Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
So, have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or heard a story, that made you wish you could live in that time or that place or in that setting? Have that challenge or experience that adventure?
I have no sense of what year the movie Witness came out, but I do know that was a very stressful period in my life. I was really drawn to that movie, and sometimes I wished I could have a simpler life, or could live in a simpler time. (I feel (fairly) certain dancing in the barn with Harrison Ford had nothing to do with it!)
When I was young, I would hear stories from my uncle and others who had worked on the railroads when they were booming – and it seemed like it would have been exciting to have been a part of something like that.
Perry Mason definitely made me want to become a lawyer. It can be interesting sometimes to think about the road not taken.
Anyway… how about you guys? Have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or heard a story, that made you wish you could live in that time or that place or in that setting? Did any of those stories change your path?
Ihop
Well, I also love ‘witness’, the beginning sequence with the wind-blown hayfields has always taken me to a place.
But I wanna live in Rivendell, if only for an age or two.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ihop: I was just thinking about Rivendell! It’s so beautiful. Although, I could enjoy Hobbiton too. It’s cosy.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
I really wanted to live in the Egyptian world of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. Turns out he’d exaggerated a lot & it wasn’t quite the intellectual bohemian paradise he depicted in the books.
raven
Jeremiah Johnson
E.
When I was a kid I always wished I could run away to a sailing ship, preferably a whaler, like in Moby Dick but anything would do. I loved Captains Courageous too.
dm
I think being a resident on one of the Culture’s General Systems Vehicles would be interesting. I don’t think I have what it takes to be good at Special Circumstances, though, but that’s not necessary.
BellaPea
I absolutely love the Outlander books and series. It is so romantic to think about time-traveling to meet and fall in love with a handsome Scottish warrior. The battles make it sort of scary, though.
Scout211
I always thought that time travel would be super cool. As long as I could come back. And most especially if I could fall into the arms of Jamie Fraser in the Highlands of Scotland.
Just kidding . . . maybe. 😉
ETA: And BellaPea, you get me!
Brachiator
@E.:
The movie “Master and Commander” and subsequently the Jack Aubrey novels made the Age of Sail seem very interesting, but I came to these novels as an adult and am also aware of the great dangers of that life.
But related to this, I guess that following the stories of the first astronauts and watching Star Trek led me to fantasize now and then about life aboard a starship.
schrodingers_cat
I would have loved to be a physicist working on the Manhattan project.
Pete Downunder
When I was a kid I watched The Defenders with E.G. Marshall on TV every week and I think it aimed me at being lawyer. They did criminal law which I never did, but I think it turned me toward law from science or engineering (and while I was good at math I wasn’t THAT good).
MomSense
Reading the black stallion books as a kid, I wanted to be Alec or the black, usually the black. I would love to be transported to the deserted island in the Coppola film. That whole part of the film has to be one of the most beautiful ever.
MomSense
@Scout211:
Works for me!
Brachiator
Peter Weir, the director of Witness, has a knack for creating fictional worlds that feel fully lived in. Examples are Witness, Dead Poets Society and Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World.
Robert Altman was also good with this in MASH and McCabe and Mrs Miller.
Sidney Pollack also mastered this in Jeremiah Johnson.
Citizen Dave
Almost Retired
This is probably unexpected for a dude, but I always loved the depiction of the homey gentility of the rural wealthy in the novels written or set in Regency England/early Victorian England. The Austen world. Manor homes, masked balls, etiquette wielded as a weapon…
Of course, authors of the era rarely provided detailed descriptions of the mechanics of chamber pots, or the rusty implements in the dentist’s barn. And, I probably would have shipped off to fight Napoleon before my 18th birthday – assuming I survived frequent canings or worse at boarding school.
So never mind. San Francisco in the 1960’s then…..
SpaceUnit
I liked to read Edward Abbey when I was younger and I probably read The Monkey Wrench Gang at least four times. It made me want to explore the entire Colorado Plateau at length. In fact I ended up moving to Colorado and doing a whole lot of backpacking.
And the Colorado Plateau vastly exceeded my expectations.
Rachel Bakes
1896 Portland, Maine from the Moosepath League books.
kalakal
As a kid I loved Robert Louis Stevenson & Rafael Sabatini. I wanted to journey to Treasure Island, travel the highlands with Alan Breck, and sail the Spanish Main. Later I wanted to be C. S. Foresters’ Horatio Hornblower.
As I got older I got into SF ( still am) and wanted to see the galaxy up close, walk on a ringworld etc. etc.
