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Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
The cry has no doubt been flying round the clubs of late: Where’s Robbo?
Well, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been out on another of my little biznay jaunts. I had meant to let you lot know about it before hand, but technical difficulties over the weekend prevented me from stopping in here. Now that I’m home again, home again, jiggity-jig, a few highlights (hopefully) of interest:
♦ My Field HQ this time around was in the lovely and talented city of Florence. Alabama, from which base my comings and goings took me numerous times across the waters of the mighty Tennessee River. Now this may be the single geekiest thing that I have ever admitted here, but nonetheless it is a fact: I found something genuinely disconcerting in seeing a river rolling obstinately to the northwest when I knew perfectly well that the Gulf of Mexico was only a couple hundred miles due south. Indeed, on at least one occasion as I crossed, I found myself pointing and yelling, “The ocean’s that way, idjit!”
♦ If you want other drivers to give you a wide berth, I suggest adopting a similar practice.
♦ Speaking of driving, this time around the rental people gave me a Chevy Impala. The rear-view mirrors on the thing were about the size of postage stamps and, couples with the hunched up trunk, provided damn-all view of the traffic behind me. I know that watching one’s six while driving does not appeal to most folks these days, but I’m a big proponent of it. Wish the designers at Chevy were, too.
♦ Also speaking of driving, this trip was the first one I’ve taken without my contacts and instead relying solely on my glasses. Let’s just say that the fact that it’s easily been a good three or four years since I got my prescription checked was hammered home in no uncertain terms. We’re talking Squintapalooza. Had it not been for a last second flicker which caused me to notice the airport exit on the way back, I’d probably be somewhere in West Virginia right about now.
♦ Speaking of the airport, this time around I flew in and out of the lovely and talented Nashville (or “Nayshville, as I like to call it), my usual practice being when practicable to find the closest direct-flight landing spot and driving on from there. Although I didn’t stop at any of them, it was a goodly historickal treat to go by the battle sites of Nashville, Franklin and Murfreesboro. It was also goodly to pass by the Jack Daniels distillery, even though bourbon is not really my favorite adult beverage. Perhaps some day when I’m not so neurotic about getting from A to B in the shortest time, I’ll force myself to detour to such spots rayther than just appreciating them vicariously from their exit ramp signs.
♦ Mention of the Gulf of Mexico above reminds me of working with a local lawyer a number years back down in Mobile. He referred to it as the “Guff”. I have thought of it as the Guff myself ever since.
♦ Speaking of working with local lawyers, let me give you an example of the practical use to which my otherwise utterly random collection of trivial knowledge can sometimes be put. The (potentially) adversarial attorney with whom I had to deal presented, at first, an extremely gruff and forbidding mien that had “Goddam Yankee” stamped all over it. Somehow in the course of conversation, it came out that he had a son in the band Shenandoah. As I happened to know something about them, and indeed, even have one of their albums, I was able to pick this up and run with it. We got on famously after that. Just goes to show you.
♦ Finally, I should note that in packing for my trip, I inadvertently forgot to bring along a book. (This is what comes of packing at Oh-dark-thirty Monday morning instead of the night before.) After a day or so, I found myself practically climbing the walls in withdrawal. I read the local fish-wrapper and Useless Today front-to-back each day, but that only took about twenty minutes tops. I studied the tedious local tourist mags in my room. I flipped through the local yellow pages. I came perilously close to dipping into the Book of Mormon. It was agony. Fortunately, I had remembered to bring along my book of crosswords. I did a lot of crosswords.
♦ Really finally, a word about those crosswords. I have an issue of the Dell “Crossword Special” and I must say that I don’t like it very much. For one thing, some of the clues are just wrong. A statue in a church, whatever non-conformists might think, is not an “idol”. Also, I think the editors invent some of their vocabulary. I’m morally certain that there’s no such word as “solidest”. Prove it to me and I still wouldn’t believe it.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
A short while back, whilst poking about on Netflix, ol’ Robbo stumbled across a movie he’d never heard of before entitled Legend of the Lost and starring John Wayne and the lovely and talented Sophia Loren. Intrigued, he tossed it into the ol’ queue. And as Robbo’s beloved Nats had a late game on the west coast last night (which, alas, they lost), he popped it into the DVD player and sat back.
