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You play that thing once again, I burn the piano
Yesterday, despite operating on less than three hours' sleep, I—
1. Went out to Lexington to see a dentist about a hole I've had in my left upper front tooth since December 2013. Initially it was a piece of composite that cracked off the bottom of the tooth; the dentist I was seeing at the time told me repeatedly that he couldn't repair it without altering the fit of the Invisalign braces, i.e., he wouldn't do it, so I went on having a hole in my front tooth for more than a year until it finally registered with me that I've had traditional braces since December and I could get the damn thing fixed. (Also, quite recently, the tooth started to hurt.) Very much not to my surprise at all, it had developed into my first cavity. Very much to my relief, it was not infected and was easily filled. I don't have a hole in my front tooth anymore. I'm really happy about this.
2. Finished Tom Holt's The Walled Orchard (1990) on the bus. It was more of a downer than Goatsong (1989). I wasn't shocked. I am indebted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asakiyume for the concept of history as spoiler, but I think it might also be a kind of protection as well—I could brace for what I knew was coming. The narrative remained well-written, dryly funny, politically angry, and followed through on the major emotional arc of the first novel, which I really cared about. Slowly my list of classically-set fiction that doesn't suck grows!
(There must be anthologies of short fiction with classical Greek and Roman settings out there that are not just mysteries. Anyone know where to find them?)
3. Arranged to meetderspatchel for dinner at Sugar & Spice with wind05, whom I had not seen since he moved to Kansas with his family for a teaching job. Conversation was lovely, catching-up involved being shown photographs of one child I hadn't seen since he was much smaller and screamier and one child I have never met, I had delicious spicy fried catfish with eggplant and we went to J.P. Licks for dessert afterward. Everyone I know needs access to cheap reliable teleportation.
4. Came home and watched Going Highbrow (1935), a weird little quasi-musical B-comedy which has almost no plot and a terrible last line, but is otherwise a delightful showcase for a bunch of character actors and some of the loopiest double-talk outside of the Marx Brothers. Guy Kibbee and ZaSu Pitts are a pair of middle-aged middle-American nouveau riche who accidentally made a fortune in the crash of '29 and have been spending it ever since on high-profile purchases like a $75,000 Tintoretto, hoping to break into society; Edward Everett Horton is the distractable estate manager for a well-heeled family now hurting for cash, who has the brilliant inspiration to exchange some of the Marshes' social standing for the Upshaws' spare change. When his patroness balks at selling the ancestral art collection, he quickly brokers a coming-out party for the Upshaws' daughter for which the Marshes will serve as hosts and consultants and the stage is set for a memorable, mutually lucrative weekend with one small catch: the Upshaws never had any children. Luckily, June Martel is on hand as the cheery, clever waitress at Kibbee's favorite diner; she's had some acting experience, she's glad to play the part. She bonds at once with her fictitious mother. Wealthy young Ross Alexander is in love with her even before he knows who she is. (They have a literal Cinderella meet-cute that leaves him smitten and holding her shoe: he broke the heel off trying to get it out of a manhole cover. She wasn't impressed.) Horton has his fingers crossed for a love-match merger, but impediments arise in the form of a melodramatic secret, the inevitable consequences of impersonation, and anyway Martel thinks the kid's a dope. All the plot thunders head-spinningly out of the woodwork in the last twenty minutes and it's a seventy-minute comedy, so it all resolves happily at the same breakneck pace. Mostly the film just looks like a lot of actors having fun. Kibbee is happily prosaic as an inadvertent millionaire who doesn't see why he should give up eating at a lunch counter just because he can afford room service at the Waldorf; Pitts' flighty sincerity defuses any graspingness in her character's social climbing. I'd forgotten completely that I'd seen Ross Alexander as either Demetrius or Lysander in Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)—he's whichever one Dick Powell isn't—but I don't feel bad about it since he's much more memorable here, coaxing a bemused Horton into musical duets and swinging from a chandelier with romantic joy. And I have loved Edward Everett Horton ever since childhood exposure to Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and here the combination of his character's plot function and the actor's inimitable fluster (how to hurt yourself badly watching a movie with Horton in it: take a drink every time he double-takes) makes Augie Witherspoon into something as gorgeously improbable as a Pantalone playing Arlecchino. He has a dreadful debonair mustache and is susceptible to absent-minded tap-dancing. In his defense, the song is a legitimate earworm. It's stuck in my head right now.
