Not Too Hot Yet

This is the sweet time of year in Arizona for weather. It hit ninety the other day for the first time, but mostly the days have been temperate with a gentle breeze. Soon it will too hot to spend much time outside during the day.

It was a fascinating spring, weatherwise. We actually got snow in Scottsdale in February, not where we live but a few miles north where the elevation is higher. The local Reddit was filled with folks' pictures of saguaros with snow on the them.

But although we didn't get snow at this elevation, the mountains nearby got plenty of it. It was most the beautiful sight. Normally the mountains are barren with little vegetation. They seem brown and featureless most days. In the winter, after the rains, they look green like Pennsylvania. But after the snow something fascinating happened. Their barrenness was coated with white overlaid on the rocks. They looked exactly like the High Rockies above the tree-line (for there are "above the treeline", of course).

The snow lasted a week before melting away. Now the snow is but a memory. We've moved onto rattlesnake season.

Shakespeare -- Too Darn Hot ,and Too Darn Fast a Pace

According to TCM, today is the late Howard Keel's 100th birthday, so they are showing a day-long slate of his movies. I just finished watching the 1951 version of Show Boat, which had seen a couple times before. Now they moved on to the second movie he made alongside Katherine Grayson---Kiss Me Kate.

I've only seen clips of this movie, and given my current Shakespeare project, it seemed mandatory to give it my first viewing. So I'm about ten minutes into it, watching Ann Miller do her jazz strip tease and fan dance in front of the principals playing himself.

How much of an adaptation of Shakespeare is this really? Does it matter? For now I'm just watching movie. But it strikes me this is one of the most beautiful examples of the postmodern style. A multi-layered backstage musical about the making of a musical about a troop of theater performers who themselves are performing a version of Taming of the Shrew, all with music by Cole Porter  playing himself within the movie.  The Shakespeare scenes are performed, and described peripherally in the musical within the musical. This is how clever Hollywood got by 1953. Since then we've pretty much living the same move stylings over and over, just with more violence and explicit sex.

One thing to note is that I'm far behind the schedule I originally set for myself. The Shakespeare project looks to be a three year deal. I set the rules of this of course.