The U.S. First Lady, who has stuck to a palette of red, white and blue since she arrived in the city this morning, opted for an ensemble from the resort 2013 collection of American label J Mendel for an early evening reception at Buckingham Palace.
Oh? But what's this, further down:
Mrs Obama performed a further outfit change right before the Opening Ceremony began. She was seen viewing the dazzling spectacle (above) wearing a lime green blazer over the top of a simple white blouse.
Lime green! Lime green, you say? Unpatriotic!
Speaking of fashion colors and the opening ceremony... why was the Queen of England wearing black gloves? (Photo at the link.) She had this brocaded pink/peach-colored dress and a matching feathery hat, but black gloves. In summer! She also looked incredibly grouchy. I found it hard to enjoy the show, myself, because I was constantly distracted by thoughts about how the Queen must feel about it. All those people, all those flashing lights, and loud music, including Queen blasting "just gotta get out... just gotta get out..." And then those black gloves. It's as if she thought the place was going to be grimy — too dirty for her — and the gloves were a precaution against the attachment of any commonness.
From the long, photo-filled Daily Mail article about last night's opening ceremony for the London Olympics.
Unfathomably? Oh, come on. It must be at least possible to fathom it!
The OED tells us that to fathom means "To encircle with extended arms." So: Can you get your arms around it? Can the government get its arms around you?
The opening ceremony also had a giant production number celebrating the National Health Service, replete with hundreds of dancing doctors and nurses in period costumes, and children in pjs bouncing on oversized hospital beds.
Socialized medicine will encircle you with its extended arms.
J.K. Rowling (the "Harry Potter" author) read from J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" — video — and we were told that Barrie donated the royalties from "Peter Pan" to GOSH (the Great Ormand Street Hospital). We saw "GOSH" in big lights along with "NHS" in that production number.
(Wikipedia: "When the copyright originally expired at the end of 1987, 50 years after Barrie's death, the UK government granted the hospital a perpetual right to collect royalties for public performances, commercial publication, or other communications to the public of the work.... GOSH has been in legal disputes in the United States, where the copyright term is based on date of publication, putting the 1911 novel in the public domain, although the Hospital asserts that the 1928 version of the play is still under copyright in the U.S.")
Rowling tied it all together. Like Barrie, she's an author of children's literature. (The production number more generally celebrated Britain's children's literature, e.g., "Mary Poppins.") Like Barrie, Rowling represents giving up one's money to the greater good. Barrie voluntarily donated a specific flow of money — "Peter Pan" royalties — to a specific cause — a children's hospital. Rowling is just a very rich person who — visibly and graciously — submits to taxation.
This year's Forbes magazine rich list showed that Rowling "has dropped out of the world's exclusive billionaires' club as a result of Britain's high tax regime."
So, fathom that: The government has gotten its arms around her fortune. Unlike the charitable giving of yore — exemplified by Barrie — the modern-day secular saint need only sit still for taxation, and the government will decide exactly where it goes. It's the way things are done now, and it's massively celebrated as part of the Olympics spectacle about what makes Great Britain so great. The spectacle notably took us through the phrases of history, and those wonderful children's authors have been giving children reading material and vast donations of wealth, in their own way and in their own time. And in our time, the government has an immense role.
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"No man ought to graspe more then he can well fathome." Bp. J. Hall Horæ Vacivæ 71 (1646)(via OED).
I didn't write this on my own. In fact, I didn't write it at all. Meade wrote this:
Lord North: Look, if you colonists have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by colonists and yeomen who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.
George Washington: Without our consent, we reject your taxes.
Lord North: There are a lot of smart people out there in the New World. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking British subjects of the Crown out there.
Thomas Jefferson: Stop coercing us, Lord North. Your Acts are intolerable.
Lord North: If you yankees were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great King somewhere in your life. Some members of Parliament helped to create this unbelievable Royal Navy system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in French and Indian Wars and the East India Company.
Alexander Hamilton: The King is your king. He is only our king by our agreement.
Lord North: If you've got a medical practice or silver smithery or a cabinetmaking business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The printing press didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the printing press so that all the pamphleteers could make money off the printing press.
Sam Adams: Hey, Lord North, shove your Stamp Act where the sun don't set.
Lord North: All right, all right - everybody just calm down. In politics, we all tolerate a certain amount of spin. I understand these are the games that get played in political campaigns. Although when folks just, like, omit entire sentences of what you said, they start kind of splicing and dicing, you may have gone a little over the edge there, you pesky Americans.
