Hot or Not?: Foreign Policy Edition (11/23/09)

Happy Monday, everyone!

We're going to start the week off with a confession: Instead of selflessly watching oodles of Britty television to review for you, I have been obsessively watching the American version of The Office. Even though I know exactly what's going to happen with Pam and Jim, the suspense is killing me, and I may or may not have watched numerous episodes in the last two days. And by "numerous," I mean "23." Or so. Shut up.

My obsession with Pam and Jim = borderline psychotic. And now you know.

Nevertheless, I have managed to rustle up some Britty goodness on the Interwebz, and here it is:

Tory Party News of the Weird!
The Tory party chairman is named Eric Pickles! And he used to be a Communist! But mostly I just think "Pickles" is a fabulous surname. It presumably serves as the set-up to lots of obnoxious jokes about foodstuffs. Between that and the fact that he read Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution at age 14, I suspect that Pickles had a difficult time with the other kiddies when he was in school.

Cheese and Pickles sandwich, anyone?

Monarchies are just the cutest!
OMGA!!! (That's "Oh My God Adorable," a long-overdue acronym. You're welcome.) Look at Queen Elizabeth II being all royal and shizz at the annual State opening of Parliament! How cute is it that the British are still playing Monarchy? I just want to pinch their imperialistic little cheeks.

Queen Elizabeth II is just darling in her little queen outfit, isn't she?

Younger Men = Yes, Please
Being an Anglophile isn't just for the proletariate, dudes. In fact, just last week U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described her English counterpart, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband, as "tall and dashing." I can definitely see it:

David Miliband is nerd-chic, and Hillary Clinton isn't afraid to say so.

In the article, which unsurprisingly A) refers to Clinton as Hillary and to Miliband as Miliband and B) is all over the map on gender relations, the Telegraph sort of asserts the rights of the older woman to think that younger men are hawt. Thanks, Telegraph. You wouldn't happen to have Daniel Radcliffe's phone number handy, would you?

Daniel Radcliffe being all young and beautiful.

Le sigh. If you'll excuse me, I have a daydream to attend to.

Rupert Grint goes Irish (10/5/09)

Things YOU need to know:

• Rupert Grint rocks Cherrybomb
  This drug-, sex-, and crime-fest is set in Belfast. Read: Unintelligible Northern Irish accents. Hawt. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival months ago, but it still hasn't hit theaters. (Hat tip to my roomie!)

Rupert Grint gets down and dirty for Cherrybomb. Also, I need that necklace.

I lurve Rupert Grint's non-HP work (though I still haven't seen Thunderpants), but per the trailer, Cherrybomb seems to be Skins: The Movie. Oh, wicked youth.

• Queens on Thrones
  Go look at the world's best pic of Queen Elizabeth II and bonny Prince Charlie. You won't regret it. (Yet another hat tip to my roomie! I may have infected her with my Anglophilia. Mayhap I should be quarantined.)

• The Part about Doctor Who
  Did I remember to tell you guys that the divine Richard Curtis has signed on to pen an episode of the upcoming season of Doctor Who? Do you understand the import of that statement?
  
  Permit me to explain. Richard Curtis is the genius behind The Vicar of Dibley! For the uninitiated, VOD is a totally ridiculous Britcom set in a country village that's been assigned a lady vicar: one Dawn French, comedienne extraordinaire. Hilarious character-based high jinks ensue. This is My Favorite Show of All Time. Check it:

If that's what Curtis does with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, I cannot WAIT to see what he'll do with the good Doctor. (Hat tip to Filmi Girl! It's like I don't even try to find my own news these days.)

Maybe Richard Curtis can help me heart Matt Smith's adolescent Doctor Who.

• I totally made out with Richard Armitage...
  ...in this inappropriate dream I had one time. (That's a secret. Don't tell anyone. I only told you guys so I could use that information as an awkward lead-in to his totally dorky North and South interview.)
  
  In a nutshell: Armitage stars as the I-love-him-more-than-Darcy hero of North and South, John Thornton. N&S is a totally rad BBC mini-series of Elizabeth Gaskell's totally rad book of the same name. And in his cast interview, Armitage talks, at length, about all of the research he did for the part. He's very, um, detailed. (Read: Giant nerd.) He's also wearing kind of a hilarious necklace. And this interview is why I lurve him.

