quasigrecian thoughts

[calimac]

1. The first big storm of the winter season rolled over us yesterday. Unlike much of the strange weather we've had in recent years, this was a typical California storm as I remember them. Over the course of a day the clouds surreptitiously gathered overhead and the world became darker and colder. Then overnight, without any drama, it just began raining steadily and soaked us for the whole of the next day. No sudden cloudbursts, little if any thunder or lightning, some wind - enough to be dramatic in places - but no howling gales. With the usual flooded zones, mudslides, fallen trees, and power outages afterwards.
   
   
2. I recall enjoying the first season of Mad Men, but the second, now out on DVD, begins by devolving into a series of dull existentialist blackout sketches, apparently meant to demonstrate the emptiness of life because I can't think of anything else they do. It's like reading Mrs. Bridge, a comparison I do not mean as a compliment. (The movie was much better.) At the point in episode 2 when Pete wanders into Don's office and delivers the scriptwriter's musings on how he should respond to the news of his father's death in a plane crash, instead of acting like a person responding to the news of his father's death in a plane crash, and in general sounding more like whiny old Connor, a character I'd hoped the actor had left far behind him, than like the creepy but interesting Pete, I turned it off and will not be returning. Don't tell me it gets better right after that. I know that trick.
   
   
3. Received from an editor who wants me to review it, the "Collected Poems" of Mervyn Peake. Buried in the third long paragraph of the introduction is the news that it excludes all his nonsense verse. Excludes all his ...? That's like opening the "Collected Poems" of T.S. Eliot to discover it doesn't have Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which, come to think of it, it doesn't. Next time leave the skins on! That's the best part!

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I actually wrote to Faber to complain about the absence of Old Possum from the soi-disant Collected Poems - but answer got I none.