Schnitzels

I watched Men in Trees on Friday night. I admit to a mild curiousity (can they really pull this off? and will she wear carhartt's?), but mostly I thought it might be fun to blog about it. Not that I want to perpetuate the number of visits to my site by people wondering where Elmo, AK is. I'll help you guys out: Elmo, much like Cicely, does not really exist. Actually I don't think a place like Elmo exists in all of Alaska.

Assuming the writers bothered to put much research into the show (it is evident they did not), Elmo would have to be on Prince of Wales Island. I say this because a raccoon makes an appearance on the first episode, and raccoons are an introduced species in Alaska. They only exist in a few select places, and POW Island is one of them. The candidates are narrowed down to POW Island when the radio show in Elmo receives calls from Ketchikan, a supposedly nearby town. Elmo could therefore conceivably be a town like Craig. Here we run into a problem: a bus runs daily between Elmo and Vancouver, B.C. There are no roads between this area of Southeast and the Outside. The only Southeast town with road access to the Outside is Skagway, and there are no buses that run to Vancouver daily from Skagway. I have to wonder where the writers are doing their fact checking.

Another pet peeve: casting John Boncore as George, a Tlingit character who gives Ann Heche a ride to buy cigarettes. I see that the writers had to check off their list of characters: token black man, token Native, token tough woman, token helpless woman, brooding hot white guy... I just wish they would have paid more attention to the appearance and accent of the actor they cast in this show. Tlingit people just don't have the same speech patterns as Lower 48 Natives.

OK, perhaps these things are me just being way too particular. Ken tells me that I have to learn to embrace suspension of disbelief. I do have trouble with this, and I can accept that a show might be halfway decent and really popular even when I refuse to watch it. I decided to give Men in Trees a chance. I thought I might even watch a second episode, just for kicks, until Anne Heche falls through the ice and is rescued by brooding hot white guy, James Tupper.

I can deal with the heroine in distress rescued by knight in shining armour aspect. Sort of. Then Anne has to take all of her frozen wet clothes off to get warm and subsequently falls asleep naked with James because there isn't any heat or fire, and this is the only way to get warm. Okaaayyy... I can deal. HOWEVER, when the camera pans to the outside of the cabin and Anne's clothes laid out on the roof to dry out, I swear I will never watch this show again if Anne can put her clothes back on in the morning. No heat source, including hardly any sun, and freezing temperatures mean Anne's clothes should be a solid block of ice and too stiff to slip into.

Suffice to say I'm never watching the show again.

Couple that with the following reviews:

The title, "Men in Trees," is seen on a warning sign meant to alert people below that pruning and trimming are going on above. "Beware 'Men in Trees' " would be even more appropriate. Please consider yourself warned.

and...

How nice to know there's nothing wrong with a woman that can't be cured by a week in the wilderness.

Unless that idea strikes you as anything other than total throwback nonsense, you may have a hard time hurdling past the setup of ABC's Northern Exposure wannabe, Men in Trees... you have to be willing to believe in an Alaska that is on another planet rather than a distant corner of the continent.

Is it really so hard to run plot lines, casting, and maybe one episode past a real Alaskan? I think this could have potentially saved the show. Of course we aren't the target audience. No wonder tourists love main street Skagway.

Last night I caught Ken looking at motorcycle boots online. I can only imagine what he's up to.

Life with Ken is hardly ever dull. He has his own way of looking at things, his own way of communicating. We all do, but I sometimes wonder if Ken grew up in even remotely the same world that most of the rest of us did. A friend of mine has suggested that the way he relates to the world is similar to the way one might expect a five-year-old alien to relate. For example, Ken claims to never have eaten a grapefruit until he met me. There are so many examples of this odd lack of "normal" experiences that I can't even think of any more right now. They usually don't even register these days...

A month ago Ken started dragging me around town to look at bicycle helmets. He wanted to try them on to see if helmets he had seen on ebay would fit. Ken doesn't have a bike. I left my bike in Virginia for my mom. There are consequently no bikes in our household, so I could only imagine that Ken was considering buying one. I asked Ken if he was planning on getting a bike, and he told me that he had no intention of doing so any time soon. Window shopping for bicycle helmets without plans to own a bike was therefore a bit strange, but it certainly wasn't outside the realm of normal things for Ken.

About two weeks later I came home, and Ken met me excitedly at the door. "Look at my new bicycle shoes!" he exclaimed, holding a box that had arrived in the mail. "Oh, those are nice," I replied. And went about my usual evening activities. I didn't even ask.

The next day a helmet was sitting on the kitchen table. "Look! They match!" Ken remarked. "That's nice, honey." And I went about my usual evening activities.

The next week I went out of town for field work; and when I came back, a pair of spandex bicycle shorts had been added to the pile. I draw the line at spandex shorts with padding. "Honey? Are these your new shorts?" I asked. "Yes! Do you like them?" was the reply. And then Ken informed me that he was going to ride to work the next day.

I had a quick flash of the following image in my head: Ken in padded, shiny black spandex, wearing his black and red helmet and black and red shoes, riding to work in his Toyota Tacoma. There had to be a better explanation than this, or the winter was bound to be a long one. Soon Ken retrieved a bicycle from the arctic entry. It was our friend "Skookum's" bike, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, you're going to ride Skookum's bike." Ken looked at me like I was crazy. "What did you think I was going to do with all of this stuff?" Silly me.

Never mind that it was mid-August by the time the bicycle stash was purchased and the borrowed bike was ready to ride. Snow will likely fall by the end of this month, but I won't be surprised to see Ken riding at 10F above. He's odd like that.

The bike is stashed in our arctic entry/laundry room/tool shed/plant storage area for the winter. It's getting pretty crowded in there. I thought I was safe, but then I saw this:



Like I said, life is hardly ever dull.

I had a bite of decadence this weekend, when a generous friend brought some Dolfin chocolate to a women's weekend getaway. Theme: good food, good friends, lots of lowbush cranberry picking! More on the weekend soon, but the delicious chocolate must be shared now! For those who enjoy slightly off-beat flavors, try Chocolat Noir Au Poivre Rose (Pink Peppercorn Chocolate!). And don't throw away your wrappers! If you don't have your own project for them, send them to me!

A mutant yes but also lovely.

"If the fires get bad this year, we can get one.
...In California, thousands of goats are helping prevent wildfires... "

So you said on June 27 of last year. And last year was the second worst fire year in quite a long while. That's my definition of bad. So, goat, here I come...