The Avengers ‘65, vol. 4

Even more adventures of secret agent John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and his sidekick Mrs. Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). Episodes range from straightforward murder mysteries to cases involving national security to cases involving weird events (which may or may not overlap with the others). In these episodes, one straightforward murder-mystery (with extra crazy guy); delusions of grandeur with random weirdness; spies and foreign agents; and really weird and surreal. These episodes didn’t really stick in my head. I took notes while watching them a week or two ago and don’t really remember them now; my notes make no sense.

Previously: vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3

–The Episodes–

• Dial a Deadly Number

  The plot: Six company chairmen died in less than a year; the companies were not then taken over. Steed acts as a trust fund representative and visits the relevant bank to discuss investments; Mrs. Peel visits the funeral home to get the latest victim’s effects, and discovers that he had a beeper (was wearing it in the pocket over his heart) but it ended up missing. Steed discusses put options (a way to make money with dropping shares?) with another broker with insinuations and flirts with the secretary and discovers the name of someone who is miraculously making money with put options.

  Random Thoughts: This episode was kind of boring. The murderer and the motive were obvious from the beginning; Mrs. Peel wasn’t in this one much, so there was a lack of banter; and there were no weird elements to make up for her lack. There was an attack by motorcycles, a wine-tasting duel, and a random crazy guy, though. It all seemed straightforward until the appearance of the crazy guy (the sudden appearance of his craziness, anyway). Mrs. Peel was taking a refresher course in applied medicine and was captured once. This episode did not actually require any suspension of disbelief; I don’t know if the murder method was actually feasable, but it seemed plausible.

• Man-Eater of Surrey Green

  The Plot: Missing horticulturalists; Mrs. Peel was friends with the latest missing person. They talk to her fiancé/coworker, who has to chair a meeting of horticulturalists when the chairman cannot (his first missed meeting in ten years). Steed visits the chairman as a representative of the Green Preservation society; his favorite plant is the venus flytrap, and he claimed to be collecting horticulturalists for a project involving a new flowering shrub; however, there is brainwashing and an oil derrick in the background, even though there is no oil in Surrey. They find a dead astronaut (died in space), and War Dept. gets involved (spacecraft collided with a plant).

  Random Thoughts: This episode more than makes up for the lack of weirdness in the last one. Steed is growing roses, which tells Mrs. Peel what the case involves. Mrs. Peel was taking calls at Steed’s place, and was the driver when they went to investigate. The special effects for the plant growing were lousy. Shotguns were the weapon of choice. Mrs Peel was captured and controlled and fights Steed. At one point, it is mentioned that recent photographs show evidence of whole areas of vegitation on Mars or the Moon. The episode also features a crazy old lady expert, Zombie Horticulturalists, and Man-Eating Mind-Controlling Sentient Plants from Space!! (blocked by hearing aids!) I had a technology issue with this; I didn’t realize until late in the episode that the earplugs with wires to a pocket was a hearing aid; I think I assumed he had a radio or something and was confused when he mentioned turning it down.

• Two’s a Crowd

  The Plot: Col. Psev wants to infiltrate the Western Defense conference. No one has ever seen him, but they know his tastes (model airplanes, particular and unusual types of cigars and liquers) and his associates. Steed is participating in the conference, and has a watchdog for some reason. Psev and his associates are staying at a random embassy, and the overanxious ambassador is annoying; he tries too hard and is ineffective and made an otherwise interesting episode hard to watch.

  Random Thoughts: Starts off ominously with a plane carrying a bomb; the bomb is released and lands in a punchbowl (it’s only a model) with a message: “Arriving at 12 o’clock. Psev”. I was surprised to see that Mrs. Peel actually rang Steed’s doorbell. Randomly, there was a fashion show for secret agent clothes. Surprisingly, the bad guys actually know about Mrs. Peel’s existence. There was stupid use of a house phone leading to Mrs. Peel being captured, and another instance by one of the embassy staff. I did not expect Psev’s identity (should have paid more attention), though I did expect the other twist at the end.

