QotD: Apple For The Teacher
Who was your best (or worst) primary school teacher?
Submitted by Minnow.
(Question edited for the British market)
My best was Mrs Simm, who taught me in primary 3. She was a lovely woman, with over 40 years of teaching little Scottish brats under her belt. She knew every teaching trick in the books, but still clearly loved her job.
My worst was her immediate predecessor Mrs Pritchard, who was rubbish and confused "bored, bright kid" with "stupid kid". Strangely enough, I can remember Mrs Simm clearly, and have no memory at all of what Mrs Pritchard looked like.
Well, it's nearly Friday Night in Sutton...
further to Andrew's post about the Fashion Police arriving in Sutton:
I can now report that it's the dog section in attendance.
Insert your own joke here.
Hitting The Headlines (on p29)
Just over a week ago, Katie Allen of The Guardian came to visit us here at RBI Towers:
You can also see the results online. All in all, I'm pretty pleased. Hanging the story on the current Avian Flu kerfuffle is no big surprise, and will probably get more readership as a result. There's a couple of small factual errors, and my job title's wrong, but, on the whole. it's great publicity for what we're doing here.
I'll be very interested to see what this does for our traffic over the next few days.
Vox Hunt: It's Like This...
Audio: Share a song that reminds you of a current or past relationship.
QotD: Pass Me The Style Section
Do you read the Sunday paper? Which one(s)?
I alternate between The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer, thereby confusing any watching ninjas attempting to discern my political affiliation.
Ninjas are fascinated by political affiliations..
What I Did On My Weekend
Friday: Drove to Norfolk. Watched while nurses pumped poison into my Mum. Went to the pub. Went home. Spent a fun afternoon creating logins for Flight journalists, and dealing with the news that they're changing Mum's chemo routine.
Saturday: Fixed stuff. Shopped. moved stuff. Cooked a roast meal. Drank beer. Watched a movie.
Sunday: Cooked a full English. Drove to London. Continued putting the flat back together after the carpet fitting. Wrote a really dull Vox post. Went to bed.
Vox Hunt: I'm The VJ
Video: Show us a great music video.
I've loved this video since it first appeared:
I think the common feature both is the perfect matching of visuals to the mood of the song, if not the literal narrative of the lyrics.
QotD: Pleasepleaseplease!
What was the one toy you wanted as a kid that your parents never bought you?
Submitted by Princess of Darkness.
I wanted this toy so much that it hurt, but I never got it.
Even getting the Millennium Falcon a few years later didn't make up for this. Ah, well.
Fashion's in the Details
Lorna and I were watching Project Catwalk, our guilty Sky Three pleasure, waiting eagerly to see which of the three dress designs would win.
And they didn't tell us.
We suspected it was the one you can see to the right, because someone from that team was this week's winner, but we didn't know for sure. It was never explicitly said in the show. And that left us feeling curiously unsatisfied.
Niggling details.
(It was that dress. We found the result on the website.)
Gates has encountered an error...
So, Bill "Kermit the Geek" Gates has been doing the media rounds promoting Windows OSX, or whatever it's called.
Unfortunately, things went wrong on The Daily Show:
DVD review group
I've just set up a DVD review group, not unlike Piers' Book Club.
Join up and share your reviews at What Should I Watch Tonight?
(And please promote it to your neighbourhood, too)
DVD night: The Odd Couple
Friday night's viewing from our Amazon DVD rental account was this old classic:
![The Odd Couple [1967]](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/772/2007/01/6a00d8341da3af53ef013486ad1097970c-200pi-1.jpg "The Odd Couple [1967]")
Whatever the reason, I was looking forward to it. The Odd Couple is regarded as a comedy classic, and it lurked somewhere in my brain as a "movie to see".
And you can see why the movie (and the play it is really obviously adapted from) has been so popular. The performances are really excellent. Matthau starts off as disgusting and unlovable, but wins your sympathy as the feel goes on. Lemmon charts the reverse journey. The supporting cast are good, even the ghastly Pigeon sisters from London, and the film, while wearing its stage roots on its sleeve, makes a reasonable transition to celluloid.
But, nearly 40 years on, the whole concept has lost its bite. Men leaving together just doesn't seem so strange any more, and the obsessed housewife role adopted by Jack Lemmon's character seems an oddly-conceived and slightly offensive mix of female, gay man and OCD sufferer stereotype.
There's some moments of real wit in the dialogue and the relationship between the two main leads is often compelling. But, in the end, the societal mores being explored in the movie are becoming so alien to us today that it just doesn't have the power it did in the 60s.