Then there was fantasy, I wanted to in Middle Earth, Amber and Lankhmar. I’d love to meet Fafhrd & the Mouser
These days like dm I’d like to be on a Culture GSV, that, or a crusty 17th century Cornish squire with modern health care
piratedan
think I received most of my societal indoctrination via Jonny Quest. Heavy double doses of Science and social tolerance coupled with a cool jazz soundtrack. Ideas that people were different and that science could solve problems.
apparently way too many folks followed the example of Dr. Zin
CaseyL
Julian May’s scifi series set in Pliocene Earth* (~5-6 million years ago) made me want to go to that time: post-asteroid, pre-human. I would love to see/live in the world before humans got their hands on it.
*Part time travel, part Celtic pantheon origin-story, part a lot of other stuff. People alienated from 22nd Century Earth can take a one-way time travel trip to Earth 6 million years ago. Things are not what they expected. The series starts with The Many-Colored Land and goes on for three more books.
Ninedragonspot
I hear something similar in the classical music biz from time to time; “Wouldn’t it be great to have been alive in the time of Bach/Mozart/Beethoven to hear and see them.”
Me reply is always the same: “I’d hate to live in any era that didn’t have novocaine.”
Nelle
@SpaceUnit: Ed Abbey stayed with us up in Alaska when he came up to float the Kongakut River. My husband was his pilot. It’s written up in “Gather at the River,” which was first in Outdoor and also in his book, Beyond the Wall. Interesting guy. I like to go back to Desert Solitaire every so often..
Brachiator
I loved science fiction novels featuring time travel scientists and historians. I would love to travel back to the ancient Greek civilizations to fully investigate those societies. Maybe take in a few plays. But I would not want to live there long term.
Similar fascinations with past civilizations in Africa, India and Japan.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Brachiator: Yes the Patrick O’Brian Aubry and Maturin books make life in the Napoleonic British Navy seem like a great adventure.
I liked Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay which made the Byzantine Empire seem intriguing.
Then there’s PG Wodehouse who make jazz age England and NYC seem pretty fun.
SpaceUnit
@Nelle:
Wow! That is really cool. I would have loved to have met him. I’ll have to reread that book – it’s currently packed away in a storage box somewhere.
eclare
The movie Moonstruck made me wish that I was part of a large boisterous Italian family in NYC. I’m an only child and for most of my childhood/young adulthood did not live near any relatives, so that appealed to me.
kalakal
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Oh yes, I’d love to live in Wodehouse’s world
japa21
No
Laura
@piratedan: I loved Johnny Quest too!
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
I share your star ship fantasy. My best friend and I would have long late-night conversations while camping in a nearby field as to who we would bring with us if we were suddenly given command of the Enterprise… with all the absolute sincerity that kids that age can muster.
SpaceUnit
@Brachiator:
I watched a documentary about the ancient Greeks recently and got the distinct impression that it was not a place we would find particularly pleasant.
And I’m not sure if they even had a word for tourist.
ETA: You’d likely end up as a galley slave.
Frankensteinbeck
Making other people feel this is my job.
prostratedragon
@Almost Retired: My problem with other times is that for all the allure they might have in some ways, I readily think about those little things.
Twin PeaksMayberry do have their charms; the subtext of the newer show seems to be people finding ways to destroy Eden. But I’m a city kid in the end, and a more or less coastal one at that, if you think of Lake Michigan as an inland sea.
geg6
Count me in as an Outlander fan, but in no way would I go back to the 18th C, Jamie or no Jamie.
I can’t think of what inspired this, but 1940s New York City is where I’d want to visit. Women were doing things they’d never had the opportunity to do when there wasn’t a shortage of young men and employers were desperate enough to hire women in all kinds of positions. The fashion, the music, the sense of being a part of a great endeavor. Love it!
zhena gogolia
I’m happy with what I got. When I was a kid, there were hits like “Hey Paula.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7w3traHbTU
If I’d been born into Jane Austen’s world, I’d be a kitchen maid. I’d be terrible at it.
ETA: Obviously, early-season Daisy is the character I most identify with on Downton Abbey.
bluefoot
I’ve long wanted to eat at the Drones Club. While I’m in Wodehouse’s world, I’d also like to go to Brinkley Court, since Bertie Wooster once said it was “positively ill with atmosphere.” :)
Similarly, I want to go to the Diogenes Club.
Rivendell, maybe around the time of The Hobbit.
