In other Food Network news, I just watched the American version of Iron Chef and hoo-boy. It's not good. They (we?) just. don't. get. it. Sad because one of my best meals I've ever had in my life was at a Todd English resturant (the original Olives). Oh well, yet another concept doesn't survive translation (I think this episode was origianally on UPN like a year ago, and didn't work there either).

Yeah, I remember that. They totally missed the delicate balance of tongue-in-cheek camp and genuine love of food that the show needs to work.

They totally turned it into a wrestling smackdown kind of show.

Granted, that's how the original comes across in a lot of ways, but the dubbed dialog (except for the chairman) somehow makes it work.

Plus - not acknowledging that Shatner is Shatner? Just doesn't work the same. Maybe the Japanese chairman is that famous, but over here that kind of trying to ignore the obvious just doesn't work. So disappointed. The sad part is, Shatner's PERFECT for the role, but it doesn't work over here.

Totally off-topic, but it seems like the best place to write this:

Fiona! I got the package! Thank you so much!

The note from the post office was in my mailbox when I left for the university this morning, and as I was trying to make schedule plans in order to get there as soon as I possibly could, my friend T called and asked if I wanted to have lunch with her today. I had the genius idea of asking her whether she's coming by bus or by car, and when she said that she has a car with her, I asked her to give me a ride to the post office. I am getting so spoiled with the 'no wait' part of this package and DXM's yesterday (DXM's package got with a messenger (!) without any notice mediation - the only next possible step is having an actual living Buffista at my door to hand me the package personally). In fact, I'm getting spoiled with the constant getting of packages, but that's another personal problem I'll have to learn to deal with. My roommates are going to make so much fun of me for this double-package thing, especially after I couldn't get a minute of VCR last night to watch the F2F tape, no matter how much I wanted to, and now I'm going to be back in the evening with a whole bunch of them.

Anyway, I found the note on around 8am and on 9:30am I was in the post office. I asked the clerk, as I did with Ellen's package, if I could keep the note that informed on the package arrival, because it wasn't a usual post-office official note, it was the one filled by the sender, in handwriting (yeah, I got loads of issues, I like strange souvenirs, I know. Another personal issue, but I don't intend to deal with this one, I happen to like it). When I asked to keep Ellen's note the clerk didn't know if it was possible and had to check (it was - I just had to do lots of signing in various places for it). Today it happened to be the same clerk, and when I asked her whether I could keep the note, she said 'ah, so you're the one who keeps those things!' - apparently, my request was so strange, she remembered it from a month ago! I explained that it's a souvenir from a friend (didn't mention the part of never meeting the friend, I must admit), and it worked out OK again this time (though I had to sign in more places than last time).

When T, who gave me the ride, heard that the package had arrived, she immediately asked for the last episodes of "Buffy", so now the tape is safely in her backpack, and she said she knows exactly what she's going to do with her afternoon. I want to watch things in order, anyway (I'm a very strange kind of spoiled when it comes to BtVS and AtS).

She also had a good laugh at me unwrapping the package - I couldn't wait, I had to open it in the car, and I'm one of those annoying people who can't do it with a quick pull-and-tear, I have to keep it whole, so I unwrap slowly and carefully. And then she laughed at me again because I immediately looked for a note, exclaiming that this is the best part, and reading it aloud to her, with explanations and annotations ('yeah, Fiona knows that I have friends who want to watch those too, I told her that, that's why she's mentioning you in her note, well, that and she's really nice. She has the cutest baby who is, oh, wow, already a year and a half old!'). She thinks I'm completely nuts, but in a good way.

Me? I can't wait to start watching "Firefly" after being so curious for so long. Strangely, I'm completely unspoiled. Yes, I did the 'episode discussions' pointers on the threads here, but English still not being 'natural' to me, not 'jumping' into my brain with the meanings of the words like Hebrew does, I have no idea what's going on in the episodes themselves.

The only thing I do know is that I should start watching from "Serenity" (Yes, I'm imagining the following conversation when trying to explain that:
Me: We should start watching from the last episode they showed.
Friend: Why? Aren't you the one that always want to watch in order?
Me: Well, yeah, but in this case, the writer told me not to watch it in order.
Friend: The writer?
Me: yeah, the guy who invented it all and if it hadn't happened first in his head (and, well, another person's head) it would have never come to pass.
Friend: And why would he tell you that?
Me: Because I asked him.
Friend: You're nuts.
Me: Yeah, and that's the only thing in this post that made you say that?)

Anyway, while looking for the tape of the final episodes of "Buffy" for T, I found that one of them has a note from Jon on it and one has a note from Jim, and I was all 'oh, we're so international, those tapes have been to so many different places!'. It was not just me being silly again, though (well, not only that), because I think that's a truly amazing thing, how something can connect such different people from such different places leading such different lives, and having a physical evidence to that lying in my hands, with an act of consideration and friendship that crossed oceans, literally. I'm so happy I can be a part of something like this, even of for the time being I'm only on the receiving end of it. Thank you.

And thank you, Nilly, for that post. It's a thing of complete and total loveliness.

Jamie Oliver's new series (starting in Australia tonight), where he opens his own restaurant and employs a bunch of long-term unemployed disadvantaged young people as the staff, is apparently brilliant and has cured everyone in the UK of chronic Jamie fatigue.

It is brilliant. It totally shows that his act is the product of being a very hardnosed professional at the top of one of the toughest businesses in the UK, and at the same time a thoroughly good bloke.

It's only through talking to my cousin about his job (chef at a country club) that I've come to realize what a people-skills-intensive job it is, as well as having to know how to cook, plan ahead to make sure you have raw materials, et cetera.

One of the reasons I love Junkyard Wars -- at least the British version, Scrapheap Challenge is that the contestants have real i.e. non-showbiz accents, yet are bright and voluble nerds.

Question for Brit-type Un-Americans: Are you scheduled to get one of the 'unaired' Firefly episodes today, and which one is it?

At 8pm we have War Stories, then at 9pm we have Trash.

Yay!!!

Yay for Firefly! t does Happy Dance

Do any other Brits know if there are going to be any reruns of Smallville this summer, and if so, when and where? I've caught the end of season 2 on C4, and have stupidly got hooked, and now I want to catch up on all the Big Gay Bald Millionaire and Alien Farmboy I missed.