Dear Harriet Walter,
I wonder if it's odd that the other day, drying off after a shower, I found myself trying to count how many kinds of killing I could list.
And chanting their names over and over again.
"Suicide, homicide, femicide, genocide, infanticide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, sororicide, regicide, tyrannicide, deicide, senicide. Suicide, homicide, femicide, genocide..." and so on.
Best Friend just laughed at me when I told her about this. (Of course, I phrased it as a "do you ever find yourself doing such and such" question.)
Laurie R King once used the word "ecclesiasticide" in one of her books. It is not in the dictionary but it is just another reason I love that woman to bits.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
more of The Price
(written at a previous date)
Dear Harriet Walter,
So, as one might expect, my sister and I have been watching your miniseries The Price (1985) over the past week or two. It's been...interesting.
Like, it was all super slow moving for ages, all middle-aged men yakking and your character being beautifully kidnapped and goin' slightly loopy locked up in a dirty Irish basement, then suddenly the end of episode 4 comes and we're like OHAAAAAAUUUUUGH NO OHEMGEE TRAUMA ALERT TRAUMA ALERT TRAUMA TRAUMA TRAUMA ohhhhh the bastard's gonna use that knife oh girl
And tonight we watched episode 5. I AM SO TRAUMATIZED RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE FINGER AND THE ENDING I WOULD HAVE BEEN CRYING AND BLEEDING FROM THE EYEBALLS AT THE SAME TIME IF I WASN'T TOO STUNNED TO DO ANYTHING MORE THAN CHOKE WITH SPEECHLESS MISERY ON MY ANTI-TRAUMA HAM AND PICKLE.
Fuck.
My sister and I agree that there is not much to be done at this point for a proper ending except kill everyone. We'll probably watch the final episode, 6, tomorrow, but before we do I think I need to try and record parts of our traumatized consultation over ham/cheese/pickles. (Asterisks denote a skip to a different part of the conversation.)
Sister: Frank needs to die.
Me: Violently. With lots of blood and pain and slow suffering.
Sister: Who should kill him? Clare?
Me: Clare. With bits of the jigsaw puzzle.
Sister: But they've already got Harriet's shiv.
Me: All right, she'll kill him with Harriet's shiv and then stuff the jigsaw puzzle bits in the wounds.
*
Sister: Nobody cared that Andrew died!
Me: Yeah, nobody gave a damn about that! They're like oh yeah whatever it was an accident, let's talk about money.
Sister: Poor Andrew.
*
Me: Frank needs to die. Everybody should die.
Sister: Clare should just kill everyone.
Me: Including herself. And her mom.
Sister: And Geoff. And Margaret.
Me: And the police.
*
****(edit: further speculative bit removed - 7-21-11)
I expect that the actual end of the actual series will not be anywhere near as satisfying.
Dear Harriet Walter,
So, as one might expect, my sister and I have been watching your miniseries The Price (1985) over the past week or two. It's been...interesting.
Like, it was all super slow moving for ages, all middle-aged men yakking and your character being beautifully kidnapped and goin' slightly loopy locked up in a dirty Irish basement, then suddenly the end of episode 4 comes and we're like OHAAAAAAUUUUUGH NO OHEMGEE TRAUMA ALERT TRAUMA ALERT TRAUMA TRAUMA TRAUMA ohhhhh the bastard's gonna use that knife oh girl
And tonight we watched episode 5. I AM SO TRAUMATIZED RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE FINGER AND THE ENDING I WOULD HAVE BEEN CRYING AND BLEEDING FROM THE EYEBALLS AT THE SAME TIME IF I WASN'T TOO STUNNED TO DO ANYTHING MORE THAN CHOKE WITH SPEECHLESS MISERY ON MY ANTI-TRAUMA HAM AND PICKLE.
Fuck.
My sister and I agree that there is not much to be done at this point for a proper ending except kill everyone. We'll probably watch the final episode, 6, tomorrow, but before we do I think I need to try and record parts of our traumatized consultation over ham/cheese/pickles. (Asterisks denote a skip to a different part of the conversation.)
Sister: Frank needs to die.
Me: Violently. With lots of blood and pain and slow suffering.
Sister: Who should kill him? Clare?
Me: Clare. With bits of the jigsaw puzzle.
Sister: But they've already got Harriet's shiv.
Me: All right, she'll kill him with Harriet's shiv and then stuff the jigsaw puzzle bits in the wounds.
*
Sister: Nobody cared that Andrew died!
Me: Yeah, nobody gave a damn about that! They're like oh yeah whatever it was an accident, let's talk about money.
Sister: Poor Andrew.
*
Me: Frank needs to die. Everybody should die.
Sister: Clare should just kill everyone.
Me: Including herself. And her mom.
Sister: And Geoff. And Margaret.
Me: And the police.
