Hooray for History Fans!

And I mean fans in the fangirl/fangent/otakuish sense. Hmm. I just realized something. I used "fangent" to mean a tangent indulged in by fans (a more random and less canonical relative of the fan theory) but when paired with fangirl, it could also be a gentleman who is a fan. This all makes me very happy.

BUT!

Not as happy as this web comic, which I stumbled across by way of Twitter (because random steampunk tidbits soothe my fevered brow better than actual sleep {my brow is fevered because I recently became a computer teacher, while keeping my part-time job at Barnes and Noble.})

It reminds me in a way of Five Fists of Science, but, dare I say(?) better. I feel that there should be a question mark in the previous sentence, so I put one in. And I do dare say it, because FFoS is pretty entertaining, but kind of meh. Any hoo, "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" is about Charles Babbage, creator of the first computer, and Ada Lovelace, creator of the first computer program. Apparently they fight crime? It's fantastic.

Even more fantastic (but actually less fantastic inasmuch as it's actually true) are all the links to Primary Source Documents by about the protagonists. I dare not start clicking on any more of them tonight or I really won't get any sleep. And then I won't be able to set up the computers for next week's classes. Maybe I should give the middle school kids a project later to research the history of computers on the interwebz. Whoever can go back the farthest gets a prize.

Of course, depending on how broadly one defines computers, there were even earlier examples of machines that used basic logic, but not to do math. So, since a computer ought to compute, the Difference Engine was the first one.

Mysteriously Steampunk Old Cartoons!

So I was looking up "Come Take a Trip in My Airship" on youtube, because it's an awesome song, and a picture on deviantArt reminded me of it. It was a popular song in 1904, and it's a very cute love song. I found a few videos of a singer named Billy Murray singing it on old phonographs (odd, because the song is from a girl's point of view), and I also stumbled upon this cartoon.

There's this one too, which has the whole song with the lyrics, and is on acid. At 2:48, the adorableness begins, but the whole cartoon is pretty awesome. I like that the second cartoon has it as a duet. Johnny Cash sang it too, but not all the verses. Who would have been a good singer to sing the woman's part with Johnny Cash?

Here's another video using the song, with some really great old airship clips!

An Ideal Husband Part 2

A few posts ago I wrote about Oscar Wilde's play "An Ideal Husband", which is one of my favorite plays, although I have never seen it performed, because it's not that famous. I wanted to see it fleshed out somehow.

So I finally bit the bullet and rented the DVD of "An Ideal Husband", the one with Rupert Everett. I was reluctant to check out this version because I read so many bad reviews of it, but someone told me she liked Rupert Everett's performance as Lord Goring, and that it was a good movie. I suppose it was an OK movie, as long you have not read the play. I suppose Rupert Everett was good, as long as you don't know about Lord Goring. I suppose I should start at the beginning.

There were some good things about this film. The costumes were beautiful, as were the sets. As a production designer and a fan of Victorian fashion, this was a real treat. Some of the performances were very good, especially Kate Blanchett, but then again, she's always good.

Rupert Everett was good too, just as a performance, but not necessarily the way I picture Lord Goring. I liked a couple of parts where he gets philosophical and passionate, and yet still tries to maintain his airhead dandyish facade, even though it's painful, and he needs his friends to listen to him. However, other than that, I think he was miscast. For one thing, Lord Goring is supposed to possess an easy grace and disarming wit that is effortless, and it's pleasantly surprising and sort of thrilling when he turns he turns out to be intelligent and morally upright. It seemed more like he was trying too hard to seem frivolous, and he was sort of brooding. It's hard to put my finger on it, but he didn't seem very Lord Goring-like.

The biggest problem was simply the adaptation. Half the play wasn't in the movie, which is typical, but half the movie wasn't in the play, which is far worse! During the entire second half of the film, one thought kept going through my mind: "Not in the play!" If you took a drink every time a line of dialogue (or even an entire conversation) was not in the play, you wouldn't last halfway through the film, and the first half was relatively faithful. Not only was it annoying to not see most of my favorite lines and exchanges, but some of the changes were to actual themes and plot, and to the characters' motivations. I won't give any spoilers, but let's just say it was very shallow compared to the play, and many of the plot twists toward the end were over-explained, showing the screenwriters' apparent contempt for the audience's intelligence, or else rewritten, showing their apparent contempt for Oscar Wilde.

An Ideal Husband

I just read the play "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde, and I believe it may be my favorite play! (Aside from "Arms and the Man" and "Arsenic and Old Lace") I have heard people say it is not Wilde's wittiest play, but somehow I don't think it was supposed to be. I wish people wouldn't dismiss him as a silly quote-factory. As "An Ideal Husband" and "Picture of Dorian Gray" reveal, he actually had an interesting view of morality that went far beyond just contradicting society's expectations. His emphasis was on free will, charity, forgiveness, and love, and also what happens when one is denied (or denies oneself) those things. Also on fashion and wittiness. Probably about half of Dorian Gray is descriptions of people's clothes and home furnishings.

Anyway, back to the play. It has the coolest speechifying villain. She's so evil. It also has the most wonderful hero, Lord Goring. He's a dandy who is the shame of his father and is basically idle and frivolous, yet he is pretty much the only character with a real understanding of morality and the guts to act on it. He's also adorable when he plays the airhead. It's actually a very suspensful little play. And it does have it's fair share of witticisms and jabs at Victorian culture, but it's no "Importance of Being Earnest"