June, 2015 -- The Good Parts Version

Here's this month's collection of cool stuff I felt like sharing :-)  Enjoy!

Videos

This first was shared with me by Hannah.  It's exquisite.  Richard Armitage reading the first proposal scene from the North and South novel, accompanied by video from the miniseries' version of the scene.  A thousand thanks, Hannah!

This is wildly different, and wildly awesome:

I'm not fond of the guy's voice, but I love how they tweaked the lyrics.  And the last line cracks me up endlessly!  My thanks to Cowboy for finding that one.  (Warning: does involve the phrase "knocked up" and some kinda scary Star Wars images.)

And finally, the late, magnificent Christopher Lee singing my favorite song, "Mack the Knife."  Well, actually, he's singing it in the original German, so it's called "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer," or "Moritat" for short.

DKoren sent me that cuz she knew I'd heart it :-)  Vielen Dank!

Blogs

I MUST share this wonderful, comprehensive post about The Andy Griffith Show on the Silver Scene blog.  (Yes, I realize the post was published in May, but I got kinda behind in my blog reading again, you see, so didn't read it until June.)  I've been a fan of TAGS almost all my life, and whether you know the show well, are just getting into it, or are simply curious about it, that post is a must-read.

And if you're at all interested in how Christianity is portrayed in our culture today, and what that portrayal says about our culture, please read this thought-provoking post on Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife.

Not actually a blog, but if you love the Sherlock Holmes canon, check out all these awesome charts about various collections of canon data, like how many cases the main characters appear in, what kinds of clients appear the most, what kinds of crimes he investigates the most, etc.  And then there's this lovely floor plan of his flat:

Pinterest Fun

I can't believe I didn't pick up on this myself.

(Source)

I want a shirt just like this, only I want it to say "write" instead of "read," because that is truer of me.

(Source)

And then, there's this bit of wonderful MCU-HP mashing up.  Look!  My 3 favorite MCU characters in my favorite HP house!!!  (I do really like Falcon too, but I need to get to know him better before I call him a favorite.)

(Source.  And they did the other houses too -- check 'em out.)

That's all, folks!  More next month.

May, 2015 -- The Good Parts Version

Videos

Okay, this is not going to interest everyone, but I personally find it both hilarious and amazing.  It's from the Spike TV show Lip Sync Battle, and it's Dwayne Johnson not just lip syncing to the BeeGee's "Stayin' Alive," but doing a full-on, choreographed dance routine to it.  Warning:  it's a little silly and a lot sexy.  (Or maybe a lot silly and a little sexy?)  This vid should start right up with his number and skip Jimmy Fallon's Madonna song, if I set it up right.  What I like best about it is realizing how much time my big, muscly guy Dwayne Johnson had to have spent practicing that routine with the backup dancers, and how well he pulls the whole thing off :-D

And now for something completely different:  an amazing interview with Juliet and Hayley Mills in Australia, where they're appearing on stage together right now.  The first half is more serious, and the second half is quite funny, as they crack each other up several times.

Blogs

This is a Tumblr site, not a blog, but if you haven't checked out Awesome People Reading yet, then do so forthwith!  It's an amazing collection of pictures of, well, awesome people who are reading.  It gets updated every few days, and it has everyone from actors (classic Hollywood to modern) to authors to musicians to politicians -- it's amazing.  And addictive.

I found this post by Kelly-Anne very timely.  It's a quote from North and South about modesty, which I've just been trying to explain to my kids.

Pinterest Fun

This excellent quote from J.K. Rowling, which I 100% agree with:

(Source)

This shot of Dwayne Johnson on the set of Hercules, playing patty-cake with a 2-year-old :-D  (I swear I did not intentionally make this whole post Dwayne Johnson-themed, it just happened.)

(Source)

And this bunch of comparison shots of my two favorite film versions of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:

(Source)

There you go!  Bunch of cool stuff I found online in May but didn't blog individually about because I was saving them for this post of reasons ;-)

April, 2015 -- The Good Parts Version

Here we go again!  A compilation of fun stuff I encountered online over the past month, but didn't blog about individually.

Videos

A friend linked to this on Facebook, and it has been cracking me and my kids up for weeks.  Clean, ultra-hilarious comedy from Tim Conway and Harvey Korman on The Carol Burnett Show in 1969:



And now for something completely different... J. R. R. Tolkien reading a poem in Elvish:



Your life is now complete.  You're welcome.  (Thank you to Hannah for pinning that!)

And lastly, in honor of the new Star Wars movie coming out far too many months from now, here's a vid of the University of Maryland's chapel bells playing the Imperial March:



(Cowboy found that.  Now you see why I married him.)


