Ankai

The shoe thing made me chuckle. My family do not typically wear shoes in the house, we usually have slippers or sandals (yep, sandals and socks) for when we are inside the house, but are pretty lax about it, and don't make guests take their shoes off. I have sandals in my apartment for when I am inside, but I will sometimes keep my shoes on if I need to go out the other door. My parents have some White Asiaphile friends who are a bit more strict with their no-shoes policy and have little slippers for everyone at the front door. Chicken feet are fine. They taste like chicken...at least when they are cooked. I am not sure about the chicken in the episode. The spoken Chinese was...well... Perhaps it was a deliberate behind-the-scenes decision to not involved politics, but I found it a little strange that the "China China China" presented in the show was the People's Republic of China, as opposed to the Republic of China. I get that the point of all of that was about cultural roots and not the question about the status of Taiwan, but I still found it to be distracting. I forget what the Taiwan-Mainland relations were back in 1995, but I don't think that they were all that chummy.

I don't know. It looked to me like there were no more than a dozen soldiers between him and the princess. He could have gotten through them and taken her hostage, no?

I just watched a movie called Departures, about a man who takes a job preparing the deceased for their coffins. Given its subject matter, this movie could have been a tearjerker out of the gate, but the movie was quite deliberate in easing the audience in at the beginning with a bit of mild humor. It wasn't really until nearly halfway through that the weight of the sadness became prominent, but even then, it was not some despairing misery. It was less a movie that makes its audience cry and more one that lets its audience cry. I really liked it.

Did I miss the reason why Ben was not wearing a shirt? While the horrible crass insults are usually reliable for a laugh, my favorite one-off lines from these two episodes were rather tame. The "Vladimir Drawattentiontomyself" from last week and the fake phone noises from one of the new characters in this episode made me laugh the most. Maybe because, with all of the raw jokes being tossed about, these two lines just threw me off. Also, is Richard pretty much the only non-horrible human being in this show to last more than two episodes? Is he going to snap at some point or just be the exasperating nice guy for the entire run?

First off, thanks to those who had addressed my questions about Old English and Old Frankish in the thread for the previous episode. Speaking of the previous episode, the first time that I watched it, I thought that Ragnar deliberately fell off the wall, but then I sort of changed my mind when I watched it again and saw how he bounced off all of the hard surfaces. Watching the end of this episode, though, I went back to wondering if he had not deliberately thrown himself off and got those injuries on purpose. Sure, it would hurt a lot and take him out of commission for a while, but maybe he needed that to sell his decision to get Baptized and brought into the city. Of course, the Baptism may be genuine for him, but there is always an ulterior motive...or agenda. I did kind of like the difference between him and Ecbert when it came to scheming. Ecbert tried acting all innocent and shocked that his son would even think that he was trying to pull something. Ragnar pretty much outright stated that he has a scheme and he is under no obligation to reveal it to anyone. That said, maybe one or two of them are in on it and are not telling the others. So...conquered by the dead. That could mean Ragnar or it could mean the sickness that is...plaguing the Parisian populace. Or...there is still time for that other rather gross piece of speculation to be put into works. Perhaps that will not be necessary.

It could be worse. The show could have the parents beating the boys every episode and emphasize the father's gangster background.

Well...Louis did hospitalize an eleven-year-old boy this episode, just not his son.

Yeah, I see Eddie's complaints as being a bit naive. That said, is he legally forbidden from pitching another show somewhere down the line? Like maybe within a few months? Like, let's say that this show is deemed successful enough; could he pitch a darker version to a cable network like FX or even HBO? It doesn't have to necessarily involve him in his pre-teen years or even his own life, but something where the meat of his grievances can be aired more freely. If Fresh Off the Boat opens the door to Asian American shows being exposed to the mainstream, maybe there can also be room for...Gobble-D-Cook...or whatever.

So they were yelling "Oh! We are annoyed and surprised!" over and over? I am not doubting you, but I am just trying to get clarification, particularly since it seems as if the French and English at that time seemed to come from the same sets of peoples, though from different subsets. The Gauls were Celts, right? And the Franks were a Germanic tribe like the Saxons. And the Romans had control over both Gaul and the British Islands for a time.