And be on the crew of the Enterprise during TOS, in the science section…though having Spock as a section head would be a little scary. But cool.
zhena gogolia
@SpaceUnit: I started reading Serhii Plokhy’s history of Ukraine, and God, life was horrible in the time of the Vikings. You just went around killing or being killed, trying to get slaves and booty.
NotMax
Always have been drawn to the 1930s (except for that whole Depression thing) and the 1940s (except for that whole war thing).
;)
Frankensteinbeck
@zhena gogolia:
The ancient Greeks were worse. They were a lot worse. But hey, they built a lot of pretty stone buildings!
Subsole
I always thought it would be fascinating to visit one of the Sun Domes on Bradbury’s Venus. Just sit inside and look out of my nice, safe, cozy shelter at a strange, alien jungle lashed by perpetual rain. Which is funny, because that man usually wrote worlds I really would not enjoy living in.
Otherwise? I’d enjoy living in Star Wars, because I grew up watching Star Wars and it captivated me. Part of what I love about Andor is that it kind of explores what life in that universe would be like.
As far as visiting? Ankh-Morpork under the Vetinari Administration. Ancient Rome, perhaps. Wouldn’t live anywhere pre-modern. Indoor plumbing, climate control, modern medicine and electricity are kind of must-haves for me.
It’s funny, but now that I look at it, most of my entertainment runs toward the dark and apocalyptic, so I can’t really recall reading many places I’d want to live in…pLenny of places that would be interesting. But living there? Oh God no
ETA: Maaaaybe Altered Carbon.
Possibly.
zhena gogolia
@Frankensteinbeck: And wrote some good plays and stuff.
Craig
Conan Doyle’s London. Rbt. E. Howard’s Aquilonia.
zhena gogolia
@Subsole: I spend a lot of my time reading Russian literature. No way I want to be beamed into any of those worlds.
Subsole
@zhena gogolia:
Hey now. Who doesn’t like a good Roadside Picnic??
Josie
When I read Owen Wister’s The Virginian, I fell in love with the man, the scenery, the other characters, everything about the book. I have reread it many times with great pleasure. I did not like the television series they made from it, since I felt that the hero was miscast and the emotional thrust of the book was lost.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Scullery not your bag?
How about governess?
SpaceUnit
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, if time tourism ever becomes a thing an awful lot of destinations in the past are going to have the exact same review:
ZERO STARS. DO NOT RECOMMEND!!
Brachiator
@SpaceUnit:
I would not want to be a resident, but a time travel historian of Athens, Crete, Thebes, even Sparta.
I don’t romanticize the era, but would like to fill in the blanks of what daily life was like for various social classes. I would also like to know more about Persian society.
Also, I thought that the Athenian navy had citizens as well as slaves among their crews.
ETA. I wonder if future historians would find out society to be woefully primitive.
NotMax
@SpaceUnit
Most frequent critique:
“It smells funky.”
//
Subsole
@SpaceUnit: Michael Crichton wrote a book about that. Pretty enjoyable one, actually. Timeline, I believe it was called.
Come to think of it, I enjoyed Eaters of the Dead as well. Ol’ Mike actually wrote pretty fun historical fiction.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: Ugh, I know about that from the Brontës.
geg6
Also a Trekker, as some mention above. If I could be on an Enterprise, it would be on NCC-1701-D. I still crush on Picard and I’d hang out on 10 Forward with Guinan.
Omnes Omnibus
This is very book specific, but the continental European travels of James Bond in the novels. Hell, even the two bedroom flat off the King’s Road in London. The 4 1/2 liter Bentley and later the R-type Continental.
El Muneco
Beta Colony in Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosigan” books. It’s a lower-tech spin on the Federation from “Star Trek” (the series started out as fanfiction before getting the serial numbers filed off).
Only no Starfleet – the Betan Expeditionary Survey starts out unarmed and has to do an arming effort similar to the USA post Pearl Harbor when they are attacked. And it’s an absolute democracy – even their spaceships are run on a more … consultative … basis than other polities’ militaries could tolerate.
There are some downsides, a lot of it pointed commentary on how our particular experiment has some failure modes. But every setting has downsides.
kalakal
@Subsole: I’ll stick to the video game
HumboldtBlue
I always wanted to be the boy Sherlock Holmes relied upon for errands and such, providing a surprising helping hand in solving the latest case because of my urchin street smarts and derring-do.
But I always die of consumption.