5. Went to bed a good three hours earlier than any previous night for weeks. Read two or three chapters of a mystery by Patricia Moyes which my mother had lent me. (Wait, she was a technical advisor on School for Secrets (1946) and wrote the screenplay for School for Scoundrels (1960)? Rob and I watched the latter together in 2012 and I've been waiting for the former to come around on TCM ever since I found out it stars Ralph Richardson and is about radar. This is what comes of reading paperback editions with no author's bio in them.) I was still woken at ten o'clock this morning by a hard-sell call from Comcast, which I did not appreciate, but at least I made the effort.
Today was mostly spent waiting around the house for someone who did not show up, but we were saved from Beckett by the arrival of the other person on the calendar for today, who turned up right on time and fixed our futon. Here I say nice things about Bedworks. With any luck, my back will now stop going into spasm on a random and regular basis.
Listen: Tom Lehrer gave a lecture on Kurt Weill. It's fantastic. He can't iron out of some of his automatic parenthetical snark. That's fantastic, too.
1. Went out to Lexington to see a dentist about a hole I've had in my left upper front tooth since December 2013. Initially it was a piece of composite that cracked off the bottom of the tooth; the dentist I was seeing at the time told me repeatedly that he couldn't repair it without altering the fit of the Invisalign braces, i.e., he wouldn't do it, so I went on having a hole in my front tooth for more than a year until it finally registered with me that I've had traditional braces since December and I could get the damn thing fixed. (Also, quite recently, the tooth started to hurt.) Very much not to my surprise at all, it had developed into my first cavity. Very much to my relief, it was not infected and was easily filled. I don't have a hole in my front tooth anymore. I'm really happy about this.
2. Finished Tom Holt's The Walled Orchard (1990) on the bus. It was more of a downer than Goatsong (1989). I wasn't shocked. I am indebted to
asakiyume for the concept of history as spoiler, but I think it might also be a kind of protection as well—I could brace for what I knew was coming. The narrative remained well-written, dryly funny, politically angry, and followed through on the major emotional arc of the first novel, which I really cared about. Slowly my list of classically-set fiction that doesn't suck grows!(There must be anthologies of short fiction with classical Greek and Roman settings out there that are not just mysteries. Anyone know where to find them?)
