Before I go to bed, I'm going to post a few polls pertaining to my previous entry, just for the heck of it. Hope you participate!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Law And Order Criminal Intent
NEST HEADS by John Allen
©2007 Copley News Service
This is usually me -- I'd rather be reading than watching TV. I am still exposed to a lot of TV, living in a house with a husband and two kids. But there are very few shows for which I will switch on the television. I like (but don't watch every week) Numbers, Monk, CSI (original), and NCIS. I also occasionally watch Cold Case and Without A Trace. Last year I enjoyed a new crime drama called Close To Home. But I will make the time to watch Law and Order Special Victims Unit and the newer Law and Order Criminal Intent.
I liked the original Law and Order and used to watch it most of the time. When the spin off SVU came on the air I enjoyed it even more. But my favorite of the three has to be Law and Order CI, for various reasons, not the least of which are the acting abilities of Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe. CI starts its new season this Thursday on the USA Network, and this weekend they have been showing a CI marathon. I have indulged myself! I even stayed up way later than I should have last night watching episode after episode.
I think it is a very intelligent, sophisticated show, but I particularly like the acting and the way the main characters mesh together. Vincent D'Onofrio has played very diverse roles over the years, and I find his character on this show, Bobby Goren, fascinating -- the way he uses his hands when he talks, the way he sits close to a suspect he's interrogating, casually propping his chin in his hand and closely studying the suspect's face, his speech cadence, even the movements of his head and neck are just fascinating; I can't think of any other word to describe it. His character is Holmes-like in his deductive powers, Columbo-like in noticing and zeroing in on the smallest detail, and a genius who is on that borderline between sanity and having a total nervous breakdown.
Erbe's character of Alex Aemes is perfect as a foil for D'Onofrio's character. She is calm, reasonable, smart, and she understands Gore and his methods and deals well with his quirkiness. She also isn't afraid to rein him in when needed. I also like seeing this kind of female playing the senior officer.
Last year the other CI duo were Chris Noth playing Mike Logan, a bit of a hothead with a good gut instinct, and Julianne Nicholson who played Wheeler, the new kid on the block. This year Nicholson is being replaced with an actress I'm not familiar with, Alicia Witt. I liked the combination of Noth and Nicholson and hope Witt's character meshes as well.
So, here I have given you an entry the likes of which you won't often see from me. I rarely go ga-ga over an actor or performer of any kind, and I don't usually tout TV shows or specific actors. But I am rather infatuated with Law & Order Criminal Intent.
Left to right: Julianne Nicholson, Chris Noth, Vincent D'Onofrio, Eric Bogosian, and Kathryn Erbe.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Marcel Marceau Dies
Earlier this week the famous mime, Marcel Marceau died. I never knew it, but he had quite an interesting history.
Jogger's actions when confronted at gunpoint leads police to wanted felon ~~
Click for the full story: "There wasn't anything that was going to get me in that car," she said.
This was a really cool story. This lady was a quick thinker!
Speaking of Chickens . . .
In that same letter Barbara also sent me a clipping from the police logs in their local newspaper, The Herald News:
This struck her funny, and she knew it would amuse me, too. As she said in her letter: "If those chickens separate it's going to be hard to identify the ones that don't limp."
"Confusion Now Hath Made His Masterpiece!" ~~ Macbeth
My darling mother has come up with another gem. I got a letter from my sister Barbara, and she closed it with something my mother said. My sister wrote:
"This is from Mom when she started canning grape juice and got her first inkling of just how much it would make. 'We might have looked at our chickens before they were even eggs!' Ever done that?"
I just love my Mother!
In her defense she'd been making and canning grape juice for almost two whole days!
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Y'all Come
Barbara at Life And Faith in Caneyhead did an entry on an AOL article about Southern drawls. It was a very enjoyable entry.
I'm from "the country" in Northern Kentucky (North Central Kentucky, which is a completely different animal from North Eastern Kentucky or North Western Kentucky) There was quite a bit of diversity just within my own family and my parent's families when it came to speech patterns, vernaculars, drawls, etc. Neither of my parents had/has what I'd call a drawl, and definitely not a Southern drawl. But my mother used to say dreen instead of drain (as in "letting the dishes drain), and warsh instead of wash. I've always had an ear for language and a somewhat fanaticism for the English language being used correctly when at all possible, so even before I was old enough to have been taught any better I knew certain words weren't right -- like dreen and warsh. (But I also learned early on that you didn't correct your mother's language!) And as I've said before, I was an avid reader of varied genres, and a child in a family of avid readers whose vocabularies reflected that. I can remember being asked by a classmate when I was an eighth grader if I was from Louisville because I didn't talk like I came from Breckinridge County. I think that's funny, because I know some people from Louisville who talk with more of a Southern drawl or a country accent than almost anyone I've ever known from my home county.
I had a brother-in-law who would say "clumb" instead of "climbed" and "reched in" instead of "reached in". His son, my second-oldest nephew, has the only really slow, country drawl of any of my nieces and nephews. My eldest sister, Dennice, is the only one of us seven who has a slow, country drawl, but none of her children has one. Well, I take that back. Her daughter does slightly, but she has lived in Florida for the past 20 years, and her accent sounds more Floridian-country than Kentuckian-country.
We have a good friend who is originally from Missouri (the hills of Missouri) who has a completely different slow, country drawl than my husband's family who live in Alabama. And actually I have met some of my husband's family from Alabama who don't have what I would call a Southern accent at all.
And though I'm usually careful about how I pronounce my words, I do adopt some country colloquilisms simply because they feel right. For instance, I do say y'all (pronounced yawl). I don't say you-all, or y-all. And if you are from Louisville, Kentucky or have lived there for years, or if you are from anywhere in Kentucky, you will probably pronounce "Louisville" as "Loo-uh-vull". You may pronounce it "Loo-uh-vil", but it is not Looey-vil or Loo-us-vil. Pronounce it one of those two ways, and you're giving away that you aren't from Kentucky!
Go to the hills of Eastern Kentucky and you get into an entirely different dialect. I worked with a girl from Winchester who said "are" instead of "our", as in "are house" and "are car". I loved hearing her talk, actually. When I was in high school I sold Avon, and one of the ladies on my route was originally from Eastern Kentucky. She would say "hit" instead of "it". I loved sitting on her front porch and just listening to her talk about her childhood.
When I was about three years old my paternal grandmother would come to our house to stay during the day while her son (with whom she lived) was at work, so my mother could look after her. She was in her 80s and her health was bad. One day a friend of ours dropped by, bringing with her some visiting friends of her own. This friend of ours was just as country as we were, but her visitors were city-folk. When the visit ended, my grandmother, who had been dozing on and off during the visit, stood and walked them to the door.
"You well'st to just stay the night. We can put a pallet on the floor."
Our friend politely declined, explaining that her friends had to get on their way back home. She told us later that the visitors had asked her after they'd left what she meant by "well'st" and what was a pallet? She explained that "you well'st" meant "you might as well", and that in offering them a pallet, she was offering to make up a bed for them so they could spend the night, even if it was just a "pallet" -- bedding -- put on the floor. They were charmed by it.
We're just a big old mixing pot of different languages and dialects. I hope y'all enjoyed this entry.
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