Greek Gypsy love

20 Oct

Just the bride decked out in red and gold is proof enough they’re from India; on top of it the mother-in-law’s name is Madhubala!  Not the most brilliant piece of journalism or video but super-cool, entertaining and, in the end, moving!  He’s 16, she’s 13, and he abducted her, so her parents then have to approve.  “Because a bride brings light into the household”, says the mother-in-law.

“When are you getting married?” asks Greek journalist

Gypsy boy: “Huh?  We’re married.”

Gypsy girl nudges her husband: “They mean when’s the wedding.”

Gypsy boy:  “Ah, we dunno yet.”

“Did you have to abduct her, couldn’t you wait?” asks journalist.

Gypsy boy: “Well, we were sleeping apart.  We wanted to sleep together.”

Don’t think it’s gypsy-like or tacky or age-inappropriate; I had aunts and uncles, from somber, grey Epiros, who got married just like that — without the fun and gold.  See Lorca’s “Blood Wedding.

Sad that they can barely speak Greek.

P.P.S. The Beatles

20 Oct

You only have to look at the crowds in this “Hard Day’s Night” video to see what the Beatles were all about: under the studied glibness and English irony run a sincerity and eroticism that are no joke.

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Alexandros: “Anybody who steps into my apartment becomes a guest.”

20 Oct

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Photos: Turkmen and Uzbek carpet merchants 1973, Andkhoy, #Afghanistan.

20 Oct

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Screen Shot 2019-10-20 at 9.17.23 PMPhotos by Roland and Sabrina Michaud

When I get a blog hit from The European Union, like, where is that guy?

20 Oct

index

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Russia: “…too great, too big, too vibrant…”

20 Oct

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Atlantic, Harold Bloom: ““We are,” he said, “destroying all intellectual and aesthetic standards in the humanities and social sciences.”

20 Oct

Harold Bloom

Read whole article by Stanley Fish:

We eviscerate literary works to uncover the presence of exclusionary and discriminatory impulses and gestures; we feast on their contributions to social justice or their failures to contribute to social justice, and then discard the carcass. There is nothing more to be done with them, and surely no reason to reread them.

Rereading for Bloom, who died last weekend, was the hallmark of the aesthetic experience. Something that has, in Bloom’s words, aesthetic dignity is not disposable. It is not instrumental in relation to some other value. It is its own value, and it is not, Bloom wrote, “for hire.” Aesthetic dignity is not to be subordinated to some cause, however noble. It does not offer itself up for “rapid ingestion.” It does not exist to give the reader pleasure. Instead it gives the “high unpleasure or more difficult pleasure that a lesser text”—one in the service of an ideology—“will not provide.”

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Blues and Rebetiko

20 Oct

Blues Rebetiko

Jimmy Kimmel: “…Turkey gets everything they want…”

19 Oct

“So to recap, Mike Pence flew to Turkey to negotiate an agreement, wherein Turkey gets everything they want…and the United States gives it to them: mission accomplished.”

You have to watch the sequence that begins at 6:06 (sorry, I’ve never been able to figure out how to set Youtube footage so that it takes people where I want them to see); it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.  I dunno, maybe see: “Erdoğan: no wonder they adore him“ first…

Even American stand up comedians are onto you, arkadaşlarım.

The whole monologue is pretty funny too.

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Aslı Aydıntaşbaş on the downward spiral in Turkish-US relations — my comment

19 Oct

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