[The real story]
Happy St George's Day to all our English chums!
Here, have an anthem...
PS
Hoist the flag would you, dear boy?
Tuesday 23 April 2024
Monday 22 April 2024
Don't make no lifer out of me
This is how I always greet a Monday. NOT!
Too soon, too soon. I'd hardly got in the "weekend mood", and here we are again. Same old shit, different day week.
Hey ho.
Among a raft of birthday celebrants that include Issey Miyake, Glen Campbell, Bettie Page, Kathleen Ferrier, Jack Nicholson, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Yehudi Menuhin, Vladimir Nabokov, Dame Ethel Smyth, Immanuel Kant, Henry Fielding, Charles Mingus, Peter Frampton, Donald Tusk, Aaron Spelling, and - erm - Vladimir Lenin, it's "The Pope of Filth" John Waters' birthday today!
On this Tacky Music Monday, we deserve this - a double-bill of Johnny Depp at his most gorgeous, in one of Mr Waters' finest films...
Have a good week, dear reader.
Sunday 21 April 2024
Ooh, slip out the back, Jack
It's a bit of a slow day today, after another mammoth drinking-session-cum-Film-Club with our chums yesterday...
What better than some "Sunday Music", courtesy of our "house band" here at Dolores Delargo Towers [who we are going to see in the glittering London Palladium in a fortnight's time]?!
That'll do nicely.
We love Postmodern Jukebox!
Saturday 20 April 2024
Girl, I'll just forget you
Sigh. I love the 80s...
I'm heading off to Holborn later for another "gathering of the clans" at one of our semi-regular "Film Club" afternoon/evenings - but I am on a bit of a nostalgia kick today.
Can it really be FORTY YEARS since this one was in our charts [scraping the lower echelons thereof, admittedly]..?
I wonder what Miss Brenda Shannon Greene's doing these days?
Friday 19 April 2024
What a set up, Holy cow!
I make no excuses for another gratuitous pic of sex god Tom Daley (wearing the new Team GB kit for the 2024 Olympics that was launched yesterday)!
A much-needed weekend is almost here, and I think we need to crank up the wireless and get into the party mood that normally greets the end of another week of drudgery..! Our gang actually has a "party" afoot, as we gather once again tomorrow afternoon in the Perseverance pub near Great Ormond Street in leafy Holborn for the first "Film Club" in ages.
On the list of prospective movies on offer (we tend to bring a few then choose the ones to watch by a show of hands) is one of my all-time favourite musicals Sweet Charity, so how about this version of one of its most famous numbers by Miss Linda Clifford and - ahem - a dancing robot?!
Thank Disco It's Friday!
Bizarre.
Have a fab weekend, dear reader!
Thursday 18 April 2024
Arbitrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
We ask you: will you go in the shop and buy a 34-year-old cigarettes in two decades' time?Outside the newsagent in the year 2044 lurk two men in their early thirties. They hold up a £40 note and ask you to get them a packet of Silk Cut. Will you?
Bill McKay, smallholder: “No way. Smoking will stunt their growth.”
Susan Traherne, accountant: “Absolutely not. The law is the law, and the law has an arbitrary cut-off point of January 1st, 2009. I would light up, blow a lungful in their jowly faces, and tell them to piss off.”
Martin Bishop, hare courser: “Not me. Instead I would point them to someone who would do so on principle like Liz Truss or Kemi Badenoch, both of whom I expect will be hanging out down the precinct.”
Jim Bates, lighting technician: “Smoking is illegal for those mid-life reprobates. But I would get them rolling baccy for a good old English spliff, because that tradition must be kept alive.”
Hannah Tomlinson, hairdresser: “Can’t they just tell the shopkeeper the fags are for their dads?”
Of course.
Read the depressing-but-true news that PM Rishi Sunak - supposed champion of the freedom to choose, hence the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme he launched between lockdowns - and his Tory government have introduced a new bill in Parliament that is worthy of the worst of the Tony Blair "Nanny State" years; to make it illegal for anyone born after 2009 to buy cigarettes in their entire lifetime!
Shocking abuse of power. Even New Zealand didn't get their own version into law... [And Rishi's one only got through its first reading with the support of the opposition Labour Party anyhow.]
I despair.
Wednesday 17 April 2024
Ars Gratia Artis*
Another day, another centenary...
One hundred years today, three studio magnates reached a merger agreement - and the legendary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was born!
Famed for its glittering parade of stars over the decades - such icons as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, the Barrymores, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Judy Garland, Robert Taylor, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Lana Turner and Cyd Charisse (and so many more) all got their big break at MGM! - it was also the home of Tom and Jerry, Lassie, the Marx Brothers, and some of the biggest and campest Busby Berkeley productions.
This was the studio that was responsible for some of history's most-lauded films, including The Women, Doctor Zhivago, North by Northwest, Mrs. Miniver, Ben–Hur [both versions], National Velvet, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jailhouse Rock, Waterloo Bridge, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Forbidden Planet, Mutiny on the Bounty [both versions], How the West Was Won, The Philadelphia Story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Shaft, Where Eagles Dare, Westworld, The Hunger, Moonstruck - and hundreds more besides!
It is, of course, as the production house behind some of the most wonderful musicals ever made that we love MGM the most! Its back-catalogue includes Easter Parade, Annie Get Your Gun, On the Town, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Show Boat, Gigi, Meet Me in St. Louis, and these...
Following the death of Louis B Mayer in 1957, the demise of the original company was palpable - with a number of buy-outs, reshuffles and bits sold off to the likes of Ted Turner, the involvement of dodgy businessmen and accusations of illegal operations, it went bankrupt in 2010 - despite having acquired United Artists, and with it the distribution rights for such cinematic behemoths as the James Bond and Rocky franchises. It survived the humiliation with a major buyout by its creditors, and finally MGM ended up in the hands of none other than Amazon, who bought it in 2021...
Let's hope that bodes well for its future.
["Ars Gratia Artis" = "art for art's sake" in English]
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