Below are the 19 most recent journal entries recorded in snowmoon246's LiveJournal:

Sunday, June 17th, 2007
1:32 pm	Anniversaries --and the White Trash Classic Today is my millionth wedding classic (also Father's Day) and R the Chef has hotfooted it into the nearest big town to buy a Standing Rib Roast. We called the grocery there and they said they had a bunch of one-ribbers, which is plenty for us. We'll probably do it with seasoned salt on the grill, a nice salad and roast potatoes. Plus a bottle of cabernet. Wish his son could be here but he's in the middle of an ugly divorce in Florida (don't ask) and we'd just as soon not hear about the details on our anniversary. Before he left, the chef stood in the kitchen, shifting his eyes and tracing a big square on the floor with his toe, mumbling in embarrassment. When I finally got a translation, he asked for lunch made with that "white trash classic," a sandwich much beloved by me in my Midwestern childhood and recreated for him albeit apologetically during our courtship. It was love at first bite. Just so you know, the chef came from a large and mostly Italian family that thinks eating is the 8th sacrament. To this day he cannot eat dinner without a cloth napkin and a glass of wine. When I described my sandwich the first time, he laughed like hell and made trailer park jokes. You might too, but trust me. Nothing could be better than..... THE WHITE TRASH CLASSIC Wonder Bread, utterly fresh and soft as a kitten's ear 2-3 slices bologna per sandwich a small onion, sliced 1 Tablespoon hard Crisco (gotta be) per skillet French's yellow hot dog mustard (NOT the classy Dijon-type) 1) Heat a cast iron pan on a stove till hot. Add the Tablespoon hard Crisco and let it melt. Don't burn it. Add your onions and cook until they are no longer crisp. Remove onions to drain on paper towels. 2) Add bologna slices. The object here is to get some color on them, but not to burn them. This shouldn't take long. When they have brown patches in spots, remove to the same place you're draining the onions. 3) On each of two slices of Wonder Bread, spread a thin slick of mustard. You don't need mayo because you've already used Crisco. 4) Add the bologna & onions and slice on the bias. Serve with bread and butter pickles plus potato chips if you have them. Please pick yourself up off the floor and stop swooning from revulsion --this is really good, honest! That's what my husband did the first time I described this to him, but believe me, he's not laughing now. This was a staple in every home in my neighborhood, made for children by moms, cleaning ladies, baby sitters --anybody who happened to be in the kitchen at 12:30 in the afternoon, and I never knew anyone who had one who didn't want another later in time. It's best with a full-sugar Coke, but who keeps that on hand anymore? I suppose the prime rib and cabernet will be a lot more elegant, but will it be better? R and I have been both fancy and humble during our million-year-old marriage, flush and broke, happy and sad. Through all of it this Classic has kept us fed and comforted. Can't ask more of a sandwich than that. If you try this, either for yourself or your kids, let me know what you think. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 24th, 2007
3:42 pm	Root, root root for the home team. Sure. It's only May and I'm sick of the Red Sox Nation already. It's not that I don't like baseball. I do, but they tend to overdo it here in Boston to such a degree that I sometimes wish I were still a Yankees fan, just for comparative calm. Worst of all is the effect a lost game has on my husband, R. He's going to have a seizure one of these times, no kidding. The other night when Okey-Dokie the pitcher walked a couple of Yankees in a row R stood up and screamed like a girl, demanding that the poor Japanese national commit seppuku right there on the mound. "Do the honorable thing!" he raged, dead serious. Can I put up with this until October? Can I stand the helicopters buzzing my house behind Fenway Park like a Vietnamese village? Can i bear to wait until 10 pm every night for my dinner? (You didn't think I cook, did you?) Stay tuned. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 28th, 2007
