Sweet Songs, From Now On

Some things defy credulity, the workings of the human heart among them. In the end, they were each other's lucky star. And that's a very sweet song, indeed.

Mary Louise, Ultrastar

If only she hadn't been up against the divine Glenn, I'd be totally thrilled.  As it is, I'm pretty close.  There's a joke there, but you'll have to make it.  Wasn't she lovely?  And isn't she still?

Also, it makes me oddly happy that in private life, she's Mrs. Gummer.

Yesterday, When We Were Young

More like rising thirty years ago, actually. Time in its flight...

A-Meryl-ca, I Love You!

Now, God knows we here at the Café adore the ground on which Miss Streep walks, and I know that this is a daring choice from a rising young designer, but... I'm not convinced. This is more a Cindy McCain kind of frock, don't you think?

Actually, I think it's what Sarah Palin should have worn for her big announcement yesterday. And every day for the rest of her wretched life. Sorry, didn't mean to venture into politics, but somehow, it just crept in. Schadenfreude shows up at the oddest moments...

AnachroGlam

A contemporary jewel in a period setting: Miss Streep, quite convincing as a Mucha fever-dream.

(Portrait by the remarkable British pencil artist Anna Shipstone)

A Café Gallimaufry

Well, Gentle Readers, due to circumstances all too much under my control, the Café's connection to the Great Wide World has been, for the last several days, very much on the fritz.

Who knew that if you travelled for a summer and then got back and got rather busy and didn't, as the absolute top priority in your life, go spend the necessary hour in line to pay your bill, you might wake up one morning (one weekend morning, of course!, when everything is obdurately closed) with a sad little dark spot on the line of blinking lights on the tiny device that, through some technosorcery, makes it all happen? That dark spot, I've now learned, makes it not happen.

So, the weekend ends, you go pay, they turn you back on. It's like having a dealer in the old days. Not that I'd know anything about that.

In any case, I thought I would tie up a few loose ends I've been considering during the down time and give you some doubtless gripping details from the front:

It's lovely having readers, and it's even lovelier having ones who write. One gentle soul, for example, thought that the following brilliant piece of poesie might be a tad racy for general consumption, and so sent it privately. To avoid overuse of your fainting couches, darlings, I've lightly censored it:

There was a young man from Eurasia,
Who toasted his balls in a brasier -
'Til they grew near as hot
As the glamorous tw*t
Of Miss Brenda Diana Duff Frazier.

I admire it most for making optimum use of the lady's exquisitely metric full name.

Speaking of censored - I forgot, when chatting aimlessly not long ago, about how people find their way to the Café, to note the hands-down favorite of all posts, one that sports the following apparently irresistible image:

More titillating, apparently, even than Marisa Berenson nude!

A truly depressing number of first-timers drop by here having searched on "censored". Surely that can't be a realistic way to find - and presumably this is the goal - material worth censoring?

And speaking of readers writing, another (and was I excited to hear from one of my fave bloggers!) writes to update us on the erstwhile Annabella of Bow Wow Wow: there's a chance, apprently, that she's working in retail in southern California. I can only hope it's a shop that doesn't stock candy, or that she's become wholly unrecognizable. Or both.

Now, let me think...what else? Well, this weekend, Mr. Muscato and I finally saw Mamma Mia! Once past the initial shock at how it tries to batter one into HAVING! FUN!!, we actually did, a little.

In no particular order:

• Meryl's predictably divine;
• How did they get out of having to cast Bette Midler in place of either Christine Baranski or Julie Walters - or both (but at least we were spared Whoopi, although I would wager her name came up at least once in casting)?;
• The gayische mini-subplot was unexpected fun (but mostly cut to bits, from what we could tell, for this region's delicate sensibilities); but
• Colin Firth: not aging as gracefully as one might have hoped; and
• Goodness, doesn't Pierce Brosnan look better than he sings (and didn't that part really call for additional shirtlessness)?

We also: had lunch at the metropolis's most unfortunately named eatery, a perfectly nice little joint that rejoices in the (one has to presume non-Anglophone-bestowed) name Stomach; visited the mall (well, it's still a thrilling thing in this part of the world, and I found the letters of Truman Capote); and actually read the papers, on paper.

If you know the local papers, you know that the loss of the Internet is a grave, grave thing.

Oh, and Ramadan being hard upon us, we shopped. The supermarkets for the next two weeks will be as if every hour is 4:30 on Thanksgiving Wednesday crossed with Christmas Eve. With a storm coming.

Unlikely Incarnations

Behold:

Barbie Streep.

You slog away for decades to become one of the world's most successful Big Serious Actresses. Then, one day, for a lark, you take a silly, showy part in a comedy that turns out to be a runaway success, and what happens?

Some queen goes and makes a doll out of you. Although to my untrained eye, the whole effect is more evocative of Alexis/Nolan Miller than Miranda/Prada, but then I suppose it's hard to get the leopard skin just right at 11 1/2" scale.

And all of of this only because I felt like running a couple of shots of Miss Streep, just because.

I love her in her classics:

Here, as, in Bette Midler's memorable impression, "the French Leftenant's Whoooooooooooore...", or equally, as she so often admirably is, straight up, no make up:

I've been thinking that whatever one thinks about the current crop of Hot Young Things (Misses Johansson, Portman, et al), we are, in a few year, in for an amazing crop of fabulous Old Lady Actresses: just think of the movies that could be made by bringing together Streep, Close, Hawn, Sarandon, and more as they move in a decade or two toward their eighties and beyond.