pax hominibus bonae voluntatis

Buon Natale!
Which, do you think, pleased la Guadalupe? The zealot who hanged her child in Iran? The Bishop of Rome who, under the cover of protecting mixed-sex marriage, opposed the French initiative to condemn the murder of that child? Or the French who, thanks to Napoleon's rationalistic code, would've embraced that child?
Et in terra, pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
La Madre Vergine di Guadalupe giudichi.
Buon Natale hominibus bonae voluntatis!--Giac.

§§§

Buon Natale!
Alla Guadalupe chi sarà piaciuto? Il bigotto zelota che l'ha impiccato il Figlio persiano? Il Papa che, sotto la maschera del Protettore del Sesso Sposato, ha condannato la proposta francese all'Onu, la proposta che avrebbe condannato l'uccisione del Figlio? Ossia i francesi, davvero francescani, che, grazie alle leggi civili, dote dal trisnonno corsicano Napoleone, avrebbero abbracciato il Suo Ragazzo?
Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
Giudichi la Madre Vergine.
Buon Natale, hominibus bonae voluntatis!--Giac.

(Foto e servizio: Oggi, No. 51)

No Wonder It Was Dull

° The audience at Belmont University was trying not to doze off, so were the candidates.
° Why should Obama or McCain be enthusiastic? After all, neither will be President of the country that existed two or more years ago when the campaign began. That was a country whose economic system, though abused and weakened by years of drugging by the Federal Reserve and flogging by the Administration and Congress, was not known to be on its last legs.
° At least, Obama and McCain didn't know it.
° Cheers to Obama for showing the first signs of awareness, in his assertion that energy independence would take precedence over the other items on his wish list.--Giac.

It's the End of the World As We Know It, One Month Later

° As I said a month ago, not a forecast, just observation.
° The S & P 500 closed Friday (3 ottobre) exactly on the optimistic longterm trendline. (Today, 8% collapse in Milano, not so jolly 4% in New York.) What does breaking this trendline tell us? What we knew already, that the financial climate that has prevailed since the mid-nineties no longer obtains.
° What would it mean if the S & P retreats another 20% or so to the conservative longterm trendline in the 850ish area? (Well, it would mean some very very unhappy investors, that's for sure.) If the S & P reaches 850, and holds, it means that the secular bull market, that America's economy, can revive and grow from a lower level. If the S & P reaches 850, and falls through, it means . . . .
° I've about given up on that condo in Ecuador. Now I'm more thinking a trip to the Mexican Market and a Boone Pickenslike investment in dried beans.
° Though my friend at the Y is clearly wiser, he plans to fill his closets with nutritious and heartwarming scotch.--Giac

Chart drawn with software from Ultra Financial Services

Mikhail Sharkov

° Chi è questo bel ragazzotto? Si chiama Mikhail Sharkov, è ballerino col Bolshoi da molto tempo. You can google him all you like, you'll find a series of "empty" biographies. And these fotos, taken from the 1989 dvd collection The Bolshoi Ballet (Arthaus Musik, Euroarts Music International), are the only ones I have found on the internet.
° Why am I such a fan?
° First, I'm a sentimental fan of the Bolshoi. The Bolshoi has survived everything so far: tsarism, revolution, Lenin, Stalin, Cold War, dissolution of Empire, rebirth of Empire. And it has survived without any great cross-pollenisation with Western dance. So it remains pure at best, idiosyncratic at worst. Idiosyncratic’s good too.
° One might think that 1989 was a particularly harsh time of transition. But it doesn't show.
° True, there're barely any sets in the Swan Lake, just immense darkness outside the spots, even the principal dancers are often only slightly illuminated. But what rich costuming! Alla Mikhalchenko, Yuri Vasyuchenko, the outrageously sinister Aleksandr Vetrov.
° And whirling across the stage like a perpetual motion automaton, the scene-stealing Court Jester, il nostro Mikhail Sharkov.
° An old-fashioned Nutcracker, with Clara dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy numbers. A proto-Nutcracker, perfect for children forever. Enchanting use of that oldest of special effects, the trap door. Natalya Arkhipova, Irek Mukhamedov. Mikhail Sharkov billed as Devil (with Witch), don't blink or you'll miss him.
° Sleeping Beauty. Sets, costumes, dancers--I can't imagine a more perfect production, down to the original Petipa special effects for the boat trip. The dvd notes, by the way, are the freshest and deepest I’ve ever come across. Nina Semizorova, Aleksei Fadeyechev, Nina Speranskaya, the perfect Carabosse of Yuri Vetrov. The erstwhile sinister Aleksandr Vetrov all glamoured up as the lithe and elegant Blue Bird.
° Mikhail Sharkov unbilled, except in the final credits. But I recognised his legs. You will too.
° Romeo and Juliet, with more of Prokofiev's music than we hear in the West. Natalya Bessmertnova, Irek Mukhamedov, and a pugnaciously swaggering Aleksandr Vetrov as Tybalt. Hard to seduce on stage the boss's (Yuri Grigorovich) wife. Hard not to be Nureyev and Fonteyn. Nobody's fault, unless Nureyev and Fonteyn's. (The very first well-mounted ballet I ever saw was the 1965 film version of MacMillan's R & J, screened at the British Embassy in Rome. Tea and scones afterwards.)

