It's two in the afternoon and thirty-four degrees

[sovay]

Actually the temperature crashed by a solid thirty degrees Fahrenheit and with any luck will stay this moderately cool and dampish until everyone has rehydrated. Or we could just skip the next heat dome entirely.

I had worked up an entire rant about the scaremongering of this article and especially its anti-intellectual characterization of Zohran Mamdani as automatically out of touch because his father teaches at Columbia and his mother has directed films in Hollywood as if he were a Cabot who talks only to God when both of these professions especially in these days of DEI demonization mean something very different without whiteness and then I discovered that the author's big shtick is that she "came out" as politically conservative while an undergraduate at Harvard, at which point her already tenuous right to slate anyone for attending Bowdoin fared poorly on the pot-to-kettle scale. Anyway, spatch liked Monsoon Wedding (2001).

The Europeans (1979) turns out to have been the first foray of Merchant Ivory into costume drama and its modest budget gives it a slight, wonderful ghost-look of New England, nineteenth-century carriages on twentieth-century streets, the tarmac dirt-roaded over, telephone poles discreetly out of shot, the dry stone walls tumbledown in the picturesque rather than practically maintained day. I got such déjà vu from the Federal style of its historic houses—and the occasionally more modern construction of their neighbors—that I was reassured to see it actually had shot in Waltham, Concord, and Salem which I recognized from the red-bricked back side of the Customs House. Its autumn is the sugar-red drift of maple leaves, the pale punctuation of birches. Its actors have an indie air with their precisely characterful period clothes doing half the worldbuilding. Robin Ellis sports a moss-bronze corduroy coat and a waistcoat in pheasant paisleys I should like to bid for and a creditably mid-Atlantic accent, cast ironically on the colonial side of the plot of two sets of American cousins and their entanglement with a third, European set. I have not read its particular source novel by Henry James, but it has the light, sharp, not overly mannered observations, a sweet-sour bite in the chocolate box. In light of the setting, variations on "Simple Gifts" and "Shall We Gather at the River?" may have been unavoidable contributions to the score.

Because I had showed spatch a clip of a trumpet played into Jell-O, my attempt to explain Chladni figures netted us a 1989 Christmas lecture by Charles Taylor, after which we went through Delia Derbyshire's "Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO" (1967), Belbury Poly's "Caermaen" (2004), and finally thanks to what must have been a very confused sidebar landed on Les Luthiers' "Rhapsody in Balls" (2009). Today has been generally breaking-down-tired, but during the part of the evening where I was still working on implementing a bagel for dinner, WERS had the decency to play the Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl" (1988).

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

In response, have Leonard Solomon playing the majestic bellowphone. I suppose you might have seen him perform somewhere - he used to do a street gig in Harvard Square, among many other things.
https://youtu.be/9B-lIVEm0As?feature=shared

I am pretty sure I liked Monsoon Wedding when it came out, but all I actually remember about it is images in a dimly lit room, oddly enough.

[minoanmiss]

Oh Ms. Hajjar came out as a conservative durng Harvard undergrad wwhile surrounded by many extra-young too-smart-for-our-own-good students learning not to be bigots for the first times in their lives. Great must have been her suffering.

*sends analgesic vibes* Have I told you recently I love how you write?

[princessofgeeks]

I am NOT looking forward to more handwringing about Momdani. It's already started and PLEASE NO.

So hoping he wins the election and carries the party in a better direction.

[asakiyume]

Love Love Love me some Punk Rock Girl. I hastened off to watch the trailer to The Europeans and yes! Even from that I can see what you mean. Plus, I'm intrigued. And from your link, looks like I could get access through my library--sweet!

Re: scaremongering rants, ugh. I'm out of things to say.

[kaffy_r]

That column is vile. JFC, it just gets worse and worse.

[gwynnega]

I needed to see that Jell-O trumpet!

[thisbluespirit]

I'm very glad the temps came down! I hope they stay down for a bit for you. *hugs*

The Europeans (1979) turns out to have been the first foray of Merchant Ivory into costume drama and its modest budget gives it a slight, wonderful ghost-look of New England,

I think there must have been something about this on one of the Merchant Ivory DVDs I have (one of them had a Merchant Ivory retrospective extra), because I was curious enough to look it up, I think. I was going to say I didn't know it had Robin Ellis, but that may have been why I was looking it up and I've just forgotten.

Robin Ellis sports a moss-bronze corduroy coat and a waistcoat in pheasant paisleys I should like to bid for

He's had luck when it comes to period drama costumes! He has some great jackets and waistcoats in Poldark as well as one of my absolute favourite "they got the memo" TV costume choices in this leather jacket, which I cannot immediately find a good pic of, but it's an 18th C style version of a 1940s bomber pilot jacket - Winston Graham wrote Ross Poldark in the 50s based on WWII bomber pilots he knew who couldn't come back to earth, transposed to late 18th C Cornwall (as a soldier presumed dead in the Revolutionary War.)

and a creditably mid-Atlantic accent

Yay! :-D (He is usually very good, though, not just well dressed, lol.)

that I was reassured to see it actually had shot in Waltham, Concord, and Salem which I recognized from the red-bricked back side of the Customs House.

Oh, that's really cool.

[spatch]

Didn't know whether to reply here or in the previous post, but thank you very much for showing me Monsoon Wedding.