When The Song On Side B Is Better

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A Landscape of Witches

Growing up, I remember that witches were a regular part of the landscape of story telling.  Whether it be the Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Cinderella, tales from the Brothers Grimm, the old bitch in black was the common enemy that everyone could agree needed to die.  Well, all with maybe the exception of Samantha from Bewitched, or Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle...   And certainly, Glenda, the good witch from the north or south was okay.

For some reason as I grew older the witch seemed to fade from the landscape though.  No longer common fodder for story telling.  I remember the Witches of Eastwick, but it was sort of a not great movie; maybe the book was better.  I guess I shouldn't forget Harry Potter, but alas Harry never really struck me as a witch, more a sorcerer, though yeah, they had wands and flying brooms and maybe even pointy hats, so I guess you can't say they totally faded.  There was also a series of novels Anne Rice wrote about witches in N'Orleans.  I do remember reading a couple of them, and being very entertained.  Still, ...

Then, some twenty five or thirty years ago, I believe I was sitting in the Neptune theatre when a preview for The Blair Witch Project came on, and it looked absolutely fantastic.  Oooh!  Finally a black evil scary bitchy witch that was going to make the hair on the nape of your neck stand up and salute!  Alas, though some brilliant marketer had edited, whittled, the movie down to 60 seconds of thrilling promise in a preview, the other 89 or so minutes of the movie turned out to be inane and downright junk.  That marketer turned that piece of junk into a big hit, but I went home totally bored and deflated.

I can't say that in the 25 or 30 years since, that other than maybe Harry, that I've even noticed the shadow of a witch, not even on the remote horizon.  Maybe I forgot about them.  Stopped noticing.

All of which brings me to my 72nd birthday, and receiving a text from my nephew offering to send me money as a birthday present if I'd spend it to go see the movie Weapons.   I told him I didn't need the money but I'd go to see the movie and accept the recommendation as a gift regardless.  Well, lo and behold, it turned out to be a witchy movie.   I won't say anything else...

Ah, Vacation Of The Mind

Over my many years I've developed an affinity for the vacation novel. To me, they take me places without giving me jet lag, or a sore butt from having to sit in a sardine can. They also usually provide adventure that few of my real-life vacations have ever had the pleasure of providing me.   A few vacation novels that I've loved, that pop into mind are Ship of Fools, Joyland, The Moonspinners, The Gabriel Hounds,...

This summer I've had the pleasure of reading two new ones; well, one new, one old; well, both old.

A couple months ago I turned on the movie Black Narcissus for probably the sixth or seventh time in my life, and this time I finally finished it.  It had always struck me as a rather odd movie, but finishing it made me realize it was a rather good movie as well. The crazy nun who goes off the deep end (literally though fictionally as well, though maybe not fictionally...) qualified as quite fantastic.  As is my wont, I had to research the movie a little after I finished it and learned that the story was from a novel written by a lady with the fabulous name of Rumer Godden; she had been inspired to write the story from having discovered some derelict tombstone with a inscription to a lady that shared the same name as the crazy nun.   I learned she had written a couple of other novels, and reading a snippet from one of them, The Greengage Summer,  I found out that the Greengage is a type of green plum grown in France that are apparently quite delicious.  In France they are called Reine Claud;  Reine Claud in English is Queen Claud, but I'm not sure if the plural should be Queens Claud or Queen Clauds; presumably the former, but perhaps that conundrum caused the English to give it a different name entirely.  My guess is its Misters Smith and not Mister Smiths, and so it should be Queens Claud; meme, en francais, Reines Claud?  Oh, if only there was a rain cloud...  As I quickly scanned the book just now for something else, I notice they say Reines Claudes; Misters Smiths?  Rain clouds, please.

Well, having learned over the years that plums are one of the great delights of existence, I was immediately envious, perhaps hungry, as I'd never had the pleasure of tasting the green plum; alas, I presumably never will,  but nevertheless, I decided this novel needed to be read.   I found on Amazon that the hardback copy was actually a dollar or two cheaper than the paperback, so I opted for the savings.  The book that arrived was physically a little strange.   There were two strange things about it; its size in height and width which were about three fifths the normal height and width of hardback books was one; the other was the fact that it came with a built-in ribbon bookmark attached to its spine.  Other than a bible or perhaps an Encyclopedia Brittanica, I can't think of any book I've seen that came with a ribbon bookmark.  The size of the book made me think it was made for delicate, presumably small hands.   As the story turned out to be about teenage girls and younger on a vacation along the Marne, I could see how the target audience might be teenage girls and younger, ergo the delicate size was probably some marketer's idea of something that might appeal to young girls in a bookshop, and that marketer probably was right. 