Rich2506
I remember being on a wooden ship and being where the officers had offices and thinking “Yeah, I could work with this!” I spent time in the Navy, don’t easily get seasick, can work in tight quarters, like the ease of being able to smoke and drink back in the day. Of course, I would think I’d probably avoid joining the crew for drink-a-thons and would do more just plain sightseeing during port visits.
phein64
@CaseyL:
Don’t forget the four prequels set in the Milieu!
As much as I loved The Many-Coloured Land and it’s three sequels, the idea of living in a present earth with metapsychics and alien interveners is much more interesting, probably because it is more difficult to present.
kalakal
T. H. Whites vision of the middle ages seemed a lot of fun. The reality not so much
Subsole
@kalakal: Glory to The Monolith.
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: I have no desire to be turned into a perch. A merlin otoh…
schrodingers_cat
Is anyone else besides me watching the second season of Made in Heaven on Amazon Prime?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator: Connie Willis’s DOOMSDAY BOOK is about future historians conducting research via time travel. Her central character means to go back to 14th century Oxford to study Christmas customs, only the machine malfunctions and she winds up in the path of the Black Death.
@El Muneco: Beta Colony would be awesome! LOL
HumboldtBlue
On a sadder note for those who watched the Women’s World Cup, in particularly today’s final, the woman who scored the winning goal for Spain, Olga Carmona, learned soon after the match her father had passed away.
Geoduck
It would be fun to visit the Bazaar on Deva in Robert Asprin’s MythAdventure novels. As already noted about other places, not sure I’d want to live there full-time.
My favorite webcomic of all time is Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius, but man, the thought of actually living in the Europe the strip depicts is terrifying.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
I saw that and was shocked.
billcinsd
While I feel pretty well adapted to the present, if I had to choose, maybe St. Mary’s in Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s. Sort of an alternate present with Time Travel
Kayla Rudbek
@El Muneco: Beta Colony, Escobar, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Diane Duane’s wizardry series. Maybe the kingdom of Manticore from David Weber’s Honor Harrington series (I would love to have an intelligent six-legged telepathic cat).
p.a.
DS-9 when the sector is calm. Have a drink at Quark’s, flirt with a dabo girl. Have Garak tailor a suit for me.
Troy just before the Greeks land. As a 21st century time-traveling observer, not as a local peon.
Drake’s Cakes tasting lab when Funny Bones were developed. Far superior to Hostess
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue:
I heard that. At first, thought he had passed away just before the game. He died on FRIDAY, and they didn’t tell her? Unconscionable.
NotMax
@Geoduck
Steer clear of the Pervish restaurant, wherever it may meander at any given time.
CaseyL
@phein64: I read the Milieu books, and liked them very much, but didn’t fall in love with them the way I fell in love with the Pliocene story.
Betsy
@Almost Retired: Being shipped off to fight napoleon? That just means you’d be in Regency / Austen *and* Jack Aubrey / Master and Commander settings! The best of all movie worlds.
phein64
@CaseyL: Agreed. I loved the Pleistocene world, but was more challenged by the world of the Intervention.
Not sure I would have wanted to be a gray or silver torc. I think I could have made myself useful to King Aiken Drum, but not too useful! The Firvulag monsters scared the heck out of me, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betsy: Just as likely to be one of the brand new subalterns with a purchased commission and no military knowledge who loses an arm in one of the Sharpe stories.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Sounds scary and fascinating. It’s now on my list of books to read.
A time traveler would definitely want to avoid plagues and cataclysmic disasters.
Subsole
@HumboldtBlue: Skill issue.
I end up living to a ripe old 55.
Betsy
Id love to be in the world of Wooster and Jeeves, specifically as laid out in the TV series with Stephen Frye and Hugh Laurie. An adorable pair in a highly silly world.
Mel
@Brachiator: It’s a great book!
raven
@Brachiator: Altman’s “Three Women” creates quite a world
.
NotMax
Planned to load The Wager by David Grann onto the Kindle from the local library for the NYC trip. On going to library site today, discovered they do offer it as an e-book but there’s a 20 week waiting list for it.
C’est la vie.
zhena gogolia
@raven: I saw it when it came out. Weirdsville.
raven
@zhena gogolia: But great too! Janice Rule was a trip.
Spanish Moss
@Almost Retired:
I am particularly fond of that Victorian period as well, we see a lot of movies set in that time. Though in reality as a female I would probably not enjoy my limited opportunities.
Even better would be the small village in “Under the Tuscan Sun.” I love the scenery, the beautiful old villa, the food, the friendly people in the town, …
DesertFrriar
The Welsh village of Portmeirion, where the exterior shots of the TV show; The Prisoner, was filmed.
