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I was hungry and I ate and a man took my trumpet
1. We had a more traditional Christmas after all: eggnog as a public event did not happen, but in the late afternoon my brother fetched us from Somerville and we had an evening with family, our two-and-a-half-week-old niece included. There was lamb and scallops and leftover roast beef and an artichoke spread I tore into and several weird cheeses and a plum pudding on fire as is only proper, this year mostly comprised of cherries, figs, candied orange and lemon peel, and some stray and confused pineapple, but it flamed beautifully and I ate all the bits I like with whipped cream. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I watched The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) and correctly diagnosed it as a film that had suffered substantial rearrangement after shooting, although its original cut might still have sunk like a rock eight days after FDR's death. Pieces of it work brilliantly (and weirdly foreshadow Wim Wenders' work with angels pulled into the world for one reason or another, whether it's love or temptation or impulsive altruistic acts that go all wrong). There are some lovely quirks of Heaven, here the popular bureaucracy of the 1940's: "Assessor of Asteroids . . . Vice-President in Charge of Tomorrow . . . Department of Small Planet Management." The cast is full of character turns and faces, Jack Benny's peerless falsetto crack as his mild-mannered angel Athanael, sent to earth with Gabriel's trumpet and a page of instructions he lost on the way down, finds the task of blowing the Last Trump possibly out of his pay grade after all. Pieces of it are just not as funny as they need to be. Harold Lloyd hangs off a building better than anyone else in cinema, I'm sorry, and Raoul Walsh as a director did not have the slapstick chops to compete with him. I am almost willing to bet the frame story was added at the last minute, because other than getting the script out of the corner it topples itself into, I can't figure out what it's doing there (the payoff to the Paradise Coffee joke is good; the setup is unnecessary). The film was still a delight to watch, especially in the way of B-movies: the performances, the effects, what works, what doesn't. And I can't think of very many comedies that have the audience rooting for their hapless hero to prove himself a success by demolishing the planet, so there's that, too.
2. Yuletide is still fun this year, too. Have some stories! I am nowhere near done with the archive.
"The Not Entirely Accurate Chronicle of John Polidori, Genius Physician and Brilliant Writer, and His Rather Less Distinguished Companions." Not so much a Very Secret Diary as an extended riff on Kate Beaton's Lord Byron. The narrative voice is endearing in one of those hopelessly annoying ways; in other words, probably a lot like actual Polidori.
"A brisk young sailor." A short novel slipped into the silences of Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1953): Ralph Lanyon at sea in 1940, captain of the Stella Maria; a sub-lieutenant named Fairchild and a girl named Jeanie Mackintosh. It's an excellent sea-story; it's a sharp character piece; nothing in the novel requires it, but I'm glad to believe it happened. I'd chase it with The Cruel Sea (1951) if my copy weren't in a box somewhere. I'll have to make do with re-reading Jan de Hartog's The Captain (1967). I have my suspicions as to the author's identity. Either way, they knocked this one out of the park.
"Each coming night." Continuing the theme, an absolutely lovely crossover between supporting characters of The Charioteer and the major ones of Renault's Return to Night (1947). Bonus points for the author of Hilary's favorite detective stories.
"He Who Loves Truly Kills." You would think that writing a continuation to Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1967) where the next generation is aware of the pattern and its perils would take the numinous out of it, but not so: in some strange way it is worse for the son of Gwyn and Alison, grown up knowing that his birthright in the valley might spring out some year and possess him (and not knowing whether he will be Lleu or Gronw, betrayer or betrayed), worse for the girl who is Blodeuwedd-ridden in the midst of real and human pain, becoming too many things at once. It’s always owls . . . Owls or flowers. But the three of you have to choose. And what you choose will mark the valley. It will direct the power. And it will direct you, too. Worse than being caught in the drive of a blind myth-engine is the responsibility of steering the story. The piece is not in Garner's style—too much of it's not dialogue—but it pursues a pattern as relentlessly as he does: it flickers back through time, showing us older ways the choice has gone; it deconstructs, too, the different things that owls and flowers might mean. I started it skeptically; I finished impressed.
"Nothing But One of Your Nine Lives." A brief gloss through Romeo and Juliet, taking Tybalt's title as "Prince of Cats" darkly, evocatively, and literally.
"Historical Curiosity." Backstory for Elio from Diana Wynne Jones' A Tale of Time City (1987)! Featuring a cameo by Sempitern Walker being effective in anguished ways! I really approve of continuing Jones' naming conventions of Time City: "Ji-hoon Thorsteinsson" is an excellent name for a Sempitern.
"we must strive for perfection." Post-The Emperor's New Groove (2000): Kronk wants to perfect his macarons. Yzma is dedicating her time to something else entirely. Fantastic physical comedy-on-the-page and the pleasure of putting together everything that Kronk isn't noticing, because macarons. The voices are exact.
