I feel like I am losing track of my life again, between the nightly three hours of sleep and appointments of different kinds. I actually slept eight hours on Monday night, but for logistical reasons the achievement was not immediately repeatable. I am reading my way through Laurie R. King's Mary Russell mysteries and a highly randomized assortment of nonfiction and mostly pulp. Mental note goes here to talk about Anya Seton's Foxfire (1950) and Valerie Taylor's Stranger on Lesbos (1960), which I may or may not manage any time soon. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks and I continue our double-feature viewing of Person of Interest and Leverage. Did I mention that we saw James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971) at the HFA on Saturday and it was exactly as amazing as Guy Maddin had promised? It could and should be screened in the same classes that include Cocteau's Orphée (1950) or Jules Dassin's Phaedra (1962) as an example of classical myth transformed in contemporary cinema, assuming it's all right to show undergraduates porn. Have some links off the internet.
1. R.I.P. William Schallert. I think I saw him most recently as the uncredited equivalent of Lieutenant Levy in The Reckless Moment (1949), but like the rest of the Star Trek-watching universe I saw him first and forever as Nilz Baris, obstructive bureaucrat par excellence of "The Trouble with Tribbles." Otherwise I mostly remember him from sci-fi features like The Man from Planet X (1951) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), making his starring role in the B-movie-within-a-movie Mant! in Joe Dante's Matinee (1993)—"Half man! Half ant! All terror!"—one of the better in-jokes in that film. I am glad I have living character actors to follow; the older ones keep doing this dying thing.
2. The Feminist Press is reprinting Ethel Johnston Phelps' Tatterhood and Other Tales (1978)! This is one of the books I would take out again and again from the children's section of the Cambridge Public Library, then didn't see again for decades until I finally ran into a used copy of my own. I tried to draw my own illustrations. The language that was so intensely evocative to me at the time turned out, years later, to have been a relatively plain folk style for children. But when the story said that one of the two flowers growing beneath the childless queen's bed "was green and oddly shaped; the other was pink and fragrant," I knew exactly what they looked like. I would always choose a green flower over a pink one myself, which is why I liked the title story best.
3. My first published story made a Tumblr list of retellings of Orpheus and Eurydike. For all I know they got my name off Wikipedia, but I'm still pleased.
4. I like the photograph fine, but I may like the way the photographer talks about it even better: "I decided to use a pomegranate, instead of a quince, because a pomegranate would explode like a grenade."
5. Ghost signs from around the world!
P.S. I am delighted that the U.S. Army has an official stance on the question of Captain America's back pay.
rushthatspeaks and I continue our double-feature viewing of Person of Interest and Leverage. Did I mention that we saw James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971) at the HFA on Saturday and it was exactly as amazing as Guy Maddin had promised? It could and should be screened in the same classes that include Cocteau's Orphée (1950) or Jules Dassin's Phaedra (1962) as an example of classical myth transformed in contemporary cinema, assuming it's all right to show undergraduates porn. Have some links off the internet.1. R.I.P. William Schallert. I think I saw him most recently as the uncredited equivalent of Lieutenant Levy in The Reckless Moment (1949), but like the rest of the Star Trek-watching universe I saw him first and forever as Nilz Baris, obstructive bureaucrat par excellence of "The Trouble with Tribbles." Otherwise I mostly remember him from sci-fi features like The Man from Planet X (1951) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), making his starring role in the B-movie-within-a-movie Mant! in Joe Dante's Matinee (1993)—"Half man! Half ant! All terror!"—one of the better in-jokes in that film. I am glad I have living character actors to follow; the older ones keep doing this dying thing.
2. The Feminist Press is reprinting Ethel Johnston Phelps' Tatterhood and Other Tales (1978)! This is one of the books I would take out again and again from the children's section of the Cambridge Public Library, then didn't see again for decades until I finally ran into a used copy of my own. I tried to draw my own illustrations. The language that was so intensely evocative to me at the time turned out, years later, to have been a relatively plain folk style for children. But when the story said that one of the two flowers growing beneath the childless queen's bed "was green and oddly shaped; the other was pink and fragrant," I knew exactly what they looked like. I would always choose a green flower over a pink one myself, which is why I liked the title story best.
3. My first published story made a Tumblr list of retellings of Orpheus and Eurydike. For all I know they got my name off Wikipedia, but I'm still pleased.
4. I like the photograph fine, but I may like the way the photographer talks about it even better: "I decided to use a pomegranate, instead of a quince, because a pomegranate would explode like a grenade."
5. Ghost signs from around the world!
P.S. I am delighted that the U.S. Army has an official stance on the question of Captain America's back pay.
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