2:56 pm	SUMMER IS ICUMIN IN: SNOWMOON'S SEASONAL JOURNAL RESUMES. I don't know what I thought when I came back here to pick this journal up again. Did I think that someone would have done it for me in my absence? No one did, obviously, so I'll try to post more regularly now that classes are winding down. In fact, this coming week is IT. I'm still hoping to teach the first summer session with one class, mindful of how miserably it rained last June. Might as well make the money and still have July and August to myself, though so far only four students have signed up. Sigh. I may have the whole summer off anyway, dammit. I could really use that money. A lot happened over the course of two semesters, though thankfully none of it happened to me. My computer's hard drive was a wipeout, of course. That's an annual event. If I can ever lay my hands on anything above $1000 I'll probably go over to the dark side, i.e. buy myself a PC instead of a Mac. I have a big-assed Dell at work and it's like driving a Cadillac after a clapped-out Toyota from the 80s. Otherwise, Bush is still an idiot. That lunatic at Virginia Tech wiped out 30-something students for NOTHING. ( It was one of the few times I've ever seen my husband cry.) And the media did a craptacular job of covering it. I can't tell you how mad it made me to hear every network --EVERY one-- begin their coverage by intoning "the largest shooting in the history of the United States!" To my mind that's like waving a red cape at a bull. Imagine all those sickies out there saying to themselves "Hey! Thirty something people? I could better that record! I want to be on TV for a week!" Somebody will, too, it's just a fact. I also hated hearing the Nutjob's narcissistic ramblings described as his "manifesto." Excuse me? Martin Luther issued a real manifesto by nailing it to a cathedral door --and the Renaissance began. This asshole's self pity means zero to the world at large except that it prompted the deaths of a lot of perfectly good people. I'd like to dig him up and shoot him all over again. I'm also mad at NBC for issuing his tapes so as to insinuate themselves into the story. Possibly the impact of all this will fade when we return to our country house and see flowers growing and our tiny waterfall spitting into its tiny pool. As I sit here typing, the birds are singing lustily and the buds on the trees are turning green. The cat, dreading his annual check up at the vet today, is snoring in his cardboard box, snooting his very expensive cat bed elsewhere in the apartment. The madam who runs the brothel in the mansion across the street (it's so true it was even in the PAPER, though nothing ever was done about it) is cleaning out the gutters and gardens of her house, a sure indication that Spring Is Here. Cuckoo! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
4:19 pm	Enter the Svengali of Sex It took us forever, but we finally got together with my friend who has produced a boyfriend after two arid years of widowhood. She asked if she could bring him over before the four of us headed out to another couple's house for dinner, so I figured that she had some kind of announcement to make. Providentially, I had a bottle of champagne chilling in the refrigerator so we were able to break it out when she announced that they're getting married --a year from this October. Why so long, for God's sake? Naturally, it makes me nervous. That's just far enough away for him to identify her Issues in the meantime. Issues which include a divorce, a widowhood, 4 untrained hounds that leave snot marks on your crotch the minute you step out of the car, a horrible unfinished house she doesn't want to sell (that's going to be the deal breaker), a crumbling career and two grown daughters, one with a kid. The older daughter lives abroad and the other is thinking of moving, so mom will want to follow, watch. And he's not going to want to go. He's a very nice guy. VERY nice, but I don't think she's thought this all out from his point of view. I begged her to sell her house and get a place that will be strictly hers and his, not hers, his and her dead husband's. She didn't say much to that, so I don't know if it penetrated her stubborn head or not. But here's the best thing that happened that night: She had described to me how "blisteringly hot" he is, and how they have this "seismic sex" (which is waaaaayyyy too much information for me). So you can imagine how much I enjoyed it when the car door was flung open and this little short chubby guy with his pants hitched up under his arm pits got out. The world went dim for me for a moment as I assessed the Rasputin of the Rack and ruthlessly smothered an instinct to howl laughing. When I brought them into the house for drinks I found my husband, R, giggling silently into a bathroom towel. The world is an interesting place. Who knows --maybe they think we're funny, too. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 30th, 2006
