So many mistresses, so little time...

I've just finished the second season of The Tudors, and it's been exactly the same guilty pleasure as watching its first season or any season of Rome. It's great fun to see the beautiful costumes and the hyperbolic acting (John Rhys-Meyers, please cool it, will you). At the same time, however, you just want to smack them on the head with the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for all the historical inaccuracies they throw in just because. Margaret Tudor, especially, must be rolling in her grave for being merged with her sister and being portrayed like such a superficial $"·$%. As for the Atia of Rome, if there ever was such a thing as vengeful Roman ghost, I'm sure she will be there, holding a devout matronly rolling pin. (Of course, anyway, nothing will ever, ever, beat Braveheart becoming the father of Edward II for the sake of having Sophie Marceau squeezed in and having something of a happy end).

I'm not going Taliban on these people. Heck you have to film a movie or do a TV show, and I suppose nobody expects total accuracy when you have a limited budget and a limited time to stuff all the stories in. But if there is something that people like Simon Schama has proven with stuff like A History of Britain is that there are enough good stories in the history books to make such distorsions not terribly necessary. The problem, I think, is that there might be less boobs around, which seems to be the whole point of The Tudors and Rome at times. But oh well, being fun to watch as they are, all you can say is, bless Wikipedia for at least a few people in the audience will bother to check the facts out of simple curiosity, and that's good. The show becomes quite interactive that way -- at least for me. I'm becoming a complete expert on royal mistresses, who are all quite a curious bunch, what with all their ambitions, beauty (or lack thereof) and, more importantly, not giving a flying %&$%% about society's conventions. My favorite, so far, is Charles II's Nell Gwyn, if nothing else for this beautiful, beautiful scene, taken straight from the wikipedia article on her:

Nell Gwynn was one day passing through the streets of Oxford in her coach, when the mob, mistaking her for her rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth, commenced hooting and loading her with every opprobrious epithet. Putting her head out of the coach window, "Good people", she said, smiling, "you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore"

Oh how I wish The Tudors got spin-offed all the way to The Stuarts! In any case, I'll certainly watch the third season of The Tudors next year, even though I'll miss the great Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn --she didn't look a thing like the historical Anne but hey she definitely can act. A lot of the weight of the show fell on her shapely shoulders and I worry that the actress they've chosen for Jane Seymour -- and, well, the character of Jane Seymour itself-- will not be enough to fill the space of Anne's severed head. Unless they go on to create a completely different Jane out of nowhere (see above), or dispatch her in a couple of episodes. And on with more interesting stories, such as When Good Portraits Happen to Ugly People.


Ps. One day, I hope, someone in Spain will do The Austrias. Now that's fun stuff for at least seven seasons.

The Fed-up-o-Meter

I've finally come up with a pretty efficient method for keeping my students silent during an exam. You would think "well, it's an exam, they're supposed to be quiet", right? Wrong. It's taken me a year and a half to come up with my efficient method. It consists on the following points:

a) Stare at them with the exams in your hands until they shut up.
b) Give them the precise time when they will be listening to the CD for the listening test.
c) Give them the date and insist that the exam must be done in pen, not pencil (yeah, I know, but believe me, it must be done).
d) Deliver the exams once and only once there is total complete silence in the classroom.
e) Once the exams are on the table, patiently explain how to do absolutely every question in the test. Include the total number of points and how many points they need to pass.
f) Refuse to say any other word for the remainder of the hour. Believe me, this is hard. But I've become the Mime from Hell.
g) The Amazing Fed-up-o-Meter (Aguantómetro). This has been intelligently described by one student today thus:

"Mira, ese es el aguantómetro de la profe. Primero va a por el boli rojo. Luego, le quita el capuchón. Y luego, te quita un punto."


"Look, that's the teacher's fed-up-o-meter. First she goes for the red pen. Then, she takes off the lid. And then, she takes off one point"

That was so accurate I had a seriously hard time trying not to laugh. I told you, (f) is hard.

Back from Amsterdam

... with a full New Year and a clearer head. I've been feeling like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I'm not very sure exactly why. I guess it has to do with 2007 sucking volumes . I guess it also had to do with second-hand cannabis smoke and beautiful Dutch boys running around. But I digress.

I also found a way to work the idea for a story I had in my head into a story. I might even, finally, put something to writing. Which is very exciting.