not crocs and basketball shorts & tank tops to travel like now. They nailed that as well.
I remember when smoking was banned aboard aircraft; there was an uproar and warnings from “experts” that smokers would go absolutely mad if deprived of cigarettes for even short flights, let alone international long-hauls. Now it is a federal offense to be caught smoking in an airplane toilet.
I do know studios hire technical spotters to correct wrong dress and jewelry settings, and to spot Starbucks cups in medieval dragon series shows. The extent of the fuckups nance reported is astounding. I have seen mistakes, we all have. Only one I thought was preposterous when nobody else noticed. I saw “Midnight Cowboy” first run at The Brown Theater in Louisville when I was a trainee in the US Army on a weekend pass. A cutaway showed lead actor Joe Buck (Jon Voight) home on leave for his gramma’s funeral. He was a buck private, and his hair was way too long for the period, and his sideburns extended way below his earlobes. Since we were harangued daily about appearance, I knew Joe Buck never would have been permitted to look like that. Even in fucking Vietnam we were hounded to shave and have short hair. I shoulda been a movie scene spotter! Missed my calling.
Some progress: I caught the new neighbor and he agreed to at least look into removing the Chinese elm that shed 3 huge branches 2 nights ago , scraping my house siding. That monster tree hanging over my house has been a bane for years.
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ROGirl said on June 23, 2021 at 4:26 am
A line from Downton Abbey sticks with me. The Earl is speaking about another character and says, “he has a lot on his plate.” That term just struck me as off for a British aristocrat in the 1920s.
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Dorothy said on June 23, 2021 at 5:31 am
I Googled “when did the phrase ‘a lot on my plate’ originate?” And I found one reference that it started in the 1920’s, and another said in the 90’s. I think they meant the 1890’s (maybe?)
I pay attention to stuff like getting the language right, fabric in dresses, etc. I’m not an expert on clothing but I can usually spot glaring errors. Has anyone else watched Lupin on Netflix? I only watched one episode but they dubbed the French speaking actors with English speaking ones, and I can’t stand the one they use for the lead character. It just doesn’t seem to ‘go with’ the way he looks. Does that make sense?!
Julie our son and his wife moved into their new home which they helped design/choose furnishings and they’re mad at themselves for NOT picking the taller toilets. He has mentioned he’s probably going to replace the toilets himself eventually. I think it’s only a difference of 2” but it’s a huge difference when you go to sit down on a shorter one and you have bad knees. I consciously chose the taller ones for our house – the same builder that did our son’s home – so I’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure the right ones go in.
Donating goods is our default now – not offering much to anyone anymore because when I want something gone, I want it gone NOW not in three weeks. We’ve slowed down (stopped) packing anything for a few months now because they haven’t even broken ground on our house yet. That might change in the next month. But we got a good start. The garage is going to be the killer to pack. I’m glad I’m not responsible for that. If I WAS, at least 1/3 of what’s out there would be in a dumpster.
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nancy said on June 23, 2021 at 6:59 am
This reminds me of watching one episode of “Bridgerton,” and recalling a lingerie writer I follow on Twitter dismissing it, because in the opening scenes a young lady is being “tightlaced” into her corset, an act that would have been impossible before the innovation of metal grommets, which wouldn’t come for 17 more years. Not 15, not 20. Seventeen.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 23, 2021 at 7:17 am
On behalf of Denison, thank you!
To be fair, in the early ’80s we were still a safety school for Connecticut scions who hoped to get into an Ivy but lacked the grades or connections to do so.
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Julie Robinson said on June 23, 2021 at 7:50 am
Umm, historical accuracy in Bridgerton? It’s pretty much limited to pulling out as a birth control method.
Dorothy, one person wanted my mother’s good china and crystal for her daughter who is marrying in October. She insisted we could “just pack it up, ship it to Orlando, and drive it to the wedding”. I insisted that if she wanted it, she could bring her own packing materials over, pack it up herself, and figure out how to get it to the wedding. No way would there be space in the back of our little CRV, with four adults and their luggage.
I think she was shocked but she did bring packing materials and spent two hours packing and whining. This particular person has spent her life figuring out ways for other people to take care of the problems she created. But not me.
