Going to great lengths

I was on my way from a BIFHSGO meeting (that's my family history society, for those who don't know I'm a family history nut) which had gone overtime, to drop off a DVD at the library, then high-tail it around the corner to the Empire 7 to meet the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter at Lincoln.

This is the first family rendezvous we've done with a cell phone. As I hurried along, I already knew that the RFB would be getting the popcorn because he had texted me before leaving the house. However, the RFB is flatly refusing to get a mobile device, so when I didn't show up at the appointed time, he panicked, found a pay phone between the coming attractions, and left a message along the lines of if-you-don't-answer-your-cell-phone-what's-the-point. I hadn't answered because by the time I realized the thing was vibrating in my parka pocket, his call had gone to voice mail, and I hadn't figured out how to retrieve my voice mail. (I have now.)

So I arrived five minutes into the film and, having no night vision to speak of, had to stand at the back of the cinema until the RFB came to help me feel my way to my seat, to the dismay of the lady on the aisle.

Anyway, Lincoln:

I've only seen two of the Academy Award nominated films. Les Miserables was two and a half hours I'll never get back and of course, as I'm typing this, has just won the Golden Globe. (Fine performances, lovingly filmed, but gosh darn it, it's a musical based on variations of the same song.)

Lincoln is also epic and about half an hour too long, but it's gripping, even though we know how it panned out. Everything appears to have been filmed through a blue filter, taking us back to a cold, bleak, nearly colourless Washington DC of January 1865. Top-notch performances from many of the finest character actors in the States, including a rather wonderful turn by James Spader as one of a trio of lobbyists selling off appointments to reluctant Democrats in order to secure their vote for the Thirteenth Amendment. About four speaking roles for women, even in this large cast, but it was, after all, a man's world -- and a white man at that.

I've read complaints about the film not including the assassination, although it does show Lincoln's death a few hours later. Frankly, I thought the film should have ended at the point when the President sets off down the halls of the White House, on his way to Ford's Theater. It was a beautifully shot and poignant moment; everything beyond was superfluous.

A good film, all the same. Of the other nominations, I only really want to see Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour. That should be enough to choose something to champion come awards night. (If Les Miz wins, I'll throw snack food, I swear!)

Memories of Mackers

When I was seventeen, my Grade Twelve literature class had a field trip to go see Roman Polanski's infamous version of Macbeth which was playing at a local cinema as part of a Shakespeare-on-film festival with matinees for school groups.

When Polanski made this flick, it was only a year or so after his wife had been butchered, among others, by Charles Manson's disciples in Los Angeles. On top of this, Polanski added in images born of his boyhood memories of the Nazi persecution of Jews, including his own family, in Poland. This version of Macbeth omitted no opportunity for horror: the Thane of Cawdor was executed before our eyes, King Duncan's murder was shown in every gory detail, as was the rape and murder of MacDuff's household. Early on in the film, Macbeth and Duncan were having a little chat, while in the valley behind them, struggling men were being dragged to a huge gallows and strung up.

I spent most of the movie with my fingers in my ears and my head between my knees (I could do that when I was seventeen), but I could still hear the gasps and groans of my classmates. Plus sickening crunches.

The corker was when I emerged shaking into the lobby where a knot of girls from my school were in deep conference, punctuated by "EEEEEW"s. When I got close enough to hear the discussion, my life changed. They were disgusted by the fact that the witches were naked. It was then I knew that something was fundamentally wrong with society. More than two hours of rape, decapitation, skewering, and they were upset by nude old women. I wish I could say that attitudes have changed in the intervening years.

Anyway, last week, I finally received my library hold on Patrick Stewart's recent portrayal of Macbeth. It was on PBS a couple of years ago, but I only managed to catch bits of it, enough to know that I'd like to see the whole thing. Unlike Polanski, Rupert Goold (who directed this for the Chichester Festival Theatre and eventually brought the production to Broadway before it was adapted and filmed for television) elects to suggest rather than show -- which can amplify the terror. The one aspect that is rather more graphic than Polanski's version is in the interpretation of the witches who here are the Weird Nursing Sisters.

A YouTube contributor going by the handle tizerandchips has thoughtfully put together a comparison of our first glimpse of the witches from Polanski's version, Goold's version, and in the middle, from Australian Geoffrey Wright, three diabolical Melbourne schoolgirls.
Wow. After all that, we need to counteract the evil charms, don't we? Rather than sending you outside to turn around three times and spit, I offer my best-beloved scene from the third season of Black Adder where the Eighteenth Century incarnation of Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) explains the "Scottish Play" superstition to Baldrick (Tony Robinson) and then puts two supercilious actors (Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Connor) through the wringer. Hugh Laurie is the baffled Prince George.


