'Bred Crumbs

The Symbol Life

Symbols.com is an informative and engrossing reference to Western (and some Eastern) graphic symbols, indexed both visually and with a word index. An online version of a thorough symbols dictionary by Carl Liungman, it's one of those sites, like IMDB and Wikipedia, where reading one entry inevitably leads to another, and another, and ...

On top of that, it comes with a little attitude. For example, a lengthy entry on a simple variety of Greek cross contains this passage:

The Romans were a cruel and barbaric race, whatever you may have learned in school and however efficiently you may have been able to deafen yourself to the screams of terror and agony of the women and children burned, chewed on by starved crocodiles and lions, or carefully pierced alive on poles to die slowly in the Coliseum for the pleasure of the populace of Rome.

Soon after, the entry turns its educational fangs on the Romans' frequent victims:

When the successful new ideology of Christianity began to spread, the worship of suffering also spread, and the promoters of apostles and would-be saints competed in devising ugly past deaths for their protégés[,] the immensely sought-after prize being the honor of having a torture rack named after them ... .

Plus, there are hobo signs.

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Punch Line of a Joke Yet to Be Written

Overhead, mid-conversation:

Woman: So where does she perform?

Man: No, I said she made meat loaf last night.

I can't even begin to guess how that chat went awry.

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Fantastic with a Capital F

We've got a trend here, people. A small one, but one worth cheering anyway. First, Farscape finds its way out of the grave (the news has more or less moved beyond rumor); now, USA Today reports that Fox may resurrect Family Guy, another top-rung show starting with F that was jerked around by its network and cut down too soon. Dare we cross our fingers for Futurama?

(No, I'm not forgetting about Firefly; it's just that its continuation – apparently, in motion-picture form – is, well, um, not so exciting to me. But hey you Whedonheads, enjoy.)

On the Farscape front, the still-unknown info is where, when, and/or how the four-hour miniseries revival will be shown. But what matters is that it's being made. I don't care if the producers don't even find an American distributor; just give it to me on DVD. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we can cut networks out of television, the better.

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Wash Your Mouth Out with Conditioner, Young Man

The convention hotel welcomed us with this lovely display in the bathroom:

The arrangement of colorful potions is elegant – but dangerous. Because if you wanted to create a triptych of (from right) shampoo, conditioner, and ________, for a room often occupied by sleepy, bleary-eyed people, the answer for the third slot is clearly not mouthwash.

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The hotel was a Hilton, which is handy because I have no other meaningful association for that name, unlike a lot of people these days. Sure, I'm vaguely aware that there are a couple of people with Hilton as a last name who are suddenly getting a lot of attention for no good reason I've heard of, and that one of them has something to do with some sex video, but that's it, and that's all it's going to be. I have drawn a line in my cultural sand against celebrities who are famous for nothing, especially if they're only celebrities because New York or Hollywood tells us they are. Return to sender, package refused. Just put it on the stack over there, on top of Robert Evans and Bruce Vilanch.

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Isn't There a Grammy Category for This?

Outside of the occasional truck commercial, I'm lucky to never have to hear the works of Toby Keith. And I could conceivably (with great effort) put aside his politics. But one thing cannot be denied:

Shock'n Y'all is the stupidest album title ever.

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Convention Update

The only big announcement at the Farscape convention was that a big announcement could not yet be made. But it was all the stars and producers on hand could do to keep from blurting out the news that is about to be unveiled regarding the series' resurrection. The actors often lapsed into future tense with big grins, and we were repeatedly reminded that the show's ringleader, David Kemper, wasn't able to be with us because he was in Australia working on "a very important project."

At first, not getting the official word was disappointing. But as the convention progressed, much humor was derived from hinting and teasing about what became known as The Australian Project That Cannot Be Talked About. Claudia Black opened her appearance on stage by agonizing about how hard it is for her to keep secrets, and mentioned passing up a job offer to take part in ... something. Then Ben Browder riffed a kind of top-five list of reasons the announcement could not be made at the convention (since the news came from the other side of the dateline, announcing it would cause a rift in spacetime, etc.) If the real news weren't due very soon, the conspiracy might have been torturous; instead, it gave the gathering a nice bit of electricity. Hope will do that.

More L.A. notes, from within the convention and without, later.

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