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Jeff Borden said on June 23, 2021 at 8:53 am
As something of a car nut, I wince when the wrong vehicles are cast in prestige pictures. Martin Scorcese, who has such a knack with finding the right pop music in his films, whiffs several times in “Goodfellas,” including Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) leaning on a 1965 Chevy Impala while contemplating the 1961 Lufthansa airport robbery. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) continues to drive a 1961 Impala convertible deep into the ’60s, when a cheap, loud-mouthed showoff like him would’ve had a new vehicle every year. And probably a Caddy or a Lincoln.
(Full disclosure: I’m one of the dorks who noticed six hubcaps coming off the Dodge Charger in the “Bullitt” car chase.)
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JodiP said on June 23, 2021 at 9:00 am
Julie, that sounds so, so horrible. As if moving weren’t stress enough!
It did remind me of one of the funniest books I read, “L’Appart” in which David Lebovitz the food writer/chef/cookbook author relates the tale of remodeling his newly-purchased apartment. He lived for a few years with a faucet that was installed like this. He finally got it fixed in the last year with some type of extension thingy.
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Heather said on June 23, 2021 at 9:25 am
The one movie anachronism I can think of that really bothers me,off the top of my head, is Richard Gere’s haircut in Days of Heaven. It was such a perfect early 80s coif and so out of place in the rural 1880s setting or whenever it was–it really takes me out of the movie.
I don’t know that knowing Trump wanted to send Americans to Gitmo would have made a bit of difference at the time, sadly.
Who’s been to Hawaii and has recommendations? My friend in LA booked a weekend trip to the Big Island in October and I decided to jump on the opportunity as it’s on my bucket list. She’ll be there for three nights and then I’m there for 5 more days by myself. Trying to decide what other island I should go to, or if I should just stay there. I think it would be either Maui or Kauai for the other one. I like beaches, snorkeling, boat trips, hiking, food (although it doesn’t have to be fancy, I like beach shacks/street food). Not into nightlife and resorts. I’ll be on the Kona side on the Big Island, just FYI.
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nancy said on June 23, 2021 at 9:54 am
The best thing I did in Hawaii was take a city bus from Honolulu to Hanauma Bay State Park. There’s a public beach there that rents (probably no longer, because Covid, etc.) snorkeling equipment, and a gorgeous reef you can easily wade out to — it’s right off the beach. It was spectacular, and I think my total spend for the trip was around $8. If it looks familiar, it’s where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolled in the surf in “From Here to Eternity.”
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Suzanne said on June 23, 2021 at 9:25 am
At least, I solved my Amazon refund mystery which I mentioned here several days ago. Instead of refunding the money to my credit card as I assumed would happen (why wouldn’t they?), Amazon gave me Amazon credit which was supposed to automatically be applied to my next Amazon order (ensuring that I would have to buy through them again). I had ordered something from Amazon from someone’s wedding registry since the refund was supposedly issued and the credit wasn’t automatically applied (some restrictions apply, no doubt). Color me surprised.
The third party seller clearly had no clue where my refund went when I asked but could only tell me that a refund had been issued. I had to dig through my email to find the one from Amazon saying that the refund would be applied to a gift card. I ordered something last night and had to dig around on the payment section to apply the gift card money to my order (automatic? Joke is on me).
I hate Amazon with every fiber of my being.
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Julie Robinson said on June 23, 2021 at 9:25 am
David is a much more patient man than I.
The entire addition was designed for ADA because Mom will be 89 next month. No stairs, only ramped walkways, wide hallways, an adjustable height shower (and if you’re guessing they initially screwed that up too, you win!), the shower could be rolled into if necessary. So, duh, tall toilet. We already replaced the other two for dual flush, and while we were at it we got the tall guys. We all loved them immediately.
We also wanted it to be as energy efficient as possible, so we paid extra for super insulated windows and a hybrid heat pump water heater. We had to fight with him about that too. Why would we buy such an expensive water heater? Between government rebates and efficiency it will pay for itself the first year, and that’s no small thing when you’ve got five people showering and running laundry on an electric water heater. He only saw that it would be more complicated to install.
Remember, we spent a year searching out contractors and in the end only had two bids. The other guy’s bid was, “I think we can get you a real nice addition for this much money”, with no breakdown of costs. Oh, and his company was named Southern Heritage. Ick.
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Pam said on June 23, 2021 at 9:28 am
When language is out of historical context over and over, I quit watching. It bothers me too much, unless it’s intended and part of the story.
The worst and most obvious one is in Independence Day when Jeff Goldblum’s character puts a virus in the computers of the alien invaders using a DOS command. Har Har Har!!
