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February 2008 Archive 24 February - Global Warming Report  Here's this year's installment of our long-term but tragically underfunded climate study - the reporting of the first appearance of crocuses in the Janus Museum gardens. Last year, the crocuses appeared on March 3rd. What are the implications as applied to global warming? The Museum's team of climate scientists say that they're concerned and need more funding. link home 24 February - Asterix at Last  Christian Clavier (left) as Astérix and Gérard Depardieu (center) as Obélix in Astérix & Obélix contre César I've been waiting to see Astérix & Obélix contre César, the first live action Astérix movie, since I heard it was coming out in 1999. Tragically, there was no American release in theaters or on DVD. But I finally scored a Korean DVD (with English subtitles) - see, this is the upside of globalization - and we watched it the other evening. Was it worth the wait? Oui, very oui. Gérard Depardieu is wonderful as Obélix, the gigantic menhir-mover - very different from his roles as Cyrano, Marin Marais, Jean de Florette, or Martin Guerre. The English language version (not included on my disc) has Terry Jones doing the voice-over; he also wrote the English script. Christian Clavier was a fine Astérix - had seen him previously as Napoleon in a miniseries. The special effects when he drinks the druid Getafix's magic potion are very fine, also the CG Roman legionaries who go flying in a very amusing way when clobbered by the Gauls. I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for an NTSC-capable DVD of the sequel, Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002). Oh! There's a new film - Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques! I would move menhirs to see it. link home 24 February - Feline Cardiovascular Effect University of Minnesota researchers have found that cat owners are thirty to forty percent less likely to die of heart attacks or strokes than cat-deprived persons - read about it here. Dog owners do not enjoy the same benefit. See, this dovetails nicely with my own research into the benefits of therapeutic catwalking - the National Institutes of Health really ought to give me a generous grant to fully explore this promising work. The next time my gout kicks up, I'm going to try strapping Max to my foot to see if there are any rheumatologic benefits from topically-applied cat therapy. I'll get a Nobel Prize yet, just you wait. link home 23 February - Bottled Monsters  Horse in a Gas Mask, WWI - from A Repository for Bottled Monsters Friend of the Museum Richard Thompson has alerted me to a fascinating new blog, A Repository for Bottled Monsters, the unofficial blog of the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Blogger Mike Rhode is an archivist at that institution, located on the campus of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Once known as the Army Medical Museum, it was originally to be found in an Edward Gorey-esque gothic edifice on the Mall where the Hirshhorn Museum is today. As a kid I clamored to be taken there, and would have nightmares for weeks afterwards. The emblematic museum display for Washington area children of my generation was the Army Medical Museum's elephantiasis leg, enticingly exhibited in a big jar of yellowish fluid, closely followed in popularity by the bottled conjoined twin babies. I also liked the lurid color photographs of accident vicims - I can still summon up the snap of the chap who walked into whirling helicopter rotors. I went to the Museum's Walter Reed location once, but, sadly, had no nightmares afterwards. Oh! the elephantiasis leg is pictured on the Museum's web site. Looks they they've changed the fluid since my young day. link home 22 February - Grateful Thanks Many thanks to the anonymous but kind Friend of the Museum for his or her generous contribution to the Museum's Rare Book Room Bookcase, Data Recovery & Furnace Fund. If the donor will contact me at refdesk at janusmuseum dot org, I'll send a genuine Janus Museum fridge magnet, sure to increase in value, with our thanks. The Janus Museum is an unintentionally not-for-profit institution, and depends on generous contributions and sales from the Janus Museum museum shop to further its unspecified but fairly legitimate activities. link home 22 February - After the Fox Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1818. In Canada, his dog Blucher befriended a fox. The fox bit the duke, who died of hydrophobia on August 28, 1819. Blucher: He seemed nice. How was I to supposed to know he was all bitey and stuff? How do I feel? Awful, just awful. How would