A Tardy Post-Sunday Sondheim- One Hand One Heart

I'm late:

Sondheim Tuesday:

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa & Jose Carerras, Bernstein & Sondheim:

How Are My Orchids Doing?

I hear you ask...

Just Fine. A rare December display going on!

Sweeney's coming, you bleeders!

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.

His skin was pale and his eye was odd.

He shaved the faces of gentlemen

who never thereafter were heard of again.

He trod a path that few have trod

did Sweeney Todd

the demon barber of Fleet Street.

He kept a shop in London town.

Of fancy clients and good renown

and what if none of their souls were saved

they went to their maker impecably shaved.

By Sweeney,

by Sweeney Todd

the demon barber of Fleet Street.



Swing your razor wide!

Sweeney, hold it to the skies.

Freely flows the blood of those who moralize.

His needs were few, his room was bare.

A lavabo and a fancy chair.

A mug of suds, and a leather strop,

an apron, a towel, a pail, and a mop.

For neatness he deserves a nod,

does Sweeney Todd,

the demon barber of Fleet Street.

Inconspicuous Sweeney was,

quick, and quiet and clean he was.

Back of his smile, under his word,

Sweeney heard music that nobody heard.

Sweeney pondered and Sweeney planned,

like a perfect machine he planned,

Sweeney was smooth, Sweeney was subtle,

Sweeney would blink, and rats would scuttle.

Sweeney was smooth, Sweeney was subtle.

Sweeney would blink, and rats would scuttle.

Sweeney was smooth, Sweeney was subtle,

Sweeney would blink, and rats would scuttle

Sweeney was smooth, Sweeney was subtle,

Sweeney would blink, and rats would scuttle.

Sweeney! Sweeney! Sweeney! Sweeney!

Sweeney!



Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd!

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd!



He served a dark and avengeful God!

He served a dark and avengeful God!



What happened then, well that's the play,

and he wouldn't want us to give it away...



Not Sweeney

Not Sweeney Todd

The demon barber of Fleet...

Brit: "God may me do it"

Val, Here's a little dig. Guess you got 'em, too!

A bizarre row about evolution versus creationism led to an English backpacker fatally stabbing a Scottish backpacker during a fruit-picking trip to earn money for their travels.

Alexander York, 33, from Essex, was sentenced to a maximum of five years in jail yesterday for the manslaughter of Rudi Boa, 28, a biomedical student from Inverness.
...
Towards the end of the night, however, they became embroiled in the creationism versus evolution argument, and it escalated into a shouting-match in the pub. Mr Boa and Ms Brown were both adamantly opposed to York's Christian fundamentalist point of view.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

But the snow is so delightful....

As of last night we were supposed to get an inch of snow today,

As of now:

...HEAVY SNOW WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 12 PM CST SUNDAY...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHICAGO HAS ISSUED A HEAVY SNOW WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 12 PM CST SUNDAY. THE SNOW ADVISORY IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.
LIGHT TO MODERATE SNOW WILL GRADUALLY INTENSIFY THROUGH THE EVENING HOURS... WITH MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW CONTINUING THROUGH THE OVERNIGHT HOURS. STORM TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATION IS EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM UP TO 6 INCHES ACROSS THE EVANSTON...WEST CHICAGO...AND MENDOTA AREAS...TO 6 TO 9 INCHES FROM CHICAGO AND THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS TO JOLIET TO MORRIS. THE INCREASING INTENSITY OF THE SNOW LATE THIS AFTERNOON INTO TONIGHT WILL MAKE FOR HAZARDOUS TRAVEL ACROSS THE AREA THIS EVENING INTO THE OVERNIGHT HOURS AS MANY ROADS BECOME SNOW PACKED. IN ADDITION TO THE HEAVY SNOW ACCUMULATION...NORTH WINDS WILL STRENGTHEN THROUGH THE EVENING WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH POSSIBLE OVERNIGHT. THIS WILL RESULT IN AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW AND REDUCED VISIBILITIES. SNOW WILL TAPER TO LIGHT SNOW AND FLURRIES ON SUNDAY MORNING.
A HEAVY SNOW WARNING MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT...FOOD...AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

Keith!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice Olbermann interview to be found here.

