hrmm

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Have just been reading the livejournal pages of people who are friends with somebody on lj who I stalk. Am now looking at my own, new little blog here and seeing it as weird.

    Not so much the content (hah) as the format, though. I write letters/posts to you mainly because my mom told me several times over the course of last year that I should totally write letters to you, when I'd be enthusing and grinning and wiggling over how awesome you were and giggle-squealing about how much I loved you and so on.

    This is just how it worked out. I'm pretty sure she meant paper-and-ink-and-expensive-postage letters or something. The woman has strange ideas.

    (She told me a few times that I should write to David Burke back when she and I were on our big Sherlock Holmes kick. Love that man. Never did anything about it.)

    I've been meaning to write more lately anyway, so it's a nice little arrangement. (I keep meaning to write fiction, but "creative nonfiction" aka blather keeps getting produced instead. Woe.)

    Anyway the question that I raised to myself today was, how long am I going to be able to slip in enough Harriet-centric or Harriet-related posts to justify the way the blog is presented?

    (I know, it's rather early days to wonder that, but this tiny little nook of the internet is the only potentially long-term thing I feel like I have any real control over and so I muse and brood and fuss over it.)

    Any by Jove, Dame Harriet, but the movies and TV shows you've been in are fearfully obscure. I've gotten my hands on the easy ones already, but soon I will have to start blind-buying things off Amazon and irritating my family by surreptitiously stuffing things into the Netflix queue because they have HW bit-parts. (And then not always watching them immediately.)

    At some point I'll have to go back over things I've already seen but saw pre-blog and write second impressions, I suppose. I'll make my sister watch Macbeth, huurhurhurculture. Although I'd want to watch it again anyway after your book, which I for some reason have not finished. (It it sitting squashed underneath I, Claudius and a collection of Lovecraft.)

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.

Macbeth

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    My mom asked the room in general today what the tiny little package as came in the mail was. My sister asked where said package had come from, and my mom said she believed it came from the UK.

    Naturally, the words "package" and "UK" make a combination which tends to seize me by the ears, being as it is that they are two of my favorite things and the best packages I ever get always come from the UK.

    Sure enough, the tiny little package turned out to be a copy of your book on Macbeth! I knew it wasn't going to be a huge book but great Scott this thing is tiny, tiny and delicate and holding it makes me feel like a zombie gorilla manhandling a butterfly. Fantastic picture of you on the cover, too.

    I believe I shall begin reading it now. I ought to be working on my prelab report for class tomorrow but I think I'll only do that once I've eaten. (said she, waiting for her mother to get done cooking like an extremely useless lump which cannot feed its own damn self)

    (PS, the author bio thing in the front flap claims that you have "contributed several essays and articles to other drama publications" and I just want you to know that it causes me near-physical pain that I don't know how to get my hands on these essays and articles in other drama publications)