O sweet grows the lime and the orange

[sovay]

Of course, on the day when rushthatspeaks and I had plans to visit the MIT Science Fiction Society, we had a thunderstorm. I managed to leave the house with an umbrella, but somehow it did not make that much difference. I think my shirt dried out three times over the course of the evening. There was some very attractive pinkish lightning over the skylines of Kendall Square and Rush-That-Speaks brought me a snickerdoodle. The rain had almost tapered off into misting by the time we left the student center with a year's membership apiece and our book haul carefully bagged in convenience-store plastic; we tried out Naco Taco for dinner and I can report favorably on the cabrito (lamb instead of goat, with mint crema and a slight heat on the tamarind glaze), the duck confit (with pomegranate molasses and fried strings of sweet potato), and the cochinita pibil (real heat and no problem deleting the onions). Then I came home and passed out for about an hour on top of spatch because my head had been hurting all day and Autolycus was already asleep on my pillow.

I looked at the news in time to find out that Stephen Miller had, in Rob's words, well, actually'd the Statue of Liberty. Remember when I wanted Trump-supporting Jews to be haunted by their disappointed dead relatives? I'd like to redirect the majority to Miller personally. Or maybe just the ghost of Emma Lazarus. She could be pretty intense.

[edit] I said it better over at cmcmck's: Miller with his nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant rhetoric is Jewish, the great-grandchild of immigrants as I am. I hope he's haunted. I hope he has the dybbuks of relatives and refugees coming out his ears. I hope he sleeps even less than I do.

I am delighted by this 1984 interview with Elisha Cook, Jr. He's about eighty at the time. I'd never seen him out of character before. He's a charming storyteller, with a necessary but not over-deprecating sense of humor about his track record of getting croaked onscreen. I'd heard his story about sticking to small parts so that no one could blame him if the film bombed (I still have no idea if it's true, but he tells it well), but I had no idea he'd lost a thumb to making a movie with John Ford. I admired his hands in The Killing (1956) and I never noticed. That's Harold Lloyd levels of hardcore. Now I guess I can decide if I want to watch Submarine Patrol (1938) and wonder where he might have fit into Ford's stock company (in the timeline we actually live in, Ford never worked with him again). My favorite bit is about three minutes in: asked about his typecasting as fall guys, Cook answers, "Of course, I think John Huston had a lot to do with it, when I did Maltese Falcon for him, you know, when I played Sydney Greenstreet's—boy?" He flirts his eyebrows and all of a sudden flickers younger, teasing, playing the boy. Just in case you somehow thought the whole cast wasn't in on the subtext. "It was a fun show."

I feel very fragmentary. I hope it will help if I get some sleep. I'm dubious.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

No wonder he (I'm told) hit it off so well with Jack Larsen after guesting on "Adventures of Superman."

[sovay]

No wonder he (I'm told) hit it off so well with Jack Larsen after guesting on "Adventures of Superman."

I don't think I follow.

[moon_custafer]

Sorry -- Jack Larsen played naive junior reporter Jimmy Olsen on the show. In his other career he was a poet and dramatist* who'd dated Montgomery Clift for a while. I'm pretty sure I watched the episode in which Cook guest-starred with a voiceover commentary by Larsen in which he says this is his favourite episode for several reasons, one of which is that he met and became friends with Cook. I figured having a lurking sense of humour was one of the things they had in common.

*No seriously. Virgil Thompson called him up in the 'seventies, saying he was writing an opera about Byron, needed a librettist and, well, Gertrude Stein was no longer available.

[sovay]

I'm pretty sure I watched the episode in which Cook guest-starred with a voiceover commentary by Larsen in which he says this is his favourite episode for several reasons, one of which is that he met and became friends with Cook. I figured having a lurking sense of humour was one of the things they had in common.

Gotcha! Thanks for the clarifying information.

You've mentioned this episode to me before. I really need to find a way of seeing it that doesn't require me to pay Warner Bros. through YouTube. [edit] I don't know when Dailymotion became actually useful to me, but it really has. I'll see if the aspect ratio has gone too weird for me to watch. [edit edit] The quality here is worse, the aspect ratio is better, I'll get back to you!

That was completely adorable. "Nothing that glamorous ever happens to my profession in real life."

No seriously. Virgil Thompson called him up in the 'seventies, saying he was writing an opera about Byron, needed a librettist and, well, Gertrude Stein was no longer available.

Well, I need to hear that.

[kore]

OH DUDE, when I heard him on Maddow fum-fuhing on about "Oh it was some broad who wrote the poem MUCH later and it has nothing to do with the actual statue blah blah bleeee," I just lost it and started screaming at the TV set.

[sovay]

when I heard him on Maddow fum-fuhing on about "Oh it was some broad who wrote the poem MUCH later and it has nothing to do with the actual statue blah blah bleeee," I just lost it and started screaming at the TV set.

It's the two-for-one aspect of this administration: (a) there is no neutral reason to make this claim; it can be used only to hurt people (b) it's factually, historically, truth-wise wrong. I am so sick of people who are happier being wrong.

[kore]

I am so sick of people who are happier being wrong.

That's really, really it. And then they get happier if someone points out how wrong they are! I really don't get it.

[nineweaving]

Curses to the power of 13! May he suck in the planet's insomnia, migraines, hemorrhoids, and boils like a black hole. May a Trump tower grow in his stomach!

The rest of the day sounds just swell (despite the soakedness). What books did you score?

Nine

[sovay]

May a Trump tower grow in his stomach!

That's good. I like that.

The White House and the string of Trump properties seem an apropos site for the curse about ten houses and each house with ten rooms and each room with ten beds and may cholera throw you from bed to bed across all of them.

The rest of the day sounds just swell (despite the soakedness). What books did you score?

A lot of research material!

[gwynnega]

I too wish hauntings upon Miller. He seems like the type who wishes he could white-supremacist his Jewishness away. I'd forgotten that he grew up in Los Angeles. I knew kids who went to his high school (twenty years or so before he would've been there).

I watched the interview with Cook and was struck by how relaxed and down-to-earth he was, so unlike the high-strung characters he often played.

[sovay]

I too wish hauntings upon Miller. He seems like the type who wishes he could white-supremacist his Jewishness away.

That never works! There are stories about it! Come on!

I'd forgotten that he grew up in Los Angeles. I knew kids who went to his high school (twenty years or so before he would've been there).

He's younger than my brother. That's strange all by itself, but it should not be enough time for historical memory to fail. I guess it helps if you give it a firm push.

I watched the interview with Cook and was struck by how relaxed and down-to-earth he was, so unlike the high-strung characters he often played.

Yes! I don't think anyone ever cast him like that. He's down to earth in Baptism of Fire (1943), but I wouldn't call battle-protocol propaganda exactly relaxing; he's practical in Born to Kill (1947), but it's in service of protecting the sociopath who'll eventually kill him. I just really enjoyed watching him. He could have told random stories about Hollywood all afternoon as far as I was concerned.

[edit] He gets a nice competent turn in the 1954 episode of Adventures of Superman ("Semi-Private Eye") I just watched thanks to discussion with moon_custafer above. He still needs rescuing by Superman because that's the show, but he's a middle-aged, bespectacled private investigator who's demonstrably good at his job and quite gentle about letting down Jimmy, who expects a shamus to look like Humphrey Bogart, not Elisha Cook, Jr.: "All my clients are disappointed at first. They expect a cross between a gorilla and Sherlock Holmes." It's pretty cute.