you feel? I'm supposed to be his best friend - kind of ironic, when you think about it. Need a doggy?The Duchess of Richmond gave the famous ball on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, familiar to readers of Vanity Fair and also dramatized in Waterloo. link home 22 February - Ancient Early Adopter  The heroic archer Arjuna (Pradeep Kumar) demonstrates ancient Vedic televison to Sakuni (the great Jeevan, who played the gangster Robert in Amar Akbar Anthony) and some of the other Kauravas in this scene from Babubhai Mistry's wonderful 1965 movie adaptation of Mahabharat, which is one of our favorites around here. The fabulous song is Meri Chun Chun - sounds like Asha Bhonsle may be the playback artiste. Also available via Youtube is the Bhagavad Gita segment of the movie - very powerful. And here's an excellent essay by Philip Lutgendorf on the movie. Must install curtains on my own post-Vedic TV. link home 17 February - Scoundrel in the Woods; Hiatus Warning  A catwalk interrupted - moments later, the scoundrel Peake shows up and scares away poor Natasha - Leroy and I trudge home without her. And it's about to rain. I've received the usual dread warning from our hosting service that the site will probably exceed our miserable bandwidth allowance and will be taken off the air for the rest of the month. If it happens, see yez in March. link home 16 February - Catch as Catcam Can Have stopped wearing the damn boot, so in the interest of regaining lost mobility, did a brief but strenuous Catcam-equipped catwalk with Leroy and Natasha, and featuring a brief cameo by Peake. Some of the action takes place on the good old Excellent Climbing Tree. For contractual reasons, as usual, Leroy and Natasha use their noms de video. The soundtrack is Essence of Old Virginny, played by Joe Ayers, from the wonderful album Minstrel Banjo Style. It's also available as a download. Oh, just one more - Natasha lays an ambush for poor Nutmeg and springs! No carnage ensues. Nothing much ensues, in fact. link home 16 February - Use of Airship Imagery in Baroque Opera  Danielle de Niese in Handel's Giulio Cesare Somehow, I don't think this is going to be one of those long-term ongoing cinema studies here, like our studies of the spit-take, or the Dragon Rapide, or even cinematic llamas. But I have to say that I was charmed to see a flotilla of airships arrive from stage right while watching Danielle de Niese as Cleopatra doing a jaunty hornpipe. It occurs during the aria Da Tempeste Il Legno Infranto ("The ship, broken by storms") in the DVD of the 2005 David McVicar - William Christie production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Glyndebourne Festival. The historically informed reader, if any, may realize that airships were not actually deployed by the Roman legions during Caesar's time. But this production is set in the late 19th century, with the Romans as red-coated Brits. It works quite nicely, and there's the added benefit of the use of historically-informed haberdashery:  Danielle de Niese (center) and Sarah Connolly as Cesare in Handel's Giulio Cesare Fezzes and pith helmets! Baroque opera can be a bit of a yawn, but what with the fezzes and pith helmets and airships, and above all, by Danielle de Niese's athletic performance, it was hugely enjoyable. Here's an excerpt of the big airship number: ... And here's the whole song (streaming MP3). The laughter at around two minutes into the piece is the audience reaction to the airships' appearance. It's a far cry from the way the original cast would have performed it, back in 1724 - the first Cleopatra, the celebrated soprano Cuzzoni, would have just planted herself in the center of the stage and howled, and there wouldn't have been any airships at all. Here's a more traditional staging, with Valerie Masterson as Cleopatra: And another, with Beverly Sills. We've seen Danielle de Niese before, as Hébé in the fabulous William Christie production of Rameau's Les Indes Galantes. She's swell - I think I'd pay money to watch her sing the phonebook. Also excellent in Giulio Cesare is Sarah Connolly as Cesare and Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo. Oh, let's have just one more bit - the glorious finale, Ritorni omai nel nostro core - "Sweet joy and peace return to our hearts". link home 10 February - A Casualty of Waterloo; a Couple of Tunes Not long after I posted Bob's update to my review of the film epic Waterloo, I recalled a Waterloo reference in The Best of Myles, that wonderful collection of newspaper pieces written by Myles na Gopaleen, the pen name of the novelist Flann O'Brien, which was the pen name of Brian O'Nolan. Myles overhears "a pretty