Friday, July 31, 2020
Ray Bradbury, FEVER DREAM
They put him between fresh, clean, laundered sheets and there was always a newly squeezed glass of thick orange juice on the table under the dim pink lamp. All Charles had to do was call and Mom or Dad would stick their heads into his room to see how sick he was. The acoustics of the room were fine; you could hear the toilet gargling its porcelain throat of mornings, you could hear rain tap the roof or sly mice run in the secret walls or the canary singing in its cage downstairs. If you were very alert, sickness wasn't too bad.
He was thirteen, Charles was. It was mid-September, with the land beginning to burn with autumn. He lay in the bed for three days before the terror overcame him.
His hand began to change. His right hand. He looked at it and it was hot and sweating there on the counterpane alone. It fluttered, it moved a bit. Then it lay there, changing color.
That afternoon the doctor came again and tapped his thin chest like a little drum. "How are you?" asked the doctor, smiling. "I know, don't tell me: 'My cold is fine, Doctor, but I feel awful!' Ha!" He laughed at his own oft-repeated joke.
Charles lay there and for him that terrible and ancient jest was becoming a reality. The joke fixed itself in his mind. His mind touched and drew away from it in a pale terror. The doctor did not know how cruel he was with his jokes! "Doctor," whispered Charles, lying flat and colorless. "My hand, it doesn't belong to me any more. This morning it changed into something else. I want you to change it back, Doctor, Doctor!"
The doctor showed his teeth and patted his hand. "It looks fine to me, son. You just had a little fever dream."
"But it changed, Doctor, oh, Doctor," cried Charles, pitifully holding up his pale wild hand. "It did!"
The doctor winked. "I'll give you a pink pill for that." He popped a tablet onto Charles' tongue. "Swallow!"
"Will it make my hand change back and become me, again?"
"Yes, yes."
The house was silent when the doctor drove off down the road in his car under the quiet, blue September sky. A clock ticked far below in the kitchen world. Charles lay looking at his hand.
It did not change back. It was still something else.
The wind blew outside. Leaves fell against the cool window.
At four o'clock his other hand changed. It seemed almost to become a fever. It pulsed and shifted, cell by cell. It beat like a warm heart. The fingernails turned blue and then red. It took about an hour for it to change and when it was finished, it looked just like any ordinary hand. But it was not ordinary. It no longer was him any more. He lay in a fascinated horror and then fell into an exhausted sleep.
Mother brought the soup up at six. He wouldn't touch it "I haven't any hands," he said, eyes shut.
"Your hands are perfectly good," said Mother.
"No," he wailed. "My hands are gone. I feel like I have stumps. Oh, Mama, Mama, hold me, hold me, I'm scared!"
She had to feed him herself.
"Mama," he said, "get the doctor, please, again. I'm so sick."
"The doctor'll be here tonight at eight," she said, and went out.
At seven, with night dark and close around the house, Charles was sitting up in bed when he felt the thing happening to first one leg and then the other. "Mama! Come quick!" he screamed.
But when Mama came the thing was no longer happening.
When she went downstairs, he simply lay without fighting as his legs beat and beat, grew warm, red-hot, and the room filled with the warmth of his feverish change. The glow crept up from his toes to his ankles and then to his knees.
"May I come in?" The doctor smiled in the doorway. "Doctor!" cried Charles. "Hurry, take off my blankets!"
The doctor lifted the blankets tolerantly. "There you are. Whole and healthy. Sweating, though. A little fever. I told you not to move around, bad boy." He pinched the moist pink cheek. "Did the pills help? Did your hand change back?"
"No, no, now it's my other hand and my legs!"
"Well, well, I'll have to give you three more pills, one for each limb, eh, my little peach?" laughed the doctor.
"Will they help me? Please, please. What've I got? "
"A mild case of scarlet fever, complicated by a slight cold."
"Is it a germ that lives and has more little germs in me?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure it's scarlet fever? You haven't taken any tests!"