• Too Many Christmas Trees

  The Plot: secrets are leaking out; the only possible suspects are Steed and Frederick Marshall, an old friend. Steed is having nightmares, walking through fake snow and abstract Christmas trees, finds a pile of presents, including a picture of himself, sees an evil Father Christmas, and in the most recent dream, sees the other guy dead. Mrs. Peel visits, and Steed finds out that Marshall died the previous night. There are four people with a table and pictures of Marshall which are removed to show Steed. One of the people involved is having second thoughts. Mrs. Peel is invited to a house party where the people involved are, and is induced to invite Steed; there are more weird dreams and a Dickensian costume party.

  Random Thoughts: bad fake snow (probably intentionally, a dream sequence with 60s abstract trees and with ominous music; I expected Mrs. Peel’s body, but it was some random guy’s). Mrs. Peel used Steed’s doorbell again. Someone called Mrs. Peel “Emma” which then caused Steed to go flirt with a random woman. Mrs. Peel writes articles on psychoanalysis (that are very good for the lay public). At the Dickensian costume party Christmas Eve, she is Oliver Twist (all the other women are in period dresses; Steed is someone who gets executed in A Tale of Two Cities) Mrs. Peel’s hat was knocked off and her hair was perfect underneath, of course. I don’t know why there was there a room of funhouse mirrors; the climactic fight scene was there.

official site for this release
The Avengers Forever
The Nitpicker’s Guide to the Avengers
another fansite

Barbara Hambly: Bride of the Rat God

I bought this new when I was still reading everything by Barbara Hambly (probably somewhere around its release date in 1994); I doubt I would have read it otherwise, and I’ve always felt that whoever was responsible for the title and cover did this book a disservice, though I’m not sure the marketing department knew what to do with it. On her site, she mentions that this was tacked onto the contract of another book the publisher wanted, and that it did not sell well at all. She also mentions an outline for a sequel (Curse of the Swamp Monster), but is not optimistic about its existence as an actual book. I do love this book, cheesy title and overdramatic blurbs and all:

Hollywood, 1923:

Gin, gems, and life in the fast lane…Chrysanda Flamande was the sultriest vamp of the silver screen. She had everything–fawning friends, glittering parties, exotic diversions, and baubles to spare.

Then an elderly Chinese gentleman warned her that the fabulous trinket she’d worn in her latest screen triumph had marked her to be the bride of an ancient devil-god of Manchuria. Chris paid him not the slightest heed–until the stunt double who’d also worn the jewel was hideously murdered.

The Rat God’s trap began to close. And as her doom stalked closer and her fair-weather friends fell away, Chris grew ever more desperate. But how could she thwart the mystical power and monstrous guile of the fiend that hunted her? What human force could keep the demon Rat God from claiming his unwilling bride?

This is mostly accurate; the timing of events is wrong (she was given a warning but didn’t find out the specifics until after the stunt double’s murder and an attempt on her own life), and the bit about the fair-weather friends is not true (they do end up avoiding Chris’ usual set of friends near the end, though). The cover features a dark-haired flapper-ish woman wearing an opal necklace (Chris is indeed dark-haired, which surprised me; I keep thinking of her as a redhead), burning oil rigs (in the story) and a random Chinese figure (not a person; I’m not sure if its intended to be the Rat God or one of the guardian dogs).

The cover and its blurb (“Too beautiful to live! Too wild to die”), the back cover copy, and the first page excerpt (part of the scene with the burning oil rigs) give the impression of an action/thriller/horror/pulp type story. I think the choice was made to evoke the sort of films Chris was appearing in; however, it has those elements but isn’t really that type of story.

