Sunday, March 27, 2011

interview

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    So the other day I came across this article from January discussing your...can I call it "elevation to damehood"? Is damehood a word?...No it is not. Neither is "dameness". Why is knighthood a word but damehood isn't? Isn't a dame kind of the equivalent?

    Whoa off track. What I wanted to say was that not only is it a nice little interview (or, you know, mini-bio, I mean gosh), but the words "She is writing a book to accompany them" (them being your collected photographs of older women in your Infinite Variety show) make me skippingly happy. Also making me happy are little things like the positive ending, the fact of people paying attention to you (nottheonlyonehwawaha) and the fact that you still get, you know, work. And damehoods. (Dammit, it ought to be a word.)

    Oh, and regarding the article's...sub-heading I think one calls it, their use of the word "throes" is, like, Awkwardsville. I mean, do intelligent, well-rounded, experienced 60-year-olds really go through "throes" with new romancings? Is that even something that happens?

    On a related note, I don't know if it means anything beyond extreme and bone-deep flippancy but when we heard from this article that you've got romance happenin' (yay), my sister and I both independently wondered if you and Janet McTeer were gay with each other now. Seriously. It's so weird, I don't even know why. I had just decided not to wonder it out loud when my sister did so and I was like "...".
    But the end of the article says that the (stupid-lucky) person you're embarking on a beach-walk-of-the-heart with is an American actor, so Janet's not really an option!

    I expect to hear from the tabloids that you're dating George Clooney. Any day now.

Image taken from the article in question, lazy me. Also, this image's url ends in "/Harriet-Walker-007.jpg". The name mishap is rather wince-making, but the "007" is...intriguing. "Walter. Harriet Walter."

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

stuff

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    5 things.

    1. I think I'm over my swearing phase.

    2. I forgot to mention, but a block away from the college my sister and I just visited (see previous post) there was a little burger shop with the most devastating fries and chocolate milkshakes, but more to the point they had one of those little vending machines into which one stuffs quarters and from which one receives dinky little things in little plastic capsules, except instead of plastic rings or sticky hands or whatever this one sold fake mustaches. Be still, my heart.

    3. I tried ironing something for the first time the other day and it turned out to be really fun.

    4. Tonight I was over at Best Friend's house and she taught her sister and their visiting cousin and me how to play a card game called "Egyptian Ratscrew", which might have the greatest name of anything ever.

    5. The whole concept of "dancing on someone's grave" is hysterically funny and makes my lungs bleed from suppressed giggling. It's so comical and morbid and fabulous.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

California

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Fooof!

    So I spent two and a half days in Pasadena, California this past week, just got home last night. My sister and I were visiting the college we're most interested in. (She's two years older than I am, she's been doing a couple classes at the local community college but wants to go to Full-Time Proper College with me. We are both fearful little mice, I'm afraid, and have almost no experience when it comes to new situations - my family moved to our current home when I was one year old - and so would rather stick together in the event.)

    Anyway we flew down there and we were picked up from the Los Angeles airport by a representative of the be-visited college who we'd had dinner with a few weeks ago when she was in our area. She's a director of something involved in recruiting or something. Now, we'd never been in SoCal before, and there wasn't going to be time to see it during the rest of the weekend, so after she took us out for burgers (at In-N-Out, which has the most remarkably limited menu), she took us to the Santa Monica Pier Beach and let us run around while she made phone calls. Then she took us driving around LA and we got to see places like Beverly Hills and Hollywood and Rodeo Drive and all that and also the pavement in front of the Chinese Theater. (Most glamorous concrete paving ever? Possibly.) I saw lots of fancy cars.

    Photographic evidence, I say to myself? Mais oui.

    (we took over one hundred and thirty pictures that day but i will not display them all)



I stood on a dragon.

And on a stone boat.

Also haha wow I look like a little girl or something in these pictures. A well-dressed one. Normally I look like a stinky bum with a dead llama for hair.

This is my lovely sister. Also, in this pic one can almost see the Hollywood sign on the hills in the distance.


Cary Grant was the only person whose handprints we actually tried out. His thumbs were, like, way long.



    Now, as a Northwest kind of girl I also have to note that sweet fancy moses there is sunshine happening down there. In the middle of March.

    MARCH.

    What.

    Quick edit: AGHERJO;lmcxrjetwkjpopw3pol.hj frdtrresxzewar}
rwxAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. I was LOOKING for Fred Astaire the WHOLE TIME we were in front of the Chinese Theater but I couldn't find him and I didn't know if he was there or not and my sister was tired and wanted to go and I didn't ever find him but now Google tells me that HIS PAVING STONE WAS TOTALLY THERE AND I MISSED MY CHANCE kill me now.

    Obviously we need to attend that college in Pasadena now. We were going to anyway. But still.

    AUGH.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Wimsey covers: Unnatural Death

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Time for more Wimsey covers. It's turning into a habit now.

    While I am not especially seized with fiery love and deep interest for this next selection (neither the story itself nor the covers), I'm still a rotten stickler for doing things in their proper order from time to time, and so now we come to Book 3.

