DTM Racing & The Fantastic Four

This weekend, I watched a DTM race for the first time.  That's not to say that I've never seen a DTM race, as I've followed the series (known as the German Touring Car Masters) on and off since the early 1990s. The format of these highlight shows remained fairly consistent over the past two decades.  The opening minutes would summarize qualifying, a discussion of the season thus far, and interviews.  The middle third of the hour-long broadcast would show edited portions of the race.  Each show would end with wrapping-up interviews, and a little of the podium celebrations.  Thus, after commercials, what I actually saw of the race was probably little more than twenty minutes of the cars speeding around the track.  Even if I had to endure this brief glimpse of the series, I longed to watch the highlight shows during the year, rather than several months after the entire series had ended.

A few months ago, discussions with a friend led me to investigate the history of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four.  I discovered that Roger Corman helped produce a low-budget movie in 1994 based on their origin story, and their first meeting with the villainous Doctor Doom.  Although the movie was never officially released, either direct-to-video or in cinemas, it demonstrated that the people who had purchased the movie rights from Marvel understood the characters, and desperately wanted to do them justice with a big budget motion picture.  I discovered that the movie was available on Youtube, and watched it one afternoon.  While it was hard to evaluate the film's merits, watching it as I did on a small rectangle on my laptop, I found it highly enjoyable.

I've realized for some time now that the DTM races were available on Youtube, so the desire to watch complete races, and follow the series throughout the season, beckoned.  That, plus my interest in watching Roger Corman's "The Fantastic Four" on my TV, led my wife to investigate the possibilities of doing so.  She discovered that we could access the Internet through our Playstation 3 game console, and found an app that made it possible to see content with the entire TV screen.  I worried about excessive pixelation during the movie, but it played so nicely that my wife forgot at times that she wasn't watching a DVD.  I worried about the feed halting at times, but everything played smoothly, and the video and sound quality were both excellent (in the case of the races, sometimes even better than the usual broadcasts).  

While we're happy with our cable Internet access, we've been wondering lately if we really need Cable TV.  Has the time arrived when I stop thinking of television in terms of channels and times, and start thinking of it as a database I can access at my leisure?  I'm not sure that we've answered that question yet, but I know this.  I loved watching "The Fantastic Four," and wish they would release the film on DVD, along with bonus material about the production.  We also enjoyed watching the DTM races from Spielberg (Germany) and Brands Hatch, complete and uncut, and each with a length of approximately one hour-and-forty minutes.  I'm wonder what else we'll discover--and grow to love--as we investigate how technology is revolutionizing our (apparently) outdated concept of home entertainment.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links
The DTM Racing Series
The 1994 Fantastic Four movie

DTM Cars & "Last of the Summer Wine"

After we booked a week at the resort near Lancaster, we had one more week to spend somewhere in England.  If you’ve been following my blog, you know that we ultimately decided to spend our entire vacation in the Yorkshire area.  To do so, one option that appealed to us, but we ultimately had to give up, was to attend the DTM German Touring Car event at Brands Hatch.  Every year, usually starting in December, we watch the hour-long TV highlights of each race, and have been doing so since Nicola Larini won the championship in 1993.  This year, the series featured brand new cars and a new manufacturer, and it would have been great to have seen them in action, to hear them roar around the track, to catch a glimpse of former Formula One drivers like Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard, or series frontrunners like Bruno Spengler and Gary Paffett.  Ultimately, we chose to visit Holmfirth that weekend, where the TV show "Last of the Summer Wine" was filmed.

This Christmas, we got two "Last of the Summer Wine" DVDs from family members.  The other night, we watched "Merry Christmas, Father Christmas," in which Seymour convinces Campo to climb onto village roofs in a Father Christmas outfit.  The episode featured some great moments, such as when Pearl catches Norman Clegg sneaking Howard a present from his girlfriend Marina.  Although Norman valiantly pretends that he actually knitted the sweater, when Pearl opens Marina's card, and reads out her message of love, he decides the best option is to take flight.  There’s also a wonderful line, when Seymour tries to dispel Campo’s fear of climbing onto the second-story roof by telling him, “Nonsense!  If that roof were any lower, it’d be a floor!” 

At the beginning of the episode, we felt a special thrill as Seymour, Campo, and Norman walked past Daisy Lane Books.  We don’t remember the bookstore being featured in any of the episodes we’d seen previously, but we happened upon it during our visit to Holmfirth last May.  A mother and son owned the small two-story shop, and every room was crammed floor to ceiling with books.  The man had decided to throw a half-price sale that day, in celebration of his mother’s eightieth birthday, and it was there that I picked up James Herriot’s Yorkshire, a picture book that proved a helpful resource during the rest of our vacation.  There was something about watching three of our favorite characters walk past the shop we visited that is impossible to describe, yet immensely meaningful. 

For Christmas, my wife surprised me with a mug she made on Shutterfly from our visit to Holmfirth.  She’s been working with Shutterfly this year, and has produced a couple nice photobooks from our trip.  But I hadn’t noticed her working on a mug for me.  It resides now beside the teapot we got in Sid’s Café.  I’m sure I’ll use it someday, but for now, it’s too special to use.

Today, we watched the hour-long highlight show from the Brands Hatch round of the DTM championship.  I enjoyed the little they showed of the race, and all the interviews with Jenson Button, Paul di Resta, and many of the series’ drivers.  It would have been great to have watched all the support races, and even seen some of my former heroes, such as Damon Hill, race around the track in other types of cars.  As with everything in life, we have to make choices, and each choice costs us something.  I’ll never know what I missed by not attending the Brands Hatch event, but I know what I gained by visiting Holmfirth.  I’ll clutch that particular visit close to my heart, forever.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links

Watch "Merry Christmas, Father Christmas" on Youtube