Like a little girl I suppose, I was charmed by The Greengage Summer.  Well, I was charmed by a pleasant little hotel called Les Oeillets with friendly and not so friendly accommodations smack dab in the middle of a sunny corner of France neighboring the Marne river; I forget the name of the village, but I looked for it on a map and couldn't find it.   There was a greengage orchard neighboring the Hotel des Oeillets, and the fruit were ripe, falling from the trees.  If you wanted to eat one, you just plucked it off the tree, and when you were done with it, you could have another one if you liked.  I was charmed by a British family of children, four girls, one little boy, temporarily orphaned in the hotel when their mother gets sick.   They were mostly nice people.  The children to some degree all grow up a little over the course of a hot August.   There was a charming scoundrel, and well, Mademoiselle Zizi.  How in the world could you not like a novel with a character named Zizi.  (More to come...).   They have a mild and intriguing adventure, but its mostly about learning how to understand other people, which is rather a good lesson to learn I suppose...   Oh and it was quite relaxing.   Indeed, I just felt like I was a traveller myself there,  perhaps at one of the corner tables in the restaurant, hiding behind a newspaper perhaps, but watching the events play out, smiling at the play.

Ah well, it was only 200 pages long and small pages matching the book size, so, well, it was over all too soon.  Like all vacations, an end follows a beginning and a middle.

Turn the page...  Check out what's on Project Gutenberg...  My gosh!  They have Hemingway and Fiesta.  A fiesta vacation!

A long time ago I was in college and was assigned Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (aka:  Fiesta), and though I could remember a thing or two about it, it had otherwise vaporized in my memory.  I'm sure I probably only scanned it, and what I could remember, I think, are things that came up in class.  I remembered that Jake had had something happen to him in WWI that made him impotent.  I sort of remembered Lady Ashley and Robert Cohn.  Of course you remember that they go to Pamplona and there's the running of the bulls, but...  Now that I think about it, I think I was aware of the fishing too, but...   For a couple of years it has been on my list of books I should revisit, and bam, seeing it on Project G as I closed the cover on Greengage Summer, I couldn't help but think,  Here I am already in France, it won't hurt to take a side trip to Spain...  The thing about Fiesta is it starts in France so it wasn't a giant leap...

Fiesta isn't a book about children.  I mentioned it to my sister saying it was a book about adults.  But thinking about it, it's sort of a book about adults acting like children.  I guess that's something a vacation allows you do.  They do a lot of drinking.  Drinking isn't for kids, but then again,  sort of turns them into kids.  Well, idiots.  Is there a difference?

There are actually two vacations in Fiesta.  It starts in Paris, and though Paris may be a fine vacation spot, and probably 90% of the characters were little more than tourists there, Jake was actually employed there, so I don't consider that third of the novel a vacation, though again, I suppose as a tourist, it may've been a vacation for me...   The first one of course was Pamplona.   Fishing friends food wine and bulls.   The second was after Pamplona, when the friends all go their own way,  and Jake takes a solitary little vacation on his own to some small beach retreat on the coast of Spain, where he swims and pretty much keeps to himself.  I'm not sure he speaks a word to anyone while he's there, but I may be wrong;  I finished it a month ago and elements are already vaporizing...   Nevertheless it was ever so much calmer than Pamplona; a moment of silent reflection.   I couldn't remember the second vacation from my first reading of the novel 52 years ago, but I may not've got that far back then...   Regardless, it was a nice way to finish my two to three month trip to Europe; just a few days of rest before heading home.    There was a final trip to Madrid, but that was just like me going there to catch the flight back.  Well not exactly;  it's just that it wasn't a vacation trip; it was a chore trip.

It is coincidental that The Sun Also Rises also had a character named Zizi.  Zizi in Fiesta is not a French Mademoiselle though; rather a Greek painter.   He only makes a brief appearance...  Still this little coincidence seemed to tie these two vacations together for me quite neatly.

Who Was That Guy?

For some reason I couldn't overlook a movie called All Neat With Black Stockings. It was some British movie made a long time ago, back in 1968 when I was a pimply teenager; yes, a long time ago. I'm not sure it ever reached any of my local theatres back then; I definitely don't remember it and I think I would have as it was rather unique and crazy, though, yeah, it was a long time ago, so who's to say for sure?

