Look At Him

[poliphilo]

We watched a DVD of Peter Sellers' home movies last night. They're like anybody else's home movies- look at my car, look at my kids, look at me holding the cat- except that they feature Princess Margaret.

Sellers once went on a trip to Disneyland with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. Far out, man!

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

What a shame he was not A Nice Man!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's odd, I know all this bad stuff about his life, but it doesn't stop me loving him.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I'd have loved to meet Princess Margaret...

Bring out the gin!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

She was shown brewing tea in the holiday chalet.

I'm surprised she knew how.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

"How many tea-bags to a bottle of gin, Mr. Sellers?"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It was kinda touching. There they were- Sellers and Brit and Margaret and Snowden in their big chunky sweaters- all pretending to be ordinary.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Oh, they're all just like you and me, y'know... (Only not quite!)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Money can't buy you love..."

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I know... I can cook, I've got my own flat, I look perfectly presentable and I have more money than I know what to do with (oddly enough...), and YET I can't get a date! :-S

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Did you ever answer or place an ad?

I'm not being flip. I placed an ad in the Manchester Evening News 15 years ago- and landed Ailz.

Did you really?

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

I cannot believe anyone could get so lucky! Maybe there is a God afterall?

Re: Did you really?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yup, I did.

I encouraged my sister to do the same and she met this lovely man and they've been together now four or five years.

It happens....

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

First of all it isn't really true that I can't find dates. I just can't find more than dates, which is of course what an uxorious creature like myself craves... And that, I figure, requires luck as much as anything.

And am doing some internet-dating, which is, I suppose, just an updated version of personal ads. Only trouble with it is that there is such a huge focus on sex, which is really secondary to me. (Secondary; not unimportant!) But finding someone who will appreciate an occasionally tweed-wearing, often bread-baking, constantly book-talking guy is, well... I suppose it's a niche market! :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I expect I'd have tried the Internet if it had been up and running when I was on the market.

Was it running? I forget. Anyway, I wasn't hitched up to it- nohow.

I'm not saying I found Ailz first time of asking. First time of asking was a little more problematical. I paired off briefly with a girl who was in the throes of breaking with her husband and wasn't ready to settle down again- at least that's what she said- but maybe it was more a case of her not being ready to settle down with me.

A niche market? Sounds like a really attractive niche to me. Sooner or later you're going to find your heart of gold.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

On a talk show last night a writer was telling about his adventure on whitewater rapids with some of the Kennedys and Glenn Close, the movie star.

He said the terrifying rapids merely invigorated the Kennedys, who were all laughing into the spray, and that the brisk air only made Glenn Close's cheekbones more elegant as she smiled and rowed, but that he, the writer, was "caught in a paroxyism of fear" and could only moan (inaudibly) over and over: "Save me! O God! Help me!"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"... the Kennedys... were all laughing into the spray..."

Is that courage, do you think, or a fatal lack of imagination?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

The Kennedys were all athletic. Seriously athletic. I don't think it was fatal lack of imagination. Lack of brains maybe (not enough sense to be scared).

I have nothing nice to say about Glenn Close, so I won't say it here.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't have strong feelings either way about Glenn Close. I've always sort of thought of her as Meryl Streep mark II.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Fatalism, perhaps. They know there is a curse on the family--that old Devil's hook: You will be rich and famous, but everything will always go wrong.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They're your royal family or- more precisely- your royal family in exile.

Like the Stuarts or the Bourbons.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

...your royal family in exile.

Funny--yesterday, while looking over the stacks at the used bookstore, I found an entire section called "The Kennedys."

No other president has such a section--not even the Bushes.

There are several books about Clinton and Monica, however...

You bring up a good point that the Kennedys are royalty, in that archetypal sense of it. We Americans refuse royalty, but (like the monkeys in the study who would rather gaze upon Alphas than drink cherry juice!), we must find lovely people to gaze at.

The Kennedys and their Curse are archetypes and therefore numinous and fascinating. We refer to their time as Camelot, which is telling in itself, as Camelot never existed except in myth.

Blah, blah, blah, Jackie: Oh, do go on. And on...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The reality is far from numinous.

Old Joe was a bootlegger- and as corrupt as they come.

Jack was nothing like his public image and the whole happy family thing was a PR construction and....

..yet the myth continues to entrance