wanted to write this yesterday, damn california power outages messing with myspace! I was going to talk about my weekend and how incredibly and horribly hot it was, and why, apart from some pleasant drunkeness with friends and air-conditioned bookstore diving, I spent most of the time on the couch watching videos.  My ego desired some explanation of that…

But it’s old news now so I just wanted to note that I saw the new Pirates of the Carribean (lovely air-conditioned theatre, forgot to mention it), a bootleg copy of the 40 year old virgin (hell of funny after all!  Just wanted to mention the point, first made by Bev, that the show in Tijuana is NOT a horse show but a donkey show.  Still disgusting and so so wrong), a scathing documentary about Enron, the second season of the Office, and finally, the meat of today’s entry, East Side Story, a charming documentary on socialist musicals behind the iron curtain.  Now I shall whet your appetites by telling you that there were MULTIPLE scenes of beautiful women in tight fitting gray overalls and kerchiefs, that harvesting wheat looks like so much fun I’ve a mind to do it over my upcoming holiday and I’ve already bought the dress I’m going to wear, and that songs about the fatherland and the joy of work really CAN be fun!  While I was afraid that the quality wouldn’t compare to Astaire and Rodger’s flics, the number that really turned me around was one on the joys of feeding pigs, apparently you let them out of their pens while sweetly singing come here come with me little pigs, and then you all dance down joyfully together to the trough.

There’s an interesting parallel in American bluegrass, I’m so glad the cold war is over so I can say this! There is a great song, the version I know is by Ralph Stanley whose chorus goes “I’ve got a pig home in a pen, corn to feed him on, now all I need is a pretty little girl, to feed him when I’m gone.”  All I have to say is that capitalism and the resulting urbanisation of our society seems to have robbed us of so many rural porcine delights, and the tender declarations of love so inspired!  And I now scorn my childhood fear that my Devonshire and genuine pirate-speaking grandfather’s pig would have eaten me if it ever had the chance…My opinion, however, that chickens are evil incarnate has not changed, and I thank god everyday that they are not bigger than we are.