Bill O'Pera: Mackris v O'Reilly

We Got Culture. This is hilarious, using the actual transcripts from the sexual harrassment lawsuit.

Via Crooks&Liars and the Zoo:

Somebody Bigger Than Us

has been reading PAN:http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=9313

Imagine my surprise when I pop in to one of my favorite sites and see this posited:

"Huckabee Schmuckabee"

Of course, I beat Michael D by 2 days here.

And I cannot flatter myself to think I am the only one who came up with this term.

Me thinks Balloon-Juice has a few more readers than our humble site and they have all they can handle monitoring their vigorous comments section much less searching the web for our dear Pabulum. But I can dream, can't I?

BTW Go over to B-J's and read this John Cole post on Huckabee Panic. Sez somewhere in the bible "You reap what you sow". Or something. Friggin' Theocrats!

UPDATE:

We come up 17th and 21st out of 1350 on a Google search of Huckabee Schmuckabee!

Found It! Allegro non troppo-Sibelius-Sad Cat

Valse Triste- Double click on your screen and go to YouTube and fill your screen with this....

This one made me cry, a forgotten cat's lament...

I was 17 (OK, 18) when this movie came out and I will never, ever, forget it. Especially this vignette. I saw this movie with the aforementioned Janice, and Joyce. By the end of this scene we three were sobbing in our seats. And I have never been Cat People, unless its the 1982 Paul Schrader remake (with David Bowie singing the title song) or the even better 1942 Jacques Tournier original horror movie.)

But back on point...

It made me cry all over, again.

But then again, I have just had some Jaeger shots, generously poured by our SnarkAngel at the Anvil, so I'd now cry at cutesy pictures of kittens or even those putrid pie-eyed pussy portraits perennially posted at pediatric or podiatric doctors offices.

(God, I love alliteration.)

Update: Go read the IMDB Comments on this film to see what I mean. It has quite the fan club. This film is far superior to Disney's Fantasia.

Don't forget me

A little Marianne Faithful. From "Twentieth Century Blues"

One More Weill - Lost in the Stars

Since y'all (save Val) blew off my post on Bilbao-Song and degenerated into a cultural exchange on the finer aspects of the Anvil...

I thought I'd give it another try with a Weill song in english by a contemporary performer.

I think the lyrics are by Maxwell Anderson. Cry the Beloved Country:

And this version by Elvis Costello is visually, tripping the light fantastic...

I order you to search for the version by the master, Tony Bennett.

All At Sea

I don't know if you've been subjected to the story of John Darwin, who went missing when sailing his canoe 5 years ago and was declared dead a year later.

A couple of weeks ago he walked into a police station saying that he didn't know where he'd been for the last five years, he'd suffered from memory loss.

Then someone googled his and his wife's names and found that they had been photographed a year ago in Panama buying a condo. A national newspaper broke the news.

His wife had sold the family home six weeks before he resurfaced, and was believed to be in Panama. She came home via Miami. She had said after his reappearance that she hadn't seen her husband for the five years since he went missing, and had collected on his life policies in good faith. Both are now under arrest.

Now it turns out that HE never lost his memory, and SHE knew where he was all the time - mostly in the house. He sneaked into an adjoining bedsit whenever they had visitors.

He came home because he wanted to see his sons - they had been deceived by both their parents. Strangely enough, they are not happy with their mother and father.

Let's Keep Liza In Our Thoughts and Prayers . . .

