The rule is choose one item only to tell others. Which shall it be? And why?
1870 Prussian siege of Paris began (ends January 1871). During the siege the Paris Commune occurred. Meanwhile, what’s for dinner?
1893 New Zealand legislates for universal female suffrage. Kate Sheppard, suffrage leader.
1928 Mickey Mouse’s screen debut. Is the Mick still in business?
1955 Juan Perón deposed in coup d’état. Perón resisted the advice to fight back, having seen the devastation of the Spain after its civil war years ago; he accepted exile.
1991 Otzi the Iceman found after 5300 years. Late home from the store.
18 September in history
1634 Anne Hutchinson arrived at Massachusetts Bay – an important religious figure at odds with men, the Puritans. She was driven out of the Bay and welcomed in Rhode Island.
1846 The Brownings elope – poets two whose work passed my eyes on Saturday mornings in Poetry.
1850 Fugitive Slave Act passed in US – one of the festering sores of the Civil War.
1851 First issue of New York (Daily) Times – still fit to print.
1948 Margaret Chase Smith with 71% of the vote elected to Senate – the first woman so elected when Republicans still were human.
Director Webb refers to her staunch and bipartisan committee efforts to get funding for the Apollo program.
17 September in history
Choose only one to tell others.
1683 Antoine van Leeuwenhoek peered down his telescope and saw bacteria. We are not alone!
1787 The United States Constitution was ratified with the three-fifths clause and other compromises. Never been to Philadelphia.
1835 Charles Darwin arrived at the Galapagos Islands and sat down to think.
1900 Queen Victoria assented to the Commonwealth of Australia Act – been there!
1961 Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash. There is a review of a biography of the priest of peace elsewhere on this blog.
‘Planet Earth’ (1974)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 14 minutes, rated a generous 5.8 by 571 insomniacs.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: Don’t.
A decade after Star Trek Gene Roddenberry tried again with this pilot for a television series. In design and context, it recalls its predecessor, ditto in being didactic and talky. We even have a combination Vulcan mind meld grip.
But to get to the story. Rip van Carmine Orrico awakens after a long nap to the Twenty-second century where the Planet Earth is recovering ever so slowly from the Republican Apocalypse. He is among civilised Pax scientists who go around dissecting anything and everything. So advanced is their science that they fit him with a hair piece that stays in place.
Elsewhere on Planet Earth are roving bands and isolated enclaves of Mormons, Chicago Cub fans, Mad Maxxers, Vegans, Esperantoists, Tea Partiers, and other nut cases. It is dangerous out there!
The chief gimmick is that only the Paxxers have Opal cards for the metro underground that is everywhere, so they can take the train to adventure. It is every rail commuters dream to have the train system all to oneself! No one on Town Hall Station platforms but thee! Hallelujah!
One of Pax’s top scientists has gone missing and Carmine with Lurch, a petite woman, and an albino set out to find him. This crew would stand-out even on King Street Newtown on Saturday night.
Lurch keeps knocking his head on door lintels. The little woman falls down on cue. The Albino is so weak he has to sit on it.
Only Carmine is up to it. Is he ever! No stunt man is safe from his stunt double as he punches, shoots, kicks, wallops, blasts, and jabs. All the while, the hair piece stays in place. Amazing. Awesome.
Then he falls into the hands of Diana Muldaur. ‘Lucky him,’ said the fraternity brothers. She can make ‘Hello’ sound like both an insult and an invitation. She lives in a community of über liberated women who have enslaved men, and Carmine is just another hunk. He is a slow learner and has to be beaten into submission. Protected by the script sewn into his clothing, he is tough and they run out of whips. There is talk of breeding…..and, the fraternity brothers started to pay attention. But it is only talk.
Meanwhile, the Mad Maxxers draw nearer. And so on and on…. The fraternity brothers fell asleep and their soporific sounds….. Confession: We did not make it to the end.
The script is paper thin! Ha! Ha! That is despite the fact that the writing credit goes to ‘Rockford Files’ wordsmith Juanita Bartlett. And the direction is turgid though credited to Star Trek journeyman Marc Daniels, and produced by another ST veteran, Robert Justman. It is a good team, but this time there no air in the ball.
‘The Adventures of the Busts of Eva Perón’ (2015) by Carlos Gamerro
Good Reads meta-data is 352 pages, rated 3.71 by 51 litizens.
A tale of corporate ambition set against Montoneros terrorism in Buenos Aires Argentina. Our hero Ernesto Marroné is determined to rise to the top. He studies self-help books, listens to motivational tapes, memorises the nostrums of career guides, has read every book on management there is, always smiles on the outside, and gets to work before anyone else. The only way is up!
Then….the Montoneros kidnap the head of his firm, and they send one of the victim’s fingers to the firm as proof, with their first demand: that a bust of Eva Perón be displayed in each of the firm’s ninety-two offices within ten days! The task of complying with this demand is assigned to the ever-ready, corporate yes-man Marroné.
As he places the order at a plaster works, it is seized by striking workers and he is made captive. He tries to use his ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ wisdom to cope. He has a veritable bibliography of such books in his mind and he takes pages from many of them to apply to his situation. The chief title is ‘Don Quixote: The Executive-Errant,’ fitting for this picturesque novel of adventures down the rabbit hole. Some of that is downright hilarious. Some of it is downright depressing. Most of it is just boring.
Even more amusing is his effort to abstract from the titular lady herself insights that can be used in this situation. He mentally composes an ‘Eva Perón on Management’ book starting with how to manage striking workers. The clean-cut, über bourgeoise Ernesto becomes a leader of the strike, and in so doing learns a great deal about Argentina and Argentines that he did not know before. He comes to identify himself with Eva.