"I guess I know a certain fever when I see one," said the doctor, checking the boy's pulse with cool authority.
Charles lay there, not speaking until the doctor was crisply packing his black kit. Then in the silent room, the boy's voice made a small, weak pattern, his eyes alight with remembrance. "I read a book once. About petrified trees, wood turning to stone. About how trees fell and rotted and minerals got in and built up and they look just like trees, but they're not, they're stone." He stopped. In the quiet warm room his breathing sounded.
"Well?" asked the doctor.
"I've been thinking," said Charles after a time. "Do germs ever get big? I mean, in biology class they told us about one-celled animals, amoebas and things, and how millions of years ago they got together until there was a bunch and they made the first body. And more and more cells got together and got bigger and then finally maybe there was a fish and finally here we are, and all we are is a bunch of cells that decided to get together, to help each other out. Isn't that right?" Charles wet his feverish lips.
"What's all this about?" The doctor bent over him.
"I've got to tell you this. Doctor, oh, I've got to!" he cried. "What would happen, oh just pretend, please pretend, that just like in the old days, a lot of microbes got together and wanted to make a bunch, and reproduced and made more-"
His white hands were on his chest now, crawling toward his throat.
"And they decided to take over a person!" cried Charles.
"Take over a person?"
"Yes, become a person. Me, my hands, my feet! What if a disease somehow knew how to kill a person and yet live after him?"
He screamed.
The hands were on his neck.
The doctor moved forward, shouting.
At nine o'clock the doctor was escorted out to his car by the mother and father, who handed him his bag. They conversed in the cool night wind for a few minutes. "Just be sure his hands are kept strapped to his legs," said the doctor. "I don't want him hurting himself."
"Will he be all right, Doctor?" The mother held to his arm a moment.
He patted her shoulder. "Haven't I been your family physician for thirty years? It's the fever. He imagines things."
"But those bruises on his throat, he almost choked himself."
"Just you keep him strapped; he'll be all right in the morning."
The car moved off down the dark September road.
At three in the morning, Charles was still awake in his small black room. The bed was damp under his head and his back. He was very warm. Now he no longer had any arms or legs, and his body was beginning to change. He did not move on the bed, but looked at the vast blank ceiling space with insane concentration. For a while he had screamed and thrashed, but now he was weak and hoarse from it, and his mother had gotten up a number of times to soothe his brow with a wet towel. Now he was silent, his hands strapped to his legs.
He felt the walls of his body change, the organs shift, the lungs catch fire like burning bellows of pink alcohol. The room was lighted up as with the flickerings of a hearth.
Now he had no body. It was all gone. It was under him, but it was filled with a vast pulse of some burning, lethargic drug. It was as if a guillotine had neatly lopped off his head, and his head lay shining on a midnight pillow while the body, below, still alive, belonged to somebody else. The disease had eaten his body and from the eating had reproduced itself in feverish duplicate.
There were the little hand hairs and the fingernails and the scars and the toenails and the tiny mole on his right hip, all done again in perfect fashion.
I am dead, he thought. I've been killed, and yet I live. My body is dead, it is all disease and nobody will know. I will walk around and it will not be me, it will be something else. It will be something all bad, all evil, so big and so evil it's hard to understand or think about. Something that will buy shoes and drink water and get married some day maybe and do more evil in the world than has ever been done.
Now the warmth was stealing up his neck, into his cheeks, like a hot wine. His lips burned, his eyelids, like leaves, caught fire. His nostrils breathed out blue flame, faintly, faintly.
This will be all, he thought. It'll take my head and my brain and fix each eye and every tooth and all the marks in my brain, and every hair and every wrinkle in my ears, and there'll be nothing left of me.
He felt his brain fill with a boiling mercury. He felt his left eye clench in upon itself and, like a snail, withdraw, shift. He was blind in his left eye. It no longer belonged to him. It was enemy territory. His tongue was gone, cut out. His left cheek was numbed, lost. His left ear stopped hearing. It belonged to someone else now. This thing that was being born, this mineral thing replacing the wooden log, this disease replacing healthy animal cell.
