Feast of Fools

I just have to copy this for everyone to appreciate (especially you). The ever-wonderful and many-times-supposedly-retired Nancy Banks-Smith's take on Charging for Alexander, from today's Guardian. ^____________^

----------------------------------------------

Robin Lane Fox is an Oxford don and the star of Charging With Alexander (BBC4). That last bit was an accident. He was originally hired as the classical adviser on Oliver Stone's epic, Alexander. They had long, transatlantic arguments on the subject. As we only heard Fox's answers, we can only guess Stone's questions. "Could she do it on the sofa with a snake?" "No, no, she wouldn't attack a goat. Not indoors."

Try to wrench your mind away from that.

Stone, who is nothing if not forthright, described Fox as "wonderfully eccentric, highfalutin, pretentious but terribly charming". He is also disconcertingly spindly; his endless, elongated bones being connected, apparently, as an afterthought. So it came as a bit of a shock when he insisted on taking part in the big cavalry charge, saying, according to Stone: "I ride to the hounds and the foxes. I'm a superb rider." He did not mention that he was also extremely shortsighted.

Fox said: "Dear boy!" Stone said: "Oh, boy!" and indulged him.

Bare-legged, breastplated and wearing, at his own insistence, a frilly silver helmet, he could have gone on as Don Quixote without rehearsal. Alexander's great cavalry charge, or various versions of it, were shot in Morocco in a storm of red-gold sand. Stone said: "Dust forces you to look through it, so what you find is more precious. It's like looking for gold." Fox charged gamely into the mists of myopia, crying shrilly: "Follow me! We'll have Darius for breakfast!"

It reminded me of the time Montgomery, newly arrived in the western desert, was rallying the troops from the back of a truck. He urged them, with word and gesture, to hit Rommel for six. Gazing raptly up at him was Harry Secombe. He piped up in that clear, sweet, carrying tenor: "We're with you, sir!" Shorts looked long on Secombe and his broken spectacles were insecurely mended with tape. Monty blinked.

Stone was touched by Fox's boyish enthusiasm, if non-committal about his contribution to the battle. "I may use it in the film. I may not."

Now to get back to that goat ...

----------------------------------------------

Also, new music! Helen's Tatsumi music, which I can't help thinking of as better suited to Yzak from Gundam Seed. And that just shows that a song with good lyrics can be co-opted for anyone. ^_^;;