    Unnatural Death (1927)

    As with Clouds of Witness, the premise of this story - some old lady dies and it might have been murder but nobody can think how or why it could be murder - doesn't offer much in the way of striking or dramatic imagery to work with. The resulting batch of covers are, unfortunately, rather a vague hodgepodge.

    (as always, the descriptions apply to the images directly proceeding them)


    This is the copy I own, although the color of mine is much grassier. Here we see what seems to be an Airedale terrier sniffing at the cadaver of an ill-dressed young woman in a field. I love dogs and corpses just as much as I love kitties and corpses, so this gets a thumbs-up.



    Huzzah! Elizabeth George edition! I rather like this one. I'm not sure if the lady is supposed to be one of the characters or if the cover designers just decided that picture of people in period-appropriate clothing would suffice, but either way I would probably wear her clothes if given the chance.



    Holy wow does that ever make me feel uncomfortable. Wow. Look at all those unpleasant things. It would be slightly worse if the wrench was covered in blood, but the rust is bad enough as is. (Note, for fun, the bizarrely orange air bubble.)


    Audiobook time! This is pretty. I like the colors and the angle and the overall style. (And the cloche hat. And the fedora. Mmmmm.)



    Blue, car, needle. I like the stripe across the middle.


    Another audiobook. I have no idea what's going on there. Monocle again, obviously, but...what's that gold thing? And is the amberish thing some kind of bottle? Is there a - No, I don't know. I wish I could see it in person.


    Ok, ok, I know we can't tell what's going on here either but it looks totally awesome anyway. Awesome and baffling. (Were there any fine gentlemen out on a hunt with their beagles in UD? Nothing is coming to mind.)



    Now, in this photograph we CAN see what is going on, and I wish we couldn't. Seriously what is happening to his hairline. What is up with that.



    Awkward.



    Awkwaaaarrrrrrrd.


     AWK
    WARD


    ...what is this i don't even


Monday, March 14, 2011

I, Claudius: The Totally Chill Death of Thrasyllus

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I didn't intend to quote I, Claudius more than I have, but this paragraph which I have just read in chapter 28 recounting the sudden death of Tiberius Caesar's trusted go-to prophetic fortune-teller dude Thrasyllus is, like, a thing of beauty.

Thrasyllus died. His death was announced by a lizard. It was a very small lizard and ran across the stone table where Thrasyllus was at breakfast with Tiberius in the sun and straddled across his forefinger. Thrasyllus asked, "You have come to summon me, brother? I expected you at this very hour." Then turning to Tiberius he said: "My life is at an end, Caesar, so farewell! I never told you a lie. You told me many. But beware when your lizard gives you a warning." He closed his eyes and a few moments later was dead.

    SO. RAD.

    Seriously, can you - I don't even - how is - just imagine looking death in its tiny lizard face and being like "whatevs". He is SO CHILL.

    Part of its greatness comes from its context; it takes place after a long, depressing chunk of story in which all the good people are dying horribly and Tiberius is fuckin' the whole Roman Empire over and betraying people and "legally" taking people's estates for himself and being greedy and sexually depraved and his bestie Nerva has just starved to death for some reason (note that Nerva was the third person to starve to death in the space of the first half of that chapter) and everything is falling to pieces. And then out of the blue Thrasyllus, an awesome but unimportant dude, is sittin' eating his breakfast and a lizard comes and climbs onto his finger and is like "sup" and Thrasyllus is like "sup" and then says a couple cryptic things to Tiberius and closes his eyes and dies. Like a boss.

    And then I'm like "....do that again."

    Trying so hard to imagine Tiberius' face while that goes down right now.

    Trying so, so hard.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Ballet Shoes (2007)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Watching a movie I've never seen before which has you in it is always exciting. Questions like "what will she do", "what will she look like", "what will she say" and so on arise. And the film could be a rotting, soggy heap of Useless Drivel in all other respects (read: The Governess (1998)) but always I know, I know, I know with all of my knowings that at least a few moments of the whole will be totally worth it.

    Ballet Shoes (2007) delivered in this way. Oh, oh, how it delivered.

    Language is a mysterious and wonderful thing. Once in rather a while, noises and letters can be neurologically processed into explosions of happiness in under a second, and it's entirely normal and good.

    I didn't know what those moments in Ballet Shoes as had you in would be like when I watched it a few months ago. If someone had caused such an explosion (of happiness) by saying to me, "Ballet Shoes has a couple scenes with Harriet Walter wearing a monocle", I don't know exactly how I would have reacted. The revelation came as a surprise. Even now it lights my days and makes me unable to sleep at night for gleeful wriggling.

    Harriet Walter wearing a monocle.

    (tiny images are tiny and can be clicked for maximization and maximum awesome.)

(yes this has no monocle but I can think of no reason to exclude it)
slightly terrifying Gemma Jones is slightly terrifying.
    I don't know whose idea it was but they need a very shiny award right now.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Wimsey covers: Clouds of Witness

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Let's look at more Wimsey book covers!