How much of a story could the show realistically mine from a story about spanking or whatever else? It is already a stereotype that Asian parents abuse their children, specifically any child who seems to be talented at something. Personally, I wasn't hit a lot as a child, but I do remember my mother occasionally hitting the back of my hand as punishment when I was younger than Evan. That was it, really; no belts or welts or wooden spoons. It seems that the show's form of punishment is having the mother yell for a few seconds. Perhaps there had been ideas for a "smack your kids" elements within various episodes, but they either got shot down immediately or focused grouped out.

What exactly, does or did "Uff da" mean? I looked at the Wikipedia page and, while I do not doubt its accuracy, I do doubt its helpfulness in whatever context it may have had in this episode. The scene with Ragnar and "Athelstan" at the end got me raising my eyebrows the first time, but it sort of made more sense when I read someone's speculation around what might happen. That the disastrous attack was not simply a means to punish Floki, but phase one of a bigger plan. Maybe a plan that does not necessarily involve destroying the city to take it. The battle, though epic, was a little odd, in my opinion. Maybe I had missed something in the planning scene in the previous episode, but Lagertha, Kalf, and Erlendur seemed to have about as many warriors with them as Ragnar had ships. Sure, perhaps some of those ships were working with skeleton crews, but still...Were the two teams supposed to be so numerically unbalanced? I was surprised that the land attackers would simply rush into the corridor despite it obviously being a trap. Seriously, those slits in the walls could have had archers or anything. Lagertha was far from the front of the group at that time, though, so she probably would have started running away half a second after Kalf surprise hit her. The French counter-attack seemed to come a little late on both sides. Granted, to have come too early would have made for a much shorter scene and everything was moving quickly already, but it still seemed late. The soldiers fighting Lagertha's group waited a while before opening the floor doors and throwing rocks at the...cage? And couldn't the oil have been prepared and dropped on the towers at any time? I think that I understood...most...of what the princess said, mostly because she sort of sounds like how one of my French uncles (RIP) talked. That said, I am pretty sure that the actress, though French, does not talk like that at all. I saw a clip of her from something else and she sounds more like my cousins. I can imagine that the director had told her to "French it up" and, as she had no idea what that meant, decided to lean really hard on the Rs. I think that someone brought this up in a previous episode thread, but I am a little curious now. Would Old Frankish be that much more difficult for a Norseman to learn than Old English? Yes, it would probably lean harder on the Latin, but wouldn't both Frankish and English have the similar general origins of Celtic, Latin, and Germanic?

No real surprise that China has officially overtaken South Korea as the second biggest market for Kingsman with over $53 million in two weeks. No telling, though how many of those audience members were young people from Hong Kong. So, Dejana, since I am considering you to be the resident box office expert, do you have predictions concerning the domestic theatrical run of the Spongebob movie now that Home has been released?

I made a long post in the Chuck thread that contrasted the brothers, but I think that Jimmy could represent the plucky trickster standing up to an oppressive and hypocritical system. He does not necessarily fight to win, but he fights to do as much damage to those who have wronged him and his family before losing. Of course, this means that he takes any victory that he can get, pushes for more, and then wallows in the fact that he can never catch a break in the end. While Chuck may portray himself as a rags-to-riches man who struck out on his own, Jimmy values family and friends, which is one reason why he is so loyal to Chuck and Kimmy. What Chuck may consider cheating or devaluing the essence of the law profession, Chuck sees as going the distance for those who depend on him. Yes, he sometimes feels guilt about what he does, but you cannot fight fair against a giant. He is the defender of the little guy...and, yes, sometimes the little guy is himself; so what? He knows that Chuck disapproves of his tactics, but he had not realized the depth of his brother's contempt for him and what he represents. Yet, even with that, the good side of Jimmy's nature pulled through for a bit. He gave Chuck provisions that would last for a little while, at least until Chuck could make other arrangements. Because that is the kind of guy that he is.

