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Today we finally got the new beanbags we’d been waiting for: two “sumo” chairs and two ottomans. They are covered in shiny nylon, replace our old sofa and sofa-bed, and look like something a really laid-back Bond villain would pick up to furnish the lair. The cat is still trying to get his small orange head around all this. At the showroom, when asked what he did for a living, the BiPolarBear answered casually, “oh I’m a retired teacher, and my wife works on Bay Street,” which is technically true.
I’m using my new quasi-yuppie status as an excuse to buy some nice clothes for the work. Actually, most of my wardrobe is pretty office-worthy, since I’m neither Sales nor Management and therefore only have to wear Business Casual, so it’s mostly about accessories. Last night I bought a Matt & Nat bag which looks like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag only smaller and cranberry-red. (I’m not actually a vegan, I just like the bag.)
Thursday night we saw Munchhausen, its AGFAcolour lovingly restored by the Murnau Foundation. It’s hard to watch without looking for hidden Nazi messages, knowing its provenance, or more deeply hidden anti-Nazi messages, knowing the script was by Erich Kastner, who was temporarily unblacklisted for the occasion. Possibly the film contains neither, but in any case it possesses a considerable spooky charm. Hans Albers, who plays the Baron, looks like a German George C. Scott, and every time we return to him in the framing narrative, telling the tale of his “ancestor” to an increasingly uneasy young couple, his eyes seem that much more piercing, his profile sharper. The fantastic episodes are handled more matter-of-factly than in Gilliam’s version, and some details, like the giant cake that opens to reveal a piano-playing midget, and the duel fought in a pitch-black room of the Russian palace, seem like things that might really have happened in some corner of the 18th century. Then there’s the wonderful scene in which the Baron’s faithful valet, on his deathbed, asks permission to address his old master by his first name (and probably in the original German, the singular).
Theirloveissosemiotic....
I’m using my new quasi-yuppie status as an excuse to buy some nice clothes for the work. Actually, most of my wardrobe is pretty office-worthy, since I’m neither Sales nor Management and therefore only have to wear Business Casual, so it’s mostly about accessories. Last night I bought a Matt & Nat bag which looks like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag only smaller and cranberry-red. (I’m not actually a vegan, I just like the bag.)
Thursday night we saw Munchhausen, its AGFAcolour lovingly restored by the Murnau Foundation. It’s hard to watch without looking for hidden Nazi messages, knowing its provenance, or more deeply hidden anti-Nazi messages, knowing the script was by Erich Kastner, who was temporarily unblacklisted for the occasion. Possibly the film contains neither, but in any case it possesses a considerable spooky charm. Hans Albers, who plays the Baron, looks like a German George C. Scott, and every time we return to him in the framing narrative, telling the tale of his “ancestor” to an increasingly uneasy young couple, his eyes seem that much more piercing, his profile sharper. The fantastic episodes are handled more matter-of-factly than in Gilliam’s version, and some details, like the giant cake that opens to reveal a piano-playing midget, and the duel fought in a pitch-black room of the Russian palace, seem like things that might really have happened in some corner of the 18th century. Then there’s the wonderful scene in which the Baron’s faithful valet, on his deathbed, asks permission to address his old master by his first name (and probably in the original German, the singular).
Theirloveissosemiotic....
