Mustard Eating

Not mustard eatin', Buster Keaton. You heard me wrong! The best parts of his movies are like those compilations of scater wipeouts. The thrill of the cartoonish violence done to Buster's body is irresistable. Jackie Chan does some great stuff, but I'm yet to see him land directly on his face.

What a name to get stuck with...
You look so gentle, and it's so funny
When all of your body lands
On that impassive, almost holy face.

Louise Brooks - silent screen actress, much later an author, subject of fascination for a few of us. Pined over her again in a small part in a movie I saw last week. It is always odd to feel sexual attraction to a movie star, yet somehow it seems specially weird with an actress of Brooks' antiquity. There is some deep mystery in feeling the tug of a libido over so many years. To look at the silent screen, the black and white, the low definition, and to see looking back a flashing smile that literally makes my heart flutter and my mind beat for a moment with memories of unrequited love: that is unsettling. It makes me think of everything that seems as necessary as it is impossible, every freedom and happiness that I'm sure we should all enjoy if existence were just.

There once was a dancer from Kansa
Who can't be summed up in one stanza.

There once was a girl full of freckles
Who laughed at Topekan boys' heckles.
She'd just heard the news
That film's full of jews
Who'll throw a good-looking girl shekels.

There once was a joker, "The Tramp,"
Who was a quite rascally scamp
When courting Lulu
He dyed his wang blue
And fucked her while it was still damp.

n.b. A story from the autobio of Louise Brooks (Lulu) about Chaplin.