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contours provocations
journal - 2002-0329 - fri 2000 Avengers; Where's the Camera?; To Blog or Not To Blog; Dial M About an hour ago, I flipped on the tv and heard the voice of Patrick Macnee. One of my favorite tv performers. Of course, the program was "The Avengers." But this was not "The Avengers" of Emma Peel and John Steed - Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee. It was the precursor. The one with Catherine Gale and John Steed - Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee. Although the Rigg and Macnee programs have been available in the US for many years, it has only been within the past ten years that the earlier ones have made their way across from the UK. When I first encountered Peel and Steed, it was a liberating experience. I'd never seen anything like the show or the characters or the performers before. Glib, stylish, tongue-in-cheek, intelligent. There was a long period when I wished I could dress in the dapper style of Steed. Or be capable of the quick retort of Mrs. Peel. Several years ago, A&E started showing the series for the first time since the original airing on ABC. Alas, it was a disappointing experience. The technical quality was poor with faded colors and garbled sound. To make it worse, A&E snipped 5-7 minutes from each program to make room for more commercials. From what I've read the series is now available in a digitally restored version on DVD. But I've not bought any. Something I need to do. Honor Blackman, the character Catherine Gale, left the series to do a Bond film - "Goldfinger." And was replaced by Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. In one of the Rigg - Macnee series, Steed is opening Christmas cars with Mrs. Peel. He suddenly says, "Oh! Here's a card from Cathy Gale. I wonder what she's doing at Fort Knok!" This has to be one of the great inside jokes of tv. BTW - Diana Rigg also left the series to do a Bond film - "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." The Blackman - Macnee group are fascinating in a different way. Certainly more straight-forward, although Blackman frequently wears black leather pants and jacket. Since they date from the early 60s, I'm guessing the shows aired live, and the copies were made by filming a tv monitor. They certainly have that look. The Rigg - Macnee ones were shot on film and aired from those copies. What intrigued me about this evening's show was the camera work. Pans, zooms, close ups, low shots, high shots. The cameras were actually following the performers. As a live production, it had to; there was no expectation of post-production editing. Almost all recent tv is shot the other way around. Performers move into and out of camera range. Which you can do because you're going to edit everything together later. I guess one of the simplest ways to gain a new perspective of tv or film is to ask: Where's the camera? And what is the camera doing? Thinking in these terms can add much to the viewing experience. For a couple of weeks, I've been considering using a blog. So the other evening, I went meandering around on the Net and looked at Blogger, Diaryland and Pitas. Blogs offer a more convenient method of entry. But I don't see them offering the control of HTML entry. I guess this is why I've never been enamored of authoring programs. I want to be able to have total control of the page. The ability to place each item exactly where I want. Of course, given the state of browsers, this may mean nothing. When I came home this eve, the blinking light on the phone indicated there has been some calls. Since I have Memory Call, I have to call a certain number and enter an access code to retrieve any messages. Which I did. But the options were different than usual. I stepped through the messages and was struck by the fact they were all wrong numbers. When I finished, I again noticed the options were different. I unplugged the phone to take a nap. When I woke, I checked again for messages. This time the options were as before. And the only message was from early this morning. Which was very odd. I've come to the conclusion that the earlier messages were really not my messages but someone else's. How I got access is a puzzle. There is something wrong with the phone service. Many times I've dialed the Memory Call number only to get someone else's service asking me to leave a message. I've gotten dozens of calls from people who say they have been paged to call this number. I recently had a woman call and say my number had appeared on her Caller ID, and she was curious to know who I was. About two years ago, I spent several weeks unable to receive in-coming calls. If I was using the phone, the calls were diverted to Memory Call, so I didn't realize what was happening. A friend said he'd tried to call and never got a response. So I called from work, and the same thing happened. The phone company said it was the ringer on the phone. I bought a new phone to no avail. At last, they sent someone to check the lines. He checked outside and said it was inside. He came in and replaced the plug. I went to work, called, and had the same problem. The phone company then sent someone else out who managed to fix it. I have this strange sense that I'll stumble on a message one day dealing with a murder. Sort of an updated version of "Dial M for Murder." PAX!
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