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Mark P said on June 23, 2021 at 9:37 am
I’m a little hesitant to point out language problems because it’s so easy to be wrong about your criticism. And I mean really easy.
But long hair on soldiers and cops is really annoying. I have seen a lot of soldiers in my job and have never seen one with even somewhat longish hair. Not over the ears and never over the collar.
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Icarus said on June 23, 2021 at 10:08 am
Julie Robinson, man you are scaring me with these stories. I can understand a few hiccups, but at this point, I would think that contractor would know that you and David are no fools and would stop trying to nickel and dime you.
I replaced the toilet in our first-floor powder room. It took me a tad longer than a pro but I saved so much money. Pro-tip: get a non-wax ring.
https://www.mysteries-of-life.com/2019/03/spring-is-arriving.html
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Icarus said on June 23, 2021 at 10:11 am
The movie The Untouchables bothered me for a bit because they list 1634 Racine as Jimmy Malone’s address. Neither 1634 North nor 1634 South are viable options for a 1930s Chicago apartment but I suppose I could be wrong about that.
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Heather said on June 23, 2021 at 10:24 am
Icarus, there was a scene in that Sandra Bullock movie While You Were Sleeping where Bill Pullman is walking her home from downtown Chicago…and then when they arrive, the address at her apartment building is something like 2300 north. That would be a long walk.
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ROGirl said on June 23, 2021 at 10:51 am
I hate it when Chicago gangsters have Brooklyn accents.
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alex said on June 23, 2021 at 11:10 am
I always thought Star Trek (the TV series) didn’t look at all futuristic, what with the women done up in 1968 hair with wiglets and makeup with false eyelashes and white lipstick, etc.
Well, I love how our medical industrial complex is so uncoordinated and doesn’t get to the root of problems before you’ve spent a ton of money on things that don’t work. Several years ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and prescribed a CPAP machine. I could never get used to it, felt like I was suffocating while using it. The sleep disorder people kept insisting that I wasn’t trying hard enough. I decided it was pointless to continue the appointments with them if I couldn’t use the machine, so they referred me to a TMJ place to see if they could make me an appliance to open my airways. Well the problem isn’t my jaw. A CT scan shows that the problem is my nose. Deviated septum, bone spurs, all kinds of stuff obstructing air passage, so I’m going to be referred to ENT for surgery to restore my breathing. So I just came home from the TMJ doctor with this information and I’m kind of pissed it has taken this many years for anyone to check out other etiologies instead of insisting on the wrong treatment.
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nancy said on June 23, 2021 at 11:14 am
Pam’s comment reminds me of stuff she’d point out back when she was selling phone systems, including when people on cell phones would get hung up on by whoever they were talking to, and the soundtrack would have a dial tone. And in Roger Ebert’s collection of movie tropes, he noted the was AT&T would put the “death star” logo on all the phones they provided to film sets, but not if the phone would be used to beat someone to death.
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Bitter Scribe said on June 23, 2021 at 11:22 am
Maybe period productions need some sort of script continuity editor, whose job it is to weed out anachronisms.
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Dorothy C Michalski said on June 23, 2021 at 12:08 pm
My daughter pointed out that among her colleagues at The Post, they would groan about scenes showing people driving or walking around D.C. but in wrong directions, considering where the characters were supposed to be going. Or a car would drive past some monument just so it would look pretty in the film, but in reality no one going to that destination would have ever gone that way. Only locals would really mind that stuff, but hey, they pay for their movie tickets, too! They’re allowed to criticize that stuff.
Pittsburgh is used often enough in movies that sometimes we recognize neighborhoods, or at least we think we do. It’s a standing joke in our house that every neighborhood is Regent Square because Mike kept saying that for awhile when we saw, like, 4 or 5 movies filmed around Pittsburgh in the 90’s.
Jamie Lee Curtis spent time in the ‘burgh in 1988 when she filmed Domenick & Eugene. She was on TODAY promoting the movie and we loved when she described the first time she drove from the airport into the city, and the dazzling way you go through the Fort Pitt Tunnels and BOOM all of a sudden, when you exit the tunnel, there’s the skyscape! It is cool and we never get tired of it.
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David C said on June 23, 2021 at 12:49 pm
Pittsburgh looks amazing. At least what I can see from PNC Park.
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Julie Robinson said on June 23, 2021 at 12:57 pm
Icarus, the David I was referring to was the David in JodiP’s comment at 14. My D is Dennis. Who is also much more patient than I, and hasn’t raised his voice or blood pressure once during this entire process, Lord bless him.