He tried to scream and he was able to scream loud and high and sharply in the room, just as his brain flooded down, his right eye and right ear were cut out, he was blind and deaf, all fire, all terror, all panic, all death.
His scream stopped before his mother ran through the door to his side.
It was a good, clear morning, with a brisk wind that helped carry the doctor up the path before the house. In the window above, the boy stood, fully dressed. He did not wave when the doctor waved and called, "What's this? Up? My God!"
The doctor almost ran upstairs. He came gasping into the bedroom.
"What are you doing out of bed?" he demanded of the boy. He tapped his thin chest, took his pulse and temperature. "Absolutely amazing! Normal. Normal, by God!"
"I shall never be sick again in my life," declared the boy, quietly, standing there, looking out the wide window. "Never."
"I hope not. Why, you're looking fine, Charles."
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Charles?"
"Can I go to school now?" asked Charles.
"Tomorrow will be time enough. You sound positively eager."
"I am. I like school. All the kids. I want to play with them and wrestle with them, and spit on them and play with the girls' pigtails and shake the teacher's hand, and rub my hands on all the cloaks in the cloakroom, and I want to grow up and travel and shake hands with people all over the world, and be married and have lots of children, and go to libraries and handle books and - all of that I want to!" said the boy, looking off into the September morning. "What's the name you called me?"
"What?" The doctor puzzled. "I called you nothing but Charles."
"It's better than no name at all, I guess." The boy shrugged.
"I'm glad you want to go back to school," said the doctor.
"I really anticipate it," smiled the boy. "Thank you for your help, Doctor. Shake hands."
"Glad to."
They shook hands gravely, and the clear wind blew through the open window. They shook hands for almost a minute, the boy smiling up at the old man and thanking him.
Then, laughing, the boy raced the doctor downstairs and out to his car. His mother and father followed for the happy farewell.
"Fit as a fiddle!" said the doctor. "Incredible!"
"And strong," said the father. "He got out of his straps himself during the night. Didn't you, Charles?"
"Did I?" said the boy.
"You did! How?"
"Oh," the boy said, "that was a long time ago."
"A long time ago!"
They all laughed, and while they were laughing, the quiet boy moved his bare foot on the sidewalk and merely touched, brushed against a number of red ants that was scurrying about on the sidewalk. Secretly, his eyes shining, while his parents chatted with the old man, he saw the ants hesitate, quiver, and lie still on the cement. He sensed they were cold now.
"Good-by!"
The doctor drove away, waving.
The boy walked ahead of his parents. As he walked he looked away toward the town and began to hum "School Days" under his breath.
"It's good to have him well again," said the father.
"Listen to him. He's so looking forward to school!"
The boy turned quietly. He gave each of his parents a crushing hug. He kissed them both several times.
Then without a word he bounded up the steps into the house.
In the parlor, before the others entered, he quickly opened the bird cage, thrust his hand in, and petted the yellow canary, once.
Then he shut the cage door, stood back, and waited.
- THE END -
posted from Bloggeroid
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
Country life: the young female farmer who is now a top influencer in China
Country life: the young female farmer who is now a top influencer in China
Li Ziqi, 29, has garnered millions of followers with her videos of her idyllic life in rural Sichuan. Is she too good to be true?
Since she began posting rustic-chic videos of her life in rural Sichuan province in 2016, Li Ziqi, 29, has become one of China’s biggest social media stars. She has 22 million followers on the microblogging site Weibo, 34 million on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and another 8.3 million on YouTube (Li has been active on YouTube for the last two years, despite it being officially blocked in China).
Li’s videos – which she initially produced by herself and now makes with a small team – emphasize beautiful countryside and ancient tradition. In videos soundtracked by TRANQUIL flute music, Li crafts her own furniture out of bamboo and dyes her clothing with fruit skins. If she wants soy sauce, she grows the soybeans themselves; a video about making an egg yolk dish starts with her hatching ducklings. The meals she creates are often elaborate demonstrations of how many delicious things can be done with a particular seasonal ingredient, like ginger or green plums.
