Rocking the Invisibility Cloak (7/29/09)

First, if you hadn't heard, some gasbag over at the New York Times is all worried about the ickle children being exposed to alcohol by Half-Blood Prince. Riiiight. (Egalitarian Bookworm said it best: "The dumbest Harry Potter article of all time.")

Gettin' trashed, wizard-style.

For a more thrilling Harry Potter update, hold onto your broomsticks: I admit the possibility that I was buried under an extra-large rock when this news dropped last August, but how the eff did I not know that researchers at UC Berkeley have made strides toward creating an INVISIBILITY CLOAK? Why would that not be the leading news story for every outlet in the world? (Instead, no one ever shuts up about this sort of nonsense.)

Anway, dudes, these science fellows and fellowettes have created a light-refracting, metal fishnet material (that's right...fishnets!) that...I dunno, I didn't really understand the paper. Who do you think I am, Hermione? But it makes things refract around the "invisible" object, and it doesn't use much energy. For now, it's best used for nabbing clearer antenna signals (um, who cares?), and because it's metal, it's too fragile to be a proper Invisibility Cloak. (Scientists have been working on this for a while apparently, including peeps at Duke and in Tokyo.)

Diagram of light refraction that somehow induces invisibility. Guy on the right is as confused as I am.

Regardless, in the press release posted on UC Berkeley's own site, Harry Potter is name-checked. Which is kind of awesome in and of itself.

Of course, this begs the obvious question: If you could have one magical skill, spell, or item, what would it be?

Awww! Daniel Radcliffe's head when he was wee!

Invisibility Cloaks are a little "Every Breath You Take"* for me, in that superfun, potential stalker sort of way, though our boy Harry usually manages to use it for noble purposes, rather than, say, spying on girls at sleepovers (hat-tip to Saved by the Bell, y'all).

I may have to think this one over, though having access to the Hogwarts Library (or Honeydukes! Yum!) might do the trick. I already have a wand…maybe I'd like a set of wizard chessmen shouting advice at me and beating each other up…Oh! I know. I want Pigwidgeon. He'll deliver letters for me. And soar around my room, twittering excitedly. He is SO precious. What say you, peanut gallery?

Pigwidgeon!

*Weird-but-awesome economic-geek cover of "Every Breath You Take." Thanks, Columbia Business School! (Nerds.)

Robin Hood Roundup, Part 1: Timeline! (7/24/09)

Okay, so I don't know if y'all have cottoned on to this, but I am, like, a huge dork. I'm a dorkodactyl, in fact.

Dorkodactyl!

Proof positive: Last night, I watched the History Channel's History's Mysteries: The True Story of Robin Hood…and I already knew about half of what they told me. Presaging the History Channel is not a great sign.

History of the Hood

But now I am even more informed! Lucky you! And as I promised, I'll be giving y'all the lowdown on my Robin Hood–related activites. So here's the brief rundown of Robin Hood as we know him, right up through 2010.

1190–1290 (ish): Various dudes may or may not have been the actual Robin Hood. Contenders include Robert Hod, Robert Hood, and William Robehod (fugitive, 1261); our Robin may be an amalgamation of these gents, among others. But they weren't gents. They were thieving gits.

Zazzle reps for William Robehod with this tee.

1200s–1300s: Robin Hood ballads make the rounds of Merry Olde England. Our boy Robbie fights with the Sheriff of Nottingham, kills the king's deer, and chillaxes with Lil' John. He rocks a bow and arrow, he steals stuff, he's rash, and he picks fights with everyone he meets. Not so much with the whole VolunteerMatch biznass, this one.

Nottingham's 1949 nod to Robin Hood

1377: Robin first appears in print, in the poem Piers Plowman. Piers cops to knowing RH ballads better than the Lord's Prayer. (Oh, no he didn't! That sumbitch is going to HELL!)


1500s: Maid Marian makes her first appearance. Finally. Old Rob, who used to be a poor-ass, thieving yeoman, becomes the dispossessed Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon. Now that he's a rebel with a cause, he becomes all idealistic and warm and fuzzy and starts stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, just like President Obama wants to do. (And just as it should be, thanks.)

1600s–1800s: Robin makes regular appearances in children's stories, adults' stories, songs, plays, games of Catch Phrase, etc.

1900s: Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks, the Costner idiot, Cary Elwes, and Michael Praed, among others, don that jaunty green cap. But eff them. The point is, Marian is consistently portrayed as bitchy and awesome—she's mouthy even when she's relegated to damsel in distress.