And as a final antidote, counter-curse, or what you will, this delightful ditty by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, the same team who brought us the hilarious and heart-breaking musical "The Drowsy Chaperone". This was the opening theme for the second season of "Slings and Arrows" - one of my favourite TV series ever, and is sung here by the late great Graham Harley:
Call me superstitious or cowardly or weak
But I'll never play a character
Whose name one dare not speak

I'll play Hamlet
In doublet and hose
Or either of the Dromeos
But sorry, I won't play Mackers

I'll play Richard the Third
With a hump and a wig
Or Henry the Eighth
That selfish pig
But sorry, I don't do Mackers

Every soul who plays this role
Risks injury or death
I'd rather sweep the bloody stage
Then ever do
Mac-you-know-who

So give me King Lear, Cleopatra,
Romeo, Juliet, Doesn’t mat-ra
I’ll play them all for free
But I’d be crackers
To take on Mackers
Y'see I’m skittish about the Scottish Tragedy
Och-ay!

Ironic, doncha think? (Write of passage number twenty-six)

Not all of my "writes of passage" take place on buses. This one doesn't:

One evening, I go down to the corner to buy hot chocolate mix from our local coffee shop. It's quite quiet, and since I'm the only person in line, I decide on the spur of the moment to also pick up some hot beverages for the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter. I put my order in and go down to the end of the corner to wait for my drinks to be ready.

Wouldn't you know it, three people pick this moment to come in for coffee and there are only two baristas on duty. The girl is hastening to complete my order and find a tray so I can carry it home, while the boy fetches things. The first two following me seem pretty relaxed, but as I get ready to cart my drinks away, the third man is starting to fidget.

"I've been in coffee shops all over the city and it has never taken this long," he tells the barista at the expresso machine testily. He has stepped up close enough that I can spot the OC Transpo logo on his pullover.

"I've been waiting ten minutes; this is unacceptable."

I debate inwardly whether to point out that a) he hasn't been waiting anywhere near ten minutes and b) this is damned funny coming from an Ottawa bus driver, but I decide this won't help the barista and, being a non-driver, my chances of encountering this oblivious grouch on the transit system are excellent.

I depart into the night, balancing lattes and smothering a grin.

Seriously, I'm not really researching *that*, new or otherwise

Sometimes I wonder how much trouble I would be in if the police confiscated my computer and built a case against me based on my search terms. I rather like the indie band The New Pornographers, for example. So when I wanted to find some of their CDs at the library, I had to put "new pornographers" in the search field which made me a tad uneasy. If I look up their videos on YouTube or check out their web site, well, a music fan reasonably familiar with the Canadian music scene would know I'm not making a nefarious search, but suppose I had to explain this to someone in authority?

For those of you not so reasonably familiar, The New Pornographers (cringe) are sort of an indie supergroup, comprised of about seven core members who were known for their previous work before collaborating. Known by cognoscenti, that is -- the only person I recognised in the the line-up was Neko Case and she's an American, albeit based in Vancouver. The group came to my attention via a catchy tune with obscure lyrics entitled "Sing Me Spanish Techno" which I've mentioned in a previous post. The song was from their 2005 album Twin Cinema, but I heard it much later because I'm not up-to-date by any stretch of the imagination. I decided to get any available NP CDs out of the library after hearing this song from their 2010 album Together:The library had three CDs which I downloaded on to my iPod and so I've spent the past few months being ambushed on my song shuffle.
Here are a couple of my emerging favourites:


And this one, which I really like, but I prefer the pictures in my head to the video, clever as it is:
And finally, because I can't resist, this rather marvellous cover of a Fleetwood Mac song of which I'd never heard:
That's it; I'm off to bed now.

Can you guess why Bono said no?

Last summer, I posted a very funny video called "Haters" by
Isabel Fay, but it wasn't until months later that I had a look at some of her other films, mostly while I was avoiding things I ought to have been doing. (I do that a lot.) I'd like to show you two gems.

The first is the story about how Isabel and her director Lee York entered a film into the LA Comedy Shorts Festival, then remembered they didn't have clearance to use the soundtrack, a choral version of U2's "With or Without You". After trying and failing to get permission, they came up with a very clever way to show their film without getting hauled into court:

Now, at the close of this video, Isabel tells us that they still couldn't actually show their film because U2 was still refusing to give them clearance. Evidently, they eventually got permission; the original award-winning short is now up at Isabel's channel at YouTube.

When I watched it, I thought I could guess why Bono initially said "no". Why don't you watch it and do some guessing yourself?

I enjoyed this immensely, by the way, yet, unlike several YouTube commenters, I felt some sympathy for U2 as well, although I admit I have never heard their reasons.

