Too cheap for HDTV? A multi-region DVD player lets you watch Michael Palin for a song and thank gawd he's not Sarah P

With a Palin bonus: The parrot sketch!

A view from Sarah Palin's porch? No, it's a satellite image of Big Diomede and Little Diomede islands in the Bering Strait between the easternmost tip of Asia (Siberian Russia) and the westernmost tip of North America (Alaska).

"I know I'm here for only a very short time, but I hope I'll learn something."

-- Michael Palin, to Sokun, the abbot of the Zen Buddhist temple of Buttsuji in southern Japan, in episode 2 of Full Circle, the "good" Palin's 1995-96 filmed journey counterclockwise around the Pacific Rim

by Ken

Full Circle actually begins in Alaska, on the U.S. island of Little Diomede, in the Bering Strait, opposite the uninhabited Russian island of Big Diomede, the famous closest point between our two countries. On the evidence of the scenes shot on Little Diomede, and then in Nome, and on the still-very-Russian Kodiak Island, I get the distinct impression that Michael Palin knows more about Alaska than the Other Palin (no relation, as he has been at pains to point out).

Having just watched this episode for the first time in many years, I was reminded that a subliminal connection between the Palins has been operative in my brain since the Unfortunate Palin came to my attention.

As a longtime geography buff -- it's one of the things that Howie and I have always had in common, though it's led him to do all sorts of actual traveling and me not so much -- I of course knew the names and geographical significance of the two Diomedes. I never expected to see them, though, or even to come as close to seeing them as I now have in Full Circle. I not only doubt that Princess Sarah has come this close, but doubt that she has the slightest interesting in doing so. It was, I think, her very lack of interest in anything outside the orbit of her sequestered brain, that led her to make such a grotesque hash of the actual physical relationship between Alaska and Russia. She barely knows where Alaska is, and probably can't imagine why anyone would even want to know where, uh, that other place is.

The word I'm circling around is "curiosity," and of course it's one of the defining characteristics of Michael Palin's travels. His curiosity may not be exactly infinite, but it's quite large enough to encompass any people and places his travels take him to. I'm quite sure, for example, that at least as of the time of his visit to Little Diomede and Nome, he knew more about the people who would one day be Governor Palin's constituents than she ever did.

Michael Palin is also the most congenial of traveling companions (it's hard to imagine anyone enjoying the company of Princess Sarah except desexed men who enjoy the fantasy that she might at some point jump their desiccated bones), and one of the funnier. In the second episode of Full Circle, as he makes his labyrinthine way, suitcase in tow, to his meeting with the abbot of the temple of Buttsuji, he notes the effect on his awareness of how much he's traveling with, reflecting, "By the time I climb yet another flight of stairs, I'm ready to renounce all worldly goods, beginning with my suitcase."

Of all Palin's TV journeys, Full Circle is the one that, until now, I had seen most of. Now, however, I've just knocked off his Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole (a trip intended to take him from the North Pole to the South Pole along the 30th-degree east longitude meridian, before a couple of rather large detours, one large and the other massive). After years of coveting, I've now got my very own copy of The Michael Palin Collection, which brings together, in addition to the three titles already mentioned, a pair of Great Railway Journeys, Hemingway Adventure, Sahara, and Himalaya. The more recent New Europe I bought separately.

What set me to coveting the Palin travel set, beyond how much I'd liked the parts I'd seen and how much I hadn't seen, was the existence of this set, at an incredibly modest price -- in the U.K. Back when I started scouting this stuff, most of the Palin travel films weren't even available in the U.S. The problem with buying them from the U.K., of course, is that they're in PAL and have incompatible regional coding.

I see now that the Palin Collection is actually available in the U.S., for something like $225. Back in the day, who knows? I might have paid it. In fact, I paid about $70, and about another $17 for New Europe. What I did was, finally, after years of coveting, to buy one of those increasing number of DVD players that play all TV systems and all regional codes.

You can get them incredibly cheap, but with electronic equipment I'm often almost as afraid to pay too little as too much -- there's an awful lot of crap being sold. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find a model as tempting as my new Pioneer DV610AV-S, which even plays SACDs, for $100 including shipping. (Just to be clear, this is a model that's not intended for the U.S. market, and is presumably not warranted by Pioneer. But I trusted that the vendor would back up the merchandise, and in fact it has worked perfectly out of the box.)
Naturally, once I committed to ordering the multi-region DVD player, I had to have something to play on it, which in my mind amounted to an "all systems go" for placing a whopping order with Amazon.co.uk -- starting, of course, with the Michael Palin Collection. But there was a ton of other stuff that either isn't available here or is available there at a fraction of the U.S. price.

Like the complete Inspector Morse mysteries, with a price differential, as I recall, similar to that of the Palin set. And there were the great Le Carré Smiley miniseries, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. Tinker Tailor was actually the first thing I watched. (I own bootleg VHS dubs of both series in a PAL-to-NTSC conversion so appalling as to be unwatchable -- but I watched them, a bunch of times.) And there were a couple of BBC Dickens minseries, and the original Brideshead Revisited, the British Queer As Folk, and the remake of The Forsyte Saga (I'm still scouting U.S. vs. U.K. editions of the original series), and the complete Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (which I've got on VHS, but do I watch? and it was so cheap!).

I've already got a shopping basket (in the U.K. it's a "basket" rather than a "cart") brimful of more goodies: seasons 1-3 of the Inspector Lewis mysteries, a tribute to the Two Fat Ladies, the complete Kavanagh Q.C. and Hustle and The Office (which I like much less than the American version, but it's cheap, and maybe it'll grow on me), a set of three BBC Oscar Wilde films (again too cheap to resist), and a preposterously cheap collection of 14 Hitchcock films. Of course the prices keep changing while the stuff is in my basket, but I think of it as like playing the stock market, except with no money at risk. Every time I log in to see my shopping basket, I get an announcement of prices that have changed, usually a matter of 20p or 30p. I've also had price drops of £5 to £7; those were my good days in the market. Not long ago some item -- I think it was one of the many versions of the "complete" Monty Python -- went up £5, and I chucked it right out of the basket -- I still don't know which of the many U.S. and U.K. editions to buy anyway.

I realize that if I were allocating my televisual dollars (or pounds) wisely, I would be saving up for a nice new HD TV. But I'm OK with my present TVs, including the 19-inch Sharp in the kitchen that I bought used in the early '70s from the neighbor of a friend, and was sure I'd overpaid for -- except that the damned thing is still working OK 35 years later, and refuses to stop working.

I don't really have either the asking price or the proper space for the kind of HD set I'd like. I guess I finally decided that the money would be better spent on stuff I actually watch. For what it's worth, my Pioneer DVD player up-converts to however many lines the righteous folk with HD sets enjoy. When funds permit, I'll probably buy another multi-region DVD player for my other "major" TV, so I can watch the PAL DVDs on either.

Meanwhile I continue studying my financial reports. The British complete Rumpole isn't necessarily cheaper than the American, but it reportedly has subtitles, whereas the American edition apparently doesn't -- and for British TV in particular I find they come in increasingly handy. Hmm, a quandary. Maybe I should just get back to Full Circle. Michael was headed for a ferry from Japan to Korea.


A MICHAEL PALIN BONUS: "PINING FOR THE
FJORDS"? YES, IT'S THE DEAD PARROT SKETCH

With the great John Cleese, of course (and brief appearances by Terry Jones and Graham Chapman):

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