RAIN

"You're committing a serious offence." "What you're doing would make a hyena cry!"--Rain

Tonight I went to the first Vintage Meetup.  I hadn't been into vintage clothes, true, but I'm willing to try new things.  I wore this corduroy jacket in my closet which probably dates from the '70s which I hadn't much worn for almost thirty years.  It got rather tight for me in the meantime. (Fancy that!) I miss corduroy pants.

We met at the Starbucks at College & Euclid. (On the way over, the bust of Luis Vaz de Camoes reminded me of Gabe, Claire's badass boyfriend in the first season of Six Feet Under.) The generous organizer handed out gift packages, and I got a pair of cufflinks and a bracelet that I briefly wore--I guess I'm a metrosexual now!

After a while we went to the Royal nearby and saw Lewis Milestone's Rain, which I'd never seen before. (There are still a few classic movies I haven't seen!) It was presented by Ladies of Burlesque, and just before the movie we saw a stripper with a face like Barbara Stanwyck and several tattoos--really, I don't get the appeal of body art.

The movie, adapted from the W. Somerset Maugham story by playwright Maxwell Anderson, is striking:  Joan Crawford and Walter Huston made a fearsome pair! (I'd forgotten what a great actor Huston was.) I remember seeing Sonny and Cher doing a recurring spoof of the movie on the TV, with Cher's posterior making a drum noise.

I recalled researching my Ph.D. thesis on Chongqing's foreign community and learning that Maugham had visited the city and met some local missionaries, including one named Alfred Davidson, whose name he gave to the missionary played by Huston! (Maugham was cheeky that way.) To tell the truth, I'm not so surprised that Huston ended up going all the way with Crawford:  look at all those big religious leaders with a promiscuous side, like Mormon Joseph Smith or Elijah Muhammed or Sun Myung Moon, or even Jimmy Swaggart. It's like the gregarious sort of character that can lead you into preaching can also lead you into sex!

The missionary movement has a fairly mixed record worldwide: too often it's been caught up in colonialism and destruction of aboriginal culture. But I'd say the China missionaries tend to come off well, partly because they had less power than some.  I like the idea of going to a foreign country and doing good, like education and medical care, but I don't care for the mindset that says you have to win someone over to your belief system in order to save his soul! The part I wouldn't like about being a missionary is getting a letter asking me, "How many people did you save last year?"

I've finished the Caravaggio biography, but now I want to go through it again and download all the paintings it talks about!