Heinlein Month: Bad shape

Cloistered SWF seeks poetic SWM, age not important, balcony-climbing skills a must. Send carrier pigeon to Villa Capulet. Your pic gets mine. No bots please.

You’re in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.

(Robert A. Heinlein. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. 1958.)

The Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet is a beautiful, faithful classic. But — keep this under your hat because I don’t want to be kicked out of the super-cool smart kids’ club — the Baz Luhrmann hamfisted crazy-go-nuts adaptation of Shakespeare’s play is actually my favorite, because I unapologetically love his juxtapositive imagination and didn’t think it defiled the play particularly. A little excess never killed nobody. (Get it? A little excess? Oxymoron? Yes?) I like over the top lushness in a movie — I’m a decaphile and I’m not sorry for that. But I went with the picture of Olivia Hussey to illustrate this idea because she is so exponentially hotter than Claire Danes that Claire Danes just now suddenly got sad, purely from all of us nodding silently, and she doesn’t know why.

Left: Amateur hour. Right: Holy hell.

The mise-en-scene of Luhrmann’s R&J dazzles me, but compared to the chemistry in Zeffirelli’s 1968 version? There is no comparison. Absolutely none. By the way, am I the only one who read that thing where Zeffirelli claims to have totally been hit on by Aristotle Onassis? Still wrapping my mind around that one and weighing its potential truth. (Verdict so far: Depends. Was Onassis trying to get Zeff away from Callas once and for all? Or just bombed on some really good shit?) More on that story here, and don’t skip the comments for the full scope of the debate.

Daily Batman: Bat Life With Batpecker

via.

If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall, anything more than a can of deodorizer in the shithouse of existence, the people are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry. …

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

(Tom Robbins. Still Life With Woodpecker. New York: Bantam, 1980.)

Really grok this. My estranged husband loaned me this book when we were dating. This part always stuck out to me. Do I feel like a Robbins month? I’ll need to think about it. Maybe June?

Goethe Month: One life to live

Marcello Mastroianni biting Natassja Kinski’s ass. They were having a “whose-name-is-more-difficult-to-pronounce” contest and Marcello won.

One lives but once in the world.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clavigo, Act I, Scene 1.)

We only have one life. So we must really live it. No pressure.

Goethe Month: The in-between places

Photographed by Jim Furness at the Pinncales in CA.

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust,
Die eine will sich von der andern trennen;
Die eine hält, in derber Liebeslust,
Sich an die Welt, mit klammernden Organen;
Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust,
Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.
O giebt es Geister in der Luft,
Die zwischen Erd’ und Himmel herrschend weben

Two souls dwell, alas, in my breast and their
Division tears my life in two.
One loves the world, it clutches her, it binds
Itself to her, clinging with furious lust;
The other desires to fly beyond the dust
Into the realm of high ancestral minds.
Are there no spirits moving in the air,
Ruling the region between earth and sky?

So steiget nieder aus dem goldnen Duft
Und führt mich weg, zu neuem buntem Leben!
Ja, wäre nur ein Zaubermantel mein!
Und trüg’ er mich in fremde Länder

Come down then to me from your golden mists on high,
Give me a magic cloak to carry me
Away to some far place, some land untold,

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act 1: Scene 5, 1110-1125.)

Goethe Month: the Eternal Feminine, or, “Heaven is a hell of a party.”

Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

All that is perishable is but an allegory;
The Eternal Feminine draws us on.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act 5, “Heaven.” Final lines of the play.)

I interpret that to mean this: The things of men’s making that fade and grow dusty and entropically fall into disuse and destroy themselves in time are not to be worried over in their passing because they were never intended as anything but pictures to make us understand the continually Creative beyond that awaits, endlessly pouring out life, when we follow our dead objects to the grave.

Photograph by Michael Demeo.

I have contemplated it for about thirty seconds and I think I really dig this dynamic vision of Heaven suggested in the final lines of Faust. It is more exotic and vibrant than the tired old “flights of angels/peaceful rest” saw, yes? Like you are expecting to alight on some pastel cloud and hear harp-arrangments of soothing Bach chorales while you kick back with a lemonade, and instead someone shoves crazily-bubbling champagne at you, a tall fancy neverending flute for each hand, and the invisible stereo plays only ODE TO JOY, the good part, OVER AND OVER, forever and instead of the pastel cloud you are instantly transported to the front row of an endless big bang!, watching the universe eternally fling fire and stars at itself! for all time.

Turns out heaven is a hell of a party and all your friends are there and your dead pets are live again and in their prime waiting to play whenever you like only they don’t shed anymore and your family all get along great and you can finally tell all the people you liked in your life but never told about your true feelings for fear you’d look like an idiot that you always liked them so much and they are all great with that and like you back and no one is bothered about sharing. And you are holding a sparkler. On a rearing t-rex.

“Fuck, yeah, Heaven!”

Daily Batman: The Bat and The Cat, “Shocking!” edition

The Bat and the Cat, they do get up to some games. Who would have predicted that two grown people who wear leather animal costumes and beat people up for a secret living would take things off-Broadway in the bedroom. The heck you say!

This shot is from a collection compiled by Adam West from the scrapbook he kept during the shooting of the 1966 film adapation of Batman. Yes, you read that right: Adam West is a scrapbooker from Way Back. Ain’t no shame in a name, buddy. Own your pleasures!

Catwoman was played in the film by your 1955 Miss America, Lee Meriwether, because Julie Newmar was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts and outside projects, plus she was washing her hair (in other words, she read the script, and, seeing that the opening scenes had an exploding shark, correctly deduced it would fail miserably and distanced herself from the project).