Although without Rover.
Scamp Dog
@kalakal: Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar is my favorite fantasy setting, so when I was in grad school I had to try out fencing, and stuck with the sport for about 16 years before life got in the way and I moved on to other things. I’m on the short side, so I imagine myself as the Grey Mouser, even though personality-wise, Fafhrd’s a better fit.
WaterGirl
@DesertFrriar: Welcome!
Frankensteinbeck
Am I allowed to want to live in my own books? Almost everywhere is more fun than Earth in my Spaceship Repair Girl solar system. I probably belong on Charon with the other weirdos, but Saturn, a world where everyone has steampunk adventures, would be fun. Neptune would probably kill me, but damn, worth risking it to live on a planet of peace and relaxation and endless rain. Or the Library Of Ceres itself…
I liked that book. Totally unlike my cyberpunk book, a world that is fantastic to have adventures in but a horrible dystopia to live in.
HumboldtBlue
People are getting tired of these right-wing trolls.
This asshole went to Maui and got confronted by angry residents while being interviewed by that fat fucking traitor Bannon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck: I think that might be cheating.
hitchhiker
I watch Witness every so often, and every time it leaves me feeling grateful for good film-makers. (Helps that a young Viggo Mortensen makes an appearance in that barn-raising scene.)
I think if I could enter the setting of any story, I’d pick a children’s book where animals speak and things make sense. Charlotte’s Web would do.
Deputinize Eurasiafrom the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Late 50s – early 60s Manhattan as portrayed in North by Northwest, MIB3, Mad Men, The Dick Van Dyke Show, etc.
dm
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, if we’re going that route…
Xerox PARC in 1972.
raven
@HumboldtBlue: Motherfucker was scared shitless.
Frankensteinbeck
@Omnes Omnibus:
I mean, I get to create the worlds I’d like to live in, which does kinda sound like cheating, yeah.
Anotherlurker
I would love to hike the “Ringworld”.
UncleEbeneezer
The problem with any historical period is that I know enough about how much worse things were in many respects, during those periods. While I love the look and style of the 1920’s, the Klan was really prominent and there was horrific Xenophobia. I also love the style of the 1960’s, but Black People, Women, LGBTQ People etc., were treated much worse than even now and had almost no rights. And I can’t really think of any futuristic or alternative-worlds that ever looked that appealing to me. My favorite ones are almost always dreadful dystopias.
So I guess I’ll have to go with Barbieland. Hopefully the Barbies would let me hang out with them here and there if I promise not to play acoustic guitar at them, because I’d probably get pretty tired of only hanging with the Kens.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Wandering around YouTube led me to Richard Feynman Lecture — “Los Alamos From Below”
A great lecture.
Salt water
Years ago I read Julia Child’s My Life in France. While looking at the photos in the book I said to my then girlfriend, “I want to go there.” “Where?” “Paris in the late 1940s.”
This book was the basis of the Julia portion of the movie Julie and Julia. You can watch just the Julia Child story at Vimeo “Julia Sans Julie.”
As a kid I wanted to live in Harriet the Spy’s New York.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Manhattan in the late 50s – early 60s as depicted in North By Northwest, MIB3, Mad Men, etc.
eclare
@hitchhiker:
I could barely take the ending when I read that book! For talking animals, I’ll take James and the Giant Peach.
Omnes Omnibus
@Salt water:
Have you read this book? If not, you might enjoy it.
schrodingers_cat
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I have bookmarked it. Heard about half of it.
Suzanne
Every Nancy Meyers kitchen.
In all seriousness, I love looking at interiors in movies. The office scenes in Hidden Figures, the college scenes in the new Indiana Jones, Frasier’s Seattle apartment, Katharine Graham’s house in The Post. I’m sitting there freaking out about the lampshades and clocks and desk chairs.
eclare
@Suzanne:
That house in Something’s Gotta Give, wow. Dream house.
Timill
@Omnes Omnibus: or even this one…
Suzanne
@eclare: I remember seeing that Steve Martin remake of Father of the Bride when I was a kid, and that scene when he drives down that beautiful tree-lined street and then pulls into the driveway of that gorgeous house….. absolute domestic dream.
bookworm1398
I used to think I would like to be a revolutionary. Never thought I would be a leader but I could be among those who stormed the Bastille etc. As I grew older, I realized I didn’t have the personality, even if I was in Paris at that time, I would be sitting in a cafe arguing about the pros and cons not in the streets. Alas, you still have to take yourself wherever you go.