*
****(edit: further speculative bit removed - 7-21-11)
I expect that the actual end of the actual series will not be anywhere near as satisfying.
 |
| kill, clare, kill! |
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Jeremevangelism
(written at a previous date)
Dear Harriet Walter,
Best Friend has recently seen "Sherlock". You know, the recent miniseries starrin' Benedict Cumberbatch.
She was rather obsessed with it.
She has, this evening, asked me if there were any good older Sherlock Holmes shows.
"Like, before Sherlock?" I said.
"Yeah, and before the bad one from 2009."
"Oh, well, there're the Jeremy Brett ones, those are the best. And the other famous ones are the movies from the '40s that had Basil Rathbone, but Jeremy is better."
"Cool. Can you show me one of those sometime?"
WIN.
She's gone home now and I don't think I'll see her over the weekend but that is ok, I will just decide which episode to show her.
Yay! I get to expose another person to the holy light of Jeremy!
[UPDATE about a week later: She and I have now watched "The Solitary Cyclist" and "The Dancing Men" together. I believe she's enjoying the show very much. winnnnnn.]
Dear Harriet Walter,
Best Friend has recently seen "Sherlock". You know, the recent miniseries starrin' Benedict Cumberbatch.
She was rather obsessed with it.
She has, this evening, asked me if there were any good older Sherlock Holmes shows.
"Like, before Sherlock?" I said.
"Yeah, and before the bad one from 2009."
"Oh, well, there're the Jeremy Brett ones, those are the best. And the other famous ones are the movies from the '40s that had Basil Rathbone, but Jeremy is better."
"Cool. Can you show me one of those sometime?"
WIN.
She's gone home now and I don't think I'll see her over the weekend but that is ok, I will just decide which episode to show her.
Yay! I get to expose another person to the holy light of Jeremy!
[UPDATE about a week later: She and I have now watched "The Solitary Cyclist" and "The Dancing Men" together. I believe she's enjoying the show very much. winnnnnn.]
 |
| nurrrrr. <3 |
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)
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)
Sunday, January 23, 2011
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.
Anyway so between this and Cleopatra I think I might have a tiny crush on Mr McDowall.
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.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Audible 2
(written at a previous date, and also being a continuation of the previous post)
Dear Harriet Walter,
I hate that Audible's selection of Wimsey stuff is almost entirely Ian Carmichael-centric. They've got, like, ONE Petherbridge-narrated book, and it's the effing Attenbury Emeralds. Come on.
My library has Strong Poison and Have His Carcase as done by Mr Peth on tape. I've listened to both of them. They're abridged. In Strong Poison, among other things Charles and Mary's romance is completely cut out, poor dears, much like in the miniseries, which makes the end of the book rather abrupt. (Something about Sylvia or Eiluned saying how Lord Peter's too much of a gentlemen to present himself to be thanked and Harriet will have to go to him herself, and Harriet is like, "Oh, I won't do that," and then silence and the listener goes "wait wut".)
The Have His Carcase audiobook is a bit anxiety-making when one can tell that lots of things are being left out but one can't remember quite what. (I've only read the book through once, as it's long and difficult and I've only been a Wimsey convert for about a year.) Though there's a very amusing bit, I remember, in the middle or near the end, when Lord Peter receives a prettified copy of the coded letter found on the body from the police, and he takes it to Harriet, and talks to her a little teeny bit about what sort of code he thinks it might be...and then he takes off to go see a man about a horse or something, and he comes back the next day and Harriet has cracked the fucking thing by herself. She sits on the floor and reads the decoded letter to Lord Peter. It's amazing.
I love Edward Petherbridge's rendition of Harriet. It's so soft and husky and just a little bit breathy. Deeper than his Peter-voice.
What was I going to say? Oh, yes. I haven't heard any audiobooks of Gaudy Night. I can't listen to Ian Carmichael be involved with Gaudy Night. He's just not romantically appealing in the least, and Gaudy Night is a special special thing to me. (I almost recall something about the Carmichael version having Joanna David involved? Was it dramatised? Sigh, my memory, she is barely civil to me.)
I haven't heard the Petherbridge version either, partly because it's gosh-derned difficult to get one's hands on and partly because apparently it lasts two hours.
Two hours.
Gaudy Night.
Gaudy Night in two hours.
I don't even....how? Not even the miniseries managed to cut it down that bad. I mean, what did they do to get it that short? What could be left? What is even the point?
I'll probably still find it sometime, though. What time I do devote to morbidity and literary masochism, to be sure.
I'm sorry this letter/post is so jerky and wandering. I have a cold. I think I mentioned that earlier. I need somebody to make me tea and everyone is either off grocery shopping, at work or useless at teamaking. Sigh.
Dear Harriet Walter,
I hate that Audible's selection of Wimsey stuff is almost entirely Ian Carmichael-centric. They've got, like, ONE Petherbridge-narrated book, and it's the effing Attenbury Emeralds. Come on.
