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04/21/2001 Archived Entry: "This time it's personal"

Apologies for the break in service but my account was being moved onto a new P3 1Ghz server, messing up the IP and DNS settings. Everything is fine now.

People have finally been arriving back in Cambridge now, which gave rise to this conversation I had:

"Yeah, it's great to be back. Are you ready for another term of doing... absolutely nothing at all?"

For the last couple of weeks, I've been musing about exactly what 'genuflect' meant, after I'd heard it in a mailing list. True to form, I couldn't summon up the energy to look it up in the dictionary and it was only a few days ago that I checked it out. The next day, after being sent a whole load of Disney songs by a friend, I was startled to hear the word being used in the song 'Prince Ali' in Aladdin. Very strange.

Random Trivia: Did you know that Angela Lansbury sung the signature song of 'Beauty and the Beast' as a teapot? Speaking of which, where is Angela Lansbury now?

I recently had an impulse to find out some information about the classic 80's TV series The A-Team. I found two particularly amusing sections.

In the FAQ:

DID ANYONE EVER GET KILLED ON "THE A-TEAM"?

As far as actual, on-screen deaths, there was only one, in "The Sound of Thunder," when General Fulbright was shot and killed (in the same episode the bunker where the Cong general who shot Fulbright was in was blown up, so we can assume he bit the dust as well). Several episodes referred to deaths of characters off-screen either during or usually before the start of the episode (such as, for instance, Ray Brenner's death in "A Nice Place to Visit.") Also, one of the Mafia bad guys in the episode "The Rabbit That Ate Las Vegas" was seen to fall from a high rise window, presumably to his death, although it wasn't clear if he had been killed before the fall of as a result of it.

There's also a synopsis of what someone believes the new Hollywood-ised movie of the A-Team will inevitably be like:

"...Act 3 will open with the A-team, crazed terrorists, the scheming Army official, who is secretly funding a lifestyle of opulence courtesy the terrorist leaders, and the rest of the US Army converging on Disneyland during National Orphan's Day Out. Explosions, chase scenes, gratuitous shots of adorable children in peril ensue. At least one part of the A-team plan will go horribly awry, preferably mere seconds before the team leader (Pullman) faces down the corrupt Army official and a gang of incoherent terrorists. At the last possible moment, Mad Skillz [B.A. Baracas] puts aside his prejudice toward the clinically insane to work with Murdoch, and the two execute a complex and statistically improbable rescue.

End with suave ladies' man's kissing token romantic interest with such fervour as to cause her to abandon all professional judgement and lie baldly about Murdoch's mental health. The flying-into-the-sunset scene is executed with a cwaaaaaazy punchline with Mad Skillz and Murdoch coming to blows as the other A-team members beam munificently and wave at their former captors.

There. I've just saved everyone the effort of writing, making, producing, or going to the movie.