Inigo Montoya, the bar.

Even though the sign is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, I was dissapointed to not find: Mandy Patinkin, Rob Reiner, Cary Elwes, Cristopher Guest, or the ghost of Andre the Giant.  No fencing, poison, or six-fingered men inside either.

Instead, all I found was a mostly empty bar in a strip mall that smelled of old, stale smoke, and a rude bouncer and hostess who didn't seem to realize that their bar was (name aside) a pile of shit.

It really bothers me that celebrities keep naming their babies weird names. Why do they do it? Probably for more press, to keep talk about them up, blah blah. As if they need more publicity - having a baby in Hollywood alone gets you plenty of press. It just really bugs me because if these kids weren't the children of famous stars, they would be beaten in school for having their names. But, just because they are KIND OF famous for having celeb parents they will get a free pass. Thats a load of BS if you ask me. Every parent in their right mind tries to name their baby something beautiful, something unique, and something that won't get them wedgies and knuckle sandwiches on the playground. Not celebrities though, they do the opposite - they sit down and try to think of the strangest words possible. They don't even think of names most of the time, they've moved on to naming their offspring after brand names or labels or foods. It's just weird.

While Matthew McConaughey (sigh) just named his kid Levi, here some other weird baby celebrity names used so far and the parents who are to blame:

Suri ~ Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes

Coco ~ Courtney Coxx, David Arquette
This is a delicious winter beverage - not a child.

Willow and Jayden ~ Jada Pinkett, Will Smith
They clearly took the first part of each of their names to derive their kids names. Ironically the girl got Will's half and the boy got Jada's half...

Banjo ~ Rachel Griffith
First thing that comes to mind = redneck

Zahara, Maddox, Shiloh and Pax ~ Brangelina
Brad and Angie just recently stated that they do not like to be called Brangelina. Well too bad, that's what they get for naming their kids this way. God only knows what the twins will come out as.

Harlow Winter ~ Nicole Richie, Joel Madden

Gaia ~ Emma Thompson
I'm going to be mature here and go with... "Gay". Ha ha ha.

Camera ~ Arthur Ashe
Maybe some day she'll meet a handsome Tripod and they'll live happily ever after.

Moxie CrimeFighter ~ Penn Jillette
First of all, I don't know who Penn Jillette is. Secondly, why ? Crime fighter doesn't even sound cool.

Seven Sirius ~ Erykah Badu
This kid better like Harry Potter. That, or go to work for the satellite radio company.

Freedom and Reignbeau ~ Ving Rhames
If I was either one of these children, I would hate my parents.

Tallulah Belle ~ Bruce Willis, Demi Moore
While I love Bruce and Demi, I have to wonder if they were eating Taco Bell when they thought of this one. Seriously, Tallulah is the name of the Mexican hot sauce I use.

Apple and Moses ~ Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin

Denim and Diezel ~ Tony Braxton
Sounds like a clothing store.

Sailor Lee ~ Christie Brinkley

Kal-El ~ Nicholas Cage
Sadly, dear Nick here named his child after a comic book hero. This is Superman's real birthname on the planet Krypton. I feel worse for Nick than for his kid!

Then again, maybe I am wrong. Maybe all these kids love their names. In fact, I bet they do. Obviously their parents love them even more. Who's to say my name isn't weird to them?? After all, my name does mean "downy," a.k.a. feathery, flocculent, fluffy, etc. Maybe the stars have it right... nah, I don't think so. My kids are going to be named Matthew and Jenna - normal, pretty sounding names!

Mein Name ist Inigo Montoya. Du hast meinen Vater getötet. Jetzt bist du des Todes!

Mein Name ist Inigo Montoya. Du hast meinen Vater getötet. Jetzt bist du des Todes!

Mein Name ist Inigo Montoya. Du hast meinen Vater getötet. Jetzt bist du des Todes!

Keep reading at your own peril. Don't say I didn't warn you. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Grandpa: [voiceover] Nothing gave Buttercup as much pleasure as ordering Westley around.
Buttercup: Farm boy, polish my horse's saddle. I want to see my face shining in it by morning.
Westley: As you wish.
Grandpa: [voiceover] "As you wish" was all he ever said to her.
Buttercup: Farm boy, fill these with water - please.
Westley: As you wish.
Grandpa: [voiceover] That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying "As you wish", what he meant was, "I love you." And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back.
Buttercup: Farm boy... fetch me that pitcher.
[It's right over her head, so he has to stand next to her]
Westley: As you wish.

"As You Wish" -- Aqueduct

Pleeeeease,
I beg you for my life,
For true love waits,
You see I must survive,
Good nite, sleep well,
(I've got work to do)
I'll probably kill you in the morning.

But for tonight (pleeease)
I beg you for life,
For true love waits,
You see I must survive,
Good nite, sleep well,
I'll probably kill you in the morning,
But for tonight...

As you wish,
Hearts and candy glitter and gold, is what
I'm dreamin' of.
As you wish,
Reese's peanut butter cup, is what
I'm waitin' for,
As you wish,
Certainly upon my return, my love won't be ignored.

