"She grew skilled at caring for her mother’s costumes and props, at stamping her autograph on publicity photos, and at staying quiet on set."

"Dietrich’s costume designer made her a special uniform and gave her a title: 'attendant to Miss Marlene.' For years, she thought 'Maria Daughter of Marlene Dietrich' was her proper name; she was also never quite sure of her age, which changed as often as that of her mother, who regularly shaved off the years.... 'Dietrich was the queen.... My father was her major-domo, her lovers were her suitors, and I was the lady in waiting. I didn’t think it was strange; I had nothing to compare it to.' No school meant no companions her own age.... When she was about 12, she had her first encounter with actual children, an invitation to Judy Garland’s birthday party. She was terrified: What did real children do together? She and Judy huddled on the porch and bonded over their strange, caged existence...."

From "Maria Riva, Dietrich Daughter Who Demystified the Legend, Dies at 100 She was her mother’s handmaiden and aide-de-camp. In 1993, her blockbuster biography told of the awful price she paid" (NYT).

What's the deeper meaning of wearing a fur coat to sing "Natural Woman"?

"[Aretha] Franklin performed in her floor-length fur coat until stepping away from the piano to absolutely slay the final moments of her staple song, tossing her coat to the ground as the crowd jumped to its collective feet."

I lot can be said about this song. What does it mean not to feel "natural" as a woman? Are women unnatural without the man? If she only feels "like a natural woman," is that like the way Madonna felt "like a virgin." She wasn't a virgin, but she felt like one (for one reason or another).

So, it's already a puzzling song, subject to many interpretations. Okay: What does it mean to sing it in a fur coat?

And can you think of any other occasions when what the singer wore affected the meaning of the song? The first thing that crossed my mind was Marlene Dietrich singing "Give Me The Man" while dressed in a tuxedo. But I don't think that's a good answer.

ADDED: "Her mouth was as wise as her eyes … and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets," wrote Patricia Highsmith in "The Price of Salt," which is now a big Oscar-begging movie called "Carol." The coat, a fur coat, looms large, as the costume designer Sandy Powell explained. It was "probably the most important item to get right."

"It’s those descriptions that don’t say what colour or shape it is or anything like a clue.” To interpret that impression of sexy, conspiratorial opulence, she says, she knew it had to be a blond mink, not brown, and not light or flashy.

Fur is big now and deeply meaningful.

More Jerry Seinfeld complaining about how political correctness is getting in the way of comedy.

Watch the clip, because Seinfeld quotes are best when heard (and, in fact, the audience laughs at many lines that would not read as humor at all):



Seinfeld had a joke about the way people scroll through their cellphones like "a gay French king" — a joke with a very funny gesture, but maybe audiences are indicating that they're not going to accept that kind of foolery anymore: "I could imagine a time where people say, ‘Well, that’s offensive to suggest that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing motion and you now need to apologize.’ I mean, there’s a creepy PC thing out there that really bothers me."

The other guy on the show — the Seth Meyers show — is New Yorker editor David Remnick, and he lets on that he recently rejected an idea for a New Yorker cover that played on the Vanity Fair’s Caitlyn Jenner cover. Seinfeld — like any ordinary person — wanted to know what the idea was, and Remnick wouldn't tell. And then Meyers follows on: No jokes about Caitlyn Jenner. Not yet, at least. Jenner somehow won entitlement to a circle of seriousness. Seinfeld doesn't like it, but he lets Remnick and Meyers off the hook, seemingly on the theory that eventually Jenner will be mockable.

ADDED: I'm trying to guess what the rejected New Yorker cover was. (I think Remnick called is a "misfire.") I'm thinking it was putting somebody else in the same costume and pose used for Jenner. Maybe Obama? Lindsey Graham? Or maybe flipping it and showing a woman — Hillary is the most obvious choice — wearing clothing that is as masculine as Jenner's satin bathing suit was feminine and striking a pose that is as masculine as Jenner's twisty cringe was feminine.

AND: My proposal is to show Hillary's people — desperate and furious — looking at the Jenner cover and trying to outfit and pose Hillary like this:



But get rid of the cigarette. Replace that with... oh, what can we replace that with?... A carrot!

"You will be better off looking for the future."

I see that in that last poll, I wrote, as the third option: "you will be better off looking for the future and not dwelling on the past." Looking for the future. I meant to the future. Or at least at. Looking for the future? Where's my future?