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Sherri said on June 23, 2021 at 1:09 pm
Typically around these parts, the rainy season doesn’t end and summer begin until the fifth of July, but not this year. No Junuary this year, we’ve been in the 80s all week and seem headed to triple-digits this weekend, a rare occurrence in Seattle.
I’m glad I put in air conditioning a couple of years ago.
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Mark P said on June 23, 2021 at 1:54 pm
As I’m sure you all know, a lot of movies and some tv shows are filmed in Georgia. I saw one where the characters were going somewhere on an interstate-type highway and recognized it as the short section of a bypass around Rome Ga that goes from nowhere to nowhere. There was also a supernatural tv show where the protagonist had a secret hideaway beneath a large waterwheel and small stone mill house that I recognized as the Old Mill at Berry College.
And, of course, once you have been to San Francisco, you’ll immediately recognize all the popular filming locations, like Lombard Street, Fort Point, and the Palace of Fine Arts.
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alex said on June 23, 2021 at 1:54 pm
Some years ago I attended the screening of a locally made short film. Its story was supposed to take place in the 1940s in West Virginia and the director made a big to-do about how his staff had done a fabulous job of costuming and sets right down to the tiniest period details. He got his hackles up a bit when I asked about a driving scene on what was obviously a flat Indiana road past a ranch-style house with a portable basketball hoop system in the driveway.
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Scout said on June 23, 2021 at 2:56 pm
It is currently 72 degrees and raining in Phoenix. This is quite notable. Last week at this time it was 117 degrees.
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Bitter Scribe said on June 23, 2021 at 3:18 pm
The worst lapse in geography I ever saw was in some TV show that was set in Chicago, and even had the city in its title. They concluded one episode by showing the sun setting over Lake Michigan.
I can forgive traffic on a street going the wrong way or something, but the sun is something you should try to get right. Jeez, a glance at a dime-store globe should have been enough.
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Sherri said on June 23, 2021 at 3:35 pm
Geographical discontinuities distract me. Another thing that distracts me is when a show is set in a particular city, but clearly not filmed in that city. Shots of typical surburban California neighborhoods showing up in shows set in Pittsburgh throw me off every time.
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jcburns said on June 23, 2021 at 3:51 pm
There’s a movie “Bird on a Wire” with Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn that supposedly takes place in Detroit. But it’s a Detroit with mountains in the background and a ferry (which they hijack in this) that goes from Detroit to Racine, Wisconsin.
Yes, you heard me.
It also has that USA Today newsbox on enough street-corners to try to convince you IT IS NOT VANCOUVER. But, yeah, it is.
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Jeff Borden said on June 23, 2021 at 3:54 pm
The reboot of the ‘Star Trek’ movie series –the ones with Chris Pratt as Kirk– showed a young Kirk in Iowa stealing a vintage Corvette Stingray and racing it towards. . .a giant canyon that could only be the one in Arizona. Well, it was science fiction.
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Julie Robinson said on June 23, 2021 at 4:00 pm
Chris Pine. A much finer Chris than Pratt.
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Deborah said on June 23, 2021 at 4:16 pm
Dorothy, I watched seasons 1 and 2 of Lapin on Netflix but with captions not dubbed. I hate dubbed movies because they sound so wrong. Also I love hearing the French being spoken as I read the English captions, I always dream that it will help me learn French but of course that’s a stupid dream. If I did it everyday all day long maybe that would actually help. I enjoyed season 1 better than 2, and I doubt there will be a third season, by the way they wrapped it up. I love watching the scenes that show the city of Paris.
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Deborah said on June 23, 2021 at 4:23 pm
There’s a scene in “Easy Rider” that my husband and I swear goes on highway 554 right past where our land is in Abiquiu. We have watched that clip over and over to try to confirm, but in actuality it’s hard to tell. That and my story of being in the crowd scene of the Elvis movie “Clambake”, it’s really hard to tell.
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Deborah said on June 23, 2021 at 4:28 pm
Julie, I can commiserate, my husband can keep his cool when I’m going completely ape-shit particularly when the rogue condo owner in our association is being a complete asshole about what needs to be done. S can be so calm it’s amazing to me.
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Jeff Borden said on June 23, 2021 at 4:28 pm
Thanks, Julie. Yeah, Chris Pine.
