pon farr

One tune that I keep in my mental play-list, like the Tetris song or the Night on Bald Mountain or any number of Sophisti-Pop melodies, has been the scherzo that is the Star Trek fight motif. Composed in 1967 by Hollywood arranger Gerald Fried in first for the episode “Amok Time” airing on this day in that year in which Captain Kirk indulges the mating rites (the incidental music sampled from, informed by Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 riot-inciting symphony) of his otherwise completely logical first officer, Mister Spock, by defending his insubordination in diverting the ship’s course to Vulcan to spawn as it were and fulfil the obligations of his arranged marriage, both for biological and societal reasons.
Spock’s betrothed T’Pring has fallen in love with another during his absence and invokes her right to a ritual duel, the kali-if-fee, between Spock and a pugilist of her choosing, which to the surprise of all assembled is Kirk, who agrees to enjoin in hand-to-hand combat despite Spock’s warning against it. After accepting his role as champion, Kirk learns that it a duel to the death. In order to level the playing field, Doctor McCoy convinces the referee, the overseer to allow him to inject Kirk with a compound to counteract the thinner atmosphere of Vulcan. It is permitted and the fighting ensues, underscored by Fried’s incidental music called The Ritual/Ancient Battle/Second Kroykah.
Fried also scored numerous other television programmes (the episodes to his credit are quite extensive) including Gilligan’s Island and created the signature leitmotifs for the characters. Kirk is beaten down and McCoy pronounces him dead and the two beam back to the Enterprise immediately. Spock renounces T’Pring, released of his obligations, who then explains her strategy, afraid of losing her beloved in battle to Spock, she chose Kirk as her second in order to ensure she gets her choice regardless of the outcome of the challenge. Spock compliments her flawless logic and issues a warning to T’Pring’s new mate that “having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting,” giving the Vulcan salute and motto of “Live long and proper” for the first time. Expecting to be charged for killing the captain, Spock returns to face justice and is visibly relieved to find Kirk alive and well and merely drugged by McCoy to simulate death in combat.

leave the driving to us

While not exactly pleased with the idea of after having finished the fraught task of packing house and home to be presented with a record album to bear away and figure out how to transport, we do rather like this novelty arrangement presented to families in the 1960s whom chose Allied Van lines to handle the logistics of their change of address. These orchestral variations on the company’s jingle, a network of independent contractors formed in the 1930s to reduce dead-heading—that is, the movement of empty trucks—in the shipping business, embraces the range of genres popular at the time.

in the before times

What do you think of this imagined dialogue explaining some of 2020’s iconography to 2019 interlocutor?
We especially appreciated the opera season debuting in Barcelona to an audience of potted plants, Disney World’s re-opening and the waist-up fashion since we are all talking heads now. Six months into this going viral going global and with no indication and perhaps no inclination to return to normalcy—being that that was one big grift all along, what pictures encapsulates our lived experience?  We are confident that the terrain will s

trykkefrihed or fourth estate

Though de facto liberation of newspapers occurred in Britain a few decades earlier with the abolishment of the mandate for publications to be licensed by Parliament in 1695, the first explicit guarantor of unfettered and inquisitive journalism came on this in 1770 for the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway under the regency of Prussian philosopher and reformer Johann Friedrich, Count Struensee (*1737 – †1772), who made dispatching with censorship of the press his second order of business after the abolition of torture.
Maître des requêtes and personal physician for the mentally-ill King Christian VII, Stuensee pushed forward a raft of legislation for the monarch to sign-off on including getting rid of noble privilege and state-sponsored revenues, subsidies for underperforming businesses, a ban on trade of enslaved persons in the colonies, criminalisation of bribery, reducing the size of the standing army, reallocating farm land for the peasant class and a tax on gambling. The public generally received Stuensee’s radical amendments well but halting censorship also opened up a tumult of pamphlets (mostly anonymous) critical of his regime and his dismissal of many government officials earned him many political enemies—leading to his execution after a palace coup two years later on the charge of lèse-majesté and presuming to rule in the king’s stead.

hiding in plain sight

Not a day goes by—especially now that I am slowly, carefully reintegrating back into office society by coming into work a couple days a week—that I don’t think about this image of Diane Keaton avoiding the paparazzi and find myself reminded when people recognise me around the workplace and broader campus.
How did you see through my disguise, I wonder, before pausing to consider that I, like most others, probably am memorable and make an impression. Has this happened to you? I don’t think I have a signature look but one never knows, and perhaps more often than not, our masquerade is a good alibi for not having to acknowledge an acquaintance.  H and I always appreciated the wait-staff that could recall our usuals at a Greek restaurant despite the infrequency that we patronised the place and while it doesn’t diminish the esteem I have for the waitress, I imagine that together, we’re a little outside the ordinary as well, not considering what a curse it would be to have everyone’s orders indelibly etched in one’s memory.

die 1000 augen des doktor mabuse

Premiering on this day in 1960 at the Gloria-Palast in Stuttgart, The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse was Fritz Lang’s (*1890 – †1976) final directorial effort, reusing a character that appeared in two previous screenplays and whose plot was based on author Jan Fethke’s 1931 Esperanto language novel—also a trilogy—called Mister Tot Buys a Thousand Eyes (Mr. Tot aĉetas mil okulojm).
The only lead to a myster- ious death of a reporter comes from an informer and confidant of the police inspection who is a blind fortune-teller, who had a vision of the murder but not the killer—prompting an ensemble of connected characters to engage in detective work that suggest the return of the long presumed dead titular villain—a Svengali-type figure, combining elements of horror, spy films and dragnet surveillance in a nihilistic milieu with a legacy of sequels, pre-quels and reboots spanning across the ensuing decade, the seventh and final instalment The Vengeance of Dr Mabuse screened in 1970.

san venerio

Venerated on this day as protector of the Gulf of La Spezia and the patron saint of lighthouse keepers (guardiani del faro), hermit and monk Venerius was associated with an isolated religious community in the small island of Tino in the Ligurian Sea for the first three decades of the seventh century.
Little is known about Venerius’ vita et acta other than miraculous accounts of arranging rescue missions for distressed sailors and driving out a sort of dragon fish that was seriously disrupting local commerce. Presently part of an Italian naval station, access to the island is restricted except on Venerius’ feast day, when his statue is carried out to sea with the bishop, blessing all the boats of Cinque Terre and the broader cove beyond.

heathcliff, it’s me—i’m cathy, i’ve come home, i’m so cold

Via the always superb Nag on the Lake we learn that the 1541 stately manor house Ponden Hall in West Yorkshire that inspired both Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (previously) and sister Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is on offer and back on the housing market. The Sisters Brontë stayed at this ten-room estate in Stanbury for the first time in September of 1824 while seeking higher ground during the Crow Hill Bog Burst, a flood and mudslide following particularly heavy rainfall, and the siblings often visited throughout their lives.