My library has Strong Poison and Have His Carcase as done by Mr Peth on tape. I've listened to both of them. They're abridged. In Strong Poison, among other things Charles and Mary's romance is completely cut out, poor dears, much like in the miniseries, which makes the end of the book rather abrupt. (Something about Sylvia or Eiluned saying how Lord Peter's too much of a gentlemen to present himself to be thanked and Harriet will have to go to him herself, and Harriet is like, "Oh, I won't do that," and then silence and the listener goes "wait wut".)
The Have His Carcase audiobook is a bit anxiety-making when one can tell that lots of things are being left out but one can't remember quite what. (I've only read the book through once, as it's long and difficult and I've only been a Wimsey convert for about a year.) Though there's a very amusing bit, I remember, in the middle or near the end, when Lord Peter receives a prettified copy of the coded letter found on the body from the police, and he takes it to Harriet, and talks to her a little teeny bit about what sort of code he thinks it might be...and then he takes off to go see a man about a horse or something, and he comes back the next day and Harriet has cracked the fucking thing by herself. She sits on the floor and reads the decoded letter to Lord Peter. It's amazing.
I love Edward Petherbridge's rendition of Harriet. It's so soft and husky and just a little bit breathy. Deeper than his Peter-voice.
What was I going to say? Oh, yes. I haven't heard any audiobooks of Gaudy Night. I can't listen to Ian Carmichael be involved with Gaudy Night. He's just not romantically appealing in the least, and Gaudy Night is a special special thing to me. (I almost recall something about the Carmichael version having Joanna David involved? Was it dramatised? Sigh, my memory, she is barely civil to me.)
I haven't heard the Petherbridge version either, partly because it's gosh-derned difficult to get one's hands on and partly because apparently it lasts two hours.
Two hours.
Gaudy Night.
Gaudy Night in two hours.
I don't even....how? Not even the miniseries managed to cut it down that bad. I mean, what did they do to get it that short? What could be left? What is even the point?
I'll probably still find it sometime, though. What time I do devote to morbidity and literary masochism, to be sure.
I'm sorry this letter/post is so jerky and wandering. I have a cold. I think I mentioned that earlier. I need somebody to make me tea and everyone is either off grocery shopping, at work or useless at teamaking. Sigh.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Audible 1
(written at a previous date)
Dear Harriet Walter,
I was screwing around on audible.com - you know, the audiobook site - and wishing I had the spare money for a subscription when I looked you up in their search engine.
I was happy to see that you'd performed Hard Times by Dickens, because I'm reading it right now. Hate that yours is abridged, though. Bleh.
Then I saw that you'd also done Rebecca by that du Maurier woman. I think I'd heard something of the sort before, and wasn't too happy about it because I wanted to hear it but I'm also not super fond of the story. (I haven't read the book, but I've seen the Hitchcock movie and also the miniseries as had Jeremy Brett starring. You were totally in that miniseries, too! It was one of your earliest screen things! You were a maid with a Yorkshire accent and you got really upset and I have photographic proof that you and Jeremy Brett were once in the same room together, which just makes me insanely happy.)
Anyway so Audible has this thing where one can listen to excerpts from the work one is interested in, so I listened to the provided bit from Rebecca and it was a part early on in the story and I got to hear you play Mrs van Hopper. You. Mrs van Hopper. American accent. It was so incredibly weird I thought I was having a hallucination from, like, this cold I have. You totally did not sound like yourself! I am so making my sister listen to that excerpt when she gets home. I've texted her about it already.
(I told you that I have a picture of you as my cell phone background, right?)
Dear Harriet Walter,
I was screwing around on audible.com - you know, the audiobook site - and wishing I had the spare money for a subscription when I looked you up in their search engine.
I was happy to see that you'd performed Hard Times by Dickens, because I'm reading it right now. Hate that yours is abridged, though. Bleh.
Then I saw that you'd also done Rebecca by that du Maurier woman. I think I'd heard something of the sort before, and wasn't too happy about it because I wanted to hear it but I'm also not super fond of the story. (I haven't read the book, but I've seen the Hitchcock movie and also the miniseries as had Jeremy Brett starring. You were totally in that miniseries, too! It was one of your earliest screen things! You were a maid with a Yorkshire accent and you got really upset and I have photographic proof that you and Jeremy Brett were once in the same room together, which just makes me insanely happy.)
Anyway so Audible has this thing where one can listen to excerpts from the work one is interested in, so I listened to the provided bit from Rebecca and it was a part early on in the story and I got to hear you play Mrs van Hopper. You. Mrs van Hopper. American accent. It was so incredibly weird I thought I was having a hallucination from, like, this cold I have. You totally did not sound like yourself! I am so making my sister listen to that excerpt when she gets home. I've texted her about it already.
(I told you that I have a picture of you as my cell phone background, right?)
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