3. Arranged to meet
derspatchel for dinner at Sugar & Spice with wind05, whom I had not seen since he moved to Kansas with his family for a teaching job. Conversation was lovely, catching-up involved being shown photographs of one child I hadn't seen since he was much smaller and screamier and one child I have never met, I had delicious spicy fried catfish with eggplant and we went to J.P. Licks for dessert afterward. Everyone I know needs access to cheap reliable teleportation.4. Came home and watched Going Highbrow (1935), a weird little quasi-musical B-comedy which has almost no plot and a terrible last line, but is otherwise a delightful showcase for a bunch of character actors and some of the loopiest double-talk outside of the Marx Brothers. Guy Kibbee and ZaSu Pitts are a pair of middle-aged middle-American nouveau riche who accidentally made a fortune in the crash of '29 and have been spending it ever since on high-profile purchases like a $75,000 Tintoretto, hoping to break into society; Edward Everett Horton is the distractable estate manager for a well-heeled family now hurting for cash, who has the brilliant inspiration to exchange some of the Marshes' social standing for the Upshaws' spare change. When his patroness balks at selling the ancestral art collection, he quickly brokers a coming-out party for the Upshaws' daughter for which the Marshes will serve as hosts and consultants and the stage is set for a memorable, mutually lucrative weekend with one small catch: the Upshaws never had any children. Luckily, June Martel is on hand as the cheery, clever waitress at Kibbee's favorite diner; she's had some acting experience, she's glad to play the part. She bonds at once with her fictitious mother. Wealthy young Ross Alexander is in love with her even before he knows who she is. (They have a literal Cinderella meet-cute that leaves him smitten and holding her shoe: he broke the heel off trying to get it out of a manhole cover. She wasn't impressed.) Horton has his fingers crossed for a love-match merger, but impediments arise in the form of a melodramatic secret, the inevitable consequences of impersonation, and anyway Martel thinks the kid's a dope. All the plot thunders head-spinningly out of the woodwork in the last twenty minutes and it's a seventy-minute comedy, so it all resolves happily at the same breakneck pace. Mostly the film just looks like a lot of actors having fun. Kibbee is happily prosaic as an inadvertent millionaire who doesn't see why he should give up eating at a lunch counter just because he can afford room service at the Waldorf; Pitts' flighty sincerity defuses any graspingness in her character's social climbing. I'd forgotten completely that I'd seen Ross Alexander as either Demetrius or Lysander in Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)—he's whichever one Dick Powell isn't—but I don't feel bad about it since he's much more memorable here, coaxing a bemused Horton into musical duets and swinging from a chandelier with romantic joy. And I have loved Edward Everett Horton ever since childhood exposure to Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and here the combination of his character's plot function and the actor's inimitable fluster (how to hurt yourself badly watching a movie with Horton in it: take a drink every time he double-takes) makes Augie Witherspoon into something as gorgeously improbable as a Pantalone playing Arlecchino. He has a dreadful debonair mustache and is susceptible to absent-minded tap-dancing. In his defense, the song is a legitimate earworm. It's stuck in my head right now.
5. Went to bed a good three hours earlier than any previous night for weeks. Read two or three chapters of a mystery by Patricia Moyes which my mother had lent me. (Wait, she was a technical advisor on School for Secrets (1946) and wrote the screenplay for School for Scoundrels (1960)? Rob and I watched the latter together in 2012 and I've been waiting for the former to come around on TCM ever since I found out it stars Ralph Richardson and is about radar. This is what comes of reading paperback editions with no author's bio in them.) I was still woken at ten o'clock this morning by a hard-sell call from Comcast, which I did not appreciate, but at least I made the effort.
Today was mostly spent waiting around the house for someone who did not show up, but we were saved from Beckett by the arrival of the other person on the calendar for today, who turned up right on time and fixed our futon. Here I say nice things about Bedworks. With any luck, my back will now stop going into spasm on a random and regular basis.
Listen: Tom Lehrer gave a lecture on Kurt Weill. It's fantastic. He can't iron out of some of his automatic parenthetical snark. That's fantastic, too.
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I'm really happy about the dental good things! I am having a lot of trouble with my teeth lately, so this really did help.
I hope the fixed futon helps things. We recently got a new bed after enduring a horrible broken old one and it has helped me tremendously.
Thank you. I'm really, really hoping. At least now it no longer shifts like a shipwreck when more than one person sits down on it, which is a notable improvement.
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You will adore this film if you can find it.
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Also, spiced catfish and eggplant sounds delicious, and I like the description of a child as smaller and screamier. Somehow I have a picture of a self-possessed ten-year-old saying to an aunt or uncle, "Yes. Well, I was smaller and screamier then."
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I hope it exists at least on VHS. It was directed by Robert Florey, who is beginning to feel like one of the most eclectic studio directors I've run into.
Somehow I have a picture of a self-possessed ten-year-old saying to an aunt or uncle, "Yes. Well, I was smaller and screamier then."
I am charmed by that image.