To the vein,
First I'll cut your feet off and then, the hands
on both your arms.
To the vein,
Next you'll lose your eyes, it goes, every thing,
it has to go.
To the vein,
Except your ears, you wanna hear people scream:
"Dear God what is that thing?"

*sigh*

True love waits.

But for what?

En el post que hice sobre la camiseta de Íñigo Montoya, Jose me hizo esta revelación de la que tiene que quedar constancia.

Y es que mi querido Íñigo Montoya, de La Princesa Prometida, es actualmente Jason Gideon, de Mentes Criminales.

El actor se llama Mandy Patinkin, nació en 1952 en Chicago, es actor y cantante, ha hecho películas, series, musicales en Broadway...

Aquí lo tenemos en su interpretación en La Princesa Prometida, como Íñigo (1987):

 


Y aquí en su más reciente papel como Gideon, en Mentes Criminales (2005):

Ya puedo morir tranquilo.

Hoy me he enterado que es uno de los prota de la serie de telecinco "Mentes criminales"

Juer pues pa los años que tiene "La princesa prometida" no ha cambiado mucho el tio.

Visto en blogs.laguiatv.com

Y tú me dirás "si a mí las películas de ciencia ficción no me gustan".

Ya lo sé.

Pero es que la niña tiene una gracia...

Y para que no haya queja, aquí te dejo un fragmento de una de nuestras películas favoritas.

¡Qué gran frase!

Sólo para  frikis irredentos.

(Vía ThinkGeek)

Living With Ghosts

By WILLIAM LOGAN

Published: January 20, 2008

Gloomy poets are rarely very good, and good poets rarely very gloomy. There was Edgar Allan Poe, of course, and Thomas Lovell Beddoes, denizens of that funereal, willow-shadowed decade of the 1840s, a decade half in love with Keats and half in love with easeful death. Thomas Hardy had his black moods, but also his moments of sour levity. For more than 50 years, however, Geoffrey Hill has written a pinch-mouthed, grave-digger’s poetry so rich and allusive his books are normally greeted by gouts of praise from critics and the bewilderment of readers who might have been happier with a tract on the mating rituals of the earwig.

Hill has made brutally plain that the common reader is of no interest to him. Indeed, he believes that sinking to common ground betrays the high purpose of verse; with a withering pride he has refused, time and again, to stoop to such betrayals. This has made him a poet more despised than admired, and more admired than loved. His poetry has been composed of harsh musics, the alarums of battle and the death struggles under the reading lamp — it takes to contemplation the way some men take to religion (Hill’s relation to Christianity has been famously cryptic).

Evidently Hill's poetry is dense with allusion, and all but requires a library and an internet connection to begin to tease the meaning apart. Generally, I have a great disdain for art that disdains the untutored consumer. Art, I think, is a means to communicate -- if it is opaque and requiring of special training, then it fails, somehow. But this article gives me a different perspective (although, not, perhaps, exactly what the reviewer intended). If Hill's poetry is a deliberate tangle of allusion, but one that can be detangled,  then perhaps that is part of the fun, part of the contract. Rather than an unwarranted and arrogant assumption by the author, it could be an assumption of research. Judging from the review, this may not be the case -- it may be that these poems are just a form of intellectual strutting, only intended for the informed. But that doesn't mean that some poems could be approached this way. Near the end of the review (which is worth reading), comes this poem.

There are passages of stunning beauty, however, like views through the lens of a Leica, for which a reader will forgive many a sin.

I see Inigo Jones’s great arches

in my mind’s eye, his water-inky clouds,

the paraphernalia of a royal masque;

dung and detritus in the crazy streets,

the big coaches bellying in their skirts

pothole to pothole, and the men of fire,

the link-boys slouching and the rainy wind.

Pasted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Logan-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&8bu&emc=bu>

So, I take the opportunity of reading this poem to read about Inigo Jones (I can't help but think of another Inigo -- of The Princess Bride -- "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die…" -- hopefully everyone in the world will have the chance to see that movie!). In any case, Inigo Jones, although Spanish in forename, is firmly English in surname and turns out to be "the first significant English architect." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inigo_Jones

He also designed sets for the theatre -- "credited with introducing movable scenery and the proscenium arch to English theatre. " Then I get to read about the proscenium arch -- a lot I didn't know here. This leads me (right now, as I write this), in a digression, to the alley theater -- one with the audience on two sides. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Theater

I hadn't known that this was a type of theater -- I grew up in Houston where I saw Huck Finn at the Alley Theatre -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Theatre -- although I can't tell if this theater is actually an "alley theater," I do remember that the audience at least partially surrounded Huck Finn when our school went there on an excursion. (My most vivid memory is of my soda -- a rare treat growing up with a "health food" mom -- with the can stretched out of shape from having spent the night in the freezer.)