Dance me to the end of life

At the risk of sounding morbid, I must confess that one of my daily cyber-stops (along with news sites, family history blogs, Facebook, and my habitual stalking of David Tennant) is the obituary page at the Victoria Times-Colonist. Why? Victoria is a relatively small town and I lived there a long time. It shields me with fore-knowledge, so that during my annual retreat to visit Demeter, I won't blunder into a friend's grief in my ignorance, and might, in fact, get an appropriate note into the mail.

It's not scintillating reading; obituaries are not a hot-bed of original thought nor good writing. They're mini-biographies written by grieving people, so we usually hear that the deceased "fought a courageous battle" with whatever disease carried them off, that they lived with "the love of his/her life", or adored their children. Often they were a friend to everyone. Well, it isn't the time to argue, is it?

Today, though, I was brought up short by an obituary. The first thing that caught me was the picture, a tiny black-and-white snap of a lady dancing on one foot, waving an open umbrella. (Not the photo below, obviously.) You can't really make out her features. She could be middle-aged, or a little older. However, the picture radiates joy and celebration. So does the text which begins with little in the way of punctuation: "Thank you Thank you Thank you . . . .", then launches into a litany of gratitude for her family, for being born when she was, for things like stars and trees, friends and music, for her caregivers who "were born kind".

As exits go, this one was classy. She was no one I knew, but frankly, I'm a bit sorry she wasn't.

Bloody 'ell

As you may have noticed, I'm participating in my tenth NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). So, it's 11:48 and I'm on my way to bed, and it suddenly occurred to me: Ooops! So here's a nice picture to look at. It's our neighbour's side of the porch. I think she took the ornaments down this evening. Both our trees are lying on the lawn like corpses waiting to be taken to the plague pit. I'll write something substantial tomorrow, I promise.

Take heaven

Some years ago when the girls were very small, I stumbled upon a Christmas book by Tasha Tudor entitled Take Joy. I remember very little about the book except the quote from which the title came, the words attributed to one Giovanni Giocondi, a Franciscan friar. He was a scholar, an archeologist and an architect and lived in Italy during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, so a Renaissance man in all respects.

At Christmas 1513, he is supposed to have written a letter of encouragement to the Contessina Allagia deli Aldobrandeschi, and while there is no proof that he was the actual author, the sentiments work for me, especially now that the Christmas tree is stripped to the lights only and will be going out on to our lawn tomorrow evening to await pick-up:

I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy.
And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

And so may it be for all of us. The challenge of Christmas is bringing a bit of it into the rest of the year. I usually fail, but each year, I hope that I can. Let's see what happens.

Twelfth Night and what I will

Less than half an hour of Christmas left. I can really smell the balsam which is either because the tree is dying or because my Christmas cold has worn off.

We've just got back from the annual Twelfth Night celebration with A Company of Fools, one of the few compensations for dwelling in Hades. It was long, but we won two door prizes. Scott Florence, the Fools' director made cracks about killing Christmas which younger daughter failed to find funny, Christmas being her favourite time of year, but she found most other things funny including the company's annual mangling of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. They find a different way to warp it each year and this time they did a read-through with weird hats and asides.

As I watched, I recalled I'd forgotten and foregone one of my Christmas gifts: a DVD of Des McAnuff's charming production of Twelfth Night from the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival's 2011 season. I won't be able to see it this Twelfth Night, but I'll use it to ease into Epiphany.
I also picked up my library hold of Patrick Stewart as Macbeth. Talk about killing Christmas....

As long as there is egg nog in the fridge (Merry Eleventh Day of Christmas)

As I let the dog out for a relief wade through the foot or so of snow in our front yard, I notice that the strings of white lights in the window of the middle apartment across the street have vanished. Although many pretty lights continue to glow throughout our neighbourhood, I have already passed the corpses of more than one abandoned Christmas tree in my travels through the maze of side streets.

It's only the eleventh day of Christmas, but I accompanied elder daughter to catch her plane to Halifax. The Resident Fan Boy has been dissolving into tears all day, bless 'im, so I'd gone in his stead. After she was swallowed up by airport security, I stood for a few wistful minutes gazing over the railing into the arrivals lounge where I waited for her to appear less than three weeks ago. The trees and elf figures were still there, waiting to welcome back students returning to Hades for their studies. The bus was crammed with them and their suitcases, and there was nothing to be seen through the mud-encrusted windows, so I sighed and opened a newspaper.

Back home, we opened the penultimate Christmas gift and took one step further to letting the season go.

But not yet. There's still egg nog in the fridge.

Here's Walk Off The Earth's take on "Jingle Bell Rock", a song which, if you think about it, has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas and could actually be sung at any point in the winter. (If WOTE look familiar to you, they're famous for the five-people-on-one-guitar rendition of "Somebody That I Used to Know". They're Canadian, too...)