As a leader the workers he goes hither and thither in the slums, barrios, and suburbs, and finds his way to Evita City. Yes, in 1947 President Juan Perón had a suburb named for her and its borders drawn to resemble her profile. Illustrated below.
It still exists, though over the years the name has come and gone and profile has been lost. In it all of social services and amenities that Eva campaigned for were to be available to those fortunate enough to live there. Not so any more.
In its way the book is another tribute to the hold that Eva Perón retains over the imagination in Argentina.
Today in history
1620 Mayflower leaves Plymouth to find rock – Kate has been there
1810 Mexican rebel against Spanish rule – been to Mexico
1908 William Durant incorporates General Motors – had Chevrolets
1956 First Television broadcast in Stralia – watched 9
1975 PNG independence – nada
‘Island of the Mad’ (2018) by Laurie King
The fifteenth in the series featuring Sherlock Holmes and his young wife Mary Russell.
This time the dynamic duo come to the aid of Mad Woman, whose madness is to be a lesbian and have a very unpleasant brother, who in addition to sexual harassment, rape, and theft, also wears a blackshirt when visiting Italy. What a package is this straw Marquess.
But the shenanigans give occasion for Mary Russell to break into Bethlehem Royal Hospital, better known as Bedlam. Thereafter the fashion show moves to Venice and the eponymous island, Poveglia.
There the twosome meet Elsa Maxwell (1893-1963) and Cole Porter (1891-1964) of Indiana. She was born in Keokuk Iowa (been there) during a theatrical performance, and pretty much thereafter never left the stage of her own making.
Maxwell in 1933
Professor Wiki describes her as a songwriter, gossip columnist, radio presenter, and professional hostess. Prof also credits her with engendering the treasure hunt and the scavenger hunt as party pastimes.
There is a nice study of Porter in these pages and his intense relationship with Linda, his wife.
The palazzo the Porters rented in Venice. Porter once hired the Ballet Russe to entertain at a party there.
There is very little sleuthing. Though much of the plot is hidden in plain sight, and that is a nice trick. Many of the things seen and done are taken figuratively, only later to realise they were literal. Though I never did figure out what the brother in the white coat was doing, or quite how Mussolini’s wife related to things. There is also some insight into how Bedlam worked. The research shows, but alas some of its presentation is laboured.
Much too much padding about the fashions and morēs of rich and infamous in corrupt and decadent Venice of 1925. Hmm.
Yet it is remarkable that Laurie King has sustained this series since 1994 through fifteen titles and one collection of short stories.
15 September in history
1588 The Spanish Armanda lost – Thomas Hobbes was born.
1917 Alexander Kerensky formed a Republican government in St Petersburg – saw him give a talk once.
1928 Alexander Fleming noticed penicillin – had plenty of it.
1935 The Nuremberg Laws were enacted in Nazi Germany – no comment
1981 Sandra Day O’Connor became a US Supreme Court judge
‘Evita’ at the Sydney Opera House
It is Eva’s show first and last, dead and alive, Eva and Evita. It’ll about Eva. Tina Arena nails the performance. Chapeaux!
The use of archival film was interesting and we wanted more of that, and that it be integrated into the story rather than merely wallpaper.
There is some clever choreography with the martinet toy soldiers.
But….
Yes, there are a number of them and they concern the narrative and the music. Me, I know nothing about music, so I will clear the air on that first. I found it to be repetitive. Even I could tell that. And it was shallow. The performers made the best of it, to be sure.
Moving on to the narrative.
It’s only a show. Why does it matter? Because, as with movies, many viewers will suppose it is accurate and after seeing it conclude they now know the Perón story. Aaaaargh!
Tomás Elroy Martínez called it an abomination and I can see why.
The narrative reflects the arrested development of a Hollywood script writer, whose idea of a sophisticated man of the world is Silvio Berlusconi. None of the depth and complexity of the principals and the circumstances are present.
The program notes comment that while driving the author heard ten minutes of a radio program about Eva and that set him onto the trail. Ten whole minutes of preparation! From a shallow medium itself. Yes, I know the notes go on about his subsequent research. Oh hum.
This is not the time and place to go into any of the details, though previous reviews on this blog about the Peròns are there to be seen.
In this rendering there is too little of the man himself, Juan Perón, and too much a man who was not there Ernesto Guevara. (Ernie was a teenager at time, by the way, and still living at home). The latter is a narrator of sorts, reeking of cynicism, wreathed in cigar smoke, and running with sprayed on water. Intrusive and pointless to this observer.
How can a story of Argentina have so little tango in it. While the dancers do as told, it is hardly tango. But its absence reminded me of Carlos Saura’s masterpiece ‘Tango’ (1998).
The telling is stocked with the usual tropes that preoccupy boys with arrested development, sex and money alternating with money and sex, leavened by sex and money.
As is to be expected in such tripe, there is also in the program notes (which are not paginated) a reference to Eva’s ‘Machiavellian management’ of her career. One stereotype is thus trotted out to explain another, and neither connects with reality. By the way, when a woman manages her career it is blackened as with that adjective ‘Machiavellian,’ but when a man does likewise it is the habit of a successful person to be emulated by others.
The screen cover over the stage depicted Perón rising on the corpses of hapless workers, guarded by intimidating soldiers, protecting plutocrats, and luxuriating in riches. It is quadruple play of error. And indicative of the intellectual and historical veracity of what followed.
14 September in history
1741 George Frideric Handel completed ‘The Messiah’ – heard that
1812 Napoleon in Moscow’s Kremlin – been there
1939 Igor Sikorsky’s first helicopter – never done that
1959 The Soviet Union landed Luna 2 on the Moon – nor this
2001 Ansett Airlines bankrupt – I became an unsecured creditor, i.e., I had a pile of Frequent Flyer points now worth nothing.