That is interesting. Does that mean that theaters tend to judge whether a movie stays not due to how much (or how little) money it is currently making, but how much more money a similar movie is making? I ask because both movies had been doing maybe one or two hundred per theater each week day, but other movies were allowed to make much less on average before ultimately getting pulled.

Don't take this as the truth, since I don't know for certain, but she could be referring to being one of the people going raiding and bringing back treasure, not simply being Norse. Those who know more than I say that they did not call themselves Viking the way that we cal them Vikings now.

So, for kicks, I have been checking on the box office performances of Kingsman and Fifty Shades of Grey. Of course, Fifty Shades has made more money than Kingsman, both domestically and overseas. If one looks just at the numbers for March, however, one may notice that Kingsman has done better than Fifty Shades domestically and overseas. Last Saturday, Fifty Shades made less than $250,000 domestically to Kingsman's nearly $1.4 million while Tuesday gave Fifty Shades $67,000 to Kingsman's $356,000. In other words, Kingsman did much better on Tuesday than Fifty Shades did on Saturday. And while both are losing in viewers, the number of people seeing Fifty Shades has been cut in half maybe two weeks in a row, while Kingsman is only starting to inch up to 40%, and even that could fall back down to a third or a quarter. Depending on how long each movie stays in theaters, there is an ever so slight chance that Kingsman could make up for the Valentines Day Weekend pummeling that Fifty Shades handed out. So...do you think that there is a chance? When is it decided that a movie will get pulled from cinemas? And who decides that? Fifty Shades has fallen from its domestic maximum of 3655 theaters to 554, while Kingsman's maximum of 3282 has fallen to 1785. The per-screen averages are both in the hundreds, but Fifty Shades will probably start hitting double-digits a lot sooner. I have looked around at other movies and the money earned in that final week, and they vary greatly.

Well, I doubt that Jimmy plans on showing his apartment to clients on a regular basis, so getting a nice place now does not help him business-wise. He would probably get a new car if he ran out of excuses for why he is driving it. Thanks. And, sure, Chuck was probably thinking of himself, but he probably tried to convince himself that he was doing it for Jimmy's sake. He also probably convinced himself that he locked Jimmy out of the Sandpiper case for sake of the clients. A man who considers himself righteous can always rationalize a heinous act. I am sure that the English told themselves that they were doing the Irish a favor by constantly holding them down and taking everything away from them. Jimmy is the kind of person who is only human. He tries his best and, even if his best is not good enough, he gives it his all to get it done. Chuck did not rise to the top of a law firm by being only human. He also did not get there by constantly being coddled by an older brother. He got no breaks, he took no shortcuts, and he put the work in. To him, going dumpster-diving is not paying one's due. He takes great pride not only in his status, but his journey there. Jimmy is a reminder of his starting point, using cheap tricks and smarmy charm to get his way instead of going through the proper channels. On the one hand, Chuck may feel like, since he was able to do it properly, everyone else should be held to the same standards, particularly a brother. On the other hand, he has no faith in Jimmy's abilities or willingness to respect those standards. Jimmy is what Chuck had tried to escape and would avoid altogether if he could. Jimmy had probably said many times that he would change his ways and then eventually fell back into old habits. Chuck cannot trust Jimmy even when Jimmy is being sincere, as Jimmy will eventually start undermining that sincerity with lies and tricks. Jimmy is a threat to the identity that he has created for himself. If Chuck cannot simply make him go away, the only other option is to keep him under some control. Getting him out of jail was an obligation, letting him work at HHM was probably a necessary evil for him, but helping him out on a path to where they could be even be considered in the same league was too much. Perhaps, in some terribly twisted way, Chuck figured that making Hamlin out to be the bad guy was a way to keep Jimmy out without absolutely destroying his ego. While it prevents Chuck from being seen as the bad guy, it also keeps him feeling like he is still loved and respected by the one whose opinion he values the most.

Captain Flint had been revealed to be a man capable of brutal violence in the first episode of Black Sails. I suppose that that would be predicable, given that he is a pirate. More recently, however, he committed what could be considered a heinous terrorist act against perhaps hundreds of innocent people. It was pretty bad. And he is the protagonist of the show. And he is great.