Hahahahaha! I love nerds. Here's part 2:



My guess: Dude didn't have a girlfriend until he was at least twenty. Srsly adorbs.

• I have FIVE papers due this week.
  And I'm only taking FOUR classes. So I spent Sunday, which was ridiculously gorgeous, cooped up in my apartment, writing papers. To make myself feel better, I pretended to be working all day in the Gryffindor Common Room with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. (I listened to the Order of the Phoenix soundtrack to lend credibility to my ruse.) Certain individuals have told me "that's the nerdiest thing [they've] ever heard."

Even homework is more fun in the Gryffindor Common Room!

Whatevs. They're just jealous that they didn't get to spend the day at Hogwarts.

Kitten Tea (8/21/09)

Straight to the news: The Onion reports on the royal family's concerns re: the Queen. Has Her Royal Highness been putting aluminum foil in the microwave? "Sources" say: Yes!

Incidentally, if you are in possession of a teacup with a gold or silver rim: That may not be paint. That may be gold or silver. So if you've forgotten a nice brew of tea on the counter in said cup, don't just pop it in the microwave; instead, transfer the contents to a non-metallic vessel before any reheating attempts. (Though the sight of miniature lightning zipping around your microwave can be quite thrilling. Not that I would know.)

You should refrain from putting metallic teacups in the microwave. You should also refrain from putting teacups full of kitten in the microwave.

And that's the news. Now, to bed! The heat is sapping all my energy, y'all. I will soon be a puddle of skin and eyeballs. Gross.

Royals and Aliens and Etc. (8/7/09)

First bit of business: I stand by my condemnation of Sienna Miller's trashy behavior, 'cause "other women" (and men!) are bitches, but it has been brought to my attention that I failed to explicitly state that I also think Balthazar Getty is a complete tool, and that he is responsible for his own doucheyness. So I'm stating that now. No nooky on the side for you married/committed folks. This isn't Utah—you only get one lovah.

Balthazar Getty = Douchebag

Now, on to the new and exciting! (Actually, the really, really old and exciting.) To wit: The official website of The British Monarchy! I don't know why this is a surprise to me; I would expect Parliament, for example, to be in possession of an official website. I suppose it's because I associate monarchies with fairy tales (and also dragons). I feel as though I've just stumbled across King Triton's crisply appointed online Throne Room. (Minus awesome talking crab, unfortch.)

Hang on. Which of these is real again?

I've mentioned before that I think the monarchy is an anachronism...but that doesn't stop me from wanting to visit the 19 state rooms at Buckingham Palace, which are open to the public (for a fee, natch) through September 27. You can see the Mews (stables), too! I wonder if the horses are there. This is a fairy tale, after all, so I expect they look like My Little Pony. *Lurves My Little Pony hard-core*

OMG Adorbs (and also creepy)

On what I am sure is a completely unrelated topic (well, unrelated for the UK, yuk yuk!), my minor (by which I mean ginormous) Doctor Who obsession led me to Rendlesham Forest, which had some major alien action in 1980. Of course…the Royal Air Force base where all of this was witnessed was being rented out to the American Army at the time. Big surprise.

In more recent alien-sighting news, some geniuses at Southway Junior School in West Sussex thought staging "an alien invasion, complete with a crash landing and the 'abduction' of one of their faculty members while the children watched" would be a lovely way to stoke their students' creative fires.

Right. No foreseeable problems with that, are there?

Obviously, several children freaked the eff out, convinced they had witnessed an actual abduction. Oops.

Fake Alien Landings: Frightening Schoolchildren Since 2009

And yet…if Christopher Eccleston's Doctor were the alien doing the abduction, this is one blogger who would be totally down with that.

"By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?"

Le sigh. Big lurve to Doctor Who, y'all. Now run along and have a fabby Friday!

Ice cream and swans (7/23/09)

I'll post a proper post tonight, y'all, I promise! And I'll get my schedule fixed soon, so I can post in the mornings like I'm s'posed to. In the meantime, allow me to leave you with some hot ice cream and a video of the "thrifty" Queen attending the annual Swan Upping on the Thames.

Dial-a-Ghost, plus ejaculating cake! (7/22/09)

First up: adorable kidz' book. (I am a big old sucker for children's lit. I think maybe there's less navel-gazing than in grown-up land? Whatever it is...kidz' books rock!) Dial-a-Ghost, by Eva Ibbotson, is pinch-its-cheeks cute. To wit: Oliver Smith's evil cousins try to scare him to death—but the lovely, oh-so-British Wilkinsons turn up and befriend him instead. Confusion and awesomeness ensue. (Adopta the ghost-animal lover helps.)