There is even a Li Ziqi online shop, where fans can purchase versions of the steel “chopper” knife she uses to dice the vegetables she plucks from her plentiful garden, or replicas of the old-fashioned shirts she wears while foraging for wild mushrooms and magnolia blossoms in the misty mountainside.
While she occasionally reveals a behind-the-scenes peek at her process, Li – who did not respond to interview requests for this article – is very private. By all accounts, she struggled to find steady work in a city before returning to the countryside to care for her ailing grandmother (who appears in her videos).
Recently, Li has been thrust into a wider spotlight by the Chinese government, who seem to have realized her soft power potential. In 2018, the Communist party of China named her a “good young netizen” and role model for Chinese youth. In September 2019, the People’s Daily, a CPC mouthpiece, gave Li their “People’s Choice” award, while last month, state media praised Li for helping to promote traditional culture globally, and the Communist Youth League named her an ambassador of a program promoting the economic empowerment of rural youth.
As the government increasingly champions her, Chinese citizens have taken to Weibo to question whether Li’s polished, rather one-dimensional portrayal of farm work conveys anything truly meaningful about contemporary China – especially to her growing international audience on YouTube.
They have a point: Li’s videos reveal as much about the day-to-day labor of most Chinese farmers as the Martha Stewart Show does the American working class. As Li Bochun, director of Beijing-based Chinese Culture Rejuvenation Research Institute told the media last month: “The traditional lifestyle Li Ziqi presents in her videos is … not widely followed.”
In reality, many of China’s rural villages have shrunk or disappeared completely in past decades as the nation prioritized urbanization and workers migrated to cities, with research suggesting the country lost 245 rural villages a day from 2000 to 2010. The 40% of China’s population still living in rural areas encompass a huge diversity of experience, yet life can be difficult, with per-capita rural income declining sharply since 2014 and environmental pollution often as rife as in industrial centers. That’s not to say the beautiful forests and compelling traditions of Li’s videos are not genuine – like many social media creators, she simply focuses on the most charming elements of a bigger picture.
So what do Li’s videos reflect about modern China, if not average daily life in the countryside?
For one, they say something about the mindset of her mainland audience – primarily urban millennials, for whom a traditional culture craze known as “fugu” or “hanfu” has been an aesthetic trend for a number of years.
“Fugu”, according to Yang Chunmei, professor of Chinese history and philosophy at Qufu Normal University, reflects the “romanticized, pastoral” desires of youth “disillusioned by today’s ever-changing, industrial, consumerist society.” In practice, it looks like young people integrating more traditional clothing into their daily looks, watching historical dramas and following rural lifestyle influencers like Li. (While Li is an extremely popular example of the trend, she’s not the only young farmer vlogging in China right now, and outdoor cooking videos of people making meals with wild ingredients and scant equipment are a genre of their own on Douyin.)
Among urban millennials in the west, giving up the nine-to-five grind and living humbly and closer to nature is a popular dream. In China, the contemporary experience of burnout is compounded by the intensity of “urban disease”, an umbrella term for the difficulties of living in megacities like Shanghai or Guangzhou, which can be used to refer to everything from traffic jams and poor air quality to employment and housing scarcity.
Also at play in Li’s popularity is the particular tenor of Chinese wistfulness. “It’s called xiangchou. Xiang means the countryside or rural life, and chou means to long for it, to miss it,” says Linda Qian, an Oxford University PhD candidate studying nostalgia’s role in the revitalization of China’s villages.
“It is quite prevalent for youth living the city life. They get really sick of [the city] so the countryside” – or a fantasy of it – “looks increasingly like the ideal image of what a good life should be.”
Qian also likens Li’s appeal to that of “Man vs Wild”-style entertainment in the west. “We’ve gotten to a certain point of materialism and consumption where there’s only so much you can buy, and we’re like, ‘What other experiences can I have?’” she says. “So we go back to what humans can do.”