Well, I’m sorry to report that, despite plentiful shots of Loren prancing about the Sahara in torn and sometimes sodden dresses, the film is a distinct meh. Attempting a kind of psychological thriller cum adventure story somewhere between Indiana Jones and Treasure of the Sierra Madre (you can read the synopsis here if you like), it comes out clunky and wooden. If there was any chemistry between the Duke and Sophia, I didn’t notice it. And Rossano Brazzi, who plays Wayne’s employer and rival, was a pair of empty boots. About the only thing worthwhile in this movie was the old Roman ruin at Leptis Magna in Libya, where a lot of the film was shot.
Oh, and one other thing that irritated me to no end. Wayne’s character? His name was Joe January. Joe January? What the hell kind of a label is that?
My advice, should you ever find yourself in a position to see this film, is to give it a miss.
Greetings, my fellow water swiggers!
For those of you keeping score at home, yes, ol’ Robbo is taking the middle gel to see Cosi Fan Tutte at the Kennedy Center. Indeed, Mrs. R (who possesses the 15% teacher discount superpower) went down the box office in person yesterday to scoop in the tickets. We’re off next Friday night.
(I apologize, btw, for the way in which the horizons of my blogging seem to roll in and out. This hardly counts as Lenten reflection, except, I suppose, insofar as the beauty of Mozart’s musick puts one in contemplation of the glory of God, which it does. But that’s the way things work around here.)
Anyhoo, I was chatting with the gel last evening, discussing our seats and so on, and she again brought up the modern day setting and biker-dude disguises in the per-duction we’re to see. All at once her eyes bulged and she said, “Wait, they’re not going to mess around with the musick, are they?”
“Oh, no,” I said, “It’s still the genuine Mozart.”
“Good,” she said, “Because that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“Very true,” I replied, “And if you can keep that in mind, then the horrible staging won’t be quite so bad. And we can even laugh at it.”
“You know what my favorite part of the opera is?” she then said, “The duet where Ferrando finally gets to Fiordiligi. I really love that and would like to sing it some day. In fact, I’m trying to learn it now just from listening to it.”
“Wow,” I said, “Powerful stuff. You really swing for the fences, don’t you.”
The duet she had in mind is “Fra gli amplessi” from Act II, Scene 3, and it is, as she so rightly recognizes, a pivotal emotional point in the plot, as Fiordiligi succumbs to the Wallachian-disguised Ferrando’s seduction:
It’s interesting that the gel should mention Fiordiligi so consistently. Granted, she’s only twelve, but she just doesn’t strike me as having that kind of fiery, passionate personality. Indeed, I’ve always thought of the gel as more the Susanna type:
Then again, who knows? The gel presents a consistently calm, sunny, cheerful face to the world, but every now and again one becomes aware of what’s going on behind it. Still waters run deep and all that.
Regular port swillers may recall that Ol’ Robbo posted a couple days ago about the British Parliament’s decision to expunge Top Totty brew from its Strangers’ Bar¹ after complaints from certain MP’s that its advertising clip featured too little fresh fruit too much bikini-clad bunny.
Well, the Telegraph follows up on its original coverage with what looks like good news for the purveyors of the brew:
Family-run Staffordshire brewer Slater’s revealed it has seen sales jump since one of its ales upset a MP Kate Green and attracted headlines around the world last week.
Slater’s sales director Fay Slater announced that the firm has been bombarded with phone calls and emails from landlords wanting to get their hands on barrels of Top Totty.
The welcome boost for the popular ale comes after the four per cent beer was removed from sale at the Strangers’ Bar, in the Houses of Parliament, after shadow equalities minister Ms Green said the pump clip, which features a half-naked lady, was offensive.
Now Slater’s says it has sold around 50 more barrels than it shifts in an average week, with around half a dozen pubs saying they want to start selling the controversial ale too.
“We have had emails coming in from up and down the country – London, Scotland, Lancashire – you name it, wanting our beer,” she said.
Now, I have no proof whatever that my own modest mention of this kerfluffle here over the port and Stilton was in any way responsible for spreading the publicity which led to the sales jump, but if Slater’s is feeling magnanimous, I wouldn’t mind getting hold of a barrel of the stuff myself.
A glass of, uh, Totty with Andrew Stuttaford!
¹ By way of clarification to my prior post, I only actually visited the Strangers’ Bar once or twice while working there. (One couldn’t get in unless invited by a Member.) On the other hand, the Lords’ Bar was (and may still be) open to unaccompanied staff.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
I’m probably getting coals to Newcastle for anyone remotely interested in the subject, and probably driving everyone else straight to a MEGO moment, but this is my blog and I’ll bore if I want to.
