prolific.org

Buffy and BSG writer Jane Espenson says:

“First off, is life in Jane Austen’s England any less
exotic and strange than life on Galactica or Serenity? But the real
parallel is a set of characters who seem completely fresh and real and
identifiable no matter how alien the world they’re inhabiting.

You know what current show I also see as having this quality? Friday
Night Lights. It’s a gorgeous show that consistently reminds me of
Battlestar Galactica and Firefly — it creates/reflects a real world
filled with lots of real and complex characters with consistent but
constantly-changing relationships, shot as if the camera just happened
to be catching slices of real lives… the fact that FNL is set in
small-town Texas instead of on a spaceship doesn’t matter one bit to
me. Both worlds are a little bit strange to me — what does it matter
that one requires artificial gravity and other artificial turf?”

That’s for every person I’ve met in my life who told me ‘Ugh, I don’t like SciFi, it’s not real.’ And for every person who isn’t watching Friday Night Lights or Battlestar Galactica, and should.

Last year my uncle featured in a TV show about ‘miracles’. He told the story of how he found a photograph of himself in a book he picked up from an antique shop, while on holiday in England. It’s a true story. This month the show is letting viewers decide which stories should be repeated in a clip show to introduce the new series.

Do me and my kin a favour and vote for ‘De foto’ on the ‘Wonderen bestaan’ website. You’ll find the poll on the right hand side and ‘De foto’ is the last option in the poll (which doesn’t give it much of a chance of winning!).

It’s a great story and my uncle, who is an author and lyricist, does a great job of telling it (well, duh, he does readings and theater shows for a living). In short: About 20 years ago he was on holiday with his girlfriend L. and another couple. It was a miserable day and he hadn’t even wanted to go to England anyway. When they stopped for lunch, they came across an antique shop.

My uncle had a thing about ‘a book without a title’. He had been talking about this obsession during the trip, of wanting to find this ‘book without a title’. His friends had said books without titles didn’t exist.

Looking through the books on the shelves in the antique shop, he didn’t find anything he wanted. But there was one more book, sitting on a table. Picking it up he saw the book’s cover didn’t have any marking or lettering. It was a book without a title! And when he opened it, he found a picture of himself taken when he was a young man.

Cue theme of the Twilight Zone. Vote now. Vote often.

girl: “… you know, I always think of them as people who look after themselves really well.”
client: “mmm”
girl: “Like in Amsterdam. You see a lot of goodlooking people in Amsterdam.”
client: “Yeah, you do.”
girl: “I guess in cities a lot of people are pre-occupied with their appearance.”
client: “uhuh”
girl: “People in Holland are better looking than in other countries. I mean, look at England.”
client: “oh please… English people are ugly.”
girl: “Yeah. And Belgians aren’t pretty either.”
client: “mmm”
girl: “Germans… no, Germans aren’t pretty. The Dutch are the best looking.”
client: “So you fancy Dutchmen then?”
girl: // giggles // “Yeah… blond hair, blue eyes. You too?”
client: “Yeah. And tall.”
girl: “Yeah, tall… so… what far away places have you been to then?”
client: “Oh… um, South America…”
girl: “Wow.”
client: “… on the one side, and on the other side… The Philippines.”
girl: “WOW!”
client: “And, you know, other places…”
girl: “And, um, if you don’t mind me asking… where are the Philippines? Um… I’m not really good at this stuff.”

Me: “???”