I was probably distracted by disgorging the bile rising in me over the actions of smart, well-educated conservative politicians spewing puke about critical race theory into the empty heads of their followers. Or, perhaps, it was the governor of Floriduh –Yale and Harvard, btw– who has decided all instructors and students at Floriduh universities should declare their political beliefs in a search for “intellectual and political diversity.” They used to call that McCarthyism. It was a thing.
One of my buddies is Jewish. He and his wife are considering relocation to Israel because they believe this nation is going to blow itself up violently and they don’t want to be here with their young kids when it hIts. If I were an not old dude, I wonder if I’d be thinking similar thoughts.
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Julie Robinson said on June 23, 2021 at 4:55 pm
Oh dear God, our nephew is a history prof in Orlando and this will not sit well with him.
Of all the places to move, Israel would be above Africa or Russia, but not much. The whole country is a ticking time bomb and they’ve just elected a PM to the right of Netanyahu. Not good thinking.
Sometimes being calm and well-reasoned does not get results. People think they can drive a steam roller right over you. Sometimes showing a flash of anger at the umpteenth screwup is exactly what needs to be done. Without that, I doubt that we would be getting the right toilet.
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Jeff Borden said on June 23, 2021 at 5:06 pm
Julie,
The fact they would consider Israel is the point. It’s far from a good solution, but as Jews, they are guaranteed a place to live there. And while Israel has been bedeviled by Bibi for a very long time –and there are horrible people worse than him in the Knesset– the nation does have excellent health care, educational facilities and other attractive enticements.
As a mixed breed American of English, Welsh and German descent, there is no place to welcome me. (One of my pals in Chicago obtained a Luxembourg dual citizenship because his great-grandmother hailed from there. I think Ireland also welcomes home its sons and daughters.)
I’m much too old to start a life in another land despite my fantasies about the Iberian peninsula. With luck, the fascists won’t take full control of the nation before I kick.
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Bruce Fields said on June 23, 2021 at 5:21 pm
For what it’s worth, you can turn on French captions if you want.
My reading is good, but my ear for spoken French is so-so. Even though the captions aren’t always an exact transcription, they’re usually enough of a hint for me to decode the tricky bits in the soundtrack.
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LAMary said on June 23, 2021 at 5:57 pm
The big island has gorgeous green forests along the coast. Worth renting a car, preferably convertible, and exploring. I loved the big island.
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David C said on June 23, 2021 at 6:21 pm
I’m in the same boat, Jeff. I have great great grandparents who came from Ireland but you need great grandparents to qualify. I’m here for the duration.
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Deborah said on June 23, 2021 at 6:46 pm
I was having an email back and forth with my right wing sister a couple of months ago and she mentioned Critical Race Theory and I was like, “huh, what are you even talking about?” I had never even heard of it, so this has been on their radar for a while. They have been propagandize this for a long while. These guys are dangerous.
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Julie Robinson said on June 23, 2021 at 7:00 pm
Great grandparents for Irish citizenship? If so, I could qualify, but I thought it was parents or grandparents. A high school classmate went through the process, and it took almost a year between that and getting a mortgage. She lived there less than a year when she slipped in the kitchen and bled out after hitting her head on the lovely Irish slate floor.
This just in: the contractor leaves tomorrow for vacation. Also, this just in: Julie’s head explodes.
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Mark P said on June 23, 2021 at 7:23 pm
I used to watch tv programs to try to figure whether they were filmed in Canada or LA. Now I look at backgrounds to tell whether they’re filmed in Georgia. You can often tell by the type of foliage, but housing is also a good tell. Houses differ fairly noticeably by region.
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Jeff Borden said on June 23, 2021 at 8:17 pm
Shows filmed in L.A. are easy with or without the palm trees, beaches and mountains. The city uses red not the usual yellow to mark no parking zones.
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basset said on June 23, 2021 at 9:03 pm
Mama Basset was English, and I was born before she took US citizenship, so I should have a pretty clear path to settle in the U.K. if the situation should come to that.
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BigHank53 said on June 23, 2021 at 9:31 pm
The movie mistakes that get me are the physical impossibilities. They always get gold bars wrong: the props are aluminum ingots that have been gold plated. They look fine but the weight is all wrong. There’s a scene in Three Kings where one of the characters is holding a good sized gold brick…in one hand. In real life that brick would be about seventy pounds, and I think he’d need two hands, honestly. Pure gold is too soft for the bars to clatter or clank when you drop them, too.
