Intermission: Chronicle of a developing obsession

Another Fanstravaganza post is coming, but for some reason I feel the need to write down a progress report on the status of my fandom just now.

We are just about to finish the huge ritual debauch practiced by U.S. universities every year that we call “Spring Break.” In my university city, the students flee for the (relatively nearby) beaches, but the city is flooded by participants in a major arts/media festival. The smart professor flees the city for somewhere entirely different, but I swore the last time I got off an international flight (last August) that I was not getting on a plane again until it was time to go back to Europe. My mother is ill, and I probably should have visited, but she and my father are coming here in about two weeks. So I stayed. Spring Break isn’t really a break for professors, who are usually cleaning up details from the previous weeks (we are about at midterm here) and trying to get their act together for the storm to the end of term. If they have extra time they do professional research.

Though I wrote four book reviews, I have the feeling of not having done much professional work, but I have written about Mr. Armitage every day and thought about him a lot more. In the last week I’ve watched “North & South” three times all the way through (I am writing a study guide for my students, who will be watching and discussing it next week); I’ve rewatched all of “Robin Hood” through 2.6 and watched 2.7-2.9 for the first time; rewatched the first two episodes of “The Impressionists”; listed to the first 3/4 of “Sylvester” at least five times while working in my office; watched Spooks 7.1 and 7.2 three times each; and of course gone through the “Vicar of Dibley” episodes dozens of times in the process of writing quizzes. (I have all of those things in U.S. DVD format.) Still having the problem making myself finish things. I’ve got at least a dozen ideas for blog posts. Also I did the Fanstravaganza every day.

Is this unhealthy?

This week I also received the region-free DVD player that I ordered. This was a huge step for me. I’d say that by and large historians are cultural (though not political) conservatives. Most of us don’t especially like the rate at which technology is changing (though of course there are exceptions). I myself have a tortured relationship with the television. My father is one of those people who has to have the TV on all the time, so turning it on when I walk into my apartment is an automatic impulse that I have to resist. Cable tv is quite expensive here, and so I have never had it when I had to purchase it myself, only when it was provided as part of rental amenities. I am currently living in a cheap student apartment and so I don’t have it. The desire to live without it completely was helped out a great deal by the transition to digital tv in the U.S. last summer; that is, I left the U.S. in May when analog tv was still running; I spent the summer in Germany working and had little/no tv access; I came back to the U.S. and would have had to buy a digital adapter and never did. So the TV was still there, but until last night I hadn’t turned it on since May. I’ve been watching all of this stuff on my computer in the office or on my laptop at home.

Can I say OMG region-free DVD player!!! I got to see all of “Moving On” last night–it’s essentially a four-act play, but it will bear a fair amount of analysis, I think–but it’s really amazing to be able to sit across the room and watch as opposed to staring at the screen almost point blank. I’d forgotten the seduction of TV, and so this may be bad. (I also discovered via the fiddling that was necessary to set things up that the TV is still receiving analog channels from the big country that is not very far from here.) But there are plenty of other DVDs I’d be delighted to own that don’t come in Region 1. This is the coolest thing!

So then there’s BBC Radio 4. Wow. I’ve had to stop listening to NPR here because I can’t essentially take any more bad news, and all that NPR ever seems to do is imply that the U.S. is so hopelessly polarized at the moment that we will never solve our problems. Sorry, I’ve got my own stuff to concentrate on. So I had been listening to DeutschlandRadio Kultur, which I have loved for years, and enjoy, but since “Clarissa” I am listening to all kinds of British cultural programs that are widely expanding my intellectual horizon.

I also started reading Far from the Madding Crowd because of the citation Harry Kennedy makes toward the end of “Vicar in White.” I have to put it down about every fifty pages because of the sensory emotional overload the prose is causing.

“Between the Sheets” should arrive soon, and I’ve ordered “Sparkhouse.” So the big question at this point is whether I am going to start watching Spooks 8 on the Internet, or whether I’ll wait till the DVDs come out. I can now watch the Region 2 DVDs, so the wait will be much less. Oh, and “Venetia” is just around the corner. I forgot to talk about audiobooks in this post. Oh well.

This is really getting “over the line,” as bZirk would say.

~ by Servetus on March 20, 2010.