Good Omens dreamcast

I’ve been leading an Honors College reading group over Good Omens (by the incomparable Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett) for the past two months or so.  Our last meeting was the previous Thursday, and as we munched on Chips Ahoy and drank (unfortunately warm) Coke, we outlined our dreamcast for the Good Omens miniseries.

• Aziraphale – Tom Hiddleston or David Tennant
  If you’ve ever watched any of Tom Hiddleston’s interviews, you know as well as I do that he’s got the Aziraphale demeanor down pat.  In light of this, David Tennant might seem like an odd choice, but when I first read this book, I heard his voice in my head reading Aziraphale’s lines.
• Crowley – Benedict Cumberbatch or David Tennant
  Come on – Ben just looks perfect for Crowley.  And the reason I have David Tennant down here again is this:  my group and I thought it would be super-cool and deep to have David Tennant play both Aziraphale and Crowley.  (I’ll probably rhapsodize about the themes of Good Omens in a later post, but suffice it to say that this connects to that.)
• Shadwell – Ian McKellen
  Is there any other choice, really?
• Anathema Device – Evanna Lynch, Jena Malone, Emily Browning, Ellie Kendrick, or Bella Heathcote
  We obviously couldn’t decide on one specific person for Anathema.  After looking at all these actresses again, my first choice would (still) be Evanna Lynch, followed closely by Bella Heathcote.
• Newton Pulsifer – Jay Baruchel or Colin Morgan
  If we’re sticking to UK actors (or Irish, conceivably), I can definitely see Colin Morgan as Newt.
• War – Scarlett Johansson
  …yeah, I can’t stop picturing War as movie-verse Black Widow.  Sue me.
• Famine – Jason Isaacs or Bradley Cooper
  Obviously not in Lucius Malfoy-esque getup.  More like Jackson Brodie, if any of you have seen Case Histories.
• Pollution – Tom Felton or Harry Lloyd
  If I had to choose one, I’d probably go for Harry Lloyd a la Viserys Targaryen.  Either way, I always picture Pollution as having Draco-and-Viserys-esque white-blond hair.
• Death – James Earl Jones (voice)
  Well, of course.
• Pepper – Maisie Williams
  Hair aside, Maisie’s already shown she can pull off a feisty personality.
• Wensleydale – Asa Butterfield
  We kind of tossed around the idea of Asa as Adam, but honestly I can see Asa far more as Wensley.
• Brian – Jack Scanlon
  At first I suggested Thomas Brodie-Sangster, because I figured he was about fifteen.  Nope.  He’s 22.  Definitely didn’t see that coming.  But anyway, this is about where my knowledge of British child actors runs out.  I literally just looked this kid up on IMDb.  But I figured he had to look a tiny bit like Pollution, because… yeah, that’s a topic for a later post.
• Adam – Laurence Belcher
  You all might remember him from the very beginning of X-Men:  First Class.  This kid played young Charles Xavier.  Some of you might even remember him from “A Christmas Carol,” the Doctor Who Christmas special from a few years ago, in which he played Young Kazran.  Providing, of course, that he went blond, I think he could easily play Adam.
• Metatron/Beelzebub – Gerard Butler
  Again, going back to what I had in mind for David Tennant, I think it’d be cool to have Metatron and Beelzebub played by the same person.
• Madame Tracy – Julie Walters
  She’d just be perfect.
• Mr. Young – Kenneth Branagh or Martin Freeman
  This is fanciful, I know, but wouldn’t it be great if one of these blokes could put in an appearance as Adam’s father?  (I can’t decide who I’d like better in this role.)
• Dog – the dog from The Artist
  I haven’t actually seen The Artist yet, but someone in my reading group (can’t remember who) insisted on this one.
• Hastur – Johnny Depp
• Ligur – Christopher Eccleston
  Really, these two are kind of interchangeable in my mind.  I keep forgetting what they’re supposed to look like.
  And finally…
• Agnes Nutter – Maggie Smith
  Because of reasons, okay?

That’s my Good Omens dreamcast.  Thanks to the members of my reading group for contributing to this!  🙂

Adventures in Sarkeys

Or, That One Time I Almost Crashed a Meeting.

(Sorry it’s been ages.  School’s really taking the mickey out of me this semester.)

Anyway!  Last year, my Spanish 1 class was in Sarkeys Energy Center for some weird reason (seriously, though, who puts a Spanish class in the energy building?).  But anyway, Sarkeys is probably the tallest building on the OU campus.  Looks like this:

Image from mpge.ou.edu.

Yeah, huge building.  So anyway, Spanish was my last class either of the day or for a while that semester on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  I sometimes liked to walk around and explore the building after class, just ’cause.  One day, I decided that it would be a great idea to climb up one of the mammoth central staircases all the way to the top floor and see what the view was like from there.

…well, I gave up on the stairs around floor 7.  Not entirely my fault, mind – those stairs are so numerous and steep that I felt as if I were stabbing my calves with small knives every time I took a step.  Anyway, I left the staircase and got on an elevator, punched the button reading “15,” and waited.

Ding.

The elevator door opened, and I honestly thought for a second that I’d walked into Mad Men.

I saw a posh, crimson-carpeted reception area with a mahogany desk.  No one was at the desk, thankfully.  But behind this reception area was a glass wall.  Through this wall, I could see between ten and fifteen businessmen in suits sitting around a table, obviously having some sort of important meeting.

I panicked.  No, seriously.  I flattened myself against the wall of the elevator, out of sight of the businessmen, and mashed the Door Close button about ten times, thinking something along the lines of OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD the whole time.  Finally, the door closed, and I went down to the ground floor and made my escape.

So yeah, that’s the story of how I almost crashed an important business meeting in Sarkeys.

My new research project…

I think I may have just taken on the task of dis/proving a family legend.

…Well, more like clarifying what exactly happened.

See, my great-uncle Charlie Whitney was a state trooper with the Iowa State Patrol.  It’s “common knowledge” (I’m a scientist at heart, I have to put that in quotes) in our family that Charlie invented that device that police officers and state troopers and the like use to measure the length of skid marks on the road – that little wheel on a stick thing.  He never patented it (for what reason, I don’t know), but we have pictures of him with the materials he used.  I even have one of the original wheels, sent to me by one of Charlie’s old friends.

But my questions are these:  Was Charlie really the first one to invent a device with this specific design/for this purpose?  Did he just come up with the idea independently?  Was he influenced by previous patents for surveyor’s wheels and other things of that ilk?

So now I’ve made it my mission of sorts to figure out what exactly happened there.  I guess in a larger sense, I’m researching the history of the measuring wheel (surveyor’s wheel, trundle wheel, that sort of thing).  I want to know where Charlie fits into that.  If I can prove that Charlie invented this specific device before it was patented (because I’m about 99% positive someone else holds that patent), that would be one heck of a story.  If that’s what happened, then I may very well write it up and submit it to mental_floss.  If not, then I’ll probably publish my findings on here.  Either way, it’ll be interesting to know. 🙂