I could not find a general "Better Call Saul" thread aside from that no Breaking Bad thread, so I am posting this here. When I started typing out this post, I had not thought this all of the way through, so if it starts coming across as nonsensical or…problematic…then I apologize beforehand. I like reading historical non-fiction books. For some reason, though, I have this tendency to apply what I had read to other things if there is the slight chance that they apply. The last history book that I had read was about pop music in America from the 1890s to the 1970s, but the book before THAT was The Boston Irish: A Political History. Now, does that have anything to do with Better Call Saul? No, not directly, but I found some parallels, as tenuous as they may be. Now, I have no real connection to Irish people or Irish Americans beyond some people whom I know, and I would kind of feel embarrassed to pry into their family traditions to confirm any of this, so this may all come across as nonsense, but here goes. First, I am pretty sure that I remember Saul saying that he has an Irish background. McGill could be Scottish, but I remember him saying that he was Irish. Hamlin originally came from the Norman French and could be English or Irish. For the sake of this post, I will say that it is English. If my brief internet information gathering is correct (and it may not be), McGill means “son of the stranger” while Hamlin means “home”. Hamlin is the insider, while McGill is the perpetual outsider. Vince Gilligan was brought up Catholic, though I don’t know if he was Irish Catholic. I don’t know how many Catholics there were in Farmville, Virginia when he was growing up. Maybe that could affect how he approaches his shows, maybe not. In the penultimate episode of the season, Mike overtly distinguishes the good/bad dichotomy from the criminal/not criminal dichotomy. One is not necessarily bad for breaking the law or good for always following the law. According to the book, this sets Mike in the traditionally Irish side of the Irish/English dichotomy. Now, this does not mean that the Irish do not respect the law in principal. What it means is that the Irish do not respect the law under the English, due to centuries of English repression and hatred. The laws have worked against the Irish, and the Irish could not use the laws to protect themselves, so they work against the laws. Subverting the law, perverting it, and undermining it was celebrated. Yet, there was still the feeling that they would never really catch a break, no matter how hard they tried. Boston was a pretty hardcore Puritan town when the Irish first showed up. They could tolerate the Protestant Irish, and were okay with a small number of Irish Catholics. Then more Irish Catholics came and the Bostonians started going crazy. They thought the worst of these Irish, bringing up pretty much every stereotype of the Irish that you know. They were rowdy, drunk, clannish, stupid, unsophisticated, lazy, disloyal, backwards, dirty, etc. Unfortunately for the hostile Bostonians, they could not completely prevent the Irish from entering politics. There were some Irishmen and Americans of Irish descent whom the Bostonians felt were manageable, and they sometimes tried to pit these Irish against those whom they considered to be problems. One major issue was a differing idea about corruption. The English hated corruption in any form and prided themselves as pure. The Irish, however, were perfectly fine about using political power to help those in need, at least family members and those who helped them get elected. There were several elections in the Irish parts of Boston that were utterly farcical, even more ridiculous than the stunts that Jimmy/Saul has pulled. The WASPs may have been horrified at what they considered to be a perversion of the democratic process. The Irish, however, saw this as just an extension of the Irish tradition of thumbing their noses at the English. The way that the English upheld the laws were hypocritical, and would keep the Irish poor and powerless. Being cold-heartedly by the book would be suicidal. Sympathetic corruption was the only way for the Irish to survive. Holding onto the family was paramount, keeping the community together was non-negotiable, and exploiting whatever opening one can find for the common good was a given. Of course, not all Irish felt this way. There were, as I said, the manageable Irish politicians, who tried to stick up for their people using legitimate means. Or they abandoned them altogether. As the Irish gained in number and clout, certain parts of the community started to let down their cultural guard and try to embrace the mainstream. This was easier for those who made money and were able to move out of their poor neighborhoods. Now, this could have been taken as a sign that their people have made it. But when things started going bad for the traditional Irish neighborhoods, many of those who left got branded as traitors. They had abandoned the communities that gave them life in order to suck up to the hypocrites in control; the same hypocrites who had so callously and thoughtlessly employed social experiments to further break up the Irish communities under the guise of justice and legality. Some of these absentee Irish were even at the forefront of these projects, which only further infuriated the poor communities. It is in this context that I saw the dynamic between Jimmy and Chuck last episode. Some either or elsewhere claimed that the McGill brothers most likely were from a working class community. Jimmy was the traditional one, the jokester and trickster who hides deep pain. Jimmy is a scrappy survivor, and any advantage he gets is earned, regardless of how it is earned. His fight is a righteous fight against a mighty foe and, thus, any tactic is fair. He pulls out all the stops. He sees himself as the underdog that is striking out against the Man (Hamlin), whom he sees as having betrayed him and his brother. Jimmy values family and friends. He looks out for them and does whatever he can for them. He idolizes his brother and admires his success; getting into law was one way to try to stay close to him. Jimmy’s toiling in the legal muck was means to an end, yet he can never catch a break. And it turns out that the family member whom he had so adored had sold him out a long time ago. While Jimmy was truly upset at what had turned out to be Chuck’s horrible extended betrayal, he still was willing to make sure that he had provisions for a little while longer. Because that is what a good man is supposed to do, even for someone who does not deserve it. Chuck is the one who wants to keep Jimmy down for his own good; he is embarrassed at what he sees as Jimmy’s frequent corner-cutting and wild stunts. Chuck is the hard worker who got to the top despite all obstacles by being a stickler for the law. He did it the way that it was meant to be done, the way that they said it should be done. He cannot jeopardize that for some trouble-making criminal clown of a relative, who may very well have been one of those obstacles and is a reminder of how shaky his own legitimacy may be. To Chuck, Jimmy is a family shame, and letting him work in the mail room at HHM was the most that he could do without compromising himself. Jimmy looking after him over the past eighteen months was nice and all, but it changed nothing. Taking that Sandpiper case away from Jimmy was the best thing for everyone. But he lied to Jimmy. He lied to Jimmy for years and hid behind an easy boogeyman. Perhaps, he should have been honest about his contempt for Jimmy’s attempts at becoming a lawyer from the beginning, but perhaps he decided that a long-term lie would make it easier for him to keep Jimmy in check. It is difficult and cruel. In the long run, though, it was the right thing to do. I don’t know if he was the first one to say this, but Bono said this: “In the United States, you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I'm going to get that bastard.” Jimmy is going to get that bastard.