It's like what Marlene Dietrich said to Orson Welles in "Touch of Evil":

"Susie, one of the longest borders on earth is right here between your country and mine. An open border."

"Fourteen hundred miles without a single machine gun in place. Yeah, I suppose that all sounds very corny to you."

"I could love being corny, if my husband would only cooperate."

***

DVD — "A Touch of Evil" — screened as the sky behind the TV darkened to a tornadic yellow-green and 2 large bowls of popcorn were consumed. It's a wild movie, and here's my favorite scene:



My favorite thing in the movie is the figurine of a chipmunk on the table there. It made me think of the evil "woodland critters" from "South Park":

"He's squooshy in love with her, quite obviously."

Writes John Stodder in yesterday's Mark Sanford thread:

He was obviously dumped by the woman, who has more common sense than he does right now. He'll wake up in a few weeks or months and go, "what the hell did I just do?" But as of now, he is still immersed in the psychosis of mad love.

I don't think the gal pals of Clinton or Edwards were ever anything more than pleasant vanities and erotic vessels. I get the feeling that Ensign is a creepy power addict and bonking his aide's wife was just a way of asserting his alpha status, his right to humiliate the men who serve him.

This guy, on the other hand, seems to have gone over the moon. His inner self at war with his stated convictions. He's like the professor in "The Blue Angel," desperate to give up all that he earned just to be a clown in his beloved's circus.

Have you been there yourself, John? Have any of you?

The new Solicitor General -- Elena Kagan -- is female, so the question is: What will she wear?

The Solicitor General — up to now, invariably a male — has always worn a "morning coat" — that is to say, tails. So it's a puzzle. Lawprof Patricia J. Williams writes:

The persistence of this sartorial custom beyond its natural lifespan—and in the American justice system of all places—is not merely a quirk of history but testament to the deep and tenaciously clubbish culture that still afflicts the highest levels and most intransigently closed circles of power.

Tradition, it's an affliction.

Williams tells the story — "perhaps apocryphal" — of a female deputy solicitor who wore a "'dove-brown' or 'doe-beige' business suit" when she argued a case in the Supreme Court:

According to a friend who, to this day, fears being identified, Chief Justice Rehnquist "went berserk." He chastised her for inappropriate attire, and followed it up with a scathing letter to the Solicitor General himself, requesting that this not occur again. Brown textiles! The scandal!...

In response, the Solicitor General’s office thenceforth recommended that women wear what is popularly known as a "feminized" version of morning attire, and/or a plain black suit.

So, then, the answer is easy: Kagan will wear a nice black skirted suit. Yes, it might have tails, but in my view that would seem oddly costume-y in the absence of an established tradition. Dressing like a man is not a tradition. It's sort of kinky.



IN THE COMMENTS: Sean writes:

There hasn't been a female solicitor general before, but women from the solicitor general's office have argued before the Supreme Court, and they wore business suits.

In fact, my [Appellate Advocacy]professor told us that there was some discussion, when there first started being women in the solicitor general's office, of what was the female analogue of a morning coat. Several answers suggest themselves, based on the situations where morning coats are encountered: bridesmaids' dresses (men still wear morning coats if they are in a wedding party); women's church clothes of the 1950s, featuring knee length dresses and white gloves (men used to wear morning coats at upper class churches into the 1950s); or upper class female street clothes of the Edwardian era, perhaps featuring a bustle (this was the last time that men wore morning coats on a regular basis). None of these female attires seems quite suitable for a lawyer.

Theo Boehm says: "Forget Dietrich. If that era is any guide to style, the new Solicitor General should try the Louise Brooks look":

"Good night, my darlings, I’ll see you tomorrow."

Noël Coward's last words, from a review by John Simon.

Lots of good tidbits in the review. I like this one:

"To me, the essence of good comedy writing is that perfectly ordinary phrases such as ‘Just fancy!’ should, by virtue of their context, achieve greater laughs than the most literate epigram."

Presumably, many more tidbits in the book. The man corresponded with Virginia Woolf, T. E. Lawrence, Ian Fleming, Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, and many others.

I'd get the book myself if it were available in the Kindle format. For some reason, I'm devoted to my Kindle, even though it hasn't arrived yet. We'll see if it lives up to my ideation. I remember how I felt when I bought my Rocketbook. How wonderful it was... until I decided I hated it.