The story is told from the point-of-view of Christine’s sister-in-law Norah Blackstone, who has been in LA for six weeks at the start of the book. Chris traveled to England to buy three Pekingese (trying to out-Chinese her friends) and brought Norah back with her as well. Norah had lost almost everything (her family’s money was invested in Russia and was lost, so she had to give up school; her brother and husband were lost in WWI and most of her family died in an influenza epidemic afterwards; neither her remaining family nor her in-laws would help her because she was not Jewish, but her husband was; and she ended up in service to a nasty woman and her lecherous son), and was contemplating suicide. The story is as much about Norah’s healing as it is about the Rat God.

I love this book, and I really wish I could express why, though I think part of it is that it’s about an adult having a second chance at happiness and love, and that is something I like (wish-fulfillment, in a way). It’s not as action-packed as the description sounds, though the action is there (along with a few scenes of horrific violence; Ms. Hambly does gruesome very well). It seems more slow-paced than it is; the action takes place over the course of a couple of months. A lot of it is quiet scenes between Norah and her eventual love interest, with the chaos of the set or parties in the background; they do fall in love kind of quickly, but it doesn’t seem like it because they spend a lot of time together just talking or working (she ends up acting as his assistant occasionally). I actually believe they could have a functioning long-term relationship.

xxxHOLiC the Movie: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is half of the Tsubasa/xxxHOLiC double feature, rented from Netflix; like the Tsubasa portion, it is essentially an extended episode with better animation. A young woman visits Yuuko because she can’t enter her house, and gives Yuuko the key; an invitation to an auction arrives, so Yuuko, Watanuki, and Doumeki go there. The auction is at the same house the woman couldn’t enter. There are several people already there; they are all collectors of various things and were sent a message saying that their collections were incomplete. The host is not present, but guides the guests via notes and opening doors. The house itself is large and rambling; Watanuki’s trip to the bathroom is long and odd: up stairs and down stairs and through trapdoors and crawling and down halls and outside and on and on. Between dinner and bedtime, people disappear, and Watanuki is not happy about that or about sharing a room with Doumeki. He wakes up in the middle of the night, and finds the room has turned into a single, and goes in search of Doumeki and Yuuko. His path is extremely surreal, and he meets up with Doumeki and a couple of other guests in a room of random collections (barbed wire, traffic lights, traps, etc). Eventually they find their host and a fight scene in the surreal landscape ensues.

I watched this dubbed with subtitles because there was some discussion in the animeondvd forums about rewrites, and I was curious. Generally speaking, I don’t like dubs with children or young teenagers; there’s something about the generic dub kid voices that grates on my nerves (oddly, I generally don’t have a problem with kids in US-produced cartoons). I was pleasantly surprised by Colleen Clinkenbeard’s Yuuko; I was watching Trinity Blood when it was announced, and disliked Esther (both character and dub voice). She was also Kirara in Samurai 7 and Rose in FMA, so I was associating her with bad teenage-girl voices and didn’t see how she could be a decent Yuuko; of course, I managed to miss that she was also Hawkeye in FMA. She is, in fact, the only one of the main dub voices I like; Doumeki isn’t bad, and the black Mokona is less annoying than the white Mokona, but Watanuki’s voice is even more whiny than the Japanese version (and he is a bit of a whiner).

Most of the changes I’ve noticed so far (about halfway through; I eventually gave up and switched to Japanese) were just random and did not add anything to the show; a couple were a little clearer than the subtitles, but most were irrelevant. For example, one of the men went to look for the missing people, and a woman at the same time said she was going to look for a restroom because she had had too much to drink; the dub had her wanting to go with him to look for a restroom to powder her nose. There were a fair amount of changes like that; some for better English (which is understandable), and some with slight but overall meaningless changes (which is not).