"The Color of Shadow." Following the experiences of the Ekumenical Investigator cited in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and her coworker from another culture, with very different ideas of what they should be noticing about this planet of complicated gender and even more complicated attitudes toward responsibility and advice. It isn't quite Le Guin's voice, but it is very much her way of looking at the ways in which people look at things.
"The One Moving into Battle." I don't know how anyone decides to write a story out of a Caspar David Friedrich painting, but I am rather glad they did. Nothing objectively happens, but nothing does in the painting, either, except inside.
"The Night Before the Night Before." I didn't think anyone could write fic for The World's End (2013) I would actually like, because it didn't seem that there were pieces from the original drastically missing. Hurrah for being surprised. The unhumanity of its viewpoint character is done very well.
"The (De)volution of a Holiday Party." The story itself is a little loose, but I think it justifies itself with lines like Evolution, alcohol is not your friend. Tequila is not your friend. And Vodka should be considered public enemy number one where you are concerned. The continuing revision of the toucan is also rather lovely.
"No more than reason." I have a high bar for continuations of Much Ado About Nothing, seeing asrushthatspeaks wrote one in two parts (and verse) a few years ago and I love it. This one is prose and its grammar occasionally slips, but I forgive it a great deal for its back-and-forth between Beatrice and Benedick themselves; they are as spiky and as highly spoken as they should be, and also as loving. Also their talk in bed is great.
3. The first night I spent with Rob, I slept and it amazed me. I never slept well with anyone. I barely slept well by myself: adding another person to the environment just made everything worse. It was important for me to be able to share a bed, emotionally, but it was rarely physically comfortable or in some cases possible at all. (This sentence heavily edited for Tiny Wittgenstein.) Some weeks ago I had occasion to spend a night in Lexington and realized it was suddenly strange not to expect Rob beside me at some point in the night, whether he was coming to bed after me or the other way around; nights together rather than apart had become the rule only in September, when I moved to Hall Ave. for six weeks before we came here, but already it was a familiar thing. Now we've had to set up the second mattress on the floor in the bedroom, because we both can't fit comfortably into the actual bed with his foot in a splint and needing to be carefully elevated and not jostled during the night, and even though we are in the same room and can say goodnight to each other and I can reach out in the middle of the night and find him if I am willing to lever myself out of the warmth of the spare blankets and wake a person on opiates, I am finding it surprisingly disorienting. I did not think I would become accustomed so quickly to something that always gave me trouble. I suppose it is another good reason we're together, but that ankle had better heal soon.
derspatchel and I watched The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) and correctly diagnosed it as a film that had suffered substantial rearrangement after shooting, although its original cut might still have sunk like a rock eight days after FDR's death. Pieces of it work brilliantly (and weirdly foreshadow Wim Wenders' work with angels pulled into the world for one reason or another, whether it's love or temptation or impulsive altruistic acts that go all wrong). There are some lovely quirks of Heaven, here the popular bureaucracy of the 1940's: "Assessor of Asteroids . . . Vice-President in Charge of Tomorrow . . . Department of Small Planet Management." The cast is full of character turns and faces, Jack Benny's peerless falsetto crack as his mild-mannered angel Athanael, sent to earth with Gabriel's trumpet and a page of instructions he lost on the way down, finds the task of blowing the Last Trump possibly out of his pay grade after all. Pieces of it are just not as funny as they need to be. Harold Lloyd hangs off a building better than anyone else in cinema, I'm sorry, and Raoul Walsh as a director did not have the slapstick chops to compete with him. I am almost willing to bet the frame story was added at the last minute, because other than getting the script out of the corner it topples itself into, I can't figure out what it's doing there (the payoff to the Paradise Coffee joke is good; the setup is unnecessary). The film was still a delight to watch, especially in the way of B-movies: the performances, the effects, what works, what doesn't. And I can't think of very many comedies that have the audience rooting for their hapless hero to prove himself a success by demolishing the planet, so there's that, too.2. Yuletide is still fun this year, too. Have some stories! I am nowhere near done with the archive.
"The Not Entirely Accurate Chronicle of John Polidori, Genius Physician and Brilliant Writer, and His Rather Less Distinguished Companions." Not so much a Very Secret Diary as an extended riff on Kate Beaton's Lord Byron. The narrative voice is endearing in one of those hopelessly annoying ways; in other words, probably a lot like actual Polidori.
"A brisk young sailor." A short novel slipped into the silences of Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1953): Ralph Lanyon at sea in 1940, captain of the Stella Maria; a sub-lieutenant named Fairchild and a girl named Jeanie Mackintosh. It's an excellent sea-story; it's a sharp character piece; nothing in the novel requires it, but I'm glad to believe it happened. I'd chase it with The Cruel Sea (1951) if my copy weren't in a box somewhere. I'll have to make do with re-reading Jan de Hartog's The Captain (1967). I have my suspicions as to the author's identity. Either way, they knocked this one out of the park.
