I'll wear the flowers through the sea
Today was spent almost entirely on the phone or on Zoom, which I suppose is normal for most people these days, but man, it makes me feel like squeegee water. Have some links.
1. I am gravely disappointed in the internet's inability to provide a clip of Lyda Roberti performing "It's Terrific (When I Get Hot)" from Million Dollar Legs (1932), if only because it's such a good illustration of the pre-Code spirit: you can do that on celluloid? Yes, Virginia, you can sing about asbestos pants in a skintight cut-out dress and an accent that sounds like the love child of Lobachevsky and Lili von Shtupp. If you want the full effect, start around 29:13 at the Internet Archive. If you want the full context, watch from the beginning; I can't promise it'll help. In any case, just about the last thing I was expecting to find when I went looking for Roberti was more than one cover of the song. I'm not complaining. The film it comes from is too weird not to be more widely known.
2. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie: "The tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio discovered at Porta Sarno with mummified human remains." Like everyone else in the article except, one assumes, the dead, I have no idea what he was doing out of a cinerary urn in the late first century CE, especially in a chamber with two normally cremated sets of remains. The latter was so nearly universal a Roman practice at the time, it feels like a person would have needed a strong anchor to a different tradition to contravene it. Because no one asked me, I'm throwing my hat into the ring for Etruscan: I know they are traditionally dated to have petered out as a civilization in the previous century, but there's a great indeterminate space between the assimilation of a culture and its actual demise; there's Oscan graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. The Etruscans practiced both cremation and inhumation, not uncommonly in the same tomb. I admit a sarcophagus instead of just a skeleton would make this argument a lot more convincing. Maybe he was Greek or just contrary. I still never expected to see pictures of a two-thousand-years-dead dude's hair. I look forward to reading more about his grave goods.
3.spatch in his thread on theater stuffs included a very nice picture of our chuppah.
I keep forgetting to mention that a card from my godchild arrived in the mail, weeks after they were actually at sleepaway camp. It was minimalist and delightful.
1. I am gravely disappointed in the internet's inability to provide a clip of Lyda Roberti performing "It's Terrific (When I Get Hot)" from Million Dollar Legs (1932), if only because it's such a good illustration of the pre-Code spirit: you can do that on celluloid? Yes, Virginia, you can sing about asbestos pants in a skintight cut-out dress and an accent that sounds like the love child of Lobachevsky and Lili von Shtupp. If you want the full effect, start around 29:13 at the Internet Archive. If you want the full context, watch from the beginning; I can't promise it'll help. In any case, just about the last thing I was expecting to find when I went looking for Roberti was more than one cover of the song. I'm not complaining. The film it comes from is too weird not to be more widely known.
2. Courtesy of
selkie: "The tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio discovered at Porta Sarno with mummified human remains." Like everyone else in the article except, one assumes, the dead, I have no idea what he was doing out of a cinerary urn in the late first century CE, especially in a chamber with two normally cremated sets of remains. The latter was so nearly universal a Roman practice at the time, it feels like a person would have needed a strong anchor to a different tradition to contravene it. Because no one asked me, I'm throwing my hat into the ring for Etruscan: I know they are traditionally dated to have petered out as a civilization in the previous century, but there's a great indeterminate space between the assimilation of a culture and its actual demise; there's Oscan graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. The Etruscans practiced both cremation and inhumation, not uncommonly in the same tomb. I admit a sarcophagus instead of just a skeleton would make this argument a lot more convincing. Maybe he was Greek or just contrary. I still never expected to see pictures of a two-thousand-years-dead dude's hair. I look forward to reading more about his grave goods.3.
spatch in his thread on theater stuffs included a very nice picture of our chuppah.I keep forgetting to mention that a card from my godchild arrived in the mail, weeks after they were actually at sleepaway camp. It was minimalist and delightful.
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If it were later the influence might be Egyptian- all those wonderful late painted tomb lids!
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Some of the Fayum mummy portraits are from around this time! I just didn't see mention of anything in this burial associated with even modified Egyptian tradition, unless he turns out not to be a natural mummy after all.
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Thank you! The cloth for it was embroidered by the great-grandmother I am named after, more than ninety years ago at the time of the ceremony.
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It was an heirloom! It is at least a century old by now. Thank you!
Do you have photographs of yours?
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I think this one is reasonably representative?
http://www.silverandindigo.com/photos/20050528wedding/clay/ceremony/0182married.JPG
I took a set of large burnt-velvet silk scarves with a leaf pattern, sewed them together and dyed them sky blue. The poles were birch trees.
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That's lovely. Like the last verse of "Dos Zangl."
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It used to be in the orchestra pit—it had been left there when the pit was closed over in the 1930's and never removed during the first round of renovations in the '90's. According to
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(I also like that her earrings look incredibly spiderlike to me. I don't think they're meant to be, but the effect appeals.)
~Sor
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I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
I love all the little visual gags (the heart pumping and the buttons popping) on the gentlemen
I love the one dude whose reaction shot is just a poleaxed stare.
--what is it even made of? the 1930s didn't have latex clothing, right?
I don't know! Rubberized fabric was nothing new by the '30's, but I don't know when latex fashion specifically came into existence. It's really what her dress makes me think of, too, though, especially around the shoulders and the collar. [edit] Rubber as fetish gear existed as far back as the 1920's, so I'm voting not impossible. Learn something every day!
(I also like that her earrings look incredibly spiderlike to me. I don't think they're meant to be, but the effect appeals.)
It does. Especially in that platinum cloud of hair and the dark glitter of her dress. I adore Roberti in this movie.
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< notices the following pull quote: >
Latex says: I’m me, I do what I want, embrace who I am, and enjoy it – The Baroness
I initially assumed that The Baroness in question was the GI Joe character, and now I'm kinda disappointed that it's not.
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That's completely fair.
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*hugs*
(Please still feel free to comment on the semimummified Roman dude.)
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...I knew they sent you one! They were very uninformative about its content! I am glad it arrived, and I will inform them. Also, they apparently remain uncertain Spatch exists, speaking of the chuppah, when I showed it to them. They are cognizant you have spouses! I promise!
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*hugs*
...I knew they sent you one! They were very uninformative about its content!
They told me who they were sharing their tent with and asked what my week had been like. I should probably respond in kind, even if they are no longer at camp.
Also, they apparently remain uncertain Spatch exists, speaking of the chuppah, when I showed it to them. They are cognizant you have spouses! I promise!
Have they not seen him on the Zoom?!
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The fact that they asked what your week had been like is actually really heartening. They struggle so hard to communicate in writing.
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Cool! It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the cinerary urns accompanying the interment. He doesn't have one of the nomina gentilica associated with Etruscan origins, but he started out as a slave, which means the name under which he was buried as a freedman really tells you the lineage of the man who manumitted him.
Funerary practices also strike me as particularly likely to stick around in the form of family tradition, even after the practitioners have forgotten the reason why.
I think a lot of rituals stick around even when the context is lost—it's a recurring theme in crypto-Jewish families, suddenly realizing the significance of the specially braided bread or the once-a-week candlelighting—but I agree that funerals carry extra weight: if nothing else, leave the world the right way.
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Imagine how awful it would be if whole cultures just ZUP vanished on a certain date. Thank goodness they do, in fact, linger.
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Even just as echoes in words: it's important.