Omnes Omnibus
@Timill: Holy fuck!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Hmm. As a kid, I read a lot of Dr. Doolittle and wanted to talk to animals. And then after the Jungle Book I really wanted to be Mowgli.
There are plenty of Sci-fi books that have made me feel that way. One when I was a kid was Heinlein’s “Orphans of the Sky”
lowtechcyclist
There was a time when I wanted to live in The Land of the Thomas Covenant fantasy novels. I wouldn’t have wanted to play any part of the plot of those books, just would have wanted to be a part of that world, maybe starting shortly after the first trilogy. Earthpower, Landservice, the Staff of Law, all that.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Deputinize Eurasiafrom the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I wanted to be a comedy writer and work with Dick, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie on the Alan Brady show
eclare
@Timill:
That sounds great! I love murder mysteries, Julia Child, and of course Paris.
StringOnAStick
I’ll have to go with some of the crazy stuff from Christopher Moore novels, the funny yet scary supernatural world’s he conjures up. I love his sense of humor.
ArchTeryx
@Brachiator: I loved Witness, but it was a pretty sanitized view of the actual life of the Amish. Weir never would have gotten their cooperation otherwise.
This part, from all I’ve read, was the truth. That’s a real barn they were raising, and Harrison Ford did volunteer to help because he used to be a set carpenter! So Weir pointed a camera at him and started rolling.
The community coming together for a project for one of their members. That’s where I wanted to be.
zhena gogolia
@ArchTeryx: Alexander Godunov raising a barn! Heaven!
Sister Golden Bear
As a queer trans woman, I’ll pass on anything historical, but hanging out on the Enterprise with Space Daddy — and several gorgeous crew women, including Lt. “I turn women gay” Ortegas —-sounds pretty good.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
A little tidbit about the houses.
I’ve seen the Pasadena house before.
Fun stuff.
Argiope
@NotMax: if you use Libby, you can add another library card besides your local one. Does HI have a state library? Worth searching to see, perhaps.
Suzanne
@Brachiator: So. I did not live anywhere near as lovely.
But I lived for years down the street from THE Circle K (the exact one) where strange things were afoot. That should tell you more about my milieu.
ArchTeryx
@zhena gogolia: Weir did intercut the actual barn raising with scripted scenes, but at least as far as I know, the barn they were raising was the real deal. I imagine the Pennsylvania Amish were quite happy to have the help since they already were cooperating with the filming.
Alison Rose
I know this isn’t an OT so forgive me, but I just had something weird happen and I want opinions. My phone rang and the number that came up is from a city not far from me where I do know a couple of people, but it wasn’t a number I recognized at all so I let it ring through. Then I got a voicemail notification, and it was an older-sounding lady saying “This is for Alison [last name]. Apparently you called me. I don’t recognize your name or number, so please remove my number if you’re selling something. However, if you know me or think you know me, please call back again.” I have not made a call in like four days, and the last call I made was to a local services center. I don’t say my name on my voicemail greeting, so I’m assuming the woman Googled the phone number, and you can find my name that way (which I hate). So, my assumption is one of two things: 1) It was a different number that called her, and she made a typo when Googling it; or 2) It was some spammy thing using that spoof method of making it look like it’s coming from a local number, and they landed on mine. (Although the city I live in now has a different area code, I have never changed my cell number from like 20 years ago, so I still have the area code of where this lady lives and where I grew up.)
Should I call her back??? Or just ignore it??? She definitely did not sound like a robot, and I could hear a dog and TV in the background.
eclare
@Alison Rose:
I would assume it’s some kind of spammy thing. As to calling back, I probably wouldn’t, but if you want to it’s probably no big deal.
WhatsMyNym
@Alison Rose:
Number 2 –
Alison Rose
@eclare: Yeah, I’m leaning toward ignoring it unless she calls again. I know I’ve gotten spoofed calls from the same number more than once before, so if it happens again and she calls again, maybe I’ll answer next time. But it just feels so weird!
Alison Rose
@WhatsMyNym: I hate these people. I hope they all get crabs.
Brachiator
@ArchTeryx:
Oh yeah. I never thought that Weir was accurately depicting Amish life. But the imaginary world that he created for the movie had a richness that was very inviting.
Similarly, the boarding school in Dead Poets Society and the wooden world of Master and Commander.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Alison Rose: waiting for a second call seems sensible to me, if perhaps a bit paranoid. [sidebar Bemused Senior (Mrs.) at one time worked at Yahoo. Her title was Paranoid. That was the title given to members of the Yahoo security group.]
