Nollaigh Shona Daoibh

I don't plan to post again between now and the New Year, so I'm wishing everybody who reads a spiritually fruitful end of Advent, a wonderful Christmas, and a hopeful and happy start to 2025.

Thanks for reading, commenting, and giving life to this blog in 2024.

The picture is the crib in St. Teresa's Carmelite church in Clarendon Street. (There are two Carmelite churches in Dublin city centre and they are both named after streets that either don't exist or barely exist!)

What Were They Thinking? The Hundred Dumbest Events in Television History

I've been going through the drafts folder of my gmail account. I found this book review, which might be of interest. It was actually an Amazon review. I still regularly dip into this book. I keep it in the staff room bookshelf at work.

Christmas is frequently associated with bad television, so it's quite seasonal, right?

This is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read! I read it slowly, to make it last, and I've often picked it up to dip into it ever since. I sometimes bring it to the supermarket or post office to read it in the queue. I love this book!

I heard about it on TV Tropes, a pop culture website that I read compulsively.

The great thing about this book is that the writer, David Hofstede, obviously loves television, and has spent a great deal of time looking at all kinds of TV shows. As he announces in the introduction, he is not an intellectual snob, and he's happy to admit to a liking for what other writers might consider trash. He doesn't dismiss talk shows or game shows on principle; if he trashes a talk show, a game show, or televangelist show, it's because it's a bad specimen of its kind. He really knows his stuff and he loves his subject.

I also liked the fact that he doesn't really have a social or political hatchet to grind. He's very fair-minded. He's rather more anti-censorship than I would be, but he even admits that some censorship is necessary.

But I'm beginning to make this book sound a little too earnest. It's a smart book, but it's also a fun book-- an awful lot of fun. I laughed out loud on many occasions when reading it. Hofstede is quite a wit, and he surveys these televisual car-crashes with considerable glee (although he is never cruel, and is even quite sympathetic towards many of the transgressors). Having said that it's fun, I should also add that Hofstede can sometimes write seriously, and I do like that. He's not permanently on giggle-mode. This is the tone of some "worst of" books, and it becomes very fatiguing.

As an Irish person, albeit one maried to an American, I found this book fascinating as a window onto US televisual and social history. I learnt a lot of new things, such as the nicknames of the various TV networks. I didn't know what a big deal some shows such as the Dick Van Dycke Show, Gilligan's Island, or The Brady Bunch were to Americans. I'd heard of these shows, but this book gave me a better knowledge of their standing in the USA.

I'd heard about many of these "worst moments" before-- Supertrain (a disastrous drama set on board a super-fast train), Coy and Vance Duke (the ill-fated replacements of Bo and Luke Duke for one series of The Dukes of Hazzard), and Chuck Cunningham (a member of the Cunningham family in Happy Days, who disappeared in an early instalment of the show and was soon completely forgotten).

But there's lots of other gems I learned about for the first time in this book. For instance, the Poopin' Moose, a bizarre but popular item on the QVC network (it was a wooden moose which excreted chocolate), the ill-advised efforts to remake Fawlty Towers for the American market, and Chevy Chase's quickly-cancelled talk show.

One thing I really like about the book is that it's not just a collection of dodgy moments from TV. It also includes trends and practices-- for instance, one of the "events" is the loss of so many recordings of vintage TV shows, which were frequently taped over by networks.

I'm as interested in the author's background-painting as I am in his main focus; for instance, the section on the Poopin' Moose includes quite an interesting history of the QVC shopping network.

Finally, a word as to why I find myself reading a book like this in the first place. Not only am I interested in the history of TV (which is in itself a huge part of social history), but I enjoy reading about the unpredictability of the creative industries. In a duller parallel universe, nobody ever greenlights a crazy idea, focus groups and test audiences always predict the reaction of the general republic, and making TV shows is an exact science. Thank God we don't live in that universe! 

Reading about catastrophes in the history of TV might be seen as voyeurism; taking pleasure in the failures of others and sneering at their misfortunes. But I think the joy we take in books like this comes from a purer source; they reassure us that the world is utterly unpredictable, and full of surprises. In a way, we celebrate the human condition by saluting its most hilarious mishaps as well as its most brilliant achievements.

A Hoary Christmas-Tide Tradition

Traditions! I never shut up about them, do I?

Indeed, I briefly had a blog called Traditions Traditions Traditions!, which lasted only four posts, but which I sometimes think of reviving.

Well, this blog has its own tradition of posting "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell at Christmas. I've just checked and I've done this every year since 2015!

I did a quick search for critical literature on the poem, and discovered that it's inspired a whole book, written by Anne Sweeney and published in 2006. It's titled Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: Redrawing the English Landscape 1586-1595.

Here's how it begins:

‘The Burning Babe’ is probably the only poem most readers will know of Robert Southwell’s. I recall reading it as a child; it seemed pleasantly atmospheric to a childish imagination, the holy Babe appearing like a bright bauble against the dark of a snowy English Christmas evening. It is homely, yet cryptic in the Elizabethan style, and blessedly short, a silly sentimental thing that manages, apparently on these merits, to make its way into most anthologies of the English poetic canon. It came as something of a shock to me as an undergraduate to learn that Ben Jonson, with his reputation as a hard man of letters, had singled out this bagatelle for admiration – indeed, he wished he himself had written it; there can be no greater possible encomium from a great ego. What did he admire in it? There have been some fine commentaries on Robert Southwell’s life and work, but none of them has explained to my satisfaction why a man like Jonson would have admired this poem so. This book is an attempt to answer that question.

A "bagatelle", really? Presumably Sweeney is provocative in her choice of words, and she doubtless revised her estimation of "The Burning Babe" if she wrote an entire book on the subject. (I guess I'll find out, since I've put the book next on my reading list.)

Anyway, decide for yourself. Here it is:

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

And here is a fine spoken rendition of the poem, by a chap who modestly refrains from giving his name.

Excellent Three-Part Series on Medjugorje from Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World

Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World is undoubtedly my favourite podcast of all time. I've been following it since it began, and it's now up to episode 340. I haven't listened to all of them, by any means, but I'd say I've listened to most of them.

Recently, they did a good three-part series on Medjugorje. (I'm not a believer in Medjugorje, though quite a few people I respect are, but it's very interesting nonetheless.)

The first part is here.

The second part is here.

And the bonanza, two-and-a-half hour third part is here.

While we're on the subject of Marian apparitions, the episode on Our Lady of Zeitoun is also excellent. (I find that one much more convincing!)

I can't claim to be a very enthusiastic podcast listener. I like the BBC podcasts In Our Time and Great Lives. (Though I haven't listened to that second one in a good while, and honestly I would find it hard to do so after the presenter Matthew Parris's contribution to the euthanasia debate.)

During Covid, I listened to the Secret Life of Prison podcast, having some fascination with the human situation of incarceration (especially at that time). But I haven't followed it in more recent years.

It's not really a podcast, but quite a few years ago I spent many a pleasant night listening to old horror-themed radio broadcasts. I think this was the website. It looks very different now, if it is.

On the subject of horror (and again, it's not really a podcast), I've recently discovered The Cobwebs Channel, in which an enthusiastic and likeable movie enthusiast talks about his favourite horror movies, and and movies in general.

What podcasts or YouTube channels do you like?