What a brilliant a script it was that made “Blazing Saddles.” (And never mind the gags). It is scathing, satirical, funny and bawdy — and still fresh. This is one of Hollywood’s few successfully close-to-the-bone comedies along with To Be or Not to Be — unfortunately poorly remade by Mel Brooks.
Mel Brooks: 10 things you never knew about ‘Blazing Saddles’
Beware of Episcopal women who take up with Ayn Rand and the Buddha and Dr. Rhine formerly of Duke University. A certain type of Episcopal girl has a weakness that comes on them just past youth, just as sure as Italian girls get fat. They fall prey to Gnostic pride, commence buying antiques, and develop a yearning for esoteric doctrine.
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“Our marriage is a collapsed morality, like a burnt-out star which collapses into itself, gives no light and is heavy heavy heavy.”
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“Who was it who said: if I were offered the choice between having the truth and searching for it, I’d take the search?”
One of the greats has passed. The very excellent Keith Spera captures him best ably supported by the very excellent Wayne Curtis:
The very excellent Simon Garnier:
Sadly, Soho these days comes over as very anemic save for the occasional gem, one being an unmarked (not illegal nor private) bar that I was taken to — you’d have to know it’s there to enter. A wonderful throwback to a time when Soho was still interesting. Though Bernard was a fixture at the “bloody” Coach and Horses these days it seems filled by those about to go to or are returning from an Andrew Lloyd Vombo musical.
Last orders for Jeffrey Bernard
The last ever Jeffrey Bernard anecdote
Archive: Jeffrey Bernard’s Christmas Low Life
But by far the worst thing about Christmas, apart from the suicidal tendencies, is the business of one’s pubs being invaded by these disgusting part-time drinkers who order snowballs, cherry brandy, cointreau and the like and who then deposit them on the pavement outside. You can’t get into your favourite restaurants for the mass of advertising people holding their annual get-togethers and the sight of these people affecting bonhomie for the one and only time in the year is quite sickening. Since they eat free on expenses all through the year anyway they could afford to give their Christmas office lunch money to Oxfam, Help the Aged or even to Help Keep Jeff Bernard Out of the Nick.
Died on this day — without doubt one of the greats.
No one has ever played the piano like Booker. In an email referring to the new deluxe Classified record, Harry Connick Jr. put it like this: “This CD is yet another example of the powerful genius of a unique and complex mind. I hear joy and struggle. I hear perfection and error. I hear confidence and hesitation—I hear James, the greatest ever.”
Born on this day — a brief article outlining his life and works. (H/T to Troy Camplin).
Extracts from The Chap Almanac: An Esoterick Yearbook for the Decadent Gentleman by Vic Darkwood and Gustav Temple.
On 1st January 1909, Marcel Proust was reading in bed when he dipped a piece of toast into a glass of tea and remembered something he’d left behind in his childhood. Thus began a vast literary project that would run into a million and a quarter words and occupy the inert author until the day he died. Proust had discovered a novel way of accessing 39 years’ worth of memories and converting them into fiction, so there wasn’t much need for him to do anything else. Why run about creating new memories, when the old ones are simply stored away conveniently in the subconscious? It was simply a matter of retrieving them, and all one needed was time. Proust lost no time in converting his bedroom at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris, into a hive of inactivity, remaining in bed for the next 12 years to write Remembrance of Things Past.
Astonished to see that my Amy Winehouse: The Album Collection comes with one these most grievous of offenses against taste and decency and liberality.
Frank . . . our culture is still being infantilized and no doubt has supporters from both the illiberal Left and the illiberal Right — the “central scrutinizers” of Joe’s Garage. “Explicit content” — as Amy sings “What kind of fuckery is this?” or in my terms “what kind of fuckwittery is this?” See: Sex, Drugs and Gore and the videos featured here and below, but let’s start with Amy:
manwithoutqualities 