1988: Robin McKinley writes the grim Outlaws of Sherwood. Marian is the best archer of the bunch. Robin, unlike most Robins, is compassionate and anxious, rather than cocky and mocking. I LOVE this book.

Lucy Griffiths as Maid Marian. She will eff you up.

2006: The History Channel hires a man with hair that bears a suspicious resemblance to a mullet to chart historians charting Robin Hood. Apparently, Barnsdale (in Yorkshire) and Nottingham (in Nottinghamshire) have been arguing fiercely for a REALLY long time over where Robin Hood was actually from.

2006–2009: Jonas Armstrong rocks Robin for the BBC's latest (and now-defunct) Hood offering. Richard Armitage delivers consistently creepy performances as Guy of Gisborne. Lucy Griffiths is a fabulously dressed, completely anachronistic, totally ballsy Marian.

Jonas Armstrong: the hipster Robin Hood

2010: Russell Crowe will be wearing the quiver in Ridley Scott's update. Cate Blanchett will be Marian. This could be awesome. It could also be terrible. Stay tuned! (For kind of a longish time. See you in 2010, guys!)

Russell Crowe as the next Hood

Nebulous date in future: Nottingham totally has an awesome-looking Robin Hood Festival every year, and I HAVE to go. The vendors make real longbows! Real medieval coins! Real arrows! (Dudes. Medieval arrows could pierce modern bulletproof glass. That. Is. WICKED.)

Cary Elwes and a sheaf of bulletproof glass–breakers.

Mayhap I will see you there.

Economic Meltdown, 1875-Style (7/21/09)

OK, readers. I have a problem. A nineteenth-century British lit problem. I'm kind of an addict. You can have all of your modern writers and your oh-so-now novels. It's Anthony Trollope for me, my lovelies.

Case in point:

The year: 1875.
The scene: London. Trollope had been out of the country, and he was shocked—shocked!—by the sordid state of affairs he found when he returned. And so a novel was born.
The modern hook: The story revolves around one Augustus Melmotte, a dodgy financier who threatens the city's economic stability. (Yes, Wall Street? You rang?)
The book: The Way We Live Now.


My gal Filmi Girl had been bugging me to read some Anthony Trollope, but I wasn’t sold till I realized the BBC had made a miniseries of The Way We Live Now, 'cause the BBC has faboo taste in period dramas, the old dears. It's been a year or so since I read it, but Melmotte and company are much more relevant now that our American moneylenders have been ravaging the world than it was back in the golden days of 2008, when the land was rife with milk and honey and people had jobs and houses.

And so it goes. I’m not sure where to begin praising this particular 825-page tome (825! For reals!), but I love love love it. Yes, Trollope paints his high-society characters as anti-Semites (welcome to the 1800s, kidz). Yes, those same characters believe that Brits are intrinsically superior to Americans—and other foreigners, as well. Yes, I gasped when prim Miss Carbury refers to the “nasty American woman.” (Who are you calling nasty, bitch? Unlike you, Mrs. Hurtle, TWWLN's token American, does not at any point consider going in for some COUSINCEST. Jaysus.)

But Trollope is so delightful! TWWLN is like an 825-page edition of Us Weekly (Barack Obama: He's just like Us!), but without the guilt—because it’s literature, y’all, not celeb gossip. And yet it most definitely is gossip—stickin' it to the Victorians for corruption, snobbery, and general rakishness. All of his characters are fully developed, and he's unnervingly attuned to behavioral characteristics—I should no more like to be judged by Mr. Trollope than I would by Miss Austen, that’s for effing certain.

And, by the bye, the above-mentioned Mrs. Hurtle is all kinds of badass. Trollope implies that we should disapprove of her “manly” actions and states that she herself would prefer to be more “feminine.” But his mild censure of her rockin’ independent behavior does not stop us from disagreeing with him—much like Shakespeare’s disapproval of Cleopatra does not stop us from understanding that she is one awesome bitch, and that Antony’s downfall is his own damn fault. Holla.


But consider yourself warned: The miniseries captures the overall insidious spirit of the book, but our pal Andrew Davies (writer of Pride & Prejudice '95, among other period gems) goes overboard this time, very definitely altering the content of character personalities and handling Mrs. Hurtle's story most infamously. I think "a good healthy boinkfest" would probably sort him out, but that's another post entirely, isn't it? At any rate, don't let that sway your opinion of the book. Which is awesome.