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Published 11 Oct 2021A summary of the entire Jeeves & Wooster series in roughly 6 minutes.
P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves (played by Stephen Fry) and Bertie Wooster (Hugh Laurie) have been lauded as one of the greatest comic double acts of all time. Set in the late 1920s-1930s, Jeeves and Wooster (1990-1993) follows the hilarious misadventures of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster — a young, affable English gentleman of the idle rich — and Jeeves — Bertie’s omniscient and resourceful valet. Jeeves discreetly takes control of his “mentally negligible” employer’s life, while Bertie Wooster finds himself pushed and reeled into countless imbroglios, fiascoes, and romantic entanglements led by his hapless friends and imperious aunts. But each disaster is drawn to its own satisfactory conclusion through a concatenation of intriguing coincidences … or so they would seem. Until, that is, the silent force behind every “coincidence” is revealed to be none other than the brilliant and inimitable Jeeves.
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December 4, 2023
Jeeves and Wooster, in a nutshell …
November 29, 2023
QotD: The children of the revolution
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn’t be a revolution or a riot. It’d be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning, and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn’t try to bite the sheep next to them.
Terry Pratchett, Night Watch, 2002.
November 8, 2023
Mel Blanc on How He Created His Iconic Voices | Carson Tonight Show
Johnny Carson
Published 27 Jun 2023Original Airdate: May 26, 1983
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October 30, 2023
Halloween Special: Dracula
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 31 Oct 2016It’s creepy! It’s classic! It’s surprisingly infrequently read! It’s everyone’s favorite gothic horror, Bram Stoker’s Dracula!
Wanna bypass the intro? Skip straight to 3:16 and party on!
For those asking, the outro song is “I Love The Night” by Blue Oyster Cult.
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October 15, 2023
History Summarized: The Castles of Wales
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 23 Jun 2023Every castle tells a story, but when one small country has over 600 castles, the collective story they tell is something like “holy heck ouch, ow, oh god, why are there so many arrows, ouch, good lord ow” – And that’s Wales for you.
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QotD: The two eras of Jazz
Dylan Jones, “The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection”, GQ, 2019-08-25.
October 7, 2023
QotD: Saudi princes
Abdul-Rahman was a longtime Deputy Defense Minister, whose catering company, by happy coincidence, held the catering contract for the Defense Ministry. The first Saudi prince to be educated in the west, he was a bit of a cranky curmudgeon in later years, mainly because of changes to the Saudi succession that eliminated any possibility of him taking the throne. But he nevertheless held a privileged place as the son of Ibn Saud, the man who founded the “nation” and stapled his name to it. When I say “the son”, I mean a son: Ibn Saud had approximately 100 kids, the first born in 1900, the last over half-a-century later, in 1952, a few months before ol’ Poppa Saud traded in siring for expiring.
Abdul-Rahman’s mother was said to be Ibn Saud’s favorite among his 22 wives — or, at any rate, one of the favorites. Top Five certainly. She also had the highest status, because she bore him more boys — seven — than any other other missus. They’re known as the Sudairi Seven or, alternatively, the Magnificent Seven. She also gave him seven daughters. They’re known as the seven blackout curtains standing over in the corner. This splendidly fertile lady’s name was Hussa bint Ahmed, and she was Ibn Saud’s cousin once removed and then, if I’m counting correctly, his eighth wife. But she’s a bit like the Grover Cleveland of the House of Saud — in that he’s counted as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, and she’s the eighth wife and also either the tenth or eleventh. He first married her when he was 38 and she was 13. But he divorced her and then remarried her. In between their marriages she was married to his brother, but Ibn Saud was a sentimental lad and never got over his child-bride-turned-sister-in-law, so he ordered his brother to divorce her.
Don’t worry, though: In the House of Saud, it’s happy endings all round. Two of their daughters wound up marrying two of the sons of another brother of Ibn Saud. The Saudi version of Genealogy.com must be a hoot: “Hey, thanks for the DNA sample. You’re 53.8 per cent first cousin, and 46.2 per cent uncle.”
