Poem for Tuesday

Third Charm from Masque of Queens
By Ben Jonson

The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad,
     And so is the cat-a-mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
     And the frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,
     The spindle is now a turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,
     But all the sky is a-burning:

The ditch is made, and our nails the spade,
With pictures full, of wax and of wool;
Their livers I stick, with needles quick;
There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood.
     Quickly, Dame, then bring your part in,
     Spur, spur upon little Martin,
     Merrily, merrily, make him fail,
     A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail,
     Fire above, and fire below,
     With a whip in your hand, to make him go.

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Kids indeed had a two-hour delay for school, and our power was out all morning, so I had a bit of a slow start to the day, though I did get to play Pokemon: Master Trainer with younger son as a wakeup call. By the time he was at school, I had given up on waiting for the electricity to come back on so I could shower and I went out to lunch with with my hair a mess. Eggs Benedict, however, can make up for most woes, and when I got home the power was on and I could write up a stack of reviews of The Black Donnellys.

Now, I had gotten most of my previous reviews from , which unsurprisingly are Kate Mulgrew-centric and were therefore quite positive, so I didn't realize that nearly every other review across the US was along the lines of "stink, stank, stunk." (Not of Kate Mulgrew -- many of the people who despised the show thought she was the only bright spot.) The consensus was so negative among professional critics that I couldn't believe the show was really that bad -- a bunch of reviewers said it made them miss Studio 60 and Sorkin -- so after Heroes, I left it on.

I am sorry to say that the pilot, at least, is just about as painful to watch as they said. Not only does The Black Donnellys strike me as a mediocre combined Sopranos-Brotherhood ripoff without the acting chops, but the Irish stereotypes embarrassed me (and I don't have a drop of Irish blood in me -- if Irishmen don't mind being characterized as angry drunks who aren't as clever as Italian mobsters while their women are perpetual supporting angels, please correct me). And I don't care if you're in the grungiest corner of New York in the dead of night...hospital corridors have lights on! The best thing about the show was the soundtrack.

Heroes, on the other hand, was phenomenal -- lots of twists I didn't see coming, and one I had seen coming for awhile but was still really happy played out the way it did! Mr. Bennett is pretty much my favorite character on the show, and I sincerely hope he isn't going to be off for weeks now just because he and Claire won't be able to see each other for awhile. He still knows a lot and has both Matt and Ted at his boss's mercy (I kept calling the guy Cancer Man, even though this isn't X-Files, just because).

Heee, Bennett and Claude were partners! With more hair and sexual tension! Though really the most intimate relationship in the episode is Bennett's with Matt, and I expect that to continue, now that Bennett knows he can send Matt mind-messages and Matt is smart enough to listen to him. Ted freaks me out -- if he didn't have the capability of burning down the house, I could easily see him killing Claire's brother and raping her and her mother for sport -- so I'm way past feeling sorry for him and glad to see him locked up. He and Sylar together could destroy the world.

But eeeee George Takei is one of THEM! I completely did not see that coming! And I guess Mr. Nakamura must have the same problem so far as his son is concerned as Bennett has with Claire...but does this mean that Hiro's father also has the mutation/alteration/whatever it is? First he says having children changes a man and tells Bennett to adopt Claire, then they announce, "You're only her surrogate father. She belongs to us. If she manifests, we'll take her."

I can't figure out what makes the Haitian loyal to Bennett, nor why Matt trusts Bennett so quickly, but I was so sure that deep down he loved Claire and was doing a lot of what he did to protect her instead of exploit her. Not sure about the giant underground secret conspiracy with the one scary guy at the helm and his lieutenants around the world -- and no women that we've seen so far involved -- that part IS a little too X-Files. Does Cancer Man not know that the Haitian isn't really mute; is that what it means when Bennett asks the Haitian who else knows?

I'm also not sure why hating Bennett turned into hating the world (and hating Peter) for Claude unless Bennett broke his heart because they were obviously in love, but I assume we'll get some infill on that story later. The "you didn't grow in your mother's belly, you grew in her heart" speech was so cliched and yet that almost made it more touching, that he had to resort to the traditional "what makes us your real family is how much we love you" lines, which Bennett obviously believes. I'm so glad he's not dead!


Sunset in Hanover earlier in the month. The skies there seem wider than the skies here somehow.


At the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, the local art show included "Water Lily" by Gary Guydosh...


...and "W. Rabbit" by Lorann Jacobs.