Yet as her fame grows internationally, some have questioned, in comments, blogposts and Reddit threads, whether Li’s channel is communist propaganda.
In addition to providing China a form of international PR, Li embodies a kind of rural success the government hopes to generate more of through recent initiatives. With the aim of alleviating rural poverty, the Communist Youth League has embarked on an effort to send more than 10 million urban youth to “rural zones” by 2022, in order to “increase their skills, spread civilization, and promote science and technology”.
“We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models,” Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan province, told the Global Times last April.
By using technology to create her own rural economic opportunities while simultaneously championing forms of traditional Chinese culture before a huge audience, Li may seem like a CPC dream come true.
According to Professor Ka-Ming Wu, a cultural anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: “Li represents a new wave of Chinese soft power in that she’s so creative and aesthetically good, and knows how to appeal to a general audience whether they’re Chinese or not.” And yet, “I don’t think this is some kind of engineered effort by the Chinese state,” she says.
Li’s narrative hinges on her failure to thrive in the city; that failure is antithetical to China’s overarching narrative of progress and urban opportunity. Were she a manufactured agent of propaganda, Wu speculates, “[Her failure] is something the Chinese state would never even mention.
“And I think that’s what really fuels her popularity,” says Wu. “That despair of not being able to find oneself in the ‘Chinese dream’. I don’t think she’s propaganda because one of her major successes is that she’s making that failure highly aesthetic … However, the Chinese government is very smart to appropriate her work and say that she represents traditional culture and promote her.”
According to some Chinese media, Li’s content is better than propaganda – doing more to generate genuine domestic, and especially international, interest in rural Chinese traditions than any government initiative of the past decade. “Dozens of government departments with billions at their disposal spent 10 years on propaganda projects, but they have done a worse job than a little girl,” writes the South China Morning Post’s Chauncey Jung, summarizing a tweet from journalist Jasper Jia.
However you feel about Li as a cultural force, her ability to flourish despite a unique set of contradictory circumstances is impressive. Out of the past and present, failure and success, independence and authoritarianism, she’s spun a truly pleasant vision. If only life was really so simple.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Age of Dragons, book with an audiobook
CHAPTER ONE
Brothers in Oath
Sunday, July 19, 2020
'What happened when we all stopped', a beautiful animated poem narrated by Jane Goodall
'What happened when we all stopped', a beautiful animated poem narrated by Jane Goodall
Може да си изтеглите текста (книжката) в е-версиа, като следвате посочения линк накрая
posted from Bloggeroid
Friday, July 17, 2020
Ennio Morricone, Oscar-Winning Composer of Film Scores, Dies at 91
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/movies/ennio-morricone-dead.amp.html
Ennio Morricone, Oscar-Winning Composer of Film Scores, Dies at 91
His vast output included atmospheric music for spaghetti westerns in his native Italy and SCORES for some 500 movies by a Who’s Who of directors.
Ennio Morricone directed a concert in Rome in January.Credit...Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse, via Associated Press
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By Robert D. McFadden
Published July 6, 2020
Updated July 10, 2020
Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer whose atmospheric scores for spaghetti westerns and some 500 films by a Who’s Who of international directors made him one of the world’s most versatile and influential creators of music for the modern cinema, died on Monday in Rome. He was 91.
His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his lawyer, Giorgio Assumma, who said that Mr. Morricone was admitted there last week after falling and fracturing a FEMUR. Mr. Assumma also distributed a statement that Mr. Morricone had written himself, titled, “I, Ennio Morricone, am dead.”
To many cineastes, Maestro Morricone (pronounced (mo-ree-CONE-eh) was a unique talent, composing melodic accompaniments to comedies, thrillers and historical dramas by Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Terrence Malick, Roland Joffé, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols, John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino and other filmmakers.