5:59 pm	Wish I could find a package of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. It rained so damn hard last week my friend and her new boyfriend never got here..... it's too small in the house and we couldn't sit outside. We'll have to catch up with them later in the summer, but first the debauch happening this weekend will more or less make up for one cancelled party. IT'S OLD HIPPIE WEEKEND! They start arriving Saturday night, then it's a tequila-soaked eat-a-thon until Tuesday when they all go home (I hope!) I'm looking through my music right now for some vintage CSNY, Byrds, Tom Petty, etc. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 24th, 2006
4:37 am	Probably worrying in vain I worried myself sick about money through the entire month of June, viciously ripping away the nail on my right thumb in the process, and it turns out that I didn't have to. In fact, we might end up with a surplus this month. This is good because we have a slew of people coming over and we have to feed them something. The same two couples we always have on July 4 --such old friends we used to be hippies in New Mexico together, sitting naked in hot tubs and growing our own herb. That's fine, and I'm looking forward to it. The woman who's coming over the day after tomorrow has me a little worried, though. She's the one who was so suddenly widowed two years ago and now she's got a boyfriend she wants us to meet. "I want him to see your house" she announced, and the subtext is that she'd also love to hoover a meal made by R, the culinary school graduate and certified chef. That kind of annoyed me --I hate it when people invite themselves-- but then I remind myself of how lonely she's been and how painful the whole experience was. Years ago she dragged her late husband over to see this house because it was hand built by an artist (not us) and full of wood, stone, iron work and stained glass. That's when the two of them began their 20-year process of building their own house which turned out terrible. Just terrible. The only building material they didn't use was hubcaps, and I think it's just because they didn't think of it. The source of my worry is that she and the boyfriend may be "deeply in love" as she put it, but I can only think of two reasons why a man would get to be 50 years old without ever marrying. I have absolutely no reason to think he's gay, but it could be that the minute he starts feeling the noose tightening, he panics and runs. I don't think she should be dragging him from friend to friend intimating that the future of her happiness lies entirely with him. It's going to scare him, and another loss will surely kill her. I'm worried about this. R is making this chicken thigh/drumstick mustardy/breadcrumby mock fried chicken and I'm throwing in a green bean salad and roasted herbed potatoes. I don't feel like going to a lot of trouble or expense over this, especially since I wonder if the relationship will live out the summer. I don't want to tell her what to do, but a little "hard to get" would make more sense than this. Yesterday I took a shower in my outdoor shower (my favorite thing) and Freddie the Frog got in with me. He's incredibly tame. I ran and got the camera because I just couldn't believe it. He probably started singing when I went back inside the house. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
12:10 pm	Technology is killing me. Today when I'm really longing to see a movie, the sun burst out of the sky, the birds are singing lustily, the frogs are hollering in the pond and the flowers are opening at an unprecedented rate. R is on the deck enjoying the little waterfall, but he's also trying to get the Acura service department on the horn and all he's getting is voice mail. The day after the finance company sent me the deed to the car saying it was all paid up, some little computer glitch occurred and now I'm not sure it's safe to drive. Someone we know told R that if it's a computer chip it could cost up to $1000 to fix and now, of course, it's not under warranty anymore. If that's the case, I am sooooooo trading in this car for a Honda in September when we get back to Boston. Actually, Acura IS Honda, but it's an overbuilt one, so I'm hoping they give me top dollar for a trade-in. I sure have loved this car, but there are no dealerships ANYWHERE and nobody has all the diagnostic equipment or special parts needed to repair the damn thing except a certified dealership, not even Honda. I want to unload this baby while it's still worth something. On a happier front, I figured out how to post a jpeg to another lj. Everyone on Sammie's tried to tell me how to do it, but it's a matter of perception, I guess. I kept looking for a way to SEND the image to her lj from Photobucket or lj Scrapbook, just like sending a letter. But it's really a case of preparing her "comment" section to solicit the image from my originating source. Counter-intuitive, but when has technology ever made sense to me? Here is my Head Frog. I haven't counted them yet, but they're usually up to 20 or 30 by this time of year. Name him! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