One of 2 building permit signs in the window says: "Remove all components of Stage Door theater." The Stage Door theater is the claustrophobic place around in the back where I've seen quite a few movies over the years, not the original, ornate theater that rarely showed things I wanted to see (or that I wanted to see but couldn't see under better conditions). But somehow I can only remember one movie I ever saw at the Stage Door theater: "Sling Blade."
The old marquee gives shade to the dobro-and-harmonica player. "Marquee" is a funny word. It originally meant "A tent large enough to hold many people (now usually one used for social or commercial functions)." The OED has that going back to 1690. The meaning we know — which is "chiefly U.S." — is "A canopy projecting over the main entrance to a building; spec. such a canopy at a theatre, cinema, etc., on which details of the entertainment or performers are displayed." That only goes back to 1926. For some reason, one of the examples given in the OED, from 1993, is:
Daily Tel. 15 July 21/3 At the Hubbard Dianetics Foundation there's an electric marquee that goes through this routine: Low Self Esteem? Failed Marriage? Tired Of Losing? Relationship Difficulties? Come In Now!
The marquee at the Orpheum today is pushing nothing. Which is always a good show.
Why are you judges so sensitive about what they say when they have life tenure?
Scalia says everything he has to say is in the opinions, and it's fine for people to "paw over" the opinions, but he doesn't need to be there while us animals do that.
And here he is on cameras in the Supreme Court:
Basically, his point is the public would get "educated" if they'd look at the video the right way, which is watch all of the arguments on all of the cases, including all the really boring things about ERISA and so forth. But since the video would end up in edited sound bites, that would not be educational, and therefore we shouldn't be allowed to get our hands — should I say paws? — on it.
My position, you may remember, is that video would impose some accountability on the Justices, who do, as Lamb noted, have life tenure and may very well stay beyond the point of competency. Obviously, the written opinions aren't much good in this regard, since the Justices have excellent help writing the opinions.
1. The term "portmanteau" originated in "Through the Looking-Glass," as Humpty Dumpty explains "Jabberwocky," within which, for example, "slithy" combines "lithe and slimy" and "mimsy" combines "flimsy and miserable." "You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word." (The word "portmanteau" already meant suitcase.)
2. "Portmanteau" comes from French — combining words for "carry" and "coat" — but the French don't say "portmanteau" to refer to "suitcase words." They say mot-valise — which they came up with by making a literal translation of the English term "suitcase word." That makes "portmanteau" something that's called a "false friend" (a term I did not know).
3. Tex Ritter's real name was Woodward Maurice Ritter. You'd think if he needed a nickname, Woody would have popped up. Think of all the Woodys that that had to stretch to get to "Woody." Woody Allen, for example, was named Allan Stewart Konigsberg. I can't discern how he got to Woody from his Wikipedia entry, which says: "It the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen." That sounds like he was setting up a knock-knock joke: "Heywood who?"
4. Now Woody Guthrie got to Woody quite directly. He was named Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. Born in 1912. You might say: Woodrow Wilson! Woodrow Wilson didn't even become President of the United States until 1913. Yes, but he was Governor of New Jersey. No matter that Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. It would be like somebody today living in some state that's not New Jersey naming their new baby Chris Christie Smith or Chris Christie Jones or whatever.
5. Back to Mantan Moreland, the other guy in the Tex Ritter "Boll Weevil" video. Looking at his Wikipedia page, I see he was in a surprising number of movies, including many movies I'd never heard of like "Freckles Comes Home" (1942) and "King of the Zombies" (1941). "He is perhaps best known for his role as chauffeur Birmingham Brown in Monogram's Charlie Chan series. (The lyrics of The Coasters' 1963 song 'Bad Detective' are sung from the first-person perspective of Birmingham Brown, Mantan Moreland's character in the Charlie Chan movie series.)" There's some very heavy racial context here. Spike Lee's movie "Bamboozled" appropriates some things about Moreland. And the Beastie Boys sampled something of his about mashed potatoes, and you can listen to the original (NSFW) here.
6. Moreland "was briefly considered as a possible addition to the Three Stooges when Shemp Howard died in 1955." And he was in the 1957 Broadway stage production of "Waiting For Godot." He played Estragon, the role played by Bert Lahr in the original production of the play.
7. In the "Waiting for Godot" with Moreland, Geoffrey Holder played the character Lucky.
9. The New York Dolls recorded "Bad Detective" — replete with the opening notes that you may well recognize as the music that was always used in the past to signify: This is Chinese.
10. Mantan Moreland was known for his "Incomplete Sentences" comic routines. They went like this (from some Charlie Chan movies):
:.