golden little baggage" talking to her boyfriend: "D'you know, Godfrey, only last night I learnt many interesting things about my family. D'you know that my great-grandfather was killed at Waterloo?"There's a good article on Flann and his novels by John Updike in this week's New Yorker, by the way. Oh! Updike mentions that there's a new collection of Flann's novels in the Everyman's Library series - this would certainly be a very wise investment to make. I've mentioned Flann a couple of times here, I seem to recall. I'm still occasionally digitizing bits from my old LPs. Here's an odd tune from an album by Ashley Hutchings - Rattlebone & Plowjack, a collection of English molly dances - a form of morris dancing, I think. It's the Much Wenlock dance. Oh, just one more - how many tunes for harpsichord and spoons have you ever heard? Here's one, from the album Danses et Contradanses de la Nouvelle France. Both albums are long out of print; both tunes are in streaming MP3 format. Great stuff, man. link home 9 February - Condensed Cream of Porch-Setting; Our Thanks; Updates Here's a condensation of several hours of Historic Cottage porch-setting yesterday. Leroy does his impression of a cast iron door stop for much of the video, as Natasha and Nutmeg waft about him. For the usual contractual reasons, Leroy and Natasha use their noms de video. The superb music is Poor Boy Long Way from Home by John Fahey, from his album The Legend of Blind Joe Death (also available as an MP3 download). Many thanks to the anonymous Friend of the Museum who made a generous contribution to the Janus Museum Rare Book Room Bookcase, Data Recovery and Furnace Fund. Please reveal yourself to me at refdesk at janusmuseum dot org so I can send you a genuine Janus Museum fridge magnet as a small token of our gratitude. Update - The Llama in Cinema Continuing our survey of the llama (Lama glama) in world cinema, I submit a llama sighting in I'm Not There, the odd Bob Dylan biopic. In the film, the well-known pop singer is portrayed in different periods of his career by different actors, including Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw. One segment features an aging Billy the Kid as the Dylan avatar, played by Richard Gere, in a surreal Wild West type town, inhabited chiefly by mimes and Ren Faire rejects. At one point, an ostrich is to be seen walking about. A minute later, a giraffe is glimpsed in the background. At this point, I mutter to Martha Norbeck-Wallingford, our director of planned giving, "There will be a llama before long." Two minutes later, during the big crowd scene - there's a llama, looking bored. I would say that featuring a llama made sense in the context of the film, but it didn't. How did I know that there would be a llama? I can only say that it was that sort of film - the sort of film with ostriches, giraffes, llamas, and Richard Gere. A screencap of the big llama scene will have to wait for the film's release on DVD. Other Cinematic Llama Sightings: Byron The Golden Coach Berserk! Mot de Cambronne Update Friend of the Museum Bob Lyon - he of the tragic death scene in George Washington II - commenting on the coverage of Waterloo below, reminds me that his family once lived in Belgium, and not far from the battlefield. Bob says that a Waterloo tourist attraction used to show a brief film on the Hundred Days and the battle. Bob goes on: So, at the end, we see the Old Guard drawn up in square, the British send out an officer to demand surrender. I must say at this point that the movie was in French, but subtitled in Flemish, English, and German, so three lines of subtitles at the bottom of the screen. "Brave Frenchmen, you have done all that soldiers can do, surrender and save your lives!" Cambronne waves his sword and yells, in French, "Merde!" and the subtitles all translate this as "The Guard dies, but never surrenders!"Bob also recalls, fondly, the frites with mayonnaise available in Waterloo. link home 8 February - Waterloo  The Charge of the Scots Greys, with Llama, from Waterloo (1970) Waterloo (1970), as directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, was one of the Red Army's greatest battles - and much more glorious than the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. Bondarchuk used thousands of Soviet soldiers to portray the French, British and Prussians, and, presumably, the Belgians, Dutch, and the German Legion. The battle scenes, especially the shots of the French cavalry flowing around the British squares, are quite amazing. Rod Steiger chews the scenery pretty thoroughly as Bonaparte and Christopher Plummer, as Wellington, gets to trot out most of the Iron Duke's well-known quotes: I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.And also his exchange with Uxbridge (Terence Alexander): Uxbridge: By God, Sir. I've lost my leg.But my favorite Wellington quote wasn't used, for some reason - "It was a damned large rat!" But Yevgeni Samojlov as Cambronne gets to utter the true mot de Cambronne at the last stand of the Old Guard.  