As promised, here’s La Bella Claudia in glorious color:
And my favorite of them all: Hot, dusty and in boots.
Que bella.
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Unexpected Pleasure Part 2
I spoke before about reading Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo novel, the enjoyment I had reading it, and my intention to read the next two (Played with Fire and Kicked A Hornet’s Nest ).
Well, last week I did just that. And I enjoyed them both so much that I did something unprecedented: I re-read the entire trilogy this week, a scant couple of days after finishing the third — and enjoyed the novels as much the second time around as I did the first. Remarkable.
One or two things come to mind about the novels vs. the TV series argument. Of course, the TV show is pared down quite a bit, with characters and scenarios cut out of the novels’ plots. In the main, they make sense; Erika Berger’s leaving Millennium magazine to run a large daily newspaper, for example, was completely cut from the Hornet’s Nest episode, and frankly that wasn’t a wrong decision because it had very little to do with the story’s main arc anyway.
One thing that did strike me — and it’s not altogether a bad thing — is the big difference between Mikael Blomqvist in the novels and in the TV show. In the novels, he’s much more of a ladies’ man — he beds government agent Monica Figuerola for one:
Monica Figuerola (played by Mirja Turestedt)
…as well as both Harriet and her cousin Cecilia Vanger:
…but none of the three in the TV show — which gives rise to another issue.
Michael Nyqvist (who plays Blomqvist in the TV series) is a brilliant actor — you may remember him as the Russian mob boss bad guy in John Wick, to mention but one of his memorable roles — but to be perfectly honest, in the TV trilogy he’s kinda… too short, pudgy and ugly to play a ladies’ man.
Mikael Blomqvist (played by Michael Nyqvist — I know, it’s kinda confusing)
I know that chicks fall for famous men, and in the Millennium series he’s certainly a famous journalist in Sweden, but I think it stretches one’s credulity to imagine him shagging his way around Stockholm. Mercifully, I think, in the TV series he’s a lot more a serious character than a bed toy — he’s in a long-time affair with the married Erika Berger throughout the series:
Erika Berger (played by Lena Endre)
…and of course in the Tattoo episode he beds the tortured and broken Lisbeth Salander — or rather, she beds him, and then only briefly.
Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace)
Those two affairs are quite believable, but to feature Nyqvist as a Warren Beatty-Lothario might have been a terrible piece of miscasting. And fortunately, we were spared that because, and I stress the point, it didn’t affect the storyline at all. If anything, I think it made the story a lot stronger. And having him jump into bed with the cool and businesslike Monica Figuerola might have been fun, but it would have slowed the story down to no good purpose, especially as by that time the tale was building to its wonderful climax.
Now that I’ve read all three novels, of course, all that remains is to re-watch the TV series. And let me repeat the admonition from my earlier post: do not watch the Netfux adaptation because in their usual fashion, they mess the thing up completely by cutting even more scenes and characters to the point where the story becomes almost impossible to follow.
Get the director’s cut on DVD, and have a good time. I certainly plan to.
Problem, Solution
From Insty:
In the interests of saving precious avgas, may I make a humble suggestion — because there’s no need to take them all the way over to Yurp, after all.:
I’m sure Doom Goblin* Greta Thunberg of all people would appreciate the IDF’s effort to save eeeevil fuel and thus pollute Gaia’s atmosphere less.
Just a thought.
*okay, who came up with that wonderful nickname for the little Swedish retard?
3 Voices That Can Just STFU
From now on, I’m actually not interested in hearing anything that these three people have to say, about anything.
Tucker Carlson
I used to listen to what he said — thanks to a gift subscription to his channel — back before he went completely off the rails. Carlson is not a conservative, he’s not a Republican: he’s a loose cannon, and I don’t care much for cannons of the loose persuasion. Which leads me to my next loudmouth.
Candace Owens
If you’re going to choose a hill to die on, then why FFS would you decide that hill to be “Brigitte Macron is actually a man” ? I’ve always been a little suspicious of Owens, because she’s a perfect example of today’s “influencer” ethos, where people of little talent or intellect try to dominate the media just by being “famous” or “edgy”. Yes, she’s said some things that I agree with — e.g. calling out Black Lives Matter — but in today’s fucked-up world, that’s not difficult. STFU Candace and go away. You’re not a conservative commentator, you’re an embarrassment. So stop pretending to be one.
Lindsey Graham
Master of the art of bandwagon statements. In other words, he’ll chime in only after others have said something which makes Republicans cheer. And when he says something all on his own, it’s usually wrong or else just bullshit.
Begone, all of you.
Lifestyle Choices
From some Spanish chick SOTI about her country’s lifestyle:
‘Everything slows down in the afternoon heat. Between 2pm and 5pm, shops close, streets empty, and we like to rest up.
‘Embrace our slower afternoons and you’ll have more energy to enjoy dinner the Spanish way; late, leisurely, and alfresco at 10pm.’
I have to say that when I went to Chile — where they have the same outlook — I grew to love that way of doing things. Granted, it’s not the best business practice, and you can mock it all you want, but it sure as hell is more restful. I loved that when we Americanos went out for dinner at 7pm, we found most restaurants still closed or at best staffed only with people cleaning the place. Two hours later and there’d be a queue of hungry Chileans with their families waiting for a table. Then after the meal — which would end at about 10.30pm — the streets were filled with people strolling about the streets, or going home. Bedtime, I would guess, was no earlier than 11pm, maybe later.
Small wonder that their workday only begins after 9am.
One of the worst aspects of our Murkin work ethic is that nonsense about eating lunch at your desk. Apart from being a filthy habit — sauces and crumbs scattered all over the place — it denies the necessity of taking a break from work. When I was working for Big Corporations, I never had a lunch break of less than an hour, unless there was a deadline looming in which case I just didn’t eat at all and worked through lunchtime. But those situations were few and far between, because I planned my workload efficiently to account for a long lunch. I might have worked late — sometimes past midnight — but only during crunch times.
Over Here? Don’t ask. Work, work work, even for a shitty wage, and annual vacations that are totally inadequate for allowing people to take a proper break from the grind. Ten working days / two weeks? What a load of crock. Whenever I hear about some asshole saying proudly that he hasn’t taken a break from work for ten years, I want to kick his ass.
And we wonder why some people burn out.
I don’t want to hear that our relentless work ethic is what makes our economy the powerhouse that it is. What causes that is not the number of hours we work, but how efficiently we work. (Europeans and Latin Americans are the worst: they work less time and only at about 60% of our efficiency, so it’s small wonder their economies lag behind ours.) There must be a happy medium somewhere between Euro sloth and American drive, and we should try to find it.
To quote the best summary ever: Nobody ever lay on his deathbed wishing he’d spent more time at the office.
Caption Competition #413
Your suggestions in Comments.