3:45 pm	Today's lunch. Isn't R amazing? He woke up this morning with a craving for foccacia, ran downstairs and made this --rosemary, black olives and parmesan. We had it for lunch with a bottle of italian rose. Brilliant. Still using the cloudy weather to learn how all this techno junk works --posting images, using LJ, wrestling with the digital camera. I have no time during the school year, so summer HAS TO BE IT. It's painful, but necessary. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:28 pm	Photobucket This is a test post from Photobucket.com (Comment on this)
Monday, June 19th, 2006
3:41 pm	This was the asparagus vinaigrette from yesterday R’s favorite asparagus 1 lb thin asparagus, trimmed and blanched (for 4) vinaigrette made out of: --olive oil --red wine vinegar --pinch of salt --pinch of sugar --chopped green bell pepper --chopped fresh parsley --chopped pimento (or red bell pepper) --chopped green onions Blanch the asparagus. Combine the vinaigrette and pour over the asparagus. Let marinate several hours in refrigerator or at room temperature and serve. (Comment on this)
11:45 am	Every Year on Father's Day. As usual, I'm a wee bit hung over from father's day yesterday. Not that we have kids, but he has a grownup son from his first marriage, so I graciously volunteered to cook dinner for his special day. So while he screamed at the TV, watching the U.S. Open, I drank red wine and cooked. Sipping at first, glugging later. Why I get so nervous when I have to cook is a mystery. It was such an easy menu, too: prime steak (they were TINY --3 or 4 ounces at best, plus each one was a staggering $11. But God they were good!) Baked, stuffed potatoes which were really, really delicious, asparagus vinaigrette and a swell red wine sauce to go over the meat. And this juicy little syrah from Australia to wash it all down, which was my downfall. It's not like I cooked everything in one fell swoop, either.....I deliberately prepared each little thing at a different stage during the day, just so I wouldn't get all worn out and crabby by the end. He enjoyed it, anyway, to the extent he could enjoy anything after that mess of a golf match. Happy Father's Day, dear, and now you can stop shouting directions at Phil Mickleson and waving your cocktail glass around for a refill. It's over till next year, LOL! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 10th, 2006
8:24 am	Snowmoon's LJ, v. 2.0 I shitcanned most of the Orlando entries made last year on this LJ because in a stroke of clarity I realized I'm not that person anymore. My fantasy mechanism has utterly failed over the last few months (always excepting Legolas, of course) and the Orlando fandom is undergoing a crisis of identity. No news = no interest, it's just that easy, and the relentless deluge of O/K pictures from his press agent hasn't helped him AT ALL. I'm hoping things will perk up with the release of POTC2 and its publicity so we can talk about just him again. Meantime, I'm living in the here and now, enduring Day 10 of the Epic Rain, making waffles, hoping the rain doesn't take down the satellite TV system again. Having the luxury of time to myself is reward enough. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 9th, 2006
5:09 pm	Some things lost, some things found. It's still raining here, and it's so cold we've got the heat on. In June. This is, in fact, the 9th straight day of rain since we drove from Boston to Mayberry RFD, our summer retreat. I'd be crazy as Caligula right now if the weatherman didn't predict a clear-up for this weekend. So I'm doing all the stuff I normally do up here, puttering, mostly. Making pickles next week. Planting a few herbs indoors, hoping to move them to the garden sometime soon. Posting in my journal since sammie's looks like it's falling apart. I'm really disappointed about this, but since Orlando won't give us anything much to talk about we just keep going over and over the same old broken glass, i.e. him and Kate. Him and Kate. Some think it's hating, but I think it's just boredom. It's all we really KNOW about him, at least till POTC2 comes out, and then we'll have the whole movie to discuss. Hope Stacey can hold out till then. Hope her LJ holds together till then. The hub and I are going to have to drive a half hour to see POTC2, but it's the only thing coming out this summer, besides the Jack Black movie, that we really want to see. Otherwise, there's cause for some guarded optimism. Our friend who was so sadly widowed the summer before last has turned up a boyfriend: GOOD for her! A couple of decent restaurants have opened and the cheese from this part of New York is getting better every year though dairy farming is shrinking and our local goat farm is gone. The woman who runs our post office gave me a hug today when I went to pick up the mail and said "welcome back!" So this whole summer experience, while very Prairie Home Companion, is strangely reassuring to me. I've lived in cities all my life, but there's something viscerally satisfying about hearing your very own frogs croak in your very own pond and threatening your very own deer for eyeballing your very own lilies. I never really notice anything in great detail in the city. But here a low-flying hawk's legs and feet stand out in sharp relief for me when he cruises overhead. The outdoor shower leaves me feeling exuberent, not just clean. And the mountain laurel --which blooms faithfully every year for our anniversary-- smells achingly sweet when I'm lying in bed at night. Would I start shooting people just for something to do if I had to live here full time? Possibly. But that's a consideration for another day. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 3rd, 2006
1:55 pm	The fleshpots of Mayberry, RFD We've been here in our little New York-side Berkshires town for a grand total of 5 days and it's rained like a bastard for every one of them. We're bored comatose, me and R. Even the cat is bored, refusing flatly to get out of our bed this morning. We can't garden, take a walk, drive to another town because it's absolutely pelting down rain. Last night as we stared sullenly at each other we couldn't even decide on where we'd go if we could. There isn't much to choose between when it comes to the bright lights and honkytonks of this provincial village. We've got a post office, a so-so grocery and a couple of churches, all unpromising options for revelry. Of course there's always the local cowboy bar where the farmers raise heck instead of hell after the cows have all been run into the barn for the night. An absolute bacchanale in that place consists of turning the bar TV to CMT, knocking back a drink called an "oatmeal cookie" (Baileys, Goldschlagger and Butterscotch schnappes, shudder) and overhearing a discussion of which lubricants work best on cows' teats to keep them from going dry. Half the guys who fall off barstools in that place do so out of boredom, I swear, not intoxication. Then there's the pizzaria next to the OTB. A pretty good time can be had there on a Sunday afternoon if you want to sit in the bar watching the races at Monticello and layng down your $2 next door, but I don't like to drink and drive at night (not that we have any police.....the closest is the county sheriff's HQ a good 20 minutes away). No movies here. No bookstore. And I guess we could call some friends but we're saving that for when it stops pissing rain so we can feed them a decent dinner on our deck. (Why did we buy here in the first place all those years ago? Oh --I remember! This is the anti-city, an outdoorsman's dream, when the sun comes out!) R is making tomato soup from scratch for lunch, Cobb Salad for dinner. His heart is broken because our very best farm stand/gourment store went out of business over the winter. No more baby mache, haricots vertes, imported pasta. It's iceberg, fish sticks, Betty Crocker brownie mix and Prince's macaroni from the IGA from now on. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 1st, 2006
3:46 pm	Dispatch from the Wilderness My summer's resolution, since we're here in rural New York State for 3 months, is to post more often in my LJ. It's not like I've got a lot else to do. Everybody else in this town is probably busy buying livestock feed at the local Agway, but we're hanging around the house like a pair of veals. It looked beautiful when we rode up here from Boston on Memorial Day. It's clean, because I paid someone to clean it. The furniture is old, battered and comfortable, the gardens are effortlessly fresh and lovely. From where I write I can hear the murmur of the waterfall and one, lonely bachelor tree frog croaking in search of a mate. It's spring, and the whole summer stretches out like a magic carpet before me. Three months of doing nothing much, just me and R and the cat. It's raining this morning, which means I don't want to do anything but curl up on the sofa and watch Martha. She's frying fish with Ashley Judd, who is wearing a very expensive designer dress and trying to avoid the spits of oil from a nearby skillet. Martha is sooooo insensitive. "Gosh!" she yelled at Ashley, "you're just nothing like your mother and sister, are you?" Ashley is staring at her with a rictus of a smile suspended on her marionette's face for fully 5 seconds. You can just see the words "What the FUCK do you mean by that, Martha?" chasing themselves around in her head. I don't know either, Ashley, but sometimes Martha deserves a beating. While I'm fixated on how utterly awful the fish looks, R is vacuuming the bedroom carpet because he doesn't like how the cleaning woman did it. That's him in a nutshell. Years ago I discovered that the best way to get him to do light housekeeping and 100% of the cooking is to do it myself, badly. Then he takes it away from me and does it right. This is the glue that has held our marriage together for more than 25 years. Bless him, he's the very best wife a girl ever had. The cat just rocketed past me with his little ears flattened against his head. Last time R vacuumed this hard he awakened an indignant bat who was catching a nap in the attic. This is the first time in memory that we haven't arrived to find animals in the house. We've had everything --bats, mice, toads, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, flying squirrels-- everything except live deer, and who knows? Maybe them, too. The flying squirrels were the most persistent. Even though we evicted them countless times they still found a way back in --that's the price you pay for living in the middle of a forest. Last summer we hired a wildlife expert who caught them one at a time in HaveaHeart cages and took them away. Six of them. That's 24 little feet making noise in the wall behind our bed every dawn when they returned from their nocturnal hunting. We used to imagine them drunk, stumbling and singing, but after a point it wasn't too funny anymore. Once caught, I admired one of them up close in his cage and had to admit he was pretty, clothed by his Maker in a marvelous uniform: light gray suede on his back and a creamier color on his front, divided by --I swear to God-- white piping on his sides. All he needed was a little pillbox hat with a leather strap under his chin to look like a 1940s style movie usher. "Yeah, he'd bite you right there if he could," drawled the wildlife guy as the beast stared at me with hatred glittering in his eyes. Bite me? He looked like he'd like to box my ears like bongo drums, wrench my nose off and eat it, then sink his razor sharp teeth into my genitals. And he kept right on microwaving squirrel curses at me as he was dragged, snarling, from the premises. I wasn't exactly sorry to see them go, but I kind of miss the evenings when we'd take drinks onto the deck and watch our flying squirrels emerge from under the eaves of the house, crawl onto the roof, then rappel suddenly and dramatically onto a nearby tree. It's the same kind of fascination my black cat (now gone to that Big Litterbox in the Sky) felt when she sat on the stairs watching a bat do an uneasy lap on the second floor of the house. Her eyes said everything she was thinking. "Man, if dat ain't da shizzle," she said to herself in her soft, pretty black girl's voice. "A mouse dat flies! Get dat muthuh close enough to me, Ah jump up quick and CUT his ass! Goan fuck him ALLLLLL up if Ah can!" Rest in peace, girlfriend. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 8th, 2005
2:44 pm	Kingdom of Heaven: A Review Currently, Rotten Tomatoes is giving this a 38 which means there are more bad reviews out there than good ones. *sigh* I don't understand this at all. It's one of a handful of films that put you so thoroughly into its own world that you can practically SMELL it: horse dung, cactus flowers, the sharp tang of iron in the water and salt from the sea. The last film that swallowed me up like this was any of the LOTR movies. This one is even more real, if you can imagine it. And everyone who's there looks like he or she belongs in that world. No gussied up movie stars here..... the film was just too carefully cast for that. These are medieval faces, ethnic faces. Pinched, scarred and malnourished faces. In no sense does this film look modern, or like its stars will hurry back to the Ivy for cocktails after the shooting day. When you pay for your ticket, you leave today's world behind. Orlando is outstanding, honestly. Richard Corliss in Time magazine was right: the beard helps and so do the 20 pounds of muscle he gained for the part. The weight gain plumped up his face a bit, hiding the girlish cheekbones and making him less pretty. Plus, we've never seen such a purely macho performance from him. The speech he gives the knights waiting to fight for Jerusalem, the "Let Them Come!" speech