Is it going to be a remake of the animated movie or just a retelling? If it is the latter, then there are a few Chinese versions to tide you over until it comes. One version is streaming on Amazon for $3.00. It is dubbed into English, if that is an issue for you.

Maaaybe they could join forces. Another possibility is that they step on each other's toes and the pirates exploit this as much as possible.

Allegedly, there is an Indian adaptation in the works, so you may get your chance. And, this ties into that "too much of a good thing" non-issue. After a threshold, the notion of positive portrayals of PoC may become less important, as there are so many different and diverse characters, that it is perfectly safe for even a lot of bad apples to get in there. What that threshold is not set in stone, of course, and varies from person to person. But that is why quantity is important here, and why pulling back now on this supposed influx of racial diversity would be bad.

The issue with Vane's crew will be one of many issues that will have to be addressed in the third season. The men who went with him probably had not anticipated that Flint's men would take back the ship, but maybe their agreement that "rescuing" Flint was for the bigger picture might keep them from turning against Vane. Maybe not. Again, the gold has arrived at Nassau, the prospect of a British attack is higher than ever, and Flint is still on a warpath that could threaten to kill absolutely everyone. Vane keeping a ship might have to take a backseat.

It probably was based on stuff like that. The vocals and lyrics were based on "All God Everything" by Trinidad James, which amazes me, since that song is terrible. Also, the vocal bass got me thinking of "Fuel" by Metallica. I even made a little mashup of the two songs about a month ago.

Right. I had forgotten about that for some reason, but now I remember.