Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Christopher Walken

wow
the guy really could be entertaining reading the phone book

Twitter now recommends I follow “cynicsparty”. Let the Singularity begin!

[wrong thread, dammit!]

Needs no cowbell. Perfect as is.

TJ/Liberals are annoying dorks.

@Tommmcatt Cannot Be Arsed To Think About Sharon Angle: Fox News jeremiad as to how Target’s 1st amendment rights are threatened in 3..2..1.

Reminds me of one of my favorite teevee moments ever, which I have as yet been unable to find on youtube. Grammy Awards, mid-70s. Haughty Brit Shakespearean actor–Gielgud I think–come out in a tux and reads a Shakespeare sonnet, then the lyrics to that year’s #1 hit, Disco Lady. “Shake it up, shake it down, move it in, move it around, disco lady” with perfect diction. Awesome.

@Mistress Cynica: I adore John Gielgud. Every time I watch it again, I thank God I taped Summer’s Lease when it aired on PBS. British actors acting their asses off! Gielgud’s wicked laugh is “wicked!”, as my son’s Massachusetts contemporaries used to say (thirty-five years ago).

sample dialogue: “Who is this old boy, exactly? Do you expect him to live through dinner?”

what is this–the thursday night dead zone? where’s the repartee? Baked, help me here, are you awake?

@lynnlightfoot:
lynn! i’m here! it’s 6 a.m. been up since 2. keeping vampire hours lately, but i’m always here when you shout out.
lemme get some more coffee…what are we discussing? guielgud? walken?
i adore them both, though chris frightens me.

check this out–LOVE IT!!!

http://noolmusic.com/myspace_videos/christopher_walken_dancing.php

@baked: I love you, my dear.
Don’t know why but your link didn’t work for me. If you ever have a chance to watch Summer’s Lease, do. Written by John Mortimer about a stay in Tuscany with a mystery mixed in and a short course in Piero della Francesca. We pretty much based a trip to Italy in 1995 on its itineweary. [decided to keep that typo.] We went to Sicily in 1999. It was wonderful.

I wanted to respond to your post about Sergio. In our house it’s cats. My heart was broken when Swanson died. I didn’t name him that, my son did. We inherited him when my son ran across a landlord prohibiting pets. Swanson was a bodhisattva. We had a nasty next door neighbor who said, “That’s the friendliest cat I ever met.”

@nojo:
the 9 year old in me wants us all to follow and drop verbal water balloons on it. or should we behave?

@lynnlightfoot:
oh THERE you are! i saw it!, i want to live there……i so badly wanted to tour italy when i was stuck in the middle east, well the best laid plans don’t work out. and i’m leaving that typo too. i have only been to venice. i expected to hate it, but loved it, and that’s the extent of my italian experience…so far.

isn’t it funny how critters end up with names we didn’t intend? my rat has taken to calling bella, monkey juice. i do love that chinese proverb,
” a beloved child has many names” and it’s cats in my house too. one bella and 5 cats i love. they all like bella. it’s amazing.
thank you for mentioning Sergio.
rest in peace Swanson.

too bad about the link! a guaranteed smile..
go to you tube and search “chris walken dancing”

or wait for prommie to wake up–i got it from him!

@lynnlightfoot: @baked: Gielgud was a great gent. And turned himself from a hambone hooting Shakespeare in the manner of the day into a superb modern actor. Right after he was knighted he was arrested for cottaging – as it was then called, the English having a fetish to cozy everything up, by a policemen trapping him in the gents. The story broke and he was much scorned for wicked perversion (homo sex being still illegal). Told by some not to open the play he was rehearsing and by others to go ahead he decided to take his chances with the opening night audience. When he made his first entrance the house rose to cheer him and, when he was able to continue, he acted the play. NB. First night audiences in the West End were to be feared in those days. They were much given to booing and if they saw something they didn’t like they made their displeasure known. For example, a friend of ours was in a satirical review that closed in the interval on its first night so loud was the uproar in the house. That I was once booed is one of my proudest memories. I’m told that his friend Ralph Richardson didn’t speak to him for two years after his arrest but then they became a great partnership on stage. I saw them act together in Home. He’s brilliant in Brideshead as Charles’s father.

@Mistress Cynica: I seem to remember that.

If you care to see a performance that gives a fair approximation of how Shakespeare was once acted (Johnny G’s great aunt was Ellen Terry) see him as Prospero in that rather irritating film of The Tempest. He brings the romantic style to life again.

@Benedick: One of the funniest Simpson’s gags ever involved someone remarking of an actor, and how good he was, that “he’s like the son Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud always wished they could have.”

@Benedick: One of my favorite items we’ve ever had in inventory was a book of Shakespeare sonnets, printed on vellum by the Riccardi Press, that was a gift to Gielgud, inscribed to him in honor of his performance as Richard II (Davies play, not Will). It was in a custom morocco case with “from the library of John Gielgud” on the spine. I died.

@baked: Our cat was named Fluffer in honor a college friend who called all cats Fluffers and all dogs Woofers.

I took massive shit for that name from friends familiar with the more common usage of the term. I had no idea. Fluffer didn’t care.