Sinister! Dexter! Sinister! Dexter!
Despite exhaustion and rainy weather and my clock being totally off, I still made it to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phi's birthday/Novroz/Pi Day party, where there was ridiculous food and equally fantastic conversation and more than one person qualified to speak to the biological specifics of duck penises. It was lovely. I stayed long past the point where I thought I would be coherent and—in defiance of the usual direction of presents at a party—left with paperback copies of all four Clockwork Phoenix anthologies and Northwest Press' Anything that Loves. On the way home, although mostly out of the capacity to interact, I stopped by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
audioboy's birthday party just long enough to say hello and watch derspatchel mix something with crème de cassis that came out smelling exactly like high-test Dimetapp. (I am informed the previous invention, the White Vermonter—dark maple syrup, milk, chestnut liqueur—was a hit.)
To inaugurate the Ides of March, we watched Carry On Cleo (1964) off TCM when he got home. I admire any movie that contains jokes that depend on at least a rudimentary knowledge of Latin and passing familiarity with Roman history and/or Shakespeare and completely stupid one-liner gags and slapstick at a breathlessly flurrying pace; if you don't like the film's sense of humor, wait ten seconds. No brow too low! No distance too great to go for a punch line! We kind of wanted to double-feature it with Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981). And then we fell down an internet sinkhole of Kenneth Williams. I feel obscurely proud of introducing my husband to Julian and Sandy.
Today is my mother's birthday observed. It is a very festive weekend.
(edit: It just started snowing. What even.)
phi's birthday/Novroz/Pi Day party, where there was ridiculous food and equally fantastic conversation and more than one person qualified to speak to the biological specifics of duck penises. It was lovely. I stayed long past the point where I thought I would be coherent and—in defiance of the usual direction of presents at a party—left with paperback copies of all four Clockwork Phoenix anthologies and Northwest Press' Anything that Loves. On the way home, although mostly out of the capacity to interact, I stopped by audioboy's birthday party just long enough to say hello and watch derspatchel mix something with crème de cassis that came out smelling exactly like high-test Dimetapp. (I am informed the previous invention, the White Vermonter—dark maple syrup, milk, chestnut liqueur—was a hit.)To inaugurate the Ides of March, we watched Carry On Cleo (1964) off TCM when he got home. I admire any movie that contains jokes that depend on at least a rudimentary knowledge of Latin and passing familiarity with Roman history and/or Shakespeare and completely stupid one-liner gags and slapstick at a breathlessly flurrying pace; if you don't like the film's sense of humor, wait ten seconds. No brow too low! No distance too great to go for a punch line! We kind of wanted to double-feature it with Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981). And then we fell down an internet sinkhole of Kenneth Williams. I feel obscurely proud of introducing my husband to Julian and Sandy.
Today is my mother's birthday observed. It is a very festive weekend.
(edit: It just started snowing. What even.)
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Please feel free to experiment and report back!
I am also intrigued by your description of Carry on Cleo. Whether or not I'd like the rest of it -- no idea -- I very much approve of that approach to jokes!
So, most broadly, Carry On Cleo a parody of the 1963 Cleopatra—it was actually filmed on the sets left at Pinewood Studios in London when the 20th Century Fox production moved to Italy—but it's also a parody of Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Roman history in general, Romano-British history in general, and anything that a bored Latin student would have found amusing. Also lots of jokes about sex and the weather. For every gag that was hopelessly retrograde about gender roles, there was something unexpectedly surrealist and clever, or just so perfectly timed and stupid that it was hilarious, so it balanced out on the side of worth it for me (with bonus points for the Latin jokes). Everybody's mileage may vary and I have no idea how the rest of the series holds up, but I have a soft spot for a thunderstruck Marc Antony exclaiming, "Blimus!"
My youngest brother's birthday is March 14th.
Happy belated birthday to your brother!
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I shall! (Unless I forget to, which is always an option.) I'll have to acquire or borrow some chestnut liqueur for the purpose, but it sounds like a delicious sort of thing to have in any case. I know milk and maple syrup go marvelously together, of course.
Carry On Cleo sounds delightful! Well, aside from the hopelessly retrograde bits, but I sort of expect that anything made in the '60s is likely to have some of that.