Mark Steyn, “The Son of the Man who Put the Saud in Saudi Arabia: Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, 1931-2017”, Steyn Online, 2017-07-18.
October 2, 2023
Why Web Filters Don’t Work: Penistone and the Scunthorpe Problem
Tom Scott
Published 6 Jun 2016In a small town with an unfortunate name, let’s talk about filtering and innuendo. And use it as an excuse for as many visual jokes as possible.
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September 29, 2023
History-Makers: Plato
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 9 Jun 2023For the best experience, project this video onto the wall of a cave.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
Five Dialogues by Plato, translation and introduction by G.M.A. Grube – Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, Second Edition, edited by C.D.C. Reeve and Patrick Lee Miller – Plato Vol I: Euthyphro Apology Crito and Phaedo from Loeb Classical Library, Edited and Translated by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Plato https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pl…
I also have a degree in Classical Studies, specifically in “Classics and Philosophy”
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QotD: Collecting jazz
And there were some things I just didn’t get. Ornette Coleman was one. At the same time Miles Davis was breaking through with modal jazz forms, Coleman invented free jazz with The Shape Of Jazz To Come. Over half a century after the event it is difficult to recapture the shock that greeted the arrival of this record, but it just gave me a headache. Coleman played a white plastic saxophone that looked like a toy, he dressed like a spiv and was a master of the one-liner, the “Zen Zinger” (stuff like, “When the band is playing with the drummer, it’s rock’n’roll, but when the drummer is playing with the band, it’s jazz”), so I really wanted to like his music. But I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried. As far as I was concerned he was improvising up his own sphincter.
Dylan Jones, “The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection”, GQ, 2019-08-25.
September 9, 2023
7 Ways to Suck at Badminton
Swift Badminton
Published 27 Sept 2019This video will give you 7 tips and tricks to become a worse badminton player.
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September 7, 2023
History Summarized: Iceland’s Hallgrimskirkja
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 26 May 2023The name is more visually complicated than the church itself.
I tried my best to pronounce all the Icelandic correctly but that LL sound is TRICKY.SOURCES & Further Reading:
Great Courses lectures “Iceland’s Independence” and “The Capital and Beyond in Southwest Iceland” from The Great Tours Iceland by Jennifer Verdolin, “Iceland’s Hallgrimskirkja” from World’s Greatest Churches by William R. Cook. Plus, two visits to Iceland and a lot of time spent staring at the thing.
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September 6, 2023
QotD: Functional delusions
Did they really believe what they were claiming? The human mind, as I am sure many people will by now have observed, is a complex instrument, and works at several levels at the same time. Hence one can be sincere and fraudulent at the same time. It isn’t necessary to be a psychoanalyst to believe in the reality and prevalence of self-deception; indeed, it is necessary to be a kind of Candide not to believe in them, and to be utterly impervious to self-examination into the bargain.
Theodore Dalrymple, “The Grand Illusion”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-08-19.
August 25, 2023
QotD: Passive-aggressive “fashion”
This is why the doctrine of multiculturalism, far from making people behave better and more sensitively to the feelings of others, allows them to behave worse and less sensitively to the feelings of others. It is almost normal or instinctive human behaviour when in unfamiliar social surroundings to look around and see how other people are behaving, estimate what might offend them, and adjust one’s own conduct accordingly. Of course, one sometimes gets it wrong, but at least one tries. However, if multiculturalism is the demand that we accept the conduct of others, it is at least as much the demand that they accept our conduct, whatever it might be. And therefore there is no need for us to adjust it merely for their comfort.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Suit Yourselfie”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-09-16.
August 24, 2023
There Will Be ⚡️Pain⚡️(A Book Update)
Jill Bearup
Published 15 May 2023I’m just saying, One Crisis at a Time is our motto as well as our title. Have a Fantasy Heroine book update for your delectation and delight.
#fantasyheroine #onecrisisatatime