If you love class acts, then you love Liza Minnelli. She should be back at home now, after collapsing and falling from a stage in Gothenburg, Sweden after performing a few numbers for a Christmas show where she was appearing with Swedish performers on Wednesday. Thank goodness, a production technician caught her as she was heading down the stairs and passed out. A Swedish doctor, who saw her at her hotel in Gothenburg, supposedly stated that it would be best to get her home as soon as possible. So we, the fans of the 61-year-old entertainer, will be waiting for further reports. Hang in there, Liza baby! The world needs more class acts like you.

News stories about the incident vary on the details, but here are several links:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071213/Minnelli_collapses_071213/20071213?hub=Entertainment

http://uk.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUKL1355053020071213

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1296921,00.html

Wounded Troops Screwed Again--Merry Christmas!

...as originally reported in the Washigton Post:

"Americans gave millions of dollars in the past year to veterans charities designed to help troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, but several of the groups spent relatively little money on the wounded, according to a leading watchdog organization and Federal tax filings.

Eight veterans charities, including some of the nation's largest, gave less than a third of the money raised to the causes they champion, far below the recommended standard, the American Institute of Philanthropy says in a report. One group passed along 1 cent for every dollar raised, the report says. Another paid its founder and his wife a combined $540,000 in compensation and benefits last year, a Washington Post analysis of tax filings showed.

There are no laws regulating the amount of money charities spend on overhead, fundraising or giving. But the institute's report suggests that 20 of the 29 military charities studied were managing their resources poorly, paying high overhead costs and direct-mail fundraising fees and, in some cases, providing their leaders with six-figure salaries...."

An excerpt from Allegro Non Troppo

I saw this film in January of 1987 back in my care-free days at Boston College. It was a wonderful time, having arrived back on campus shortly before the official end of Christmas break. Most of my roommates were back--we'd all had enough of our families (never dreaming how relatively soon thereafter we'd actually bury many of them and miss those times together we in our youth so easily grew bored of)--and reveled in one another's companionship, as well as our shared affection for alcohol and 'other' substances of mind 'enlightening' effect. Two of them worked in a video shop in Brookline and brought home such classics as John Hurt's rendition of "1984', an animated version of George Orwell's "Animal Farm", assorted straight pornos such as Marilyn Chamber's "Behind the Green Door"--which was actually rather arousing even for a young, albeit closeted, gay man--and a little known, 1978 Italian film called "Allegro Non Troppo" which combined live action sequences revolving around curious animated features set to classical music. Some 20 years later, I now know--given my continued fascination with this film--that it wasn't so much the party favors that made this film special and enduring in my mind so much as it was the film itself and the messages and visuals contained therein. In addition to an Evolution themed segment that would send millions of fundies into convulsions, there was one particular segment about the follies of war and conformity that have particular meaning to me now...the deaths over over 3,500 soldiers in the past 5 years, many of whom were only children when I first saw this, make we wish now that only more people had seen it and absorbed its meaning. This piece is set to Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 7.

This piece is set to Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 7.



For a more enlightened view of evolution, enjoy it set to Ravel's Bolero.

Welcome, Boston Betty!

AND Hands off my Shuster!

Here's a gratuitous hurricane shot of Marciano to tide you over:

Wednesday Weekly Weill - Bilbao Song

Performed by Milva. From "Happy End".
I like the nostalgia in this song. Longing for the decadent, lively, sex-blood-and-guts-soaked haunts and days of yore. I feel that way towards a number of my former haunts. They've all gone respectably fern bar now... They even have windows, now, that you can see in.

Except the Anvil.

Translation lifted from a Marianne Faithfull site. By the way, her version is very blood-curdlingly elegant.

Bill's be all in Bilbao, Bilbao, Bilbao,
Was the most fantastic place I've ever known.
For just a dollar you'd get all you wanted,
All you wanted, all you wanted
Of whatever kind of joy you called your own.
But if you had been around to see the sun
Well I don't know you might not like for you to see
The stools at the bar were damp with rye
On the dancefloor the grass grew high,
Through the roof the moon was shining green
And the music really gave you some return on what you paid
Hey Joe, play that old song they always played.

