Sauce Bottle!

So the idea of Hugh Laurie in a serious dramatic role is still periodically buzzing around the “curious” regions of my brain, having watched the first episode of House last week. It’s fine, and all, and no-one wishes to typecast Mr. Laurie in a particular series of roles, but I wish I could have found it more than just pleasant enough. This, after all, is the man who once performed, à la Springsteen, a song to which the following were the lyrics:

America, America
America, America, America
Ame-ri-caaaa
Ame-ri-caaa-haa-haaaa
America, America, America
Ame-ric-caaa

The States, the States
The States, the States
The States

America, America,
America, America, America
Ame-ri-caaaaa

The gag was that, after several repetitions, he was toppled from the piano stool by a punch from Stephen Fry.

Then there are the some favourite moments from Blackadder the Third. How many disaffected nerdy adolescents had their angst eased by the “Hurrah/Hurroo” pairings, not to mention Prince George’s courting of young Amy:

Oh, come on out, you rollicking trolloping sauce bottle. Woof woof!

Hell, I even liked Maybe Baby. Perhaps I just need to give this new series time.

(Sources? We don’t need no stinkin’ sources. Actually, I have a book of Blackadder scripts, but the A Bit of Fry & Laurie shizzie is from memory, although an excellent web archive does link to this, my second favourite America-themed Fry & Laurie-ism.)

Meanwhile, I dreamed last night–the sleep following French class–that I was staying in a hotel beside a bridge over the Seine, but had only a large dusty bedspread in which to wrap myself should I wish to venture out. Dreams in which I’m insufficiently clad are routine these days, but this was my first Parisian one. I guess I’m still caught between the rock of limited vocabulary and the hard place of variable grammar. But I do love attempting it so; all of us hippity-hop out of the class and look for strangers we can shout “bonsoir!” to as we head for our cars.

I much prefer being a student to being a teacher.

My front neighbours have moved out and the landlord is interviewing prospective tenants. I spoke to him today, when he told me that he’s telling the interviewees that I’m a good neighbour although my dogs are a little noisy. I think he may have made the latter up on the spot as the dogs were making a V8 race-level of noise at the time. There is no situation, it seems, that doesn’t merit being barked at by way of investigation.

Many of the contractors in my building at work seem to be growing younger and ever more lightly clad as the months go by. Numbers of them are Scottish or northern European. One has shoulder length curly hair that is (apparently natural) layers of blonde and brown. And today I saw a student at the lifts who looked uncannily like Gael Garcia Bernal. The occupants of my corner of the university are rarely so pleasing to the eye. Must be hormones (mine, not theirs). Sadly, even the beautiful people are quickly levelled by sitting down in low-riding trousers. My local students are characterised by their enthusiasm, willingness to participate, exposed bellies of varying sizes, and plumbers’ butts.

No wonder staff are asking for a pay rise. I can only assume that the layers of lacy cuffs and t-shirts worn under sundresses of the early nineties were just as bemusing to our educators, who came of age in the era of tweeds and cords.

Meanwhile, a colleague mass-mailed a St. Patrick’s Day card featuring dancing, drunken leprechauns. I only wish I were of more extensively Irish descent so I could play the race card to her, in anger at having seen such a thing. I should add that at one point in the animation, the Loch Ness Monster appeared to pop up in the background. Can I get a double-u tee eff?