Calling back is no big deal. Just …umm.. don’t give out any further personal information.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Paul of Paul and Paula just died a few days ago (as you probably know).
Alison Rose
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Yeah, I’m gonna wait and see if it happens again. I kinda feel like calling back would be the first dumb decision a character makes in a horror movie.
This fall, answering that voicemail could be the last thing you ever do. SPOOFED, coming to theatres Halloween night.
ArchTeryx
@Brachiator: It actually was pretty accurate for some of it. Weir just didn’t show most of the nastier parts. Anyone familiar with fundamentalist Christianity can probably guess some of them.
jame
Pandora, as a Na’vi, of course.
Narya
Middle Earth
Three Pines
The Virginian (thought I was the only one!)
Richard Russo’s upstate NY
Anarres (The Dispossessed)
eclare
@Alison Rose:
That’s gold, Jerry, pure gold!
Yarrow
@Alison Rose: Some bot thing spoofed your name and number to call her, probably selling her something. She called you back because that’s the number she thinks called her. Don’t call her unless it happens again.
Narya
Also: Nancy Drew
Splitting Image
@Almost Retired:
I could picture myself happily entering the world of Jane Austen or William Thackeray, but whenever I play this game with myself, I realize that what I really want is a TARDIS. I’d be perfectly happy to hang out with Lizzy and Jane Bennet, or with Lady Lyndon, but the minute I got a toothache or a pain in my side, I’d want to be able to get back here immediately and get it checked.
So no matter which fictional world I’m enthralled with, the answer is really Doctor Who.
Geoduck
@Brachiator: C. L. Moore’s “Vintage Season” is about a group of future time-travelers who do just that, go back and watch various disasters happen. In the actual story, told from the perspective of a present-day person, they come to watch a meteor smash into the earth and spark a horrible new plague.
kalakal
Earthsea
Pern
Whatever the world of The Riddlemaster of Hed is called
I’d love to visit all 3
Brachiator
@ArchTeryx:
Okay. Gotcha. I guess I was just saying that Weir had no intention of being accurate or faithful, but was contrasting the community we see in the film to the fallen world that detective Book was from.
So I found the fictional community appealing even though I would never in a gazillion years want to live in an actual Amish community.
Also, the Weird Al parody Amish Paradise comes to mind.
Sure Lurkalot
I’m going to go Star Trek, I want a holodeck, transporter and food replicator. To be specific, I want to live on the planet that has the library to all lived experiences of the past (of course, well before their sun goes kaput). Prolly cheating.
Steeplejack
@Suzanne:
This is how I feel about Laura (1944). Big Manhattan apartments full of stylish stuff.
Brachiator
@Geoduck:
Yes! I remember this one. The idea of time traveling “disaster tourists” was very inventive.
Lyrebird
@Brachiator: Just seconding the recommendation.
That book is a tour de force. That sounds so trite… So I will stick with: YES, read it.
RA Macavoy (sp?) has a Book of Kells which also has time travel, also to a time period that any reasonable person would skip, also memorable. Content warning. Yes, even more so than the Black Death.
Prometheus Shrugged
@ArchTeryx: Yes. Amish and Mennonite tradition is absolutely not the same as fundamentalist Christian, but the isolationist aspect of the culture fosters an absurd fear of the other. I grew up in Lancaster County–where Witness was filmed–but I could never go back for that reason. Nor would I be welcome, now that I have embraced (biblically!) the other.
Pete Downunder
Several commentators have wished for Manhattan in the 60s and then San Francisco around the same time. I was fortunate enough to grow up in Manhattan in the 50s and 60s and then moved to the SF bay area in the mid-60s. Both were great experiences. NYC back in the day was far less homogenized – with little ethnic neighboroods with specialty shops and restaurants. We lived in the German neighborhood (Yorkville – mid 80s on the east side) and my mom, who lived there during war, said suddenly all the German speakers were Swiss. San Francisco in the 60s was vibrant, Haight-Ashbury, the Summer of Love and all that.
Sadly NYC has become Starbucks on every corner and SF taken over by the ultra rich tech bros and the homeless, with no one in the middle.
I enjoy visiting both, but am much happier now living in the land downunder.
Torrey
@Alison Rose:
This has happened to me, on both ends. (That is, I’ve received calls that looked like they came from a neighbor’s phone, and I’ve had people call me because they thought I’d called them.) I wouldn’t worry about it. Best guess, as others have pointed out, spammers were spoofing your number, i.e., making it look like their call was coming from your number. Apparently, they’re doing a lot more of that now, with apps like NoMoRobo cutting off calls from numbers known to be telemarketers. I wish our Congresscritters would do more to regulate the phone companies–if that’s possible.
