Melancholy Danes

Take a look at the picture of the Helsingor train station. It was built in a time of great artistry and craftsmanship, definitely. But there's something more about it.

"Helsingor" has an English cognate in "Elsinore", i.e. where Hamlet takes place. And Helsingor knows this, which is why right outside the station stand statues of Hamlet and Ophelia. The linked blogger describes them as "bearing grotesque expressions." His face looks a little wimpy, although the same can't be said of his muscular legs. She has a thousand yard stare and a jaw that looks ready to fall off.

The nineteenth century is when Shakespeare's reputation went from "a great playwright" to "the Great Playwright." By the latter part of the century, Denmark knew how big he'd gotten and about their connection to what was widely considered his greatest play. They picked a classy way to cash in.

Happy accidents

You might remember a man named Bob Ross, a Floridian Air Force veteran with a white guy afro who attained what might be called a viral fame in the last ten years or so of his shortish life. He wasn't PBS's first happy-go-lucky painting instructor―that was Bill Alexander―but he defined that role for the public and is a rich subject for parody.

A friend today told me about Bob Ross Painting Parties, which I hadn't heard of before. It seems to have started in the late 2010s and is still going on. People get together, project Bob Ross videos on the wall, and have a go at painting.

If you're an actual artist this probably sounds more like dressing up as Brad and Janet for Rocky Horror screenings than what you do, and you're not wrong. But the crucial phrase here is "people get together." Social traditions have been disappearing and shrinking much faster in the 21st century than new ones can be created. So if a new one springs up, why carp about the sillier aspects? May the painting parties spread like wildfire from YMCA to church basement to parks in the summertime. Let a million Bobs bloom.

Into the hard stuff

Some might think it treasonous to spend the night of September 11 watching a movie about New York City junkie life in the early 70s. But it's always been a warts and all kind of city. 

Born to Win (and you can see the young Roger Ebert's take here) was filmed before the Twin Towers were even completed, so it's no surprise they don't figure in it. George Segal was always a very funny and charming actor, and his character in this repeatedly calls himself a charmer. His faded tattoo (from which the movie gets its name) suggests he might have been in the military. He was definitely married to Paula Prentiss before that somehow went bad, and he sometimes still sees her in scenes where it's ambiguous whether she's actually there. For now he's with Karen Black, who seems to have no idea what she's letting herself in for.

It's a diverting movie. Things are funny and exciting, and obviously in a few minutes they won't be. J's dealer finds him amusing and sometimes useful but knows he'll eventually put him down like a dog. One of the cops is played by a then unknown Robert DeNiro, and they're their own kind of trouble.

Curiouser and curiouser

I remember when I first read Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, I liked the scene where the Gnat tells Alice about the insects found in Looking-Glass Land. There was the Bread-and-butter-fly, the Rocking-horse-fly, and something very festive called the Snap-dragon-fly.

The thing is, I was familiar with food, so I knew what bread and butter were. And I knew what a rocking horse was. But a snapdragon? Those were flowers, weren't they? What did that have to do with this thing with a raisin head?

There is, of course, a story behind that. The game of snapdragon had a long and august history even in Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's time, and was still in vogue. Again, it would be years―nay, decades―before I learned of any of this. But the other thing is, my lack of knowledge about the game didn't stop me from liking the reference to it in the book. It was something just a little different from the everyday, otherworldly and yet of the world.

A screaming comes across the sky

I just started reading Gravity's Rainbow. A lady at the bus stop asked me what I was reading. I told her the title and showed her the cover. All I could tell her was, "It's weird." She wasn't going to press me for details, thank God. In fact, she walked out of the bus shelter a few minutes later. 

If you've ever read the book you know it's very dense in a way that at least courts complete incoherence. But Thomas Pynchon studied engineering physics in college, so it does have that kind of solidly researched background. But in essence, since it's set during the Blitz and imitates the Blitz, I'm just letting myself get bombed by it.

Hic sunt dracones

It's interesting to learn that maps didn't actually warn "Here be dragons", be it in Latin, English, or any other language. But did the people of the time believe that dragons were out there on the open seas? In a way, they wouldn't be wrong thinking that. That is, aside from questions of literal belief, a dragon is nifty shorthand for adverse sailing conditions. Say there's a spot where your ship stands a better than average change of being either capsized or becalmed. If you say that dragons are there, that's a pretty vivid way of describing the conditions.

That's not getting into the fact that there were and are some unusual creatures in the sea, some of which we may not have discovered in our own time. 

As for the dragon fighting a giant lobster, I don't know what to say. Big fan of shellfish?

Is on my side

Helen McCloy wrote her mystery series about Dr. Willing, a psychologist who works with the NYPD, for some time. The first novel came out in 1938, the last in 1980. I recently felt like reading one of the books in the series, or possibly rereading them. The library couldn't help me there, as it didn't have any of them. But they used to. I know this because I've borrowed a couple before. So since then they've apparently cleaned out the entire system, either by selling or just chucking. I can see pruning, but it seems like they should have kept one or two titles at least.

The good news is that I was able to borrow another McCloy book, A Question of Time. It's a thriller with some non-overpowering Gothic touches. The plot concerns a girl brought from Italy to live with her grandmother in Boston. At a young age, she develops a seemingly irrational fear of the ballroom that contains an intense Goya painting, despite never having seen it. Years later, she returns to Beantown and things develop from there.

The book came out in the latter half of McCloy's career, and must have been written when she was about 60. Still and all, she takes an interest in her child and young adult characters, and seems to have fun writing their dialogue. A sort of snapshot of posh Northeastern Boomers in their youth.