crush

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I'm a little bit weirded out by myself these past few days.

    It just feels a bit odd to be getting huge crushes on the exact same dudes that my mom had crushes on when she was my age.

    Like Peter O'Toole.

    Or Roddy McDowall.

    I mean, it's just...I don't know.

    I am glad that I do not have a crush on Clark Gable, because that would be in double mom-and-my-aunt territory.

    Why is it so much weirder this way than when my mom and I fall in love with the same dude simultaneously? Like Jeremy Brett. We watched his Sherlock Holmes stuff together (neither of us had seen it before) and both eventually mooned, though he's more her thing by now. I say eventually because the first episode we saw was The Speckled Band and we were understandably under the impression of his being, like, kinda totally weird at first.
    Or Fred Astaire - she knew about Fred Astaire rather longer than I did, bein' some 32 years older than myself, but I was the one who got us into the Fred and Ginger movies. (She'd never actually seen a full movie of his, just clips on tv things.) And now we both totally adore him. Admittedly, Fred is more of an "oh he is so dreamy and charming and gentlemanly and snazz-tastic" thing rather than a Peter O'Toole-ish "damn it if only I could just get my hands inside his shirt" thing, but there is still love and eyeballing involved. And none of it is the least bit weird-feeling.

    Sigh. There's also the part of crushin' on dudes before one's own time that involves knowing their futures, so to speak. One looks at young Peter O'Toole and marvels that he looks so different from his ancient, grayer, modern version. One admires Roddy McDowall's handsome self and curly locks in Cleopatra and tries to focus on the thought of "o! to involve my hand in those golden curls whilst he speaks cunning political treasonings like a sexy thing!" and ignore the little curdle in the back of one's skull which murmurs, "yes, and also he died of cancer when I was six." I suppose my mother must know the feeling. Clark Gable, for example, died just over a month after she was born.

(sexy things that are dead are not as sexy)

The Tempest

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    So yesterday my sister and I were over at my best friend's house. Best Friend has recently been cast in a high school production of The Tempest. She's playing Ariel, which is awesome, I am envious.

    Anyway BF was supposed to read the play through cover-to-cover. Instead, she and her sister had me and my sister over to hang out the whole afternoon after church.

    BF told me about the supposed-to-read-the-play thing. She didn't sound like she really wanted to just then. More fun things to do and so on.

    I was like, "well, we could watch a movie of it instead!"

    And that is exactly what we did.

    We watched the one from 1960 that had Maurice Evans and Richard Burton and Roddy McDowall. It was super cheap and fruity and ridiculous. Those costumes, oh my goodness. (It was actually the first time I'd ever seen any version of The Tempest. I haven't read it, either. Hahaha oh I feel bad.)

    Anyway Richard Burton with webbed hands and webby claw-feet was pretty amazing but what I really want to say is that Roddy McDowall was amaaaazing amazing. I couldn't take my eyes off his - can one really call it a costume when it is mostly paint and sparkles and things rather than clothing? I expect one can. In any case I adored his insane sparkly blue/white almost-nude-but-for-the-discreet-matching-fairy-underpants getup and his super nifty fin/spine things on his head and back. He made a fantastic sprite. Moved and spoke wonderfully. Some of his expressions and hand-actions were a little gigglesome, but it was the sixties after all.

    Best Friend now wants to take inspiration from Roddy-Ariel's colors and sparkliness. I have promised to aid and abet her, especially if helping involves helping her cut her hair, dye it white, add blue streaks and spike it to high heaven. I adore hair dyeing and showering people with glitter and sparkles.

How DO the spikes stay on? Is there some discreet Spandex thing going on that I'm not seeing?

I could take pictures of this forever.

This, to deviate from the theme, is Ferdinand.

Ferdinand has absolutely no pants on. His Ken-doll loins are modestly covered, and he wears calf-length boots, but not a shred of pants as far as the eye can discern. Not a thread, not a smidgen. He is Ferdinand the Trouserless. Presumably he enjoys drafts and breezes upon his manly leg hairs and so on.

             


    Anyway so between this and Cleopatra I think I might have a tiny crush on Mr McDowall.