I also get to look up link-boy -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy -- they seem to be a kind of human flashlight, carrying torches through the streets of London for pedestrians and those riding on litters. Funny that -- writing this e-mail is likely preventing me from finishing that so-Victorian novel Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, wherein one old pernicious character is borne about on a litter, or carried by on or another character. (This book wins the prize for having been on my "list to read" the longest -- probably 20 years ago that I first started it, and I think I've started it 7 or 10 more times since then. It's good that I like the first chapter…)

Anyway, you can see what I mean -- rather than seeing this as a impenetrable mass, I suck it dry as an index to interesting lore. I can't say that I really like the poem that much, even now that I understand it. But it has, at least for the moment, meant that I read even poems that are accessible (and I still think an artists job is to communicate through his or her medium of choice)… I see even these poems with a difference. So, when The Writer's Almanac arrives (This week I've started a system so I won't miss listening to it.), when it arrives with a Poe poem that is so much Poe as to be recognizable without need for the author to be listed, and that poem has this stanza:

Wanderers in that happy valley

      Through two luminous windows, saw

Spirits moving musically

      To a lute’s well-tuned law;

Round about a throne where, sitting

      (Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

      The ruler of the realm was seen.

I don't skip over the word Porphyrogene as a toddlers do, in their intelligent way -- ignoring what they don't understand, rather than puzzling over things that are likely beyond them. No frustration for them -- they just move on. And so do I, I realize, trusting to the future to reinforce the tiny bits of meaning that accrue to words through long familiarity. But now I am grown, and perhaps it is worth focusing on those remaining places where I am ignorant. My vocabulary has stalled, and I will not likely run into Porphyrogene again before the traces of this encounter have been erased by the paths of so many other words streaming through my brain. And, besides, it turns out to be interesting to read about Porphyrogenita -- "born in the purple" -- a true child of a reigning Byzantine Emperor.

Porphyrogenita is a medieval Greek word which was used in the Byzantine Empire, meaning "born in the purple".

The female form is Porphyrogeniti (Πορφυρογέννητη) and Latinized to Porphyrogenita. The male form is Porphyrogenitos.

Being born in the purple means that one was born as the child of a reigning Byzantine Emperor. Being Porphyrogenita added much status to a person. For males it meant they were the legitimate successors of the last emperor, and had a real claim to the throne against rebellious generals. For females it meant they had higher status as a princess and had more value if they were used in diplomatic marriages.

Examples of Porphyrogenita:

• Empress Zoe

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrogenita>

So there, a new accretion of knowledge, knowledge without apparent purpose, my favorite kind. And from there I can slip into reading, should I wish, about Byzantine Emperors, the rulers of the Eastern Roman Empire, although I don't, since it is late.

"Hola; mi nombre es Íñigo Montoya. Tu mataste a mi padre. Prepárate a morir"

Iñigo contra el Hombre de Negro

Iñigo contra el Hombre de seis dedos

[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Iñigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
.

This, in essence is the story of any romantic movie/book. This (of course, minus the villain trying to kill hero) is the story of any Sooraj Barjatya movie. And, this (of course, minus the songs and stuff) is the story of “The Princess Bride”.

Now, if you judge the book (and the movie) by the words fairy tale, romantic or fantasy alone, you would be making a big mistake. For which fairy tale has a detailed description of a torture devise? And which romantic movie has a big cliff which only one man has scaled before (the “insurmountable odds” was a pun, you know), the world's greatest swordsman and the world's strongest person, and a girl who was 19th most beautiful girl in the world when she was born, and climbed the ranks quickly till she achieved the top spot? (For the fantasy bit, there is nothing which you cannot have in a fantasy, so I am letting it go)

So, when I tell you that this story is a roller-coaster ride, you better believe me. The ride starts from the farm where Buttercup (an apt name, don't you think) and Westley grew up and goes on to the palace of the Prince Humperdink, then onto the tall Cliffs of Insanity, on scaling which you come to a sword-fight between two “wizards” of swordsplay (better than Masters). From there, you go to a show of strength and then followed by a show of brains (OK, intellectual prowess, not actual "show" of brains). Then a headlong slide into a valley, and through fire swamps. Then you go back to the palace and the cave (where the prince keeps his hunting animals), where the final combat takes place (between Inigo Montoya and Count Rougen).

Of course, I read the “good parts version”, not the “classic tale” (and the movie is fairly true to the book). This apparently saved me 100-odd pages of packing and unpacking, 150-odd pages of wedding preparations etc., which make me realize that the classic tale (if it existed, but it doesn't outside the mind of the author, William Goldman) might just qualify as the Barjatya Bible. I mean, think of pages upon pages describing the packing of the bags by a princess' maids, and pages upon pages where they teach the farm-girl to be a princess and then of course, wedding preparations.

But, the “good parts” version cuts down the romantic story to a minimum required amount, and with the side stories of Fizzik, the rhyming giant and Inigo Montoya, definitely makes this one book worth reading (and one movie worth watching). And no, it is not a "kissing book" as the name suggests.

Think of it as a part “Shrek” (for sheer lightheartedness of the story), a part “Cinderella” (for a farm girl to princess), a part “Zorro” (for all swashbuckling) and a part all fairy tales. Add a dollop of humour, a pinch of magic and romance per taste. What you get this book. Serves (minimum) one...

Quote of The Day:
Buttercup: We'll never survive.
Westley: Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has.

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