Things that are making you crabbit! [5]

Ah, the hot toddy! I had forgotten that cure. I'm better this morning but tonight one of those should polish off my cure.

hope you are feeling better Halfy

I remember when dear old mama would slather me top to bottom in VICKS. I could just about smell it but it knocked out the other kids at school, ( still got pushed off to school sick or not )

vick's, mentholatum, these things have nearly vanished. I wouldn't mind a whiff of menthol right now.

Crush a peppermint

not quite the same potency. But I'm almost through my affliction. Bundling up with Wodehouse is a damn fine cure.

Well crush many then !
Though getting engaged in a book or a dam good meaty film does help

{{ Can't remember Halfy if you said you'd seen the Fry and Laurie versions of Jeeves and Wooster. You cant quite do the work justice off the page in my view as so much of the humour is drawn form the descriptions of characters, mannerisms and commentary on speech. But they do as good a job as you possibly can in my view }}

I've seen the Fry and Laurie Wooster, and though you can't imagine a better team to bring it to life, it never quite worked for me. I think the problem is that you don't have Wodehouse's narrative voice of Bertie, which is half the charm of the books.

{{ I agree. There is nothing at fault with the performances (perhaps you could argue Fry was still too young for the role, but he carries the performance off so well it for me at least is a momentary distraction, but there is something inherent in the writing that is not translatable when you lose the nuances of Wodehouse's ongoing commentary via Bertie. So much of the joy of the books comes from a delightfully turned comic phrase describing something as simple as how someone eats their soup or some such trivia.

There are moments where the comedy and even some of the nuances can be conveyed entirely visually, but they are small in comparison to the amount of times they cannot be.

I think this is generally an issue when adapting comic narratives to a solely visual medium. Humour works very differently on and off the page and the same trouble bedevils adaptions of Douglas Adams, Pratchett and others of that style of writing where the humour is as much in the scintillating presentation of an idea via a comic sentence as it is in the dialogue or situation.

Though I do think they nailed the music bits in Jeeves in Wooster perfectly as it plays so well to both performers styles and talents.



}}

{{On an odd Wodehouse tangent I was looking up some quotes, brilliant stuff of course like -

'She came leaping towards me, like Lady Macbeth coming to get first-hand news from the guest room."

or

"The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether your on the right or wrong end of the gun."

or

"He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the the consomme, and the dinner-gong due any moment."

And here comes the tangent. You see our old friend Moffat has been getting stick of late in some quarters for being part of the BBC agenda to hate all white males, especially in Doctor Who, and males in general (yes, I know, he has gone from being accused of the ultimate misogynist working in TV to a man-hating SJW, don't ask how this happens in Whofandom ) but the point being one of the most 'offensive' and blatantly man-hating things he ever wrote is apparently this from River about the 12th Doctor (who she doesn't know is the Doctor at this point)-

"What's that face? Are you thinking? Stop it. You're a man, it looks weird. "

Which brings me back to Wodehouse, and a quote I found of his whilst nosing about, and it occurred to me that the humour was essentially rooted in the same thing in both.

"Chumps always make the best husbands. If you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first and, if it rings solid, don’t hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him."

Both written by a man and spoken by female characters portrayed as having brains. And both jokes at the expense of men. Does that make Wodehouse a SJW? Or does it just mean we are forgetting its good to laugh at ourselves every once in a while? }}

My favorite quote of Wodehouse only works if you understand the milieu he created of formidable aunts who control, or attempt to control, their nephews.

"Aunt called to aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primeval swamps."


Yeah, it's strange that Moffat would be classified as a white male hater. The thing is, comics hate everyone. Jerry Seinfeld said the essence of a comic is the ability to be annoyed by anything.

{{{ Agreed. Moffat was writting drama with comedy from the very beginning of his career, as he has always said life is both funny and horrible, why shouldn't drama show both then? And he wrote an out and out sitcom. I think the reason he can be labelled a woman hating writer by own group and a man hating writer by another is kind of proof in itself that he is neither- he is just a comedy/drama writer who derives a lot of his comedy out of very traditional long standing comedy ideals, differences between sexes and how they view each other being one of them. At the expense of both.

Most comedy tends to come at someone's expense, even if its as straight forward as a pie in the face- you still need a face or you don't have a joke}}

Doesn't white male hater mean both 'hater of white males' and 'white male who hates...'? No wonder they are confused.

{{ Very confused! Just shows to me that people currently look to be offended. If Wodehouse was writing that line now he'd be accused of having an 'agenda' against men and as he has as many 'dittzy' or sweetly inanely feminine female character who are always trying to get married off alongside formidable Aunts and women of brains he would almost certainly be accused of sexism against women by the other side!

Oddly I sent the above quote to my better half, unsure how Wodehouse would travel. She sent me back three crying with laughter emojis and the message that the end of the quote was 'so me'.

An hour later she was still laughing. }}}

Being near the end of my sinus infection, I thought it safe to try Petty's cure and throw a Hot Toddy at it. I'm fairly proud of my hot toddies, but the Japanese bar around the corner I've touted here before, which has made the list of one of the best bars in the country, has recently put a Japanese hot toddy on the menu. I generally only go there for special occasions - not wanting to wilt the effect from over use - but deemed trying out a folk cure to pass muster.



This was good, but I actually prefer my version which is heavy on the lemon and honey. But damn if it didn't work. I wouldn't say it cured me, but it sure made me stop noticing my symptoms. By this time I had made friends with the locals sitting to either side of me (one of the virtues of Harlem is it isn't considered out of place to start a conversation with a stranger), and enchanted as I always am by the atmosphere of the place I decided to order another drink. Every time I come here I love the drinks I get, but I always notice other people getting fancier looking drinks, more picture worthy as it were. I placed inquiries to the waitstaff, and out of several options picked the one below.





The lime soaked in vodka was a simple enough trick, but fortunately they know their trade well, and wait until the inevitable picture taking before tossing the cinnamon. They toss several handfuls to ensure you get your shot.

{{That looks like a great little place Halfy- and perfect way to cure your synapses, or at least not care any more! }}

that looks good

Hello ? I just saw this on the serious thread

{{{Great minds think alike Az, except on which thread to put it! }}

Help me out, this is making me crabbit. I came across this sentence recently, and I can't figure out whether all this is required for the sentence to be correct, grammatically.

"I am looking forward to this Tolkien movie with a thousand times more enthusiasm than that with which I am looking forward to the Amazon series."

Can we simplify this down, or is all of this required? And no need to comment about how English is a "living language" and how grammar is "just made up anyway" or any of that lazy tripe! I just want to know about what is technically correct.

"I am looking forward to this Tolkien movie with a thousand times more enthusiasm than the Amazon series."

But that could be interpreted to mean the Amazon series is also looking forward to the Tolkien movie - but with 1/1000th of my enthusiasm. I doubt, however, that anyone will be so confused.

Anyway, it's not a question of grammar but of logical construction.

Ive read this over to myself & I do believe you can kick out the word "that", oky doky ? So, you could put it this way...…
" I am looking forward to this Tolkien movie with a thousand times more enthusiasm than I am with the Amazon series".

It's certainly not all required, it that's the question.
I might have said something like, "I'm looking forward to this Tolkien movie with more enthusiasm than I am to the Amazon series."
But the "thousand times" shows an inclination to hyperbole, and so it's natural that more wordiness follows.