The White Peril 白禍

It's inconceivable that anyone reads this site and doesn't read Virginia Postrel, yeah? Well, just in case, she has a beautifully done, economical little photo essay on George Hurrell at Slate. You have to see it. The picture of Pancho Barnes was interesting to me because I first encountered her name in Chuck Yeager's autobiography as a boy. I must have read that book a hundred times. By the time Yeager knew her, Barnes had hardened into an acridly foul-mouthed survivor, but Hurrell captures her much earlier. Actually, she may already have been an acridly foul-mouthed survivor by the time of this photograph, but that's not the side of her that comes through.

BTW, another photo essay posted the same day as Virginia's is worth reading also. It's about Oscar-gown blandout, and it (the phenomenon, not Julia Turner's well-written photo essay text) may help to explain the climate that's led to such weirdnesses as the dropping of jaws over Condoleezza Rice's get-up the other day. Don't get me wrong--I loved it. An athletic woman with good carriage, great legs, wintry coloring without a pair of tall black boots? Inconceivable. Where's she been hiding 'em until now? is what I'd like to know. I know that Laura Bush has been trying to recenter the role of First Lady visually (though word is, she's planning to relax a bit in her husband's second term), and if starlets in their notice-me! phase aren't dressing daringly, you can't expect much from high-ranking women politicians. Still, it's sad that everyone's so bowled over at the slightest eccentric gesture.

Darn. I slept quite a bit of the day, because when you're sick, you can usually nap for most of the afternoon and still be ready to hit the hay at your regular time.

Well, this seems to have been one of those 24-hour things, which is good; but now I'm wide awake at 1 a.m. which is not, considering I plan to be back in the office tomorrow. Unfortunately, I'm still not quite focused enough to read anything serious until I fall asleep.

I actually passed a pretty interesting day--hardly pleasant, but interesting. Being feverish and suggestible, I was in the mood to read from The Golden Bough. I never would have thought to put the two together before, but I happened to have Heart like a Wheel in the stereo, and it was a strangely inspired accompaniment to Frazer.

Somehow, all those eerie details about ancient bonfires and harvest sacrifices seemed sharper and more electrifying. Maybe it's because, while Linda Ronstadt couldn't convey emotional complexity to save her life, when she's on, she can personify a single emotion very primally, as if she were its prehistoric deity. (Of course, the material they picked for Heart like a Wheel helps. When you have a song whose chorus goes, "You're no good, you're no good, you're no good / Baby, you're no good / I'm gonna say it again / You're no good, you're no good, you're no good / Baby, you're no good," it's kind of hard not to get the point, no matter how obtuse an interpreter you are.)

Ooh, Charlie's Angels just came on! I'm pretty sure my brain has unclouded sufficiently for me to follow that--was there ever a hit show with more fabulously dumb plotlines? Let's hope that by 2:45, all the nailbiting suspense--OMG, Kelly's going into that office to search and she could totally get caught and be, like, killed, or something!--will have worn me out to the point that I can sleep through the rest of the night.

CNN has redeemed itself for every minute of air time given to that gasbag Brent Sadler: Design 360, its weightless show about contempo aesthetics, just did a segment on the new Kylie Minogue costume exhibit. Did I have a gaygasm or what? In fact, I'm pretty sure I died. Right here. The entity typing this is Sean Kinsell's specter.

I mean, we had the hot pants from "Better the Devil You Know" and the hot pants from "Spinning Around." We had the loopy-swatch dress and the hooded what-is-that-supposed-to-be? from "Can't Get You out of My Head." There was stuff from her parents' attic that she'd incorporated into her act--because, you know, she's just-folks, like us in the audience! And, of course, Kylie herself was there, petitely bouncing through the racks and talking about wanting the people in her hometown to see everything first, because that's the kind of humble girl she is. She remembers her Melbourne Melbn roots, she does.

Of course, if I were curating this collection, I'd include all the guys from the "Slow" video. You know, as accessories. This is called "proper context." And I'd make sure those horrid sheaths from "Hand on Your Heart" were kept way in the back of the storage closet. Some things are not worth remembering.

Having just sniggered at Westerners who gravely drop Oriental wisdom, I will now take the opportunity to discuss (briefly, at least for me) one of my favorite Japanese proverbs. Hypocritical, perhaps, but then, I own the place.

What brought it to mind was a Proverbs-quoting comment on this post at Dean's. The post links to an article called "How to Seem Smarter," and though the basic tone is tongue-in-cheek, there is a good deal of truth to it.

Anyway, the Japanese proverb I'm thinking of is this:

能ある鷹は爪を隠す。

nou aru taka ha tsume wo kakusu

"The astute hawk keeps its talons hidden."

Now, of course, there are other Japanese proverbs that more explicitly admonish you to keep your trap shut to avoid making a fool of yourself. This one, however, has always been one of my favorites because, for one thing, it covers varieties of show-offiness besides just babbling. It's like the German saying, "Always be more than you appear" (which, as Miss Manners once pointed out, "predates the invention of the Mercedes-Benz paid for on installments").

Another thing about it is the sensuality of the language. Except for the first word, which has a long-vowelled pronunciation borrowed from Chinese, the entire sentence is composed of native Japanese words. They flow along rapidly because of the alternating consonant-vowel structure and because most of the consonants themselves are unvoiced: k, t, ts, s. The sentence is sibilant and slightly menacing when you say it--pronounced conversationally, it comes out like noh'arutakawatsumewokox. You can imagine a hawk sitting in a tree, very still and observant, with the only sound the rustling of the leaves while he decides what to do next.