I watched it last night, finished it this morning. The 'star', Ginger, so named presumably because of his red hair, was a plonker, and though you can find a definition for a plonker via google, the one I found doesn't quite match the one provided by the plonker in this movie when he described himself. According to him, it's a guy who shares a muffin with his mates. The muffin being a bird, or well, more formally, a girl. The girls in this movie were quite easily seduced by this plonker, and in most cases didn't seem to object to being shared. If you're wondering, it wasn't some threeway scenario, more a case of, well I'm done with her, so you can have a go.... Of course Ginger ultimately had to meet some muffin (a quite lovely Susan George) that would cause our hero to question his plonking ways. Well, (I might be spoiling here...), ultimately she 'accidentally' gets plonked, as the mate that plonks her thinks it's all the same as usual and tells her so, and she falls for it only to, well, start crying, be pregnant, and cause Ginger to decide it was his fault so he's got to marry her, because he really loves her, sort of... They go on a honeymoon and some photographs of the excursion make the final cut that are quite artistic. There were other artistic elements scattered throughout... In the end though, Ginger really can't quite seem to change his ways, and it ends with him being cheeky with some muffin waitress in a lunchroom. The waitress smiles at him when she calls him cheeky.

Besides Susan George, I sort of recognised one other actor, one "Harry Towb", but I can't say what I know him from. There was a cast of twenty or thirty quirky characters, all of them fantastic in there own way, and I was so impressed with the guy playing Ginger, (Victor Henry), that I wondered why I'd never seen him in anything. I guessed maybe he was more of a stage actor, and indeed he was, but it turned out that in 1972 he was hit by a car and spent about 13 years in a coma before he died. Rather a sad end, I'd say. Wikipedia indicates there were three other movies he appeared in. I might need to search for them... One is The Sorcerers starring Boris Karloff. Another, Privilege has him listed low in the credits so he may not've been on screen long enough, but it's described as a musical science fiction comedy drama starring Paul Jones, the singer from Manfred Mann, so may be worth pursuing on its own.

The Unfortunate News About Quippled

On some forgotten date in the 20 aughts I was trying to log into this blog and had some problem whereupon I needed to create a new identity - couldn't use my Quantom Qurkington one... I had recently had neck surgery for a ruptured disk, and for the first time in my life I felt somewhat crippled. I thought maybe life was laughing at me and it was supposed to be funny, so I decided to marry the words 'quip', for a humorous observation, with 'crippled', which was my concurrent state of body, and use the portmanteau 'quippled' as my new moniker. My well thought out, maybe for 10 or 15 seconds, decision might be considered an assertion that I was going to laugh at whatever crap got thrown my way, or well, maybe I'm misremembering, but nevertheless that's pretty much the birth story for quippled. Just in case anybody ever asks.

Unfortunately, on this date, December 18, 2021, quippled has disappeared magically from the planet. Not only has he disappeared but most evidence that he ever was on this planet has disappeared as well. The only thing that remains is his work. The universe and blogspot have decided it should show my former moniker, humble, Quantom Q., as the author of all of quippled's posts. I'm not sure if that's fair, it certainly isn't honest, and at minimum needs to be recognized as a mistake. I'll blame the robot for the mistake so maybe I won't need to be held culpable...

It was an innocent mistake. I was looking at some of quippled's posts, noticed a typo, and decided I should fix it. The problem of course was that I hadn't logged in for years and years. Blogspot had mutated into some appendage of Google, and though it appears I may've been able to log in using my google account, I wasn't sure. I had different notes on how to login, and well, long story short, ended up clicking 'forgot password' and got a link sent to my google account (if only I'd used that first...). The problem arose when I finally did log in and the robot that greeted me mistook me for Quantom Q., or recognized me as him. A persona that I have not been for probably 15 years, and now, suddenly, wham!, QQ replaces q. It wasn't like the robot said, "Hello Mr Q., it's been a long time..." I wasn't even aware of the mistake until I refreshed one of quippled's posts and saw QQ listed as the author. I checked another, and another, and well, all of of quippled's posts were now being shown as authored by Quantom Q. Blast the robot for making such a stupid mistake, but I'm not sure there's anything that can be done, other than memorializing the fact that another earthly mistake has been made. I, now forever or until whenever, as Quantom Qurkington attest that the wondrous works for which I am being credited, were in fact the product of a poster named quippled. He should not so easily be forgotten.

The Thief of My Childhood

This in general is a movie with a lot of great banter.  When Abu meets his djinn and asks for his 2nd wish, well, I wish I had the energy to copy it all here; but this I couldn't pass up:

Djinn:  And the tongue of a liar!  But he who would steal the all seeing eye from the very brow of the goddess must be neither a thief or a braggart but a hero!

The djinn did a very good job of delivering this line.  Oh, I should say, the movie is The (wonderful) Thief of Baghdad. 

The Gleam In The Eye

In the gleam of an eye,

You think you espy,

A reflection of sky,

Or perhaps the lamp on the table.

But from time to time

I think you might find,

The sparkle that lies in the depth of the eye,

Is something transcendent;

A thought or a love;

A moment of this;

A thought made of this....

Of course it's so hard to tell;

Because then this is gone,

And all that you're left is the wonder:

What was that light there reflecting?