Basically, any book that starts off like this:

The Wilkinson family became ghosts quite suddenly during the Second World War when a bomb fell on their house.

possesses just the right amount of whimsy, I think. Also, my biggest, most Anglophiliest obsession is British English. The English on the Other Side of the Pond rocks my socks, and it totally runs rampant up in here. Yes!


Speaking of the Second World War, which was a long time ago...1623 was also a long time ago. And here is a mince pie recipe from 1623! Thanks, Britain Express! They also have more reasonable recipes, like Harry Potter's fave, treacle toffee.

Once upon a time, I checked out a book from the library with old English recipes—but as minor details (such as oven temperatures) were conspicuously absent, I didn't get very far. Nor with the mince pie recipe, I think. It instructs you to "cut the best flesh of the best flesh" from a leg of mutton, for starters. A tad vague for me.

Anywho, while we're chatting about food, how about star British chef Heston Blumenthal's ejaculating cake? Heston did a series of period dinners (the Victorian one featured an enormous glow-in-the-dark absinthe jelly), and ejaculating cake is a Roman delicacy, apparently. I couldn't find a video of Heston's cake in action, but for a more mod, very graphic (read: kind of crass) American version, check out this (very) short video (premature ejaculation short, if you know what I'm sayin').

Heston Blumenthal's ejaculating cake, post-coital.

In de rigueur Harry Potter news, Emma Watson has confirmed to Paste magazine that she will be attending Uni in the US, at Brown. (Actually, she said, "I’ve got a place there to read literature." How Very British.)

Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson being adorable together.

You can also check out the Paste interview with Daniel Radcliffe, as well as their general Harry Potter mania, including props for my boys Harry and the Potters. Nice.

Joe and Paul DeGeorge are wizards who rock.

(Side note: Paste and its founder/editor-in-chief, Josh Jackson, are both awesome. Like many, many other mags, it's struggling hardcore right now, so if you lurve music, you might consider subscribing to it.)

And now I leave you with my new favorite thing: the Guardian news quiz. I always fail, but it keeps me informed, more or less.

For example: Did you know that Prince Charles is now repurposing his bathwater to his garden? Sounds like my whole switching from tp to leaves theory wasn't as far off as one might have thought!

Prince Charles Hard Up For Cash Money (7/8/09)

Ruh-roh! You know the economy's in the pooper when bonny Prince Charlie cuts his "personal spending" (whatever that means) down to a paltry £1.7 million. That's a savings of £500,000, kidz! However can the figurehead be scraping by on a mere £141,667 per month? Has he made the big switch from tp to leaves? Is he making his own ink out of beetle shells? (Answers: No and No. Apparently, there's been a big "clampdown" on the use of paper, electricity, and gas, which is to say that parchment letters stamped with the royal seal are so 2008, but rugby-watching by candlelight is so now.)


I may love the Brits, but I just don't get the royals. Prince Charles owns oodles of land, and he rakes in some major rent from that, Lord Fauntleroy-style. But IN ADDITION to his crazy cash flow from the fruit of the land, he's got all of this taxpayer money rolling in to the tune of £3 million. Honestly, y'all, I could buy 166,759 full-price copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for £3 million. OR I could buy 62,500 broomsticks from Alivan's. (Erm...have I mentioned how excited I am that Half-Blood Prince is dropping in a couple of weeks? 'Cause I'm pretty excited.)

Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth is cutting back, too. By buying a £3 million jet.

So, yeah. Being a royal must be nice. Maybe I should start macking on Prince Harry. I might even let him compete with Rupert Grint for the title of Everybody's Favorite Ginger. What do you think?




Aw! They're both so adorbs!

Really, though, I'm just not sure what the point is of the British people (per capita GDP £22,661, or $36,600) funding a royal family when there is a government (a thieving government, as seen in the Telegraph's awesome photo gallery, but a government nonetheless) to run the country. I mean, at least American "royals" put out bad albums and worse movies in exchange for our hard-earned money. Amiright?

(P.S. The comments tab was broken. Now it's fixed, so if you've got somethin' to say, spit it out!)