February 16th 2004 - February 22nd 2004
Sunday Arthur or Martha
Saturday Pluto's five senses
Friday Marmalized
Thursday Skirting the issue
Wednesday Santos-Dumont
Tuesday Plane speaking
Monday Tee-hee
Sunday 22nd February 2004
I'm only guessing, but I suspect Martha Stewart plays a lot better amongst US gays than she does over here: on this side of the pond, Delia is our domestic diva.
So I haven't paid a great deal of attention to the reporting of Stewart's securities fraud trial, though I did notice in passing the relish with which the star witness for the prosecution, a young broker's assistant called Douglas Faneuil, testified that Martha's telephone manner left something to be desired. (She called him a little shit.)
I also noted, with a slight lift of the eyebrow, the phrasing of an email sent by Faneuil: "Martha yelled at me again today but I snapped in her face and she actually backed down. Baby put Ms. Martha in her place!!!"
To my shame, I didn't notice the name or status of the intended recipient of this email: his boyfriend, Robert Haskell, the erstwhile gossip columnist at Women's Wear Daily.
Further investigation reveals a trial throbbing with human interest (or what passes for it in New York these days): celebrity guest Rosie O'Donnell cussing out the prosecutor, Faneuil's defence of his occasional ketamine abuse, passing references to blogs, gay lifestyle conflicts, and buckets-full of tears before bedtime.
Now I can't wait for the movie.
Saturday 21st February 2004
Brent Benaschak and Clement Poitrenaud have done very well for Blogadoon in the last few months, spurring almost as many search requests as Amy Gehring in her heyday.
Other recent requests of note include "aroused nipples", "cunt lexicon", "adult nappy rash", and - gnomically - "pluto's five senses (not moons)".
Nothing, however, had prepared me for the veritable avalanche of enquiries for Chinese cockle jokes.
Ironically enough, as you will recall, my only contribution to that deeply suspect genre has been the somewhat pious reflection that it's really not a laughing matter. Which I somehow feel was not what these people were looking for...
Serves me right, I guess.
But serves them right too.
Friday 20th February 2004
Marmalade riddle in raid death
Attempts were made to feed a wealthy businessman marmalade as he died after a raid on his home, said police yesterday.
The West Yorkshire force declined to discuss the significance of the discovery of a spoon and marmalade jar near the body of John Luper, 57, who was found dead at his house in Leeds in the early hours of Tuesday.
Thursday 19th February 2004
Terry Castle's musical compendium, as quoted, engendered a technical discussion on the letters page of the London Review of Books. Here is her contribution, as delicately phrased as one might expect in such an august literary journal:
John Heath is right to distinguish traditional Cretan music from the gritty urban (usually Athenian) recorded music of the 1920s and 1930s known as rebétika. I was obviously hitting the ouzo.
But in my own defence I find, consulting the liner notes of Greek-Oriental Rebetica: The Golden Years: 1911-37, that the words of my favourite rebétika song, 'If I were the hem of your skirt' ('Hyotikos Manes'), are based 'on a...couplet known not only in Istanbul but also various localities of Greece, e.g. Chios and Crete':
If I were and if I were the hem of your skirt,
I would stoop and see what? The hole of your twat.
Terry Castle, Stanford
Wednesday 18th February 2004
Alberto Santos-Dumont is the unsung pioneer of aviation.
Born in 1873, the son of a prosperous Brazilian, he grew up fascinated by the flights of eagles on his father's coffee plantation. In 1891, the family moved to Paris; shortly afterwards, his father died and Alberto inherited a small fortune which he proceeded to spend on a series of prototype airships.
The fact that he was just 5' 4" high and weighed only 100lbs considerably assisted his dreams of becoming lighter than air. Something of a dandy, he dressed immaculately even when flying, and had a reputation for stepping lightly from the wreckage of his latest experiment to accept a glass of champagne.
He became briefly famous, not least when he won 50,000 francs for being the first to steer an airship around the Eiffel Tower - and donated half his winnings to the Parisian poor.
A utopian by nature, Santos-Dumont was deeply distressed by the uses to which aviation was put during the First World War: by the time of the Armistice, 15,000 British, French and German airmen had died in combat.
Deeply depressed, Santos-Dumont spent much of the 1920s in various European sanitoria. A nurse discovered him one day standing at a high window, with feathers glued to his arms and a diminutive pair of wings strapped to his back.
By 1928, he felt well enough to return to Brazil. A dozen of the country's top scientists and intellectuals climbed aboard a hydroplane christened Santos-Dumont and flew out into the Bay of Rio to welcome him. As they dipped over his ship to drop balloons and confetti, the plane exploded, killing everyone on board.
Santos-Dumont attended each of their funerals, committed their obituaries to memory and then, four years later, hung himself from a hook on the door of his hotel bathroom.
Tuesday 17th February 2004
Imagine the scene: it's cold, it's wet, you just want to get home, the bus finally arrives, you cram yourself in, your tired thoughts are only of tea and toast.
And as the bus starts to lurch off down the street, the driver begins to address his captive audience. "I'd just like the Christians on board to raise their hands."
I don't know about you but - however cold, however wet - I'd abandon any future of tea and toast just to get the hell off that bus as fast as I possibly could.
But what if you couldn't get off? What if it wasn't a bus? What if it was..a plane?
"I just wanted to give Christians a chance to talk about why they're Christians," explains Captain Roger Findiesen, the pilot in question, interviewed in (of all places) The Advocate.
"It falls along the lines of a personal level of sharing that may not be appropriate for one of our employees to do while on the job," said American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner, refusing to say whether Findiesen would be disciplined for his actions.
Crucifixion's too good for 'em.
Monday 16th February 2004
Same-sex marriage frenzy. Tee hee.
......previous week