There was that surfing movie about the youngster who lost an arm, and it was glaring that the actor’s arm had simply been green-screened away…but her posture was still that of someone with two arms. Hang a dozen extra pounds off one shoulder and you will need to shift your upper body to keep your center of gravity, well, centered.
In one of the LoTR movies there’s a series of closeups of Gollum’s head at night, and it drove me crazy until I realized that all of his head was in razor-sharp focus. Impossible. Cameras don’t work that way. Eyes don’t even work that way. The less light there is, the shallower of depth of field is. The only way to make that image is to use a computer…and forget that keeping it all in focus will make it look fake.
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Deborah said on June 23, 2021 at 10:41 pm
I’ve asked S to take over my participation in the condo association zoom meetings, we have one coming up Saturday morning . I’m at my wits end with 2 of the owners, one is a guy who thinks if you don’t have a penis you’re not worth listening to. The other is a woman who is completely bonkers, is intimidating and manipulative. It will be interesting to see how things progress.
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A. Riley said on June 23, 2021 at 11:06 pm
I think I spotted a language anachronism in “Trial of the Chicago Seven.” There’s a protest in the park one day, and among the marchers is a hippie girl on her boyfriend’s shoulders waving a flag. This enrages the frat boy types watching and they yell at her — and one yells, “Go make me a sandwich!” (Meaning No Gurls Alloud Exsep in Kitchn.)
Now I don’t think I ever ran across that one until the last couple of years. You?
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LAMary said on June 24, 2021 at 12:01 am
I saw a diner near my house on Parks and Recreation the other day and my sons’ high school is in movies, commercials, tv shows all the time.My neighborhood has lots of 1920s era small houses so in non pandemic years filming goes on here pretty often. The exterior of St. Joseph hospital in Burbank, where I used to work is used as a generic hospital in TV shows all he time.
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Dexter Friend said on June 24, 2021 at 1:48 am
I visited a movie set and had free reign to walk all over it. 8 years after filming, I drove to rural Iowa and the “Field of Dreams” set. Left Field had been returned to corn planting but the rest was all there. A lone elderly lady in a souvenir shack told me to walk the corn field for an ear to take home for a free souvenir. I gleaned a couple ears, and those were the ones my little daughter found and fed to squirrels. I also visited Universal Studios in the LA area, twice…lots of old movie sets remain, and the storage area for old sets and props is amazingly large.
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alex said on June 24, 2021 at 7:36 am
Field of Dreams also filmed on a ball diamond in the 700 or 800 block of North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and green-screened the canyon of hi-rises surrounding it. I was working in the 750 building at the time, back in the early ’90s.
Here in the Fort, they recently shot a Haylie Duff movie, a sequel to some earlier film I never saw, and used several sites near my current workplace including the courthouse and a coffee shop.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24, 2021 at 9:42 am
If I’m going to make more souffles, I need to get an electric mixer. My wrist and whisk aren’t up to beating egg whites like they used to. I tore a forearm muscle a year ago moving out of my church office and it’s still giving me fits.
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Icarus said on June 24, 2021 at 9:57 am
Heather @ 22
That movie has a special place for me for a couple of reasons. First, I joked that they got the idea from me because of course I once asked a CTA Subway booth person out. We went out a few times but the relationship never took off. Over the years I’ve seen her now and again at various turnstiles on the El.
I also went on a date with a lady who lived in the building where they filmed Sandra’s apartment. It’s on Logan Blvd near California Ave.
And of course, the ridiculous idea that someone who lives in Lake Point Tower would have the need to get on the El at Merchandise Mart — I could see once in a while but not as part of your daily routine.
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basset said on June 24, 2021 at 11:30 am
Topic change going back a few weeks… how did that cast iron pan restoration turn out?
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LAMary said on June 24, 2021 at 12:06 pm
Julie, that coffee cup and luggage thing always bugs me too. Not just the weight of the cup but pouring supposedly hot coffee into a mug then just chugging it down. At least in my reality that does not happen.
Alex, the anachronistic hair in Star Trek is consistent with the anachronistic hair in the TV and movie westerns of the sixties. Pioneer women probably did not have teased hair.
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alex said on June 24, 2021 at 12:36 pm
Had forgotten about that. Of course I wasn’t into westerns.
So in other great breaking news, Rudy’s law license has been suspended. I hope it ends up permanently revoked but that remains to be seen.
