To Sir, With Love
'There'll be heartache (and homework) tonight...'
Songs in Our Heart # 72 To Sir, With Love (Lulu) (written by Don Black and Mark London; released September 1967) [A pure infusion of 1960s Brit sugar-pop, perfectly delivered by Lulu, embodying every schoolgirl stuck on the tall, dark, handsome (and appropriately moral) teacher. Schmaltz and flowering youth songs don’t come much more ambrosial than this. Yeah!]
Continue Reading →A Hung Jury on Global Warming?
"What did South Australians use before Tom gave them candles? Electricity."
16 February 2017. Twelve years to the day since ‘implementation’ of the Kyoto Protocol.* You and I sit in a jury box. We have only just met. We bring to our mutual task our life experience and understanding of the ways of the world, our endogenous prejudices, and our gut feelings. The Judge sends us into our room charged to answer whether we are amid an interglacial, or, rather, is the globe warming – are anthropogenic CO2 emissions causing or contributing to this warming – and does this pose a clear and imminent danger, on the balance of probabilities? So we…
Continue Reading →Our First Caption Contest – Results
We asked readers to suggest a caption to “The Love Letter” by Johannes Vermeer. The Varnished Culture liked Al Taylor’s “Just let me finish my beer“, Sharona Altman’s “Do you wrap?,” Patricia Anne Carlisle’s joyous “Recess – time to play!” and of course the Picnic at Hanging Rock reference by anonymous: “My notice, ma’am.” But the winners, the three best entries, were decided to be, in alphabetical order: Jesse Luke: “My g string is a little tight.” Alicia Webb: “It’s not what it looks like…” Joe Webb: “My dear…It may have been silent…But you should go check your undies.” (We…
Continue Reading →Melancholia
(Dir. Lars von Trier) (2011) Some compare this film to Terence Malick’s Tree of Life. Here’s my comparison – one of these films is overrated tedious pretentious twaddle and the other is a stylish wonder directed by Lars von Trier. In Part 1 of the Trier one, Melancholia, a handsome couple, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) arrive at their wedding reception in a weird Maxfield Parrish twilight. Everything is beautiful in the castle guesthouse, but the newlyweds are two hours late and a whiff of despair accompanies them. We don’t know why. The bride’s sister Claire (a careworn Charlotte Gainsbourg) is exasperated but not…
Continue Reading →My Funny Valentine
'It's a nice place for a picnic..."
Saint Valentine’s Day, February 14 David Farmer, in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, suggests there were actually two Valentines martyred in the 3rd century AD at Rome, so it is possible they were one and the same. He writes: “Neither of them seems to have any clear connection with lovers or courting couples. The reason for this famous patronage is that birds are supposed to pair on 14 February, a belief at least as old as Chaucer…” One Valentine rests in a Rome reliquary, where they thoughtfully labelled his scone: Santa Maria in Cosmedin is also famous for Bocca della…
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