A recent post over at the ever wonderful
Sun Dried Sparrows reminded me of the time I was
browsing in an achingly (and I
really mean
achingly) cool, alternative bookstore in
Brooklyn several years ago. It was a
fascinating and incredibly arty shop,
chock-a-block with obscure titles and with ferocious jazz blaring from the in-store sound-system. Anyway, I
was nosing about the shelves, when a skinny young man
stepped from behind the counter and
approached me. He worked at the store and had
recognised my English accent. This was a guy
who wouldn't have looked out of place in the
line-up of a cutting edge band - an
impossibly cool individual. So you can
imagine my surprise at the question he asked
me. 'You're from England...', he said, '...do
you know a TV series called Lovejoy?'
'Errrm...., yes...' I replied, somewhat taken
aback, '...in fact parts of it were filmed
not far from where I live'. At this, the
guy's veneer of cool dropped. 'Oh my God, I
LOVE that show...' he babbled excitedly, '...do
you know when the third season will be out on DVD?'
If only I'd known at the time....
Yes, it transpired that this arty, uber-cool,
bookish Brooklynite was a massive fan of the
venerable East Anglian antique dealer and he
proceeded to pepper me with questions about
the programme for several minutes - fairly
unsuccessfully as it happens, as I'd rarely
watched it myself. His main gripe seemed to
be that, at the time, only the first couple
of series had thus far made it to DVD in the
USA, so he'd had to rely on acquiring
bootleg copies of the show to feed his habit! This was
well before Ian McShane found American fame
in Deadwood, so, to be quite honest, I was
surprised to hear that
any episodes of
Lovejoy had been released on DVD in the
States and frankly astonished that the
programme was so admired by such a young hipster.
Now, what's that phrase about not judging a
book by its cover? It seems particularly apt in this case.