At any rate, as a birthday present to Self, I recently purchased the box set of Fr. Robert Barron’s Catholicism, and over the past week or two I have been steadily working my way through the ten hours’ worth of programming (I’m about half way at the moment).
I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur of religious film or teevee. I’ve never watched EWTN, for instance, nor did I ever summon the nerve to see The Passion of the Christ. So I really don’t have any base line against which to judge. Nonetheless, I am here to tell you that this series is pure dynamite.
Fr. Barron starts out the very first episode by paraphrasing C.S. Lewis’ famous debunking of what he called “Christianity and water”. “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
From there, in that combination of kindness and firmness which one sees in the best sort of priest, he builds the teachings of the Church with remorseless logic, clarity and consistency. I won’t even attempt to summarize what he says about spirit, intellect, dogma, culture, history, art and the like, but the overriding theme is the organic inter-connectivity of it all.
The result, if I may say so, is as terrifying as it is exhilarating. (Or, to borrow from Lewis again, “He’s not a tame lion, you know.”) And I must say that it has given ol’ Robbo some very serious food for thought.
The series is no whitewash, but takes on both the good and the bad in the history of the Church. Nor is it confrontational toward other religious traditions, instead seeking to point out what is good in them. Where Fr. Barron presses the attack is mostly against secularism. Given the battle lines that seem to be growing increasingly clear, I believe the series would appeal to friends of the decanter both inside and outside HMC.
The series was shot literally all over the world and the visuals are, for the most part, absolutely beautiful. However, I couldn’t help noticing an uncanny resemblance between the script used to label each new destination and the script used for that same purpose in the Firefly series. It may just be because I’m a loony, but I keep half-expecting the name Whitefall to appear on the screen.
If I have any criticism of the production, it’s regarding the (in my opinion) excessive use of what I would call “Worlde Musicke” in the background. You know – synthesizers and choirs and lots of vaguely Asian and African riffs. This isn’t really a criticism, but more a matter of taste. I understand that it’s symbolically appropriate, given the theme, but I’m no fan of it.
People have compared this series to Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and it strikes me that this comparison is apt in terms both of the scope of the project and the narrator’s belief in and passion for it. Again, I would recommend it to anyone interested in Christianity without the water. (Indeed, the first thing I plan to do when I’m finished is to start all over again. It’s much too powerful to take in just one swig.)
Parliamentary bar no longer serving jugs.
It was Sir John Major, as prime minister, who said that the British would forever be defined by their love of “warm beer”.
One flavoursome ale, however, has proven too fruity for the House of Commons. Top Totty, a blonde beer brewed in Stafford, was banned yesterday from a parliamentary bar on the grounds that it was “offensive” to women.
The pump plate fixed to the bar tap features an image of a buxom blonde wearing little more than a bow-tie, a pair of bunny ears and a bikini to protect her modesty. Female members of the House were said to have been “disturbed” by the sight of the refreshment on offer in Parliament’s Strangers’ Bar.
I used to drink in that bar me own self when I was knocking about Westminster in my student days. Never sampled the Totty, however.
It seems to me that the RCBfA ought to take up a collection and offer to buy any remaining cases from them.
Greetings, my fellow port-swillers!
Do you know this man? His name was Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych (1877-1921). He was a Ukrainian composer, choral conductor and priest. His best-known work today (at least in the West) is his “Carol of the Bells”, a piece which I have noticed tends to have a polarizing effect – people seem either to really like it or really hate it. Personally, although I have family members who would disagree violently, I happen to enjoy it. I especially enjoyed the rendition put on last Thursday evening by the eldest gel’s 8th grade class at her school pageant, where I first heard of Leontovych. (Up till then I hadn’t the faintest idea where “Carol of the Bells” originated.)
Here’s something else I learned: The man is a martyr of the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian Church, where he is remembered for, among other religious works, composing the first liturgy in the modern Ukrainian language. Soviet goons murdered him in 1921. Hearing these facts about him at the pageant added a certain something to the performance, at least in my mind, giving it a sense of defiance against the forces of darkness. That’s probably how I’ll think of it from now on.
