Garden of Thought

I can't help but wonder who gets paid to write the schlock I so often find on some of my favorite movies or books - jacket blurbs that seem to indicate the writer never even scanned the book, much less actually read it, 'summaries' on dvds that make you go "are they talking about this movie or just making something up - and just how many drinks did they have first?"

I would love to see publishers of media offer fans of those works a chance to submit 'reviews' for the packaging - certainly would be less annoying.

And what brought this little rant about? I just got a copy of one of my old favorites, The Scarlet Pimpernel, the one with Ian McKellen and Anthony Andrews on dvd... and what does it say on the back?

The swashbuckling classic comes to rip-roaring life in this lavish production, filled with breathless romance and derring-do!.... ack....gack.... ptui! ptui!

Then to add insult to injury, they add a quote from the 'New York Times' - "A whale of a yarn! Crammed with adventure...lavish...sumptuous!"

Just kill me now....A whale of a yarn? The Scarlet Pimpernel is a whale of a yarn???

Help!

I finally got a copy of "El Dorado" - the other Pimpernel novel that our beloved movie-versions were based on, the one in which the little prince is whisked to safety but Percy does not quite escape paying for it under the Chauvelin's cruel eye. Wow - this is the best written of the lot so far, and very hard to put down. It reminded me of when Frodo is wounded and you can't put the book down until you get him safely to Rivendell...same problem with poor Percy in that wretched prison! I ended up snarfing my way through the tale in two days - I couldn't just leave him there.

Anyone who hasn't found this one yet - go forth and ferret it out. Armand is an idiot (Marguerite is smarter than he is in this one, which is saying something) and oh how our dear Scarlet Pimpernel suffers under the whumpage of the Baroness Orczy.

I found it fascinating that during the height of the French Revolution there were too many heads to be lopped for the governmental officials to keep up with in the main cities, so they had a carriage built with (get this) a "portable guillotine" that would go from town to town taking care of all those troublesome executions. Sort of like a book-mobile.

I mentioned this to my daughter who gave me an odd look. "Like a book-mobile?" she said. "And what is this gesture you used - is that your new motion for executions?" I think I am being laughed at. I realized after the fact that when I referred to executions, I was rapidly chopping the air, as if whacking up carrots with a chef's knife. (well, gee, they did have to do an awful lot of them per day...)

Still nice and icy here - no school again, and lots of tea and cocoa. We could get used to this.

I fear I have fallen into it again - not posting anything, just reading other people's postings because their lives seem so much more interesting than mine, or I feel compelled to sum up too much. I will try once more to resurrect this journal, it being a new year - closest thing I have to a resolution!

That said, it is demmed inconvenient to be happily swimming through all of the Scarlet Pimpernel series and wanting to swoon and carry on and write about Sir Percy and not really having anyone to do so with. La! Just finished three more Pimpernel novels and am trying to hunt down the rest - odds fish, they are hard to find, 'tis monstrous intolerable. Also broke down and ordered the cd of the Broadway stage version (I would happily put up with the French Revolution if I could just have Chauvelin singing "Where's the Girl?" to me like that), and a dvd of the 1934 one with Leslie and Merle. Nothing beats Anthony Andrews version of Percy for me yet, though, and Ian McKellen remains the *perfect* Chauvelin.

A shame so many people only know the title novel - it really isn't the best in the series and Marguerite is a complete idiot in it, plus it bogs down too often... though the pepper-mill incident with Chauvelin's snuff-box is worth the entire book, hee!