Pardon the delay... I was busy annoying my family! 😂
They think they're the modern Mitfords when really it's more like Sanford and Son!
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Hello, Lovelies, How the hell are you?
I am writing this dispatch from the airport and am late in sending it because of this old bastard who seems to think he is Dr. Who—jumping dimensions, garden boxes, and whatnot. He’s got me thinking about history’s great eccentrics and the difference between American “quirk” and British “eccentricity”—how both need to be nurtured ever so much more in this current era of mass social media blandification.
did a wonderful piece on the subtle difference between the two:“No one says the word 'quirky' much in England. I guess because people are more naturally eccentric". Alexa Chung.
Why is that? Is it class-driven? Is village-driven?
“It is true that the English can be eccentric, but eccentricity is quirky on steroids. For instance, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilsdon, Baron Berners (1883-1950), was a famous eccentric. He was also a talented musician, artist, and writer. Berners was probably the inspiration for Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. He was very social, and held lots of parties on his estate, where visitors would find dogs with diamond collars and pink & blue pigeons1. Berners would drive around wearing a pig's head mask to scare the locals, and he kept a pet giraffe. He invited a horse to tea, inside his grand house at Faringdon, and ended up painting him2”
“Quirkiness is quieter than eccentricity. It is the small, very individual things that people do - the often endearing traits that each of us have, that are sometimes too insignificant to be remembered.”
In thinking about my dad and my children’s father, I wish each felt the license to indulge their eccentricities more. They are extraordinarily amusing and would make terrific giraffe parents.
And even the smaller, endearing quirks… how my father still ventures down with his crazy Gandalf stake to chat with the hens every day. And when my eldest was about 7, how she was mad about the soundtrack to Peter Greenaway’s darkly comedic arthouse film Drowning by Numbers:
How did she know to love that? I hope we can model more of this for our kids.
Doofus of the Week!
Celebrity Clutter Collectors
Here I am asking people to indulge in their eccentricities and yet this feels very doofus-sy when there are so many unhoused people and teachers in need of school supplies…
Yes, collectors are going crazy for “celebrity clutter”, says The Guardian. With the fine art market in a slump, interest in cheaper, less risky pop-culture memorabilia is hotter than ever. Freddie Mercury’s mustache comb fetched more than £150,000 at auction, well over its estimate of £400; Elvis’s bible, “complete with scribbled marginalia”, sold for £59,000; and one of John Lennon’s teeth was snapped up by a Canadian dentist for £19,000. Ew.
And now for some marvels…
Seven Samurai’s 4K Restoration
THIS, I cannot wait for!
Mount Horrible
This is hilarious and runs counter to everything suggested above.
Since 2019, New Zealand has renamed 3,000 places with Māori monikers, says The Economist. The problem is that few people know how to pronounce them. Māori itself should be said “mao-dee”, with a soft d sound. The seaside town of Paraparaumu is “pada-pada-oo-moo”; Whangārei, a city, should be “farng-ah-rey”. Still, the Māori names are FAR better than the “uninspired” labels of British cartographers. They named a steep mountain “Mount Horrible”, a small lake “Silly Pool”, and more than 260 spots after James Cook. Zero imagination on the part of the Brits.
Are we all NPCs? Or is emergence and free will possible?
This is neat—especially when considering the vagueries of eccentricity and quirk.
Obituaries Are Mostly Marvelous
People probably think writing obituaries is a gloomy job, says Nigel Farndale in The Times. They couldn’t be more wrong. Death is only briefly mentioned at the bottom of the piece, and the rest is about life, “in all its chaotic, inspiring, quirky glory”. Obituaries are not, as some believe, “an extension of the honors system”. They work best when they are a balanced account, flaws and all. When we recently described Sir Jeremiah Harman as a “rude, lazy, short-tempered, unpredictable” judge, known in legal circles as “Harman the Horrible”, a member of his family got in touch to tell us we’d got him “spot on”.
Anecdotes are essential for providing insight into character: the Army officer who took an umbrella into battle in case it rained; the surgeon so competitive he “made his grandchildren cry by sending a Monopoly board flying across the room”. And we love our euphemisms: “an uncompromisingly direct way with the opposite sex” (flasher); “not known to toy with his food” (glutton); “remarkably liberated from the tyranny of ambition” (lazy); “comfortable with confrontation” (complete psycho). The aim is to be “sympathetic rather than sycophantic, gently subversive, but alive to human frailty”. Perhaps the best example is this opening, from 2016: “Provided that you were not married to Zsa Zsa Gabor – and many people were – she could be a lot of fun.”
Artemis 81
Shout out to filmmaker and culturist Paul Duane for alerting us to the existence of David Rudkin’s bonkers science fiction thrillfest Artemis 81, available for everyone to watch on YouTube below.
While almost everything about the film is memorable, a few points present themselves immediately; its wildly ambitious plot of celestial war between the angels of light and death, one of whom is portrayed by Sting; a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by brand new young thespian Daniel Day Lewis; its grain being so torridly battered it might as well have been filmed on potato peel; and a truly bonkers performance from Hywel Bennett as the immaculately named occult novelist Gideon Harlax.
A lost treasure for sure!
The First Dictionary of English Slang
The first dictionary of English slang was published in 1699, says Mental Floss. Many of the entries were related to drinking, such as chirping-merry (feeling drunk and cheerful), swill-belly (a heavy drinker), and borachio (a drunkard). If you were in the mulligrubs you were pretending to be in a bad mood; for special occasions, you might have put on your roast meat clothes, the 17th-century equivalent of “Sunday best”. Insults included arsworm (“a little diminutive fellow”) and telling someone they had a good voice to beg bacon (don’t give up the day job).
Perhaps most memorable is “the best synonym for trousers you’ll hear all year”: farting crackers. Read the rest here.
OK, time to board. Stay safe, Lovelies, and please know I’ll be thinking of you in between dinner and turbulence – xoxo, gotham girl
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I hope you have fun, safe travels! Quirks and eccentricities fascinate me about people. Anyways, it what makes them unique and themselves.
I love the obits but with each passing year a little less. They are getting too close for comfort. Although the tribute to Willie Mays today hit me hard. Loved him.