Category: work in progress

A Brit a Day [#362]


One of my favorite Brits is Nic Roberson, the foreign correspondent who finds himself in war zones plying his trade for CNN. I’m sure he’s heard so many jokes about being the real Nick Danger that he isn’t even polite anymore. Nic’s Wikipedia article includes this wonderful description:

He has won numerous awards, including two Overseas Press Club Awards, a Peabody, a duPont, and several Emmy Awards for his work in war zones and disaster areas around the world. People magazine voted him Sexiest News Correspondent in 2001 but he is better known as a fearless veteran of the world’s conflict zones, including Afghanistan, Bosnia,Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia, the Darfur region of Sudan, Northern Ireland and both the Gulf War and the Iraq War. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 CNN sent Robertson to report fromNew Orleans.
I found a picture of Nic in one of his assignments that I wanted to post. But as the photographer who took it has disabled download capabilities of the photo–that never stopped me–I will honor his wishes and only post enough bits of the photo to make you want to see it in its entirety on Flickr. You can do that here:
I love pictures of actors acting, painters painting, writers writing, even thinkers thinking–so of course, I love this photo of a great reporter reporting. And in addition to that, I really like the looks of Nic in that fine coat.

A Brit a Day [#398]


My teenage daughter plays a game with her friends that goes roughly like this–they each have their laptops and start on a webpage with headlines like Yahoo! News. The game is to see who can get from that page to a reference to Hitler in the least clicks. They can’t use a search engine, just mouse clicks. It’s a tasteless premise, but kind of amazing because it never takes very long.

I bring this up because, as one of my friends says, I need you to walk with me here. The lyrics of a passage from ‘3rd Planet’ on Modest Mouse’s the moon and antarctica are the only words that will speak for me today, but Modest Mouse is a thoroughly American indie band. ‘3rd Planet’ was written by Isaac Brock, portions of whose life sound like a Thomas Hardy novel…..
When his mother’s house flooded she was forced to move in to her new husband’s trailer where there was no room for Brock, so he stayed behind. He lived on the second floor of the flooded home until he was evicted by the police. After a period of living in a friend’s basement, he moved into a shed he built on the land next to his mother and stepfather’s trailer. [wikipedia]
…..but otherwise, there’s no British connection.
That’s Isaac Brock the living. Major General Isaac Brock, who died from a bullet to the heart in upper Canada in the War of 1812, was born in Guernsey and died a hero of the British Army. You can read more about him here:
THAT Isaac Brock is our Brit of the Day. The rest is just a device for me to be able to make you read this bit of [American indie] poetry by the other Isaac Brock–
Your heart felt good.
It was drippin’ pitch and made of wood.
And your hands and knees,
Felt cold and wet on the grass beneath,
While outside naked, shiverin’, looking blue,
From the cold sunlight that’s reflected off the moon
And baby cum angels fly around you,
Reminding you that we used to be three and not two,
And that’s how the world began.
And that’s how the world will end.
Why is this verse speaking my heart’s song today? You won’t learn that just by walking with me, for I can’t quite explain it. I can tell you this–The daughter I mentioned above is leaving home on Thursday for her first major adventure away from us. She’s going to Europe for 9 days. I’m excited for her, I’m scared for her, I’m in denial that I’m scared or that she might be scared. I just want everything to be great. I want her to be there and be totally in the moment, and at the same time, I want her to be back home, safe, with the trip as just a fantastic memory. I want to stop worrying about Libya and remembering Pan Am Flight 103. ‘3rd Planet’ is one of those songs that just hurts so good, and it’s good to hurt a little, just for today.

A Brit a Day [#1245]

Rather than being decisive about the end or move of ABAD, I’m going to just say that ABAD is on a hiatus of undetermined length. I have enjoyed doing it, and I’m proud of my own commitment to posting almost every day for almost three and a half years, but my passion for it is touching the low water mark at the moment.  There’s no excuse for doing a bad job of it, so I’m going to let it go for now.

So…this isn’t good-bye, just an exceptionally mushy post.