Lots of wacky headgear in this movie, too. As Wellington said, "I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life." link home 6 February - Haberdashery News  Frequently noted here is the odd and not very interesting fact that Gus Norbeck, the Janus Museum's odd and not very interesting maintenance man, is fond of hats. Here's the latest addition to the collection, a fine black fez, available from Al Sundus ("Where Modesty is Beautiful"). It would look very nice with some sort of insignia on the front, possibly one like this. link home 6 February - Fighting the Powers of Darkness with Kittens  I wasn't aware that cats could be used to exorcise demons - they aren't mentioned at all in these handy exorcism instructions, and cats used to be regarded as familiars - partners - of witches in the old days. But the latest cat-related ex voto on offer on eBay demonstrates that kittens can be efficacious in the removal of unclean spirits. Friend of the Museum Pedro Turina, our pro bono Spanish translator, has kindly put the inscription into English: Some gross devils entered my storage place and ate all the sweets and marmelades, made a mess and left everything smelling of sulfur. Sprinkling blessed water or having crosses in the room had no effect. Until my sister gave me a kitten as a present and, as everybody knows, since devils are scared of cats thanks to Our Lady of St. John, they never came back.Maybe the devils are afraid of catching Bartonella henselae infection - Cat Scratch Disease - can be quite nasty. Previous cat-related ex votos featured here: Cat Scratch Fever Miracle Miracle of the Cat Husband The Miracle of the Embarrassed Cats Tragic Love Canción de los Gatos San Pascual's Cat Aunt Honorata's Cats The Perfect Cat Storm Cat Pi Milagro Greedy-guts Miracle Cat link home 3 February - That Catwalk Weekend  Nice and warmish around here this weekend, so a course of catwalks seemed like a good idea. At least, that's what Natasha, Leroy and Nutmeg thought. That's Leroy and Natasha striking out down the Forest Preserve path, above. Of course, it wouldn't be much of a catwalk without there was a good blood-curdling ambush:  Natasha gets the drop on Nutmeg, who reacts in an obligingly startled way. But these are formal ambushes, like the Indian practice of counting coup, and no one gets hurt. Then down to the creek for a good slurp of fetid creek water, and homeward bound for the traditional snack and nap. Yesterday we had the annual Groundhog Day catwalk: Watch for the intense slo-mo ambush scene. It had occurred to me that I hadn't fired up the good old Catcam rig for a long time. I was pretty awkward with it, what with the lack of practice and also the damn boot. So it's not Oscar quality. Golden Globe quality, but not Oscar quality. link home 1 February - Tragic Accident Update It's been, what - about four years since I had to endure a cast for my broken foot? You know, the broken foot I suffered in my tragic accident. Regular readers, if any, may recall that three weeks ago I went to my health care provider, the AAAA Super-Valu Wellness Mart, fully expecting to have the cast off and leave skipping and capering like a young goat. The capers turned to ashes in my mouth when the doctor looked at the new x-rays and said that the foot wasn't quite healed - needed the cast again for another three, no make it four weeks. I got him down to three weeks again through strenuous whining, and I hobbled out in a cast and a funk. So it's been three weeks since that black day, and I went in again to have the cast off. I tried to make a run for it after the cast came off, but they cornered me and sent me to the x-ray area. Again, the doctor said that it's not quite healed - needs the cast again. I refused - said I'd prefer amputation at this point. He said - well, you can have the boot, then. It's not as good therapeutically as the cast, and it would cost me forty bucks. Whatever, I said - give me the boot. So I got it:  It's a ProStep™ Walker, by the way, and it appears to descend from the Spanish Boot from the good old Inquisition days. My next window of release is in another three damn weeks. Really, there was nothing for it but to go to China Bistro, order a plate of Mama's Special Dumplings, and eat them up, every one. Yes, I am taking calcium tablets. Lots of them. link home |
