I was so young when I was born

[sovay]

Tonight I had dinner at Machu Picchu with two friends who are not on Dreamwidth. There was ceviche and beef heart and papa a la Huancaína and wide-ranging conversation. It was really nice.

1. Courtesy of moon_custafer: Saint Valentine and his army of husbands. Occasionally I wonder if these stories of misapprehension are built up for the internet and then I remember that I always hear the hook of the Rick Springfield song as "I wish that I was Jessie's girl."

2. Courtesy of spatch: James Mason's cats. See also this article. I had no idea James Mason either loved cats or could draw. I am charmed by both.

3. Courtesy of handful_ofdust: Ida Lupino in white tie and tails and Janelle Monáe in several sharp suits. You want to put them in the same movie, I'm fine with that.

4. It's no use longing for a teleporter since I am contracted to spend this weekend in another city, house-sitting for friends' cats, but this year's theme at the Kansas Silent Film Festival is "Women in Silent Film" and the program looks great. Louise Fazenda, Colleen Moore, Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Dorothy Gish, Mary Pickford, Mabel Normand, Alla Nazimova, female writers, actors, and directors I've never heard of, and genderqueer sky pirates to boot.

5. I cannot remember when or how I found the video for George Harrison's "Crackerbox Palace" (1976), but I'm really fond of it. Also of Harrison's eyebrows, which minus the moustache and with the mop-top grown out really come into their own.

Comments

[gwynnega]

I like your version of "Jessie's Girl" better. (ETA: I always used to think the Herman's Hermits song "A Must To Avoid" went "She's a muscular boy.")

Also, I like James Mason covered in cats.

In terms of George Harrison videos, I'm also very fond of "This Song" (from the same album as "Crackerbox Palace"), which makes light of the copyright infringement lawsuit George went through over "My Sweet Lord."

[alexxkay]

That Valentine's story is my new headcanon.

Nazimova shows up as a fascinating supporting character in the in-progress podcast biohraphy of Val Lewton; she was his aunt.

[poliphilo]

I thought I knew everything there was to be known about the Beatles but I'd never seen that video

[thisbluespirit]

1. That is great! (And, yeah, that sort of thing does happen all the time with song lyrics. My Dad, when he was young, was mystified by my Granddad's disapproval of Flowers in the Rain until it turned out that he'd thought the line "throw marigolds on the eiderdown" was "so many girls upon my eiderdown".)


2. Awww! That is also great.


4. Well, i hope it goes well and the cats are worth it, but I suppose it's another list to play with, at least?

[shewhomust]

I did not know Crackerbox Palace: very catchy, and my, wasn't he young! More than a touch of the Rutles, there, not just in the video but in the songt itself...

[rydra_wong]

2. Courtesy of spatch: James Mason's cats. See also this article. I had no idea James Mason either loved cats or could draw. I am charmed by both.

Thank for for disseminating this important information! What a proper appreciation of cats.

"The cat recognizes these arbitrary regulations but he does not feel bound by them."

[pameladean]

Oh, the James Mason photos are awesome. The possibly-random order they were presented in suggests that after some trials, he found a cat that didn't mind hanging around to be photographed. The other cats all have a kind of, "It's a good think we like you, dude, what is this nonsense?" air about them.

I also feel strongly that Ida Lupino and Janelle Monae in their amazing suits could only be improved by a cat or two around the edges.

P.

[nenya_kanadka]

This is just to say that I, too, also hear it as "I wish that I was Jesse's girl" and then find myself wondering if both singer and aforementioned Jesse are meant to be women. (I think it's actually supposed to be a straight guy lamenting that his straight guy friend is already dating the woman he has a crush on, right? It ALWAYS sounds a lot gayer than that to me, ok.)