"Each coming night." Continuing the theme, an absolutely lovely crossover between supporting characters of The Charioteer and the major ones of Renault's Return to Night (1947). Bonus points for the author of Hilary's favorite detective stories.
"He Who Loves Truly Kills." You would think that writing a continuation to Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1967) where the next generation is aware of the pattern and its perils would take the numinous out of it, but not so: in some strange way it is worse for the son of Gwyn and Alison, grown up knowing that his birthright in the valley might spring out some year and possess him (and not knowing whether he will be Lleu or Gronw, betrayer or betrayed), worse for the girl who is Blodeuwedd-ridden in the midst of real and human pain, becoming too many things at once. It’s always owls . . . Owls or flowers. But the three of you have to choose. And what you choose will mark the valley. It will direct the power. And it will direct you, too. Worse than being caught in the drive of a blind myth-engine is the responsibility of steering the story. The piece is not in Garner's style—too much of it's not dialogue—but it pursues a pattern as relentlessly as he does: it flickers back through time, showing us older ways the choice has gone; it deconstructs, too, the different things that owls and flowers might mean. I started it skeptically; I finished impressed.
"Nothing But One of Your Nine Lives." A brief gloss through Romeo and Juliet, taking Tybalt's title as "Prince of Cats" darkly, evocatively, and literally.
"Historical Curiosity." Backstory for Elio from Diana Wynne Jones' A Tale of Time City (1987)! Featuring a cameo by Sempitern Walker being effective in anguished ways! I really approve of continuing Jones' naming conventions of Time City: "Ji-hoon Thorsteinsson" is an excellent name for a Sempitern.
"we must strive for perfection." Post-The Emperor's New Groove (2000): Kronk wants to perfect his macarons. Yzma is dedicating her time to something else entirely. Fantastic physical comedy-on-the-page and the pleasure of putting together everything that Kronk isn't noticing, because macarons. The voices are exact.
"The Color of Shadow." Following the experiences of the Ekumenical Investigator cited in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and her coworker from another culture, with very different ideas of what they should be noticing about this planet of complicated gender and even more complicated attitudes toward responsibility and advice. It isn't quite Le Guin's voice, but it is very much her way of looking at the ways in which people look at things.
"The One Moving into Battle." I don't know how anyone decides to write a story out of a Caspar David Friedrich painting, but I am rather glad they did. Nothing objectively happens, but nothing does in the painting, either, except inside.
"The Night Before the Night Before." I didn't think anyone could write fic for The World's End (2013) I would actually like, because it didn't seem that there were pieces from the original drastically missing. Hurrah for being surprised. The unhumanity of its viewpoint character is done very well.
"The (De)volution of a Holiday Party." The story itself is a little loose, but I think it justifies itself with lines like Evolution, alcohol is not your friend. Tequila is not your friend. And Vodka should be considered public enemy number one where you are concerned. The continuing revision of the toucan is also rather lovely.
"No more than reason." I have a high bar for continuations of Much Ado About Nothing, seeing as
rushthatspeaks wrote one in two parts (and verse) a few years ago and I love it. This one is prose and its grammar occasionally slips, but I forgive it a great deal for its back-and-forth between Beatrice and Benedick themselves; they are as spiky and as highly spoken as they should be, and also as loving. Also their talk in bed is great.3. The first night I spent with Rob, I slept and it amazed me. I never slept well with anyone. I barely slept well by myself: adding another person to the environment just made everything worse. It was important for me to be able to share a bed, emotionally, but it was rarely physically comfortable or in some cases possible at all. (This sentence heavily edited for Tiny Wittgenstein.) Some weeks ago I had occasion to spend a night in Lexington and realized it was suddenly strange not to expect Rob beside me at some point in the night, whether he was coming to bed after me or the other way around; nights together rather than apart had become the rule only in September, when I moved to Hall Ave. for six weeks before we came here, but already it was a familiar thing. Now we've had to set up the second mattress on the floor in the bedroom, because we both can't fit comfortably into the actual bed with his foot in a splint and needing to be carefully elevated and not jostled during the night, and even though we are in the same room and can say goodnight to each other and I can reach out in the middle of the night and find him if I am willing to lever myself out of the warmth of the spare blankets and wake a person on opiates, I am finding it surprisingly disorienting. I did not think I would become accustomed so quickly to something that always gave me trouble. I suppose it is another good reason we're together, but that ankle had better heal soon.
no subject
He wrote Rochester as a black man who was not subservient to his white employer, who had independent means and a life outside of his job and regularly took the air out of Benny's overinflated ego. So, yeah.
"Cherries, figs, candied orange and lemon peel, and some stray and confused pineapple..."
Fastachi ran out of glacéed apricots! I think I damaged that French verb!
Clearly you're Platonic halves. May the ankle heal soon for all reasons.
I don't actually believe in Platonic halves, but I allow for an unusual degree of compatibility. Thank you. Rob is doing all the right things; we return in a week for a follow-up X-ray. We're hoping for a nice walking stick instead of crutches before long.