After Watanuki wakes up to find Doumeki gone (the bedroom changed from a double (two beds) to a single), he wanders off, hears a strange noise, and looks for the source. In the dub, he’s just wandering aimlessly looking for Doumeki, and the noise is either muted or removed. Changes to the dub for flow or clarification or more colloquial English are one thing; removal of sound effects is another. This wasn’t the only place I noticed the sound effects were gone (though the only one where it mattered, so far)

The Japanese track is there and the subtitles are presumably faithful to it (it’s not dubtitled, at least), but the changes, especially the removal of sound effects, seemed very random and gratuitous. The sounds add to the atmosphere and I don’t know why they would remove them.

xxxHOLiC is one of my favorite manga series, and I enjoyed watching the TV series and was planning on buying the it (including whatever limited editions they produced). I am now reluctant due to the random changes in this, but I have no willpower, and will probably buy it anyway.

Anime News Network listing

random bits

This post of Ju-ken’s was interesting (history through picks!) and gave me more things to throw into google. I know everyone’s worked with everyone else at this point, but I never would have expected to find information about Ju-ken on a By-Sexual fansite (he was in nitro and food (same band, new name) with their drummer for a while). Also, I think the bassist that replaced him in food is the same as the bassist who replaced him in wipe (not technically a replacement since he was only support there); there’ s kanji on the By-Sexual site and romaji and katakana on the wipe site.

Looking at dates and other random information:

Nao and Ju-ken had toured with Kiyoshi in 1997, including the Kiyoshi/Hakuei show/tour (I’m not sure if it was one show or a tour; there’s a tour book for it, though.) Kiyoshi’s support was Punch (g), Juken (b), Cola (k), Nao (dr); Hakuei’s was Kiyoshi (g), Den (b), Cola (k), Nao (dr). Punch was nitro/food’s guitarist; Den was also in By-Sexual and later was in Zigzo and test-no. and is also currently supporting machine (Hakuei and Kiyoshi’s current band).

Nitro formed 1998, became food in 1999, and his last date with food was 2001.05.07; 渡部嘉之 became support bass 2001.05.17; they ended 2001.09. I’ve also seen Nitoro for the first name; the katakana would be ナイトロ for either one.

Ju-ken, Nao, and Punch (along with Hikaru Yoshida) toured as D.I.E.’s support in 1999; Ju-ken toured with him again in 2001.10 (and possibly other times; those are the ones I’ve seen proof of). I keep running across Steve Eto (percussion for Hotei’s recent tour) while looking for related information (did something with D.I.E. later and was in a band with Hikaru Yoshida at some point).

wipe formed 1999.02; Ju-ken was support starting 1999.04, was alternating with the other starting 2000.03, and ワタベヨシユキ/watabe yoshiyuki officially joined wipe for their tour 2000.08; they ended 2001.03 (nothing listed between those dates)

Oblivion Dust – joined as support January 2001, disbanded June 30, 2001

I found a random concert report for BUG’s 2001.12.30 show in 渋谷DeSeO that listed BUG’s members as KYO, FURUTON, 室姫深 with guest 獣犬; according to a fansite, BUG formed in 2001 and their current bassist joined in January 2002.

Other random finds: pages for support members of FAKE? and S.Q.F.

Also, it seems to be generally accepted on the English-language sites that the kanji he uses means “beast-dog”, but none ever have the kanji itself. That fansite had him as 獣犬, which can have that meaning; now that I look more closely, his entry has that as well. I obviously need to spend some quality time with that entry and a dictionary.

Brian Francis Slattery: Spaceman Blues: a love song

I ran across a mention of this somewhere; it sounded interesting, and the library had it. I picked it up and read a couple of random bits, thought “not for me” and put it back and wandered off, but wandered back and flipped through it again a couple more times before deciding that there was obviously something there that interested me and I should check it out. There’s a lot of description in the book, and I’m not a very visual reader, so long passages of description generally make my eyes glaze over, but something with his style made it interesting. I liked this much more than I expected and plan on buying it eventually.

The front cover blurb is from Harlan Ellison^® (“What a breathless, mad tornado of words!”; I’ve never actually read him); the back blurbs compare it to Thomas Pynchon twice (tried and failed a couple of times), Phil Dick for the plot (a plus; I’ve read most, though not in at least ten years), and to China Miéville (bounced off of due to style) and Cory Doctorow (meh) for style. These are mostly not endorsements that I find appealing, but there were also several instances of “surreal” and surreal is always worth trying.

Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González is missing after his apartment exploded; his lover Wendell Apogee wants to know why. Wendell starts by talking to Manuel’s other friends and then his enemies and follows leads farther and farther away from his acquaintances. Manuel is the sort of person who knows everyone; at one point there is someone who keeps track of relationships with strings on nails, and Manuel is at the center of everything; that person is afraid that without Manuel, everything will fall apart. Manuel also has many enemies; he traffics in everything, including immigrants, drugs, and arms. Wendell eventually finds the city under the city (Darktown); he eventually fakes his death and moves there accompanied by Masoud, a former fighter pilot from Lebanon. Wendell reminds Masoud of his younger brother who he failed to protect, and he wants another chance to do the right thing. It’s hard to say anything else about the plot without spoiling any twists.

The setting is a very immigrant-heavy portion of New York, and the cast is extremely diverse; there are several Latino characters, but most of the others are from different cultures (and even the Latino characters are from everywhere that that description contains). I think there is a scene somewhere (a party, maybe?) where there are over a hundred languages being spoken. Wendell himself is white, but I kept thinking of him as African-American; I think I can blame the band Arrested Development for that (though the song was “Mr. Wendal” and the video featured an old man). The book mostly follows Wendell and is in third-person present tense, with flashbacks and glimpses of the futures of various characters in their appropriate tenses. The present tense took some getting used to, but after a few sections, I stopped really noticing it. It has seven chapters in which something happens; each chapter has named sections that are a few pages long.

The only things that bothered me were very minor: the police officers were named Trout and Salmon, which I found a bit jarring; and the end of the book (it ended). Even though the book just kind of ended, there were glimpses of most of the major characters’ futures throughout the book, so even if their immediate fates were uncertain, their future was at least mentioned.

I really liked this book, but can’t really say why; it just worked for me. I liked the characters, was interested in the plot, and liked the style. It’s annoying that I can go on for ages about things I don’t like or even things I find vaguely annoying, but can’t really find anything to say about things I like. It might have been easier if I had written it up when I read it instead of a couple of weeks later, though. The blurbs on the book are all extremely positive, and all of the praise is merited. I would not have guessed that this was a first novel, and I hope this book is successful for the author and that he continues to write.

ha!

google.jp is my new best friend! It had crossed my mind to try the Japanese search engines at some point to look for Japanese information, but I hadn’t until now. Throwing 峰 正典 into google.com gave tons hits for Stephanie (he’s credited with arrangement for her Gundam theme) and not much else (lots of sites in Chinese, some other anime-related arrangement credits, a handful of Olive Sunday references, and a fansite that apparently I failed to set proper character encoding on before, but is working now); throwing 峰 正典 into google.co.jp gave a profile on the first page (from his guitar’s manufacturer and relatively recent; he’s wearing a Hellmetz T-shirt).

I was vaguely curious, because I couldn’t really find anything about him, but became very curious after he said he was 32 in a posting on the Quintillion Quiz blog; there is a Masanori Mine credited on Girl U Need’s 1996.02 album (the credit is Rhythm guitar on “Without You”: Masanori “Santa” Mine). Girl U Need = half of Earthshaker + Chachamaru, who all would have been in their mid-30s at the time; a very young guitarist seemed unlikely, so I started to wonder if there was more than one guitarist with that name. The profile confirmed him as being born in 1976 (and his birthday’s not until August, so he’s not 32 yet) and that Girl U Need was his first professional credit (won an audition). It looks like his career has been steady but low-profile and behind the scenes; he’s been in bands and supported people, but also produces and arranges and does commercial and TV music. He also teaches at the same school as Koichi Terasawa and Toshiyuki Sugino; I was very confused when I found a picture from an event involving all three.