If I have to leave a parting thought here for a while, though, it would be this:

A few years back, I developed a crush on the charming and charismatic frontman of a British band called Art Brut.  His lyrics blew me away. They were funny and ironic and seemed to expose every fear a 20-something young man could have–which are not that different from the fears a 40-something old woman has. I reached out to him as a friend on Myspace, that antique social medium that revolutionized my six-degrees-of-separation world.  Now there could be one degree.  To make a long story short, over the years I have met Eddie, hung out with Eddie, drunk vodka-and-apple-juice cocktails and bad wine with him.  I have met [through email] Eddie’s mom in England [she’s exactly 2 months older than I am].  Two of Eddie’s paintings hang in my house. He says that the story I’ve told him of how my preschooler misconstrued the words to one of his songs has become a part of his patter onstage.

Friday was Eddie’s birthday.  I emailed him my good wishes.  He emailed me back his thanks.  My point is–never doubt your heart.  You can feel a connection through pictures, music, video….to someone you would never have met in your ‘normal’ life or perhaps will never meet outside of the internet.  But the connection is no less real.

So…if you’re reading this–I’m connecting with you.  And isn’t that cool?

A Brit a Day [#1000]

Did you see that number I just typed??  I’ve now done this blog a thousand times, and I love it as much today as the day I started it.  And it is very appropriate that such a milestone should fall on Henry Ian Cusick’s day.  This blog very nearly started as a Henry Ian Cusick appreciation blog, but the Sistahs at LiveJournal’s Henry Ian Daily had whipped up such a stellar one that I saw no need to duplicate and quickly revised my plans.  I owe so much to my sistahs-in-Ian for the inspiration or [wait for it]…Ianspiration.

Here’s a super sexy picture of the man himself to help us [well, me] celebrate–

A classic, no?

And you’ll never guess who was featured in ABAD #1–and it wasn’t even called that because I wasn’t sure there would be a #2!  It was the beautiful and bewilderingly absent Jason Isaacs–

Here he is looking all dashing and dangerous in a promo shot from Case Histories, but I used a pic in that first post from the film “Passionada” which I still love, as I would love his TV series “Awake” if it was still among the living.  According to Wikipedia, he’s filming a couple of projects currently, so all’s good for the future of Mr. I.

I’ve thought about moving this blog to Tumblr in order to reach a larger audience, but I’m not married to the idea.  I like the format here–it’s prettier than Tumblr, and it’s easy to post and receive comments.  Any ideas on that topic, I’m all ears and happy to hear.  Thanks for reading–on to the next millenium!

A Brit a Day [#788]

This video shows you just about everything I [we, millions of us] love about Tom Hiddleston.  I could do without the Harry-Potter-esque background music, but…..just watch it.

So speaking of Tom, it has been in the works for Brit a Day to get a new lineup, and Mr. Hiddleston will most definitely be a part of it.  I love all my British lads, and I love introducing new faces to my friends as well as discovering a few sensational fellows that my friends have been telling me about.

Beginning today, the menu will include [with a few nice words about each]….

Sundays…..Alan Rickman [Still?  Yes.  Always.]
Mondays….Benedict Cumberbatch [would be included for Sherlock alone, never mind War Horse, reading stories to children, yada yada]
Tuesdays….Fan Art [Life is too short not to devote one day a week to great art, you know.]
Wednesdays….Matt Smith [The Doctor, My Doctor]
Thursdays….Henry Ian Cusick [will be included until the world recognizes his great talent and yells it from the roof tops]
Fridays…..Tom Hiddleston [I.  Just.  Can’t.  Even.  And you know who you are.]
Saturdays…Editor’s Choice [because I can]

I hope you will continue to enjoy ABAD as much as I do!  And on that happy note, I’m going to post my absolute favorite picture [so far] of Tom Hiddleston.  Might as well start at the top of my game….

A Brit a Day [#608]

I watched the Doctor Who episode called ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ last night, all the while thinking that Madame de Pompadour was played by Georgia Moffat, David Tennant’s significant other, and thinking to myself what a lovely couple they are, look at their sparkling chemistry, yada yada yada…..then realized that I had confused the story of how they met [making the episode ‘The Doctor’s Daughter,’ I think] with the story of how ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ had moved my friend Eddie to tears.  They are both lovely girls, but here is the real Georgia: