Sleep is for chelonians

Bold admissions

I received a music CD in the post today, a sort of "best of" from the Boston Baroque Ensemble that they are giving out to "frequent flyers" of the 2009-10 concert season. Very nice, I must say; I certainly appreciate the gesture, and the selection on the CD is very enjoyable.

The funny thing is that as I looked through the titles I noticed for the first time the undoubtedly unintended innuendo in the Part 2 chorus of Handel's Messiah, specifically in the subtitle: "All We Like Sheep". Cue un-PC jokes about lonely Welshmen. *giggle* This unfortunate subtitle is of course shortened from the lyric "All we like sheep have gone astray", which is then followed by some inane bleating about the Lord being their shepherd (hey, I love the music and the vocal melodies, but I find it best to ignore the religious blather).

That is definitely a case where a spot of punctuation might help avoid some unfortunate, ahh, misunderstandings. See the story of the panda that eats, shoots and leaves. 

Speaking of grammatical pedantry, I am occasionally accused (usually by someone whose grammar I have just corrected with reason) of being an obnoxious grammar nazi. So I had to laugh when I stumbled across this YouTube video excerpt from "The Life of Brian", Monty Python's immortal masterpiece (in my judgment, with the Holy Grail a close second).

I'm sorry, but I totally identify with the Roman. "Romanes eunt domus", indeed. For shame!

Was George Lucas a Garbo fan?

Now, I'm just as crazy about Star Wars as the next geek, and no matter what George Lucas does next to deface his once-great vision, I'll keep loving the original trilogy, flawed as it was from the start. In that it's like Star Trek, no matter how stinky it gets in places, it'll always have a special place in my heart.

But I do enjoy nitpicking them, especially trying to identify scenes or lines that may have been, let's say, heavily inspired by previous work. Lucas' work is often criticized for being plainly derivative -- that there's very little originality in the plot, characters or situations. Perhaps that's true, although in my eyes using clichés is far more benign than, say, Jar-Jar Binks or midichlorians (also, Han shot first). It doesn't nullify the true "genius" of the original trilogy, which was to take all those cheesy clichés and whip them into something that somehow just works, and beautifully so. Ah, I'm advised not to wax too nerdily poetic. Sorry about that. Stopping now.

So anyway, tonight as I was brushing up on my classics, I noticed a striking resemblance between a shot of Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (for the record, that dates back to 1931) and one of the iconic scenes of the Star Wars franchise, i. e. Princess Leia in a gold bikini playing slave to Jabba the Hut in Return of the Jedi.

Is this a crazy coincidence or what?

In praise of black and white oldies

Ever since I saw Casablanca some 15 years ago (I believe, but then my memory is not infamous due to its reliability, quite the opposite) I've cultivated a considerable enthusiasm for "really old" movies, i.e. the classics of the 1940's and 1950's. And I do use the term "classics" in a loose sense that includes a variety of films from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Bride of Frankenstein.

A fun night out with Geraldine the yak

Tonight I went to the movies (at last) to see The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. It was pretty good fun, although as a third in a series of spoofy adventure movies, it's lost most of the freshness of the original, and maybe some of its charm. But hey, there's still the wonderfully self-deriding Brendan Fraser, and of course John Hannah playing my favorite onscreen materialistic coward, plus a nice gaggle of guests topped by Jet Li and the awesome Michelle Yeoh. The lovely Rachel Weisz of the first two has been replaced by Maria Bello as swashbuckling British-but-excitable leading lady Evelyn, but I'm not complaining because the more mature (in a good way) Bello fits well with the character's personal evolution.

The real star of the show, of course --and I mean no offense to the CGI yetis, who gave a decent enough performance-- is Geraldine the yak, whose sole purpose in the script was, I suspect, to provide an excuse for the worst pun in the entire movie (which I refuse to repeat here). But I didn't mind because she ended up giving John Hannah's character more screen time, and that's always for the good. Plus, they shared obvious onscreen chemistry. It was all very touching.

Anyhoo. I couldn't find an actual picture of Geraldine the yak so this anonymous yak will have to do. Incidentally, "yak" is derived from the Tibetan word for the male animal, whereas the female of the species they call "nak"; so that should in fact be "Geraldine the nak". Next thing you know the poor thing will develop gender identity issues.

The only thing that remains a true mystery to me was why they called her "Geraldine". What is it with that name and Hollywood? They should have called her Daphne instead. That's a much better name, according to some (who like it hot).