That ol' Bilbao
Down were we used to go
Da da da da da ...
I can't remember the words ...
Da da da da da da
It's so long ago.
I don't know if it would have brought you joy or grief but
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
Beyond belief.

Bill's be all in Bilbao, Bilbao, Bilbao,
Came a day the end of May in '98
Four guys from Bristol came with sacks of coal dust,
Sacks of coal dust, sacks of coal dust
And the time they showed us all was really great.
But if you had been around to see the sun
Well I don't know you might not like what you've seen.
The brandy bottles smashing through the air
And the chairs flying everywhere
Through the roof the moon's still shining green
And those fog eyes all went going crazy with their pistols blazing
high,
"Think you can stop 'em ? Well, go ahead and try!"

That ol' Bilbao
Down were we used to go
Da da da da da da...
Who remembers the words ?
Da da da da da da
Something with love in it.
I don't know if it would have brought you joy or grief but
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
Beyond belief.

Bill's be all in, Bilbao, Bilbao, Bilbao,
Now they've cleaned it up and made it middle class
With potted palms and aspree
Very bourgeois, very bourgeois
Just another place to put your ass,
But if you could come around to see the fun
Well, I don't know, you might not find it such a strain,
They've cleaned up all the pools of broken glass,
On parquet floors you can't grow grass,
They've shut the green moon out because of rain
And the music makes you cringe now when you think of what you paid

Hey Joe, play that ol' song they always played;
That ol' Bilbao
Down where we used to go
That ol' Bilbao
Casting its golden glow
That ol' Bilbao moon
Love never laid me low
That ol' Bilbao
Why does it hurt me so ?
I don't know if it would have brought you joy or grief but
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
Beyond belief.

Talented Wife Beater Dead At 76!!!!! DEAD! DEAD, YOU KNOW!

I had to laugh when this abusive monster bitched and whined, in 2001, how he wasn't being acknowledged for his contributions to the world of music . . . because he'd been "demonized" by the media. Bullshit. The media didn't do it, Ike. You did it. And if you were innocent, you would have gone after the woman accusing you of heinous abuse and sought justice in civil court. Trouble is, everyone who knew you and Tina, back then, knew her story was true. Yes, the man was talented. A member of the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame, he even won a Grammy this year for "Risin' With the Blues." And maybe he did eventually make peace with Tina. It will be interesting to see what Ms. Turner has to say regarding her ex-abuser's death. Knowing Tina, she'll be a real lady about it. But I don't have to be a lady . . . or a gentleman about it. So here's to you, Ike! Let's NEVER forget your contributions to music . . . or your contribution to our society's overdue focus on a severe and troubling social malady: spouse abuse. Damn, Ike, you just LOOK PLAIN NASTY.

In Honor of Val and Our Friends Across the Pond...

Leave it to the Brits to say so eloquently and succinctly what many of us and indeed most of the civilized world were thinking the day after the 2004 elections!

The Horniman Museum

As part of the more English (oops, should I say British?) flavour I'll try and bring to the blog, I thought folks might like to see that there's more to London than the big, internationally famous stuff.

Visitors to London often visit the big museums, like the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, the Natural History and the Science Museums. Just a few miles from my home, there is a small museum founded by the Horniman Tea Company's philanthropic owner in the Victorian era. It has an amazingly eclectic collection - musical instruments, natural history, an aquarium, textiles, archaeology. When I was a child there was an excellent collection of mummies and Egyptian coffins.

School parties can have hands-on experience with artefacts of their teacher's choice. Then if the weather is fine, they can go to the gardens behind the museum and enjoy the little zoo-cum-farm in beautiful parkland.

And it's free to everyone!

The building is unusual, to say the least.


There's an amazing conservatory in the gardens where concerts are sometimes held.


There are not many usable pictures on the net - this statue is Kali standing on Shiva.


A goat and some waterfowl in the little zoo.


This totem pole stands in the gardens.