° Mikhail Sharkov, as Mercutio, steals the show. Just watch it and you'll see.
° So yes, a fan.
° What has become of him? No bios, as I say, but he danced Petrouchka with the Bolshoi tour this year. And is apparently a "trainer" at the Korea Ballet.
° An athletic guy, with huge charisma, and easily the handsomest of the lot, has he never been used as a danseur noble?
° I noticed in Sleeping Beauty that Puss was possibly shorter than White Cat. Probably, in fact.
° So what. Worth breeding up some short prima ballerinas if that was all the problem.--Giac.

solidarietà con federico e cristian

° Not my solidarity, that goes without saying. Practitioners of aggres- sive violence disgust me.
° I refer to the solidarity shown by the Mayor of Rome and by so many provincial department heads, who all immediately denounced the cowardly attack on two men holding hands in the moonlight near the Fori Imperiali, early the other morning. Ten or more ruffians spat on the lads, pelted them with stones and bottles, and assured them, in best Jim Crow style, “We don’t want your kind in Italy.”
° The same attack, in an American city, would go unreported, lest the victims be abused by the police in the very act of reporting. Indeed I recall reading this warning from the D. A. in Pope, Piers’s former home: “Same-sex hand-holding may go over out in California, but it won’t fly here.” The law enforcers are as lawless as the citizenry.
° My brother and I weren’t permitted to join the other kids in our neighbourhood in rocking, as we called it, any Negro so bold as to walk down our hill. We were told it was wrong so to do.
° Why did Daddy know it was wrong? Because he and his brother once hid in a culvert and stoned the children of their black cook. What a beating Granddaddy gave Daddy and Uncle when he found out.
° Worse than that, Grandmother said she was ashamed of them. So they grew up then and there.--Giac.

Hugh Jass

° This is a close-up foto of Hugh Jass. I realise it looks something like a watch. But just look at the face, look at the flawless precision of parts, look at the rock-solid reliability.
° Don't look at the price, Hugh's worth far more than that.--Giac.

Foto from AD Orologi

It's the End of the World As We Know It

° Not a prediction, just a big If. The upper trend line rises from the 1994 bottom that led to the great Greenspan blow-off; the S&P can fall another 15% from current levels (127) without interrupting the secular bull market. The lower trend line rises from the 1982 secular bottom; the S&P can even fall to this level (85 something) without terminating the secular bull market.
° But if the S&P should eventually rupture even the lower level, it will set up a secular double top at 155.
° It would be the end of the world as Americans know it. Time to relocate to that $30,000 condo with maid service and Quechua organic veggies in Ecuador.--Giac

Chart drawn with software from Ultra Financial Services.

Sugar Teat

° Did you know that if you give birth to your baby under water, he doesn't breathe for several hours, not till the umbilical cord stops pulsating?
° Well I didn't know it.

° On the other hand, the midwife didn't even know how to make a simple sugar teat.
° Take a fairly clean tea towel, dump a cup of sugar--brown is so very tasty--into the center, tie the corners as tightly as possible, handform the confined sugar into a sort of pointed teat.
° Then whenever Baby cries, just hand him the thing.* He'll suck contentedly for hours and hours on end.
° Those first teeth aren't permanent anyway.

° The midwife was less impressed with my observation that cows eat the afterbirth as a quick pickmeup.
° Natural childbirth, it seems, only goes so far.--Giac

*Nota bene: not medical advice, just a record of an actual country custom.

La Rondine

° Had the sala all to myself for a matinee projection of San Francisco Opera's La Rondine. Hadn't so much as heard the thing in decades, had never seen it.
° Excellent sets, costumes registering a bit chintzy on the big screen, singers less aggressively miked vis-à-vis the orchestra than their Met Live counterparts.
° That aria, thrown away so early in the day, able to express all of Room with a View in a few measures.
° Act III did not tug my heartstrings. If Magda had been a trollop and was still a liar, what of it? She's a good egg.

° Afterwards, in the car--New York's governor was confessing himself a trollop and a liar.
° Yea verily, he was an ass to persecute prostitutes in the first place, the quintessential Amerarabian vice. The persecution of Venus, I mean to say.
° But my goodness, if he'd only taken millions of dollars in bribes from special interest groups, Mr. Spitzer could still be neckandneck for the Democratic nomination.
° Nobody's perfect.

Manca

Un anno è passato.
E' passato un anno.
Ed una manca.

How to Marry a Millionaire

° Santa brought Leggero a pair of glasses for Christmas, the same prescription Marilyn Monroe wore in How to Marry a Millionaire.
° Do they work?
° Well, they've sharpened my vision.--Giac to Maurizio

Wifey Dearest

° If Socrates was so allfired smart, why couldn't he get along with the irascible Xantippe?
° Or rather, why would he try?--Giac to Maurizio