is an exercise in pure testosterone. (I surely do owe the theater owner an apology and a bottle of Febreeze for the condition I left my seat in after THAT.) In another of his well acted scenes he threatens Saladin with the destruction of the city if they don't come to an agreement over the safety of the people. Eyes narrowed, voice implacable and body rigid with spite, I believed every single word of his threat, and he makes you understand that Saladin believes it, too. Orlando gives an old fashioned performance, the kind Gary Cooper and Charleton Heston used to specialize in: the man who is not so articulate but finds the strength to rise to the occasion because people are depending on him. No critic out there can say he can't act.....unless they're just being assholes, which a few are, especially when they compare his performance to Russell Crowe's in Gladiator. The two characters have exactly nothing in common. Orlando pulls out all the stops here, and I swear I've never seen a man in a movie fight with such gusto. The battle scenes are SPECTACULAR, and you're THERE, in the moment, wielding your own sword. Ridley Scott speeds up, then slows down the pace of the action, turns up the music, then turns it down. Clarifies the images, then allows them to fall out of focus. Adds color, then leeches it away. It's just exactly what you'd see if you were really there, fighting for your life. It's almost unbearably real. Not everything in the film works as well as the battle scenes, though. Despite the reviews, I thought David Thewlis was awful, inexplicably smirking and grinning throughout this bloody confrontation. Did no one tell him that there's a war on? The Brendan Gleeson character is way, way over the top, at one point actually dancing with lunacy. And Martin Csokas --what a glorious HAM! Sneering and preening, tossing his cape and mincing his way through all of his lines --if he'd had a mustache he'd have twirled it. At one memorable point we find him tossing stuff at Balian and taunting him about being a blacksmith. Sulky Balian doesn't react much, but keeps on eating. It looked like a hazing in an English boarding school circa 1932. I liked it and found myself grinning in the darkened theater, but none of this nonsense really belongs here. The editing is a little odd, too. What DID become of the Csokas character, Guy de Lusignan, anyway? He just disappears in the middle of the film and we never see him again. The love affair between Balian and the Eva Green character is summed up in precisely two scenes. Blink and you miss it. I'll bet Orlando is furious that he worked so hard buffing up his body, and then you don't even get a decent look at the results. And in the very worst choice Scott made, Sybilla removes King Baldwin's mask after his death and the camera lets us see the ravages of his leprosy. That never should have happened; we should see her horrified reaction only --the reality isn't half as bad as what we were imagining. He just looked like a dead orc. If Sir Ridley didn't want to add any hot love scenes because it would have been cheap, he shouldn't have included this cheap trick, either. Plus, it was too late to get prissy about showing any sex after the hangings, whippings, decapitations and men going up in flames that went before. Edward Norton's performance is great. Impeded by a mask and using only his voice and his body posture, he constructs an astonishing character. You can bet his people are whispering "Oscar." Ghassan Massoud is the perfect Saladin: crafty, fearless and magnanimous in victory. So I still don't know what movie the critics saw. It doesn't help that the promotion for this film promises a popcorn movie ("The first big blockbuster of the season" trumpets one TV ad) and this is anything but. No, this is a thoughtful and intelligent look at events that happened over 1000 years ago that have major ramifications for today. I don't think critics are able to assess that sort of thing anymore. You have to take them by the hand, like little children, and tell them what they're seeing. If you prepare them for the wrong thing --and this promotion certainly does-- they turn sulky and vindictive like the clueless snots they are. Personally, I'm regarding this theatrical release as the trailer for the REAL movie, the one Scott WANTED to make, which will take 3+ hours on DVD to tell. I can't wait to see it. More of that beautiful score. More stunning visuals. More exotic smells, tastes and sounds. More hot, undressed Orlando! And maybe we'll find out what happened to the Guy de Lusignan character after all. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 6th, 2005
