Negative, I am a meat popsicle

My best cousin rushthatspeaks has knitted me a scarf for the winter. It is about six feet long and twenty different colors in alternating grades and I feel like a Time Lord with it on. It's awesome. She presented it to me this afternoon, and I considered it more than reward for the fact that Arlington had clearly had some kind of half-day and consequentially the bus was swamped after Appleton Street with very loud middle-schoolers.¹ We watched about two-thirds of Pandora's Box (1929), which is as stunning and modern as its reputation—Louise Brooks is genuinely something else. I can't think of another actress from from the '20's or '30's who has her physical directness and spontaneity, and possibly not even a present-day one.² I can't decide if I should read her essays before we finish the film or not. I imagine my mind will go on being blown either way.

Otherwise I did not go to the Rose Art Museum with wind05 and Sabitha on Saturday, because it was closed for winter break, but we hung out and drank tea until I evicted them in order to take down the Christmas tree; Sunday night I spent in Providence with greygirlbeast, Spooky, and readingthedark, where I got to hear the prologue to The Wolf Who Cried Girl and talk about Jell-O and other peculiar things.³ Yesterday I discovered that the quite legitimate reason no one's filmed Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929) is that Akira Kurosawa got there first with Yojimbo (1961), and today nineweaving gave me two drawings from Cloud & Ashes. Buying herbal chai and scones in Porter Square Books, I ran into someone I hadn't seen since high school and she recomended me a cracktastic-sounding Gothic novel. I still have new music to listen to, courtesy of ron_drummond. I may have discovered that I can drink white tea.⁴

So far, pieces of this week have been quite fine.

1. I've had bizarre transportation luck recently. My train back from Providence yesterday was so late, eventually it became indefinitely delayed and all the passengers were shunted to the next Boston-bound Acela; which was also late, so that by the time it finally arrived, there were so many extra travelers on the platform that we were referred to as "displaced persons" and dispersed variously throughout the train, which in my case meant the first-class car. I read the latest reprinted Campion, Pearls Before Swine (1945), and was called by someone who hadn't been in touch since before Christmas. No one ever came to check my twelve-dollar regional ticket. I could theoretically have been some random person with a backpack and a pleasasnt smile. I thanked the conductor a lot before I left.

2. In another department of acting altogether, I was really charmed by Siegfried Arno as the harried stage manager attempting to hold together the revue in which Lulu is the star attraction. He's never going to get to finish that sandwich.

3. And watch The Fifth Element (1997), hence the title of this post. It's one of those films that should have flown apart at every seam it had and is instead wonderful; it combines a fantastically detailed future with a character-actor cast and a plot that quite possibly cannot be explained unless you want to wind up talking Dada. (There is a black planet of absolute evil. It calls its human contact up on the phone and is referred to by the receptionist as "Mr. Shadow." No one is surprised by this, the viewer included.) I'd happily watch it again, if only for all the visual stuff I know I didn't catch the first time. I should probably read some Moebius and Mézières while I'm at it.

4. Viking Zen tested this theory with some (redundantly named, but extremely tasty) Peach Momotaro from Teavana. We diluted it by half again, just in case, but I didn't get a migraine; I'm considering the experiment a success. She also gave me a tea mug. It has peonies and a strainer. I can finally make that mango tea I got from strange_selkie again.