And speaking of performances, might I beg my fellow port-swillers to indulge me in just a bit of parental boasting? I may? Thank you! Regular friends of the decanter will know that I have often spoken of the middle gel’s angelic singing and her regular wowing of the congregations at RFEC. Well, I am pleased (and still a bit gob-smacked) to announce that, following an audition a few weeks ago, she has been accepted into the Novice Choristers Program at the National Cathedral. Mind you, this is only a first step – the Novice Program is a sort of choral boot-camp to see whether the little darlings “fit” into the overall scheme of things. After that, she still has to be accepted at the Cathedral School for seventh grade, and, not being of the Beautiful People, we still have to figure out how on earth to pay for it. And, if she does make it into the Cathedral Choir, that’s essentially her life (and ours) for the next few years. However, seeing that she is both so talented and such a hard worker, we decided to swing for the fences on this one. If we can somehow get over and around all the ifs and buts, the opportunity is simply too good to pass up. And even if it doesn’t work out, I consider the fact that she’s been invited to participate to be a signal honor in and of itself.
Ol’ Robbo couldn’t be prouder.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
As we were chatting of this and that last evening, the middle gel mentioned to me that she’s already into Chapter 4 of Great Expectations. After this, she apparently intends to tackle both A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Moby Dick.
Now, let me just hasten to say here that I don’t relay this conversation in order to stick on side about my Lake Woebegone-like above-average children. As a matter of fact, the first thing that flashed across my mind was the Bard’s line about“Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, And falls on th’other.” We shall see how far she actually gets with the project.
No, instead I bring it up because whilst noodling on the authors mentioned, particularly Dickens, it occurred to me that it is perfectly absurd that I haven’t touched one of his novels since high school, a period during which I am unashamed to say the value of his work, beyond its most superficial aspects, was no doubt quite thrown away on me. (By the bye, does anyone actually still teach Dickens in secondary school these days? And by that I mean teaching Dickens as a great author and not as a poster boy for the imperialistic, religiously-blinded, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, capitalistic, Euro-centric slime pit out of which we only just managed to crawl thanks to the gift of post-modern enlightenment.)
Aaaaanyway, our little chat inspired me to dip into Dickens myself, not just rereading the ones I’ve done before, but also tackling the ones I should have but didn’t. (Bleak House comes to mind, for instance.)
Oh, and speaking (at least tangentially) of Dickens, I caught Scrooged on the teevee last evening for the first time in years and years. All I remembered from the past was the ditzy Ghost of Christmas Present and Bobcat Goldthwaite wandering around with a shotgun and an attitude. Thus, I was unexpectedly and absolutely sandbagged by the big climax. I tell you truly, friends, Bill Murray’s speech on the meaning of Christmas and the way in which the spirit of love celebrated on that day ought to build and flow out to the rest of the year left me in something pretty close to tears. Well said, indeed.
A very happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo was thinking a bit about this most peculiar of American holidays, more specifically about its origins.
By now, of course, the myth that the Puritans at Plymouth celebrated the “first” Thanksgiving in America, in 1621, has been well exploded as nothing more than a piece of Yankee propaganda. Records make plain that celebrations of thanksgiving were held in the spring of 1610 at Jamestown and on December 4, 1619 at Berkeley Hundred, both in the great Commonwealth of Virginny.
And if you want to go even further, the founding of Quebec under Champlain in 1608 was also celebrated with a thanksgiving. The Englishman Martin Frobisher, searching for the Northwest Passage, celebrated one in1578, which the Canadians now claim as the first Canadian thanksgiving. As Christine notes, the Spanish held a thanksgiving at St. Augustine, Florida in September, 1565. In fact, a group of French Huguenot colonists under Jean Ribault beat them to it, celebrating one just to the north at the St. John River on June 30, 1564, not long before the Spanish descended on them with fire and sword. And Coronado is recorded to have celebrated a thanksgiving in May 1541 at the Palo Duro canyon in north Texas.
So you’ve got a wide variety of “firsts” from which to choose, depending on your preferences in religion, national origin and geography.
Some other time, I may ponder more thoroughly these “first wave” immigrants, although I’d have to say it isn’t necessarily a very pleasant exercise. The vast majority of people who were willing to embark on what was then an extremely risky sea adventure for the purpose of coming to an almost completely unknown new shore were either rapacious, desperate or insane, often some combination thereof. (No, ol’ Robbo isn’t suddenly going all p.c. on you. But it was a brutal time and place. Frontiers always are.)
But just look where we are today. Thanksgiving is the least commercialized, the least bowdlerized, the least cheapened holiday on the entire calendar, remaining mighty close to its roots in simple gratitude and festivity for what we have and who we have. Granted, this is probably because it sits in the shadows of the monstrosities of modern Halloween and Christmas, but it’s still pretty nice for all that.
(Image filched from Mrs. P.)
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