Blog Posts

The Shakespeare comics blog "Peace, Good Tickle Brain" did a mash-up of Hamlet with songs from The Sound of Music.  Um, yes.  It's quite amusing.  Here's part 1 -- you can click through to each subsequent part from there. (Thank you to my Cowboy for finding it and sharing it with me because he knew it would make me laugh.)

Mystery author Camille LaGuire explains here why mystery as a genre was almost murdered by booksellers, and how Amazon saved it.   Completely fascinating, especially if you love mysteries OR if you're an author interested in how the publishing world works.  (Thank you, Elisabeth Grace Foley, for linking to it on your blog!)

A super-duper long post by Javier Grillo-Marxuach about what it was like to write for Lost during it's first seasons -- an attempt to answer that infernal question, "Did you know what you were doing the whole time, or just making it up as you went along?"   TL;DR:  "...inspiration is always augmented through improvisation, collaboration, serendipity, and plain, old, unglamorous Hard Work."  (Also, he calls my Sawyer "a southern-fried con artist whose skills would have been essentially useless in the wild," which cracks me up.)  WARNING:  Contains some major bad language, but only a little.  (Many thanks to Noumenon for pointing me to it.)

This excellent review of the Dana Andrews western The Ox-Bow Incident by Eva Schon.  TOBI is one of my absolute least-favorite movies ever, but unlike most of the movies I hate, I hate it because it's so well-made and realistic and possible that it frightens me, whereas usually I hate movies that are dumb or badly made or just plain gross.

Lastly, a thought-provoking look at daily ways people can lay down their lives for their friends on one of my favorite blogs, Sister Daughter Mother Wife.


Pinterest Fun

I love this -- the artwork, the idea, everything:

(Source)

And what a great concept this has:

And I'm fascinated by this comparison of all the characters in five different versions of Pride and Prejudice.  (Thank you to Ruth for pinning that!)

(Source)

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was kind of wandering around in an Avengers-induced haze all day and forgot :-o

March, 2015 -- The Good Parts Version

Good mornin' to ya!  (Try to hear that in Billy Connolly's voice, okay?)  I've decided to try a new series of sorts.  I'm always reading blog posts I want to share with more people, and I run across various other cool things online that I think other people would enjoy, but that I don't have time or inspiration to do a whole blog post on them.  So I'm going to try collecting those all through the month, and share them with you all at once.  What do you think?  Let me know if I should continue this sort of thing!

Videos

This Soviet animated version of Winnie-the-Pooh from 1969-1972.  Oh my goodness, these make my kids laugh so hard, even when no one is around to read them the English translation subtitles.  They're much closer to A. A. Milne's original books than the Disney movies (even the classic version, made about the same time, which I love dearly).  Do yourself a favor and try one -- they're great fun.

And here's a video that is completely different.  It's Luke Evans and James Nesbitt singing a Dean Martin song together, live.  I don't exactly love Luke's voice, but I love that he can sing, and the way he sings.

Now, back in February, I stumbled on this video of Luke Evans singing "Delilah," and I emailed DKoren going, "Oh my goodness!  Luke Evans can sing!  And he has that sort of casual 'Oh, this is so easy' thing going on that Dean Martin does!"  And then I found this video of him singing "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," and was like, "ACK!  This song!  I've loved this song for decades!"  Swooooon.  Not to mention, it's in X-Men:  Days of Future Past.  Swoon again.  And then I found the above video, which is him dueting with James Nesbitt on an actual Dean Martin song, and I had to write DKoren again going, "Um, you know how I just compared Luke's singing to Dino's?  Whaddaya know...."  So anyway, I've been listening to these three songs a lot over the last 2 months.  What I especially like about this one is that James Nesbitt is the real-life dad of the two girls who play Luke's character Bard's daughters in the Hobbit movies, so yeah, seeing them together in this is awesome.  Not to mention, about 24 seconds in, Luke does this leeeeeeean on his microphone stand that is pretty deadly.  Those 3 songs are also directly responsible for me writing a new short story over the last couple months, so um... yeah, even though they're not something I found in March, I'm including them.


Blog Posts

Moving right along, here are some blog posts I ran across in the last month that I found particularly thought-provoking or amusing or just generally share-worthy:

"From Atheist to a Lutheran Pulpit" on The First Premise.

"How to Gossip like the Period Drama Ladies" on Wonderland Creek.

"The Steamed-Up Screen" on Sister Daughter Mother Wife.

"Why You Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Title Cards" on Silent-ology.


Pinterest Fun

And here is the one thing I found on Pinterest all month that has continually amused me.  (From my Take Me to Middle Earth board.)

I kind of have been saying, "They're clearly trash" all month as a result.  I can totally hear that line in Richard Armitage's voice, which is why it cracks me up so much.

Happy April!