My Fair Lady

I wish I liked Rogers and Hammerstein more. Oscar Hammerstein was obviously such a nice man. But it's the music- it's so smooth and sweet. Listening to one of their scores is like bathing in milk chocolate.

So if I can't take R&H, how am I to explain my love of My Fair Lady? Maybe it's just an Audrey Hepburn thing.

Audrey Hepburn + Rex Harrison + Stanley Holloway + Cecil Beaton + George Bernard Shaw. OK, the songs are chocolately, but it's bitter chocolate. One thing you don't get in Hammerstein's work is wit.

Almost Too Painful

I expected LJ to be full of stuff about the Jackson trial and it isn't. At least this corner of the LJ universe isn't. I wonder why.

My reason for steering clear (until now) is the difficulty of writing about it with dispassion. Jackson has been getting me all stirred up for decades now. Love the music (some of it.) Hate the preening and self-deception.

I wish I didn't care, but I do. There was a moment- a very brief moment- when Jackson was not only the greatest singer and dancer in the world, but also the most beautiful human being. Bille Jean. That's a fabulous song. And Michael is a vision, a visitation, an otherworldly androgyne, a god.

And then....

And then the decline, sinking deeper and deeper into freakishness, into Messianic fantasy, into a candy-coloured porno-heaven. It's been like watching a self-exiled Caesar go to the dogs.

Tiberius on Capri- all alone with his flatterers and pimps.

Yesterday, he turned up at the courthouse an hour late in his pyjamas and nearly got his bail rescinded. He doesn't seem to realise how serious this is. It's as if there's no-one in his entourage with the balls to tell him, "Er, Michael, you're not actually writing the script any more."