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Suzanne said on June 24, 2021 at 12:55 pm
I am overly bothered by period movies or tv shows in which the stars all have lovely straight white teeth. Seriously, I doubt people in the middle ages or out on the prairie or the wild west all had nice, straight pearly whites.
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Deborah said on June 24, 2021 at 1:02 pm
They’ve filmed lots of movies in and around Abiquiu, TV shows too. Mostly westerns, lots of period pieces but not always.
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LAMary said on June 24, 2021 at 2:24 pm
For a real thrill you can go out to Vasquez Rocks, a little northwest of LA. That’s where they filmed a lot of scenes of Captain Kirk, Sulu, and maybe Spock or the Doctor guy and some unnamed crew member who will not make it back to the ship (the guy who’s wearing a different colored shirt) landing on a planet.
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Dave said on June 24, 2021 at 3:06 pm
Coffee cups on TV shows are always huge cups, most always larger than any cups we own. The luggage thing always gets me, too.
I’ve watched a lot of old TV westerns from the late fifties, you can sometimes find them on YouTube or IMDb. You frequently see someone fall down before the shot is heard and sometimes without any shot sounding. That and Dodge City being shown with all kinds of hills in a Kansas that never existed. There’s an episode of Have Gun, Will Travel, where an equipment truck is visible while Paladin is riding by on his horse. I remember another show set in Indianapolis and mountains were visible from the suburban street that the main family characters lived on.
Basset, we bought a 2019 Outback right at the end of the model year, almost two years ago now, the last year produced before the integrated screen. We’ve not had any trouble with it and I wasn’t aware that the integrated screen is having so many troubles. That’s too bad it’s giving you such fits, we’ve been very happy with our Outback.
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LAMary said on June 24, 2021 at 3:38 pm
Just accepted a job offer. Good solid big healthcare company. Thank goddess.
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Scout said on June 24, 2021 at 4:40 pm
That is EXCELLENT news, LAMary!
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Deborah said on June 24, 2021 at 5:11 pm
Great news LAMary, good for you.
This can’t be anything but good for this country https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/media-trump-bump-slump/2021/03/22/5f13549a-85d1-11eb-bfdf-4d36dab83a6d_story.html
Having another beautiful, not too hot day in Santa Fe, high of 84 happening now and thunderstorms predicted soon. 20% humidity right now.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24, 2021 at 6:17 pm
Huzzah for LAMary, and the right employment for us all!
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Julie Robinson said on June 24, 2021 at 6:20 pm
Mary, such great news! Not a temp position? May your long saga of crummy jobs be OVAH.
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Colleen said on June 24, 2021 at 7:07 pm
Congratulations LAMary! I hope things work out well!
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Dorothy said on June 24, 2021 at 7:21 pm
Oh Mary I’m so excited for you! That didn’t take very long. But how aggravating/nerve wracking/annoying it must be to keep going through this. Fingers crossed this new position will have the smarts to keep you around for a long while – as long as you need to be employed!
We’re selling my car tomorrow and picking up a new one in PA on Saturday. I’m kind of excited. Last time I got a new car was May 2012. Finding anything in stock is next to impossible these days. My cousin’s husband works for a car dealer and he’s retiring in mid-July. They got 3 Blazers in this morning and I snagged one of them. Woo!
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Deborah said on June 24, 2021 at 8:02 pm
The photos of Sinema next to Biden when he talks to the press about the infrastructure bill makes it seem like she’s got something weird going on under her skirt on her right thigh? What’s up with that?
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Suzanne said on June 24, 2021 at 8:59 pm
Hooray Mary!! Hope this one is great!
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basset said on June 24, 2021 at 9:01 pm
LAMary, that’s wonderful! Congratulations!
Dave, I don’t know how many other Subaru owners have had problems with the integrated screen, but I’ve had enough for several. We sold our 07 Outback, meanwhile, with 194-thousand on it and running great.
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basset said on June 24, 2021 at 9:28 pm
LAMary, that’s wonderful! Congratulations!
Dave, I don’t know how many other Subaru owners have had problems with the integrated screen, but I’ve had enough for several. We sold our 07 Outback, meanwhile, with 194-thousand on it and running great.
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LAMary said on June 24, 2021 at 9:33 pm
The pre boarding paperwork is massive. Two hours so far. Lots of duplication. Everyone keep a good thought that some ex boss doesn’t say I’m a loser or something I had to provide seven years of work history and that included five temp jobs. This new job is also contract but good through 2021 and high probability of longer.
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