   Clouds of Witness (1926)

    Clouds of Witness doesn't have any really striking or recognizable images in the premise to work with; several of these covers have the theme of "bejeweled kitty" running through them, when they're not just depicting corpses sprawled over things. Which, you know, is all right when it's all right, but...maybe I just don't like having it made so obvious that, like most other people who read these books, I love kitties and corpses, and the publishers totally know that.

    (as before, all descriptions apply to the image preceding them)


    This is the copy of Clouds of Witness which I own. (Not my photograph, though.) It's really beautiful in person; slender, hardcover with shiny gold lettering and beautifully spare. The "best mysteries of all time" thing at the top is a little unsightly, but bearable.


    This is actually one of my absolute favorite LPW covers. Another of the black and white introduction-by-Elizabeth-George editions, its lines are so clean and its contrasts so stark that I feel like if I owned it and could be seen reading it, I would at last be a Real Adult. (I kinda wish the girl was supposed to be Harriet instead of...Mary I suppose it must be, or the sexy-Frenchwoman-lady, but - no wait if it's Mary then why does she have dark hair, is Mary supposed to have dark hair I can't remember, why would she if Peter is blonder than the California sun)


    I can't get a larger image, but I had to include this. It's an audiobook cover, so perhaps it oughtn't to count, but...it's, like, a tiny tiny gun laid on a tiny tiny splash of blood on a monocle. Either that or an enormous monocle with a normal-sized gun and blood splatter. RAD.



     Another audiobook. Um. Okay, for the sake of Justice I did not trust my faulty memory and actually found my copy of CoW and reread the part where Lord Peter falls into a bog. But you know what? My memory did not fail me. Absolutely nowhere in that passage does it say either that an impossibly tiny Bunter was trying to save Lord Peter by holding a twig in his general direction or that the bog was in fact a horrible, oozing pit of oversized intestines.



    This thing, however, is awesome. I love the dramatic colors and the gnarly tree and the misty, sinister cat.


    I think this one is Portugese or something. I adore it. Observe the kitty, the odd red-orange oval (eye?), the magic wand spraying candy and confetti, and the floating head of Mary who is now a ginger. Why is she a ginger? The world may never know.


    This is pretty much exactly the state I plan to be found in when I am dead. Minus the gross maroonish-purple background.
   


    Kitteh!

    Identical kitteh. With bizarre twig-forest in the background.


    I think these editions must have come out post-you and Petherbridge. They basically all have LPW on the cover and usually that LPW looks like Mr Peth.

    Usually.


    would you like some murky with that order of dim



     Isn't this peaceful? I feel soothed.



     Oh and I must not forget there's this. There are a number of Wimsey books done in this style, and I have never ever ever seen a good picture of one. The only pictures are all either tiny or blurry and tiny. This is a shame, as most of them look like they might be handsome if one could actually see the stupid things.

    
     dear sweet heavenly mercy tell me that is not supposed to be lord peter

    LATER UPDATE (3/15/11):
    Whoa hey I forgot this one. Seriously go look at it. Look at her slippers. Dude.

    EVEN LATER UPDATE (7/12/11):
    Is....is this real life? Is this an actual thing?

Friday, March 4, 2011

fanvid/mother

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Two things.

    One, uggghh I really really want to make an awesome LPW/Harriet V fanvid but I cannot for the life of me find a song that clicks for those two. Like, I know plenty of nice songs that would do all right, but I don't want to settle for all right. There's really only enough LPW-material for one video, maybe two, so by golly I want to have that video rock my own socks into the stratosphere. Grar.

 (image taken from this blog post because I am currently lacking the ability to take screencaps which are not rubbish)

    Two, [*later edit: second thing removed due to idiocy]

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

I, Claudius: Oh No She Didn't

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    There are actual tears of laughter in my eyes right now.

    I'm reading I, Claudius by Robert Graves, and Claudius and this jerk Sejanus have just arranged for Claudius' 13-year-old son Drusillus to be betrothed to Sejanus' daughter. Without running this idea by Claudius' dear grandmama Livia first. I'm going to quote the passage describing how that turns out, because it's stunning and horrifying and mindblowingly awesome and I cannot stop laughing.

    There was great alarm in the City when it was known that Sejanus was to become related with the Imperial family, but everyone hastened to congratulate him, and me too. A few days later Drusillus was dead. He was found lying behind a bush in the garden of a house at Pompeii where he had been invited, from Herculaneum, by some friends of Urgulanilla's. A small pear was found stuck in his throat. It was said at the inquest that he had been seen throwing fruit up in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth: his death was unquestionably due to an accident. But nobody believed this. It was clear that Livia, not having been consulted about the marriage of one of her own great-grandchildren, had arranged for the child to be strangled and the pear crammed down his throat afterwards. As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

    The last sentence is possibly the funniest thing I have read in all my years.

    CONTROL FREAK MUCH THERE LIVIA