Christmas Eve

[poliphilo]

1. We've treated ourselves to a Scrabble set.this Christmas. A sign of advancing age, I guess- wanting  to play board games.  I haven't played in 20 years, but it's like riding a bicycle, innit? On one of my turns I used all the letters in my rack and copped the 50 point bonus. Tee-hee! The word I scored with was DANGEROUS.

2. I've borrowed Joe's Hair CD. Turns out it's the soundtrack of the not very good Milos Forman film. Ah well, it'll do. Now to relive my youth!

3. We watched a documentary about Piaf last night. She was another like Lautrec who drove herself into an early grave with all the fun she had. Menandboozeandpills. And workworkwork. She signed off at 48 whereas Lautrec only got to 36. This particular film must have been made with the US market in mind because it gave far too much time to her transatlantic career. Did you know that at her peak only Sinatra and Crosby were selling more records? But  that's irrelevant. Piaf is Paris as Paris is Piaf. Her rather sweet, little, final husband drove her corpse up over night from the South of France so that the legend could be rounded off with the fiction that she'd died in her native city.

4. Thank you for the mistletoe, mam_adar

Comments

Hair!

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I liked THAT film! - especially the 'Good Morning Starshine' bit in the car in the dessert. I still sign that song to my cat in the mornings.
I saw the original production in New York. Its hard to believe how 'shocked' everyone was by the NUDE scene; its even harder to believe that Treat Williams is now playing a middle class brain surgeon who moves his family to Colarado - on TV! - yet.
More painful to consider is that after all the effort to stop that awfull war, the thugs who run the US of A have now involved not only themselves but all of Europe in their immoral adventure in Iraq.
Will they never learn. Now who said? - Pete Seeger I think.

Re: Hair!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Here in Britain we were expecting the Lord Chamberlain to either close Hair down or insist on cuts. When he didn't do either we knew that the old order had passed away...

Re: Hair!

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

That was an amazing time - wasn't it? For all our problems life had a buzz, an edge that I don't think the suceeding genrations experienced. I don't know about in England, but in the US many of us really believed that we WERE changing the world. Maybe some of the changes we set in motion were not always so good - but we did it.

Re: Hair!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Age of Aquarius was dawning.

Then something went wrong...

Re: Hair today - what tomorrow?

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

In America: Jack was shot; then Martin, then Bobby. My husband and I were campaining in NYC during the last 2. That war ended - finally, but something did happen then. As Clinton says in his autobiography, the extreme right / moral majority came to believe that any means justified their end - the control of power in the USA and through that - control of the developed west. So.....today we have Iraq ....and then what? I'm too old for this Shit!

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

My first real exposure to Piaf was Saving Private Ryan. How's that for stereotypically American - getting my culture through Hollywood? But I promptly compiled a collection of her songs. She has a sweet melancholy in her voice, all the more so because I don't speak French. Somehow, not knowing what she's singing lyrically makes the emotion behind it more evident.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I just sent for an album of her songs from Amazon. Plus albums by Charles Trenet and Georges Brassens. We're going to Paris next summer and I want to steep myself in French popular culture.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Merry Christmas!

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have the BIGGEST craving for a good game of Clue right about now!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Over here we call it Cluedo- God knows why.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Seriously? That's so weird! I love those little factoids that change from one place to another!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose Cluedo is a play upon the word Ludo- the name of another popular board game of the early 20th century. Have you come across it? I remember it (vaguely) as a cross between chequers and snakes and ladders.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Ludo's a drinking game with dice here in Peru! LOL!