Communicatin' is hard. Reviewin', easy.
Dec. 15th, 2013 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogA large part of my day today, from either 3 a.m. or 8-something a.m. (depending on how you count) well into the afternoon fell into the former category:
The earlier of two such situations during the day could have been made much easier if the Other Party to the situation simply spoke two words that, in the right circumstances, provide a mile of ameriolation: "I'm sorry." Or, "I apologize," if you prefer. Yet for some, getting those words out is a near-physical impossibility. I always remember this scene where the Fonz tries and fails to do it with the three-word variation on it which goes, "I was wrong":
Between two people I know, personally, quite well (one of them REALLY well), this failyah to commun-i-cate was seriously off-putting, and I hope there's still potential for fixing that.
The later event was more of a passing misunderstanding, of places and schedules and personal circumstances. I did everything I could to make things better once I learned of the situation, and the one person in the conversation who I could speak to was very apologetic about being the source of the misunderstanding. I commun-i-cated back with an old chestnut of mine, that there's a functional difference between "fault" and "cause," and that focusing too much on the former takes up too much valuable time better devoted to just solving whatever the resulting problem is. By nightfall(s), I felt better about things being more under control, and while I have no objection to apologizing or using the "W" word on myself, I don't think anyone's going to have hard feelings about what I tried to do in the situation.
----
An all-too-similar misunderstanding was at the heart of the initial plot of a long-running Judi Dench BBC series that we finally started watching today, the first of several recent acquisitions I need to comment on.
As Time Goes By does- the series goes back to 1992, and lasted 13 years. Judi is one of a pair of early 1950s star-crossed lovers who failed to commun-i-cate when the male lead got shipped off to Korea, and the first two episodes set out how they reacquaint, and, I suspect, ultimately reunite in the more modern day of the series. We've only watched the first two episodes of Series 1 so far, with that quaint BBC trick of the time of using videotape for set pieces and film for the outside shots (Python did this throughout its run, even making fun of it at times). I'll be interested to see whether, and if so how, they maintain it for several eps a year for so long a run, but the performances are first-rate.
Other recent see's, hear's and read's worth mentioning:
* Saving Mr. Banks- another preview we were invited to involving the BBC Mafia, this one Emma Thompson. Too dark, totally unexpected in light of the trailers and other publicity, and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney has "uncanny valley" problems similar to those he defined as the conductor of Polar Express.
* Dear Diz (Every Day I Think Of You)- a jazz album from Arturo Sandoval that came home last week as an early Christmas present for Eleanor (and wound up as an unexpected present for her masseuse, since I burned a CD-RW of it from the autorip until the physical disk arrived and then discovered that CD-RW's can't be erased if they've been burned in CD Audio format).
*Bad Monkey- Somehow I'd never managed to score a Carl Hiaasen read before, and this one, my 48th of the year, was worth the wait- LOL-funny, snarky, and layers-within-layers of mystery to be unentangled. I began #49 earlier today and have every expectation of completing a book-a-week pace by the time the 97 Rock ball drops here in a little over two weeks.
I'll do my best to communi-cate that information as the year winds down;)
The earlier of two such situations during the day could have been made much easier if the Other Party to the situation simply spoke two words that, in the right circumstances, provide a mile of ameriolation: "I'm sorry." Or, "I apologize," if you prefer. Yet for some, getting those words out is a near-physical impossibility. I always remember this scene where the Fonz tries and fails to do it with the three-word variation on it which goes, "I was wrong":
Between two people I know, personally, quite well (one of them REALLY well), this failyah to commun-i-cate was seriously off-putting, and I hope there's still potential for fixing that.
The later event was more of a passing misunderstanding, of places and schedules and personal circumstances. I did everything I could to make things better once I learned of the situation, and the one person in the conversation who I could speak to was very apologetic about being the source of the misunderstanding. I commun-i-cated back with an old chestnut of mine, that there's a functional difference between "fault" and "cause," and that focusing too much on the former takes up too much valuable time better devoted to just solving whatever the resulting problem is. By nightfall(s), I felt better about things being more under control, and while I have no objection to apologizing or using the "W" word on myself, I don't think anyone's going to have hard feelings about what I tried to do in the situation.
----
An all-too-similar misunderstanding was at the heart of the initial plot of a long-running Judi Dench BBC series that we finally started watching today, the first of several recent acquisitions I need to comment on.
As Time Goes By does- the series goes back to 1992, and lasted 13 years. Judi is one of a pair of early 1950s star-crossed lovers who failed to commun-i-cate when the male lead got shipped off to Korea, and the first two episodes set out how they reacquaint, and, I suspect, ultimately reunite in the more modern day of the series. We've only watched the first two episodes of Series 1 so far, with that quaint BBC trick of the time of using videotape for set pieces and film for the outside shots (Python did this throughout its run, even making fun of it at times). I'll be interested to see whether, and if so how, they maintain it for several eps a year for so long a run, but the performances are first-rate.
Other recent see's, hear's and read's worth mentioning:
* Saving Mr. Banks- another preview we were invited to involving the BBC Mafia, this one Emma Thompson. Too dark, totally unexpected in light of the trailers and other publicity, and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney has "uncanny valley" problems similar to those he defined as the conductor of Polar Express.
* Dear Diz (Every Day I Think Of You)- a jazz album from Arturo Sandoval that came home last week as an early Christmas present for Eleanor (and wound up as an unexpected present for her masseuse, since I burned a CD-RW of it from the autorip until the physical disk arrived and then discovered that CD-RW's can't be erased if they've been burned in CD Audio format).
*Bad Monkey- Somehow I'd never managed to score a Carl Hiaasen read before, and this one, my 48th of the year, was worth the wait- LOL-funny, snarky, and layers-within-layers of mystery to be unentangled. I began #49 earlier today and have every expectation of completing a book-a-week pace by the time the 97 Rock ball drops here in a little over two weeks.
I'll do my best to communi-cate that information as the year winds down;)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-17 01:01 am (UTC)