Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

koba un dzhugashvili

Unordered, unearthed meanderings:

• V. & I finally signed up for Netflix and we’re busy trying to outdo one another adding DVDs to the queue. Last night, we watched The Singing Detective both the American movie and the British TV mini-series. Verdict, as if it were in doubt, is the original is much better. From the Forest of Dean to the American Southwest, from tunes of the ’40s to the ’50s, and finally from Michael Gambon to Robert Downey, Jr.
• And now for something completely different. While looking for footage of Stalin to use elsewhere, I ran across this great collection of little seen Python footage. John Cleese at Graham Chapman’s funeral is funny, and Eric Idle as Joe Stalin, ultimate iron chef, is what got me there in the first place.
• The US Library of Congress has some 77 unpublished playscripts in Yiddish, some typed and others handwritten, with titles like Fun glik tsum shtrik: an operete in 4 akten (From Happiness to the Gallows) or Hello Nyuyork: muzikalishe komedye in 4 akten (Hello, New York). Most are written in pre-YIVO-standardized orthographies.

[Addendum 06/29/04: Sorry, the links to the plays have timed out. You can see them, if you go to the main page for Yiddish Playscripts and browse from there.] Posted by jim at June 27, 2004 12:25 PM | TrackBack