9:49 am	ENTRY FIVE: THE POPE GETS THE LAST LAUGH. If there’s anything I love it’s a good thunderclap of irony, and the death of the Pope this week provides the best one in a long time. There were telltale signs throughout his Papacy that he was a whole lot craftier than anyone gave him credit for; only his Communist enemies seemed to appreciate him for the shrewd warrior he was. With this last irony, all doubt has been removed. What irony? Four hundred years after Henry VIII withdrew England from the Catholic church so the King could marry his mistress, it’s possible that this cunning Pope timed his own death to give the royal family a cosmic raspberry. Suddenly, nobody who matters can come to Charles’ and HIS mistress’s wedding on Friday…….they’ll all be at the Pope’s funeral. How satisfying it is to imagine the Pope and God playing poker in paradise right now, smoking Cohibas, swilling Jack Daniels and pausing often to laugh so hard they throw up out of their noses. Every once in a while one or the other of them leans over to aim a yolker at a cuspidor holding the ashes of Henry VIII. Then it’s back to Aces High. It’s a scenario that tickles me to death because I can’t stand that sniveling git Charles. It’s not just the ears that look like open taxicab doors, it’s not even the fact that he insists on wearing a kilt when he’s too effete to wear one. You have to swagger to wear a kilt, boldly hinting at the grandeur that lies beneath. Ask Mel Gibson—he sure knows how. No, it’s that supercilious sneer that aggravates me: the upper lip curled over indifferent dental work limned by rot. That and the plummy, die-away voice, dripping with distain for the hoi polloi. I have no sympathy for paparazzi except when they’re dissed by an inbred lout precisely because they’re working. Not invading anybody’s privacy, mind you-—it was a photo op for which he willingly posed this week. No, he “loathes” them because they scurry to make a living, the poor yobbos, and because they don’t have relay teams of valets and butlers at their disposal. I hope his two boys don’t turn out to be heartless imbeciles like him. It would cause their mother to cry in heaven, and that’s a terrible thought. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 4th, 2005
8:27 pm	With apologies to Robert Herrick SONNET In spite of the splendor of undeserved rainbows, of crocuses shaking their soft-skirted petals, Spring plays coquette as she languidly settles, trailing her train of yesterday’s snows. Capricious, then cozy then sullen by turns- Does she launch or delay her stately advance? Entreated for more, she sidesteps the dance, to vanish from sight in a flourish of ferns. Who gives faithful promise to such wanton art when beauty can never bide honest or fair? She lacks summer’s constancy, winter’s chaste air but keeps her hold yet on the heart of the heart. Take her and do with her what she allows But do not mistake Springtime’s promise for vows. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Henry Purcell (Comment on this)
Monday, March 21st, 2005
2:47 pm	ENTRY THREE: HE LOOKED LIKE A RENAISSANCE ANGEL. With cheekbones like knife blades, a riot of soft black curls and eyes ringed with lashes so long they threw shadows on his cheeks. It was one of those faces you expect to see in stained glass adorning some gothic cathedral, but this face came with a living, breathing man attached. Loving him instantly, I couldn't foresee how quickly the years would pass. It didn't matter to me then that he was so much older --we had forever, didn't we? Lately, it occurs to me that the stained glass will last for centuries more, but he is gently slipping away. His step is careful now. Upright and proud still with the bearing of a Venetian count, but there is also the slightest suggestion of royalty in exile. What is he doing here, in this unfamiliar land of old age? What does he know of aches and slow reactions –he who was always so swift. So restless. So sure of everything. At night, with his sweet, soft breath on my cheek, I slip my hand into his and feel his surprisingly firm grip in return. The magnificent hair is white now, incandescent on the pillow. When he dreams, is he young again? Is he my lover restored once more to the brilliance we both took for granted? We don’t speak of it, this inexorable process. I refuse to punish him with words for leaving me, because he is doing it kindly, and with great grace. When he’s gone, I’ll remember him the way he once was, but I’ll also remember him the way he is now, gliding through this long twilight. As always, my eye exults for having him in my view. He is perfect. Current Mood: melancholy Current Music: anything by Handel (1 Comment |Comment on this)