The New Yorker asks readers every week to supply a caption to a cartoon. The Spectator has a more challenging competition that changes every week. A recent one asked readers to rewrite the Hokey Pokey in the style of a famous poet. Winning entries included the Hokey Pokey written by Philip Larkin and the Hokey Pokey written by Emily Dickinson.
The other week, driving through the neighborhood to visit Elvis – our resident peacock – Hania and I were surprised to find a new peacock on Elvis’s street. We knew it wasn’t Elvis, who was nowhere in sight, because he had a scraggly tail.
A neighbor appeared, and we all agreed Elvis’s new friend needed a name. The woman suggested Presley, which I wasn’t crazy about. It wasn’t a first name, and it suggested blood relations.
As we drove home, I tried to think of singers from the Elvis era who were known by one name. Donovan was too long. Deano was too obscure for anyone under 60 (but a good name for a peacock). Dylan could work as a first name, but it didn’t seem to fit. Finally, I came up with Freddie. Freddie Mercury came after Elvis, but the new bird kinda looked like a Freddie.
Then the other day, driving down Peacock Street (not its official name), we ran into a resident sitting in a lawn chair. We asked if he’d seen the new peacock. “You mean Elton?” he asked.
The other week, driving through the neighborhood to visit Elvis – our resident peacock – Hania and I were surprised to find a new peacock on Elvis’s street. We knew it wasn’t Elvis, who was nowhere in sight, because he had a scraggly tail.
A neighbor appeared, and we all agreed Elvis’s new friend needed a name. The woman suggested Presley, which I wasn’t crazy about. It wasn’t a first name, and it suggested the two were related.
As we drove home, I tried to think of singers from the Elvis era who were known by one name. Donovan was too long. Deano was too obscure for anyone under 60 (but a pretty good name for a peacock). Dylan could work as a first name (it did for Thomas), but not for a peacock. Finally, I came up with Freddie. Freddie Mercury came after Elvis, but the bird kinda looked like a Freddie.
Then the other day, driving down Peacock Street (not its official name), we ran into a resident sitting in a lawn chair. We asked if he’d seen the new bird. “You mean Elton?” the man replied.
The TV critic for The Spectator, James Delingpole, has a rule for streaming: For high quality, you have to get something with subtitles. (Though in our case, that includes British shows.) His latest recommendation, Eternaut, is an Argentinian series which we tried but, because of our aversion to science fiction, we stopped after one episode. Though I did see its merits. What I’m looking for is not exactly another Shtisel, but a show that, like that one, is about “love, loss and the doldrums of everyday life.”
The long holiday weekend brought the usual problem of what to watch. I have called a temporary moratorium on mystery and detective series – and a lifelong ban on Harlan Coben, a writer I had never heard about until I subscribed to Netflix. How can it be that so many shows have been made from books one never sees in bookstores – even airport bookstores?
Saturday night I watched the last installment of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Vietnam War. There were scenes I didn’t remember – Spiro Agnew debating with war protestors on the David Frost Show – and scenes I remembered incompletely. I of course knew that Jane Fonda visited Hanoi (as did Joan Baez and Susan Sontag) but I had forgotten Fonda saying that the American POWs should be tried and, if found guilty, executed. My favorite scene was of a group of those POWs on an airplane flying home.
At the end of the documentary, statistics appeared on the screen: over 58,000 American dead, over two million Vietnamese. My thoughts go out to them all today.