sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2023-02-04 02:45 pm

Protect my bones, but everybody makes their own damn choice

Not only did we make the borscht last night, I improvised a pseudo-stroganoff with a couple of cans of mushrooms and the rest of the sour cream. We watched The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), which was nuts in occasional two-strip Technicolor; the famous sequence is Cliff Edwards introducing "Singin' in the Rain," but my favorite was Bessie Love looking her damnedest like the parent and original of Sutton Foster not wanting to show off. Temperatures below zero on Mount Washington appear to have broken the national record, including Alaska. Have some links.

1. Courtesy of [personal profile] selkie: Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming visit the Pink Peacock in Glasgow. The shofar!

2. I had not been particularly aware of Michael Nelson's A Room in Chelsea Square (1958), but having read this review of the Valancourt reprint, I am now extremely sad that they did not or could not use the original cover art by Edward Gorey, because it looks like an outtake from The Curious Sofa (1961).

3. I don't think that I ever saw Sylvia Syms as a lead; in fact with the exception of The Queen (2006), I think I saw her exclusively in wife or girlfriend parts early in her career, paired with John Mills in Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Dirk Bogarde in Victim (1961), Laurence Harvey in Expresso Bongo (1959). And yet I don't remember her as arm candy, shoring up her men; I remember her cool head in the desert, her half-complicity in her marriage that isn't, her wonderfully choreographed cat's scratch at a hanging line of laundry after her boyfriend dashes out of their anniversary into another wheeling deal. I'm longing to loathe your lovable laughter, I want to be footloose, fancy, and free. But when I'm footloose and free, it's you I fancy. Oh, worry-go-lucky me! It was enough to grab me with the news that she had died. I played that little musical scene over and over on YouTube. I should find something else she was in.

4. I do not customarily interact with Neil Gaiman's Tumblr, but I feel the punch line of this thread is the exactly necessary amount of explanation for anything in a piece of art which persons not the author find obscure.

5. I just really like these comics about Alexander the Great.

Gemma Files' Dark Is Better (2023) celebrated its book birthday yesterday, for which I wrote: "Gemma Files writes a brilliant darkness. Some of my favorites of her fictions are collected here, weirdness in its true ornament, revelations from outside the walls of the world no worse than the truisms of the human heart. You should spend some time looking into their abyss. They are already—you have heard of mirrors—looking into you."
naraht: Moonrise over Earth (Default)

[personal profile] naraht 2023-02-04 09:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I have been extremely tempted to visit Glasgow just to see the Pink Peacock. Probably won't make it until Worldcon in 2024 but you can bet I'll be trying to get every SF fan in the city there too.
choco_frosh: Image of the Konradigasse (former {Hof-]Schreibergasse) in Konstanz, where I lived in 2005-6 (s'gasse)

[personal profile] choco_frosh 2023-02-05 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
A propos of Gorey, I don't think I told you that the Arisia masquerade featuring someone cosplaying as The Doubtful Guest, complete with dramatic reading by the MC.
gwynnega: (Leslie Howard mswyrr)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2023-02-05 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure I would have known the "southern pansy" thing before, except for the bit in A Hard Day's Night where Ringo yells: "Southerner!"

Yay, new Gemma Files!
yhlee: red and black tentacle heart pendant (tentacle heart)

[personal profile] yhlee 2023-02-05 12:45 am (UTC)(link)
The death of Hephaestion comic in the Alexander the Great comic made me laugh. XD
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2023-02-05 07:47 am (UTC)(link)
If you didn't already have "What the hell ass balls" on speed dial...
vass: Small turtle with green leaf in its mouth (Default)

[personal profile] vass 2023-02-05 07:51 am (UTC)(link)
Those Alexander comics are a delight.
nineweaving: (Default)

[personal profile] nineweaving 2023-02-05 08:45 am (UTC)(link)
Aw. The Pink Peacock clip is adorable.

Nine
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2023-02-05 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)
There were a whole bunch of Alexander comics in the exhibition at the British Library that we attended recently!

He certainly appears to have been bi.
minoanmiss: Minoan version of Egyptian scribal goddess Seshat (Seshat)

[personal profile] minoanmiss 2023-02-05 09:24 pm (UTC)(link)
*falls over giggling at the Southern Pansy discussion*
*gets up*
*falls over again at thee Alexander comics*
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2023-02-06 02:48 am (UTC)(link)
Hurray for more Gemma Files darkness out in the world!

The Alexander-the-Great comics are fun (I like that dad-candidate Philip of Macedon is drawn v. similar to Alexander)
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2023-02-07 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
NEW GEMMA FILES? //buys immediately