Do you always play the priestly roles?

Yesterday’s radio interview wasn’t without its moments of drama. The interviewer called me in the morning to set things up, get a few details straight for his introduction and settle on the time. It was a live interview, so I had to be standing by to take his producer’s call, which was set for 3:10 pm my time, 5:10 pm Atlantic.

When I got back from lunch, I discovered that the internet was down, which is strange because we have a redundant system. Then we noticed the phones were dead, too. Some yahoos running cables across the street had cut through the wire bundle. Our past experience with such matters—and, sadly, we have many—told us it would be hours before things were fixed.

I didn’t have the radio station phone number, only e-mail. But e-mail was down. So I had to dash home, send off a frantic e-mail with a new phone number for them to call, and try to track down a phone number for them in case the e-mail wasn’t read in time. Fortunately, both modes worked. I received a thankful e-mail from the interviewer. He said it was surprising how many times people blew them off in spite of it being a live production.

I prepped a sheet with points I wanted to make sure I hit during the piece, and included names and titles I might be prone to forget on the spur of the moment—including the interviewer’s name. He was great—he asked a bunch of open-ended questions and just let me run off at the mouth with minimal interruption. All told, about ten minutes. I’ll post a link when it goes on the CBC archives in a few days. It was funny to hang up, turn on the radio and hear myself still talking. Guess they had me on a 30-second tape delay in case I said @#$!(*% or !)*)#$!.

I watched two episodes of the Nightmares & Dreamscapes series: “Battleground,” starring William Hurt and “The Road Virus Heads North” with Tom Berringer and Marsha Mason. William Hurt is outstanding as a stone cold hitman. So cold, in fact, that he utters not a single word of dialog, even though it’s a virtual one-man play. None of this muttering to himself incredulously when things go amiss. It’s a tour-de-force. Berringer is excellent, too, as the beleaguered famous horror writer who picks up a creepy painting at a yard sale. The only fear I have about this series is that some of the endings sort of dangle, like the original stories did. It’s possible that these will be tidied up a little before they air, because the sound and picture aren’t fixed yet, but otherwise there’s a feeling of lack-of-resolution to “Umney’s Last Case” and “Road Virus” that might dilute their impact.

I also watched Vengeance on Varos, a sixth Doctor series. I don’t have much experience with this Doctor, but he’s sort of okay. His mannerisms are quirky, but not annoyingly so. There’s one bit of dialog that struck me as odd, though. A group of priests troop through and the Doctor leans in close to one of them and says something like, “Do you always play the priestly roles?” It had the feel of an inside joke, but since the entire episode was a take-down of video nasties, it might not have been. I can’t find anything on the ‘net that explains the line. Shrug. The villain in this one was particularly creepy, with this salacious laugh and always-moving hands. Peri’s blouse couldn’t have been any tighter, not that I’m complaining.