Kelly
The small boys driving nails in scraps reminds me of my brother(5) and I(7) driving every nail Dad had into his workbench one rainy afternoon. He took it well.
JaySinWA
@Alison Rose: Did they leave a number and was it the same as caller id? If they didn’t leave a different number than they called in on it was unlikely to be spoofed since it is local, otherwise the call back wouldn’t work. It still could be spam, but I would guess some error. I still wouldn’t call back
ETA usually local call spoofing doesn’t leave a message. OTOH somebody may have called them spoofing your number and they did the call back to check if it was real. Still not much upside in calling back.
Alison Rose
@JaySinWA: No, it wasn’t me getting the spam call. The person who called me was real, and yes the number she left was the same it came from. She got a spoofed call that used my number. And like I said, I assume she Googled the number and got my name, because I do not have my name in my voicemail greeting.
NotMax
@Argiope
Hawaii’s is a state library system. Not a biggie, got other stuff to read already on it.
@Steeplejack
Any number of art deco interior apartments or houses in 30s movies both better and lesser wherein I wouldn’t mind hanging my hat.
Tehanu
Narnia — Cair Paravel, for first choice. Time travel — Hollywood in the 1920’s. And Earth — in the time that Duv Galeni was intelligence officer at the Barrayaran Embassy there.
bjacques
@Brachiator: very late, but the 1992 movie Timescape was based on that story.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Yes, that’s why I was listening to it.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: There’s a great quote by an English wit from 18th century that given choice between jail and sailing ships, the smart man takes jail.
Paul in KY
@Anotherlurker: That would be cool. Would want the longevity drug, though.
Chris
@Almost Retired:
One of the factoids I remember really striking me was learning that it wasn’t until the 1950s that toilets as we recognize them nowadays, with toilet paper and flushing toilets and all that, became near-ubiquitous.
Even before I developed IBS, that always gave me pause, one of those “things you don’t even think about but that you could absolutely miss if you had to live in an earlier era.”
Karen H
Dead thread, but “A Year in Provence” makes me want to be one of Peter Mayle’s neighbors.
S Cerevisiae
Long dead thread but I had to get in on this subject because I’m a voracious reader and I send myself into whatever book. I read a lot of SciFi and often thought about what ship I would want from either books or movies or TV and I have to pick the Far Star from Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge; small, incredibly fast, gravitic drive, amazing computer- yeah everything you need to explore the galaxy.
Runner up to Needle from The Ringworld Engineers.
Chris
@Subsole:
I always loved that universe, but with the caveat that “my” Star Wars was the old expanded universe especially/mostly from the nineties, which drew heavily from the original trilogy and naturally assumed, as a matter of course, that the New Republic the Rebels were building after Endor would be, well, a good place to live. Not by any means a flawless one, but one where you’re like “it’s not just that at least it’s not the Empire; this is a government that’s genuinely proactively trying to make a difference for better in the lives of its people, and a lot of the time they succeed.” Combine that with all the space opera awesomeness in the setting and yeah, I wouldn’t mind living there.
Once The Phantom Menace comes out, that pretty much goes down the toilet and the novels pretty much all default to the prequels’ vision that, yeah, the Republic sucks actually, its main virtue is simply that it’s not the Empire. (And even that’s not completely certain, as there are times when you can genuinely start to wonder whether what’s left of the Empire might not actually be better).
Chris
@Sure Lurkalot:
Yeah, all told the Federation from Star Trek is probably the fictional setting I still drool over the most. When you’re part of the first class to have graduated college after the start of the Great Recession, the concept of a place where you may not have everything you want but you’ll never have to worry about food, shelter, or health care, will never not resonate.
The scene of McCoy passing through the 1980s hospital handing out cures like free candy is mostly just a “haha, those space age people are so far ahead of us they think our medicine’s medieval” joke, but it implies a lot more than that. It means the space age future actually cared enough about the health of its people to continue developing all these miracle drugs in the first place, and that distribution of these drugs is so taken for granted that a doctor from that era would just start passing them around and it wouldn’t even occur to him that these sick people would need to do anything to “earn” their good health.
Chris
@Karen H:
It’s the part of France my family (on my mother’s side is from). Never lived there long term, but still have an apartment down there that we go to regularly. It’s definitely a strong contender for favorite place in the world.