He scored many popular films of the past 40 years: Édouard Molinaro’s “La Cage aux Folles” (1978), Mr. Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), Mr. De Palma’s “The Untouchables” (1987), Roman Polanski’s “Frantic” (1988), Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso” (1988), Wolfgang Petersen’s “In the Line of Fire” (1993), and Mr. Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” (2015).
Mr. Morricone won his first competitive Academy Award for his score for “The Hateful Eight,” an American western mystery thriller for which he also won a Golden Globe. In a career showered with honors, he had previously won an Oscar for lifetime achievement (2007) and was nominated for five other Academy Awards; in addition, he won two Golden Globes, four Grammys and dozens of international awards.
Mr. Morricone receiving an Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2007.Credit...Monica Almeida/The New York Times
But the work that made him world famous, and that was best known to MOVIEGOERS, was his blend of music and sound effects for Sergio Leone’s so-called spaghetti westerns of the 1960s: a ticking pocket watch, a sign CREAKING in the wind, buzzing flies, a TWANGING Jew’s harp, haunting whistles, CRACKING WHIPS, gunshots and a bizarre, WAILING “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah,” played on a sweet potato-shaped wind instrument called an ocarina.
Imitated, SCORNED, SPOOFED, what came to be known as “The Dollars Trilogy” — “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965) and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966), all released in the United States in 1967 — starred Clint Eastwood as “The Man With No Name” and were enormous hits, with a combined budget of $2 million and gross worldwide receipts of $280 million.
Video: The Good the Bad and the Ugly • Main Theme • Ennio Morricone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1PfrmCGFnk
The trilogy’s Italian dialogue was DUBBED for the English-speaking market, and the action was BROODING and slow, with clichéd close-ups of gunfighters’ eyes. But Mr. Morricone, breaking the unwritten rule never to upstage actors with music, infused it all with wry sonic weirdness and melodramatic strains that many fans embraced with cultlike devotion and that critics called VISCERALLY true to Mr. Leone’s vision of the Old West.
“In the films that established his reputation in the 1960s, the series of spaghetti westerns he scored for Mr. Leone, Mr. Morricone’s music is anything but a BACKDROP,” The New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote in 2007. “It’s sometimes a conspirator, sometimes a LAMPOON, with tunes that are as vividly in the FOREGROUND as any of the actors’ faces.”
Mr. Morricone also scored Mr. Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and his Jewish gangster drama, “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), both widely considered masterpieces. But he became most closely identified with “The Dollars Trilogy,” and in time GREW WEARY of answering for their LOWBROW SENSIBILITIES.
Asked by The Guardian in 2006 why “A Fistful of Dollars” had made such an impact, he said: “I don’t know. It’s the worst film Leone made and the worst score I did.”
“The Ecstasy of Gold,” from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” was one of Mr. Morricone’s biggest hits. It was recorded by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma on a 2004 album of Mr. Morricone’s compositions and used in concert by two rock bands: as closing music for the Ramones and the introductory theme for Metallica.
A scene from the Sergio Leone film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Its theme was one of Mr. Morricone’s biggest hits.Credit...MGM
Mr. Morricone looked professorial in bow ties and spectacles, with WISPS of FLYAWAY white hair. He sometimes HOLED UP in his palazzo in Rome and wrote music for weeks ON END, composing not at a piano but at a desk. He heard the music in his mind, he said, and wrote it in pencil on SCORE PAPER for all orchestra parts.
He sometimes scored 20 or more films a year, often working only from a script before screening the rushes. Directors MARVELED at his range — tarantellas, PSYCHEDELIC SCREECHES, swelling love themes, tense passages of high drama, STATELY EVOCATIONS of the 18th century or EERIE dissonances of the 20th — and at the INGENUITY of his silences: He was WARY of too much music, of overloading an audience with emotions.
Mr. Morricone composed for television films and series, (some of his music was reused on “The Sopranos” and “The Simpsons”), wrote about 100 concert pieces, and orchestrated music for popular singers, including Joan Baez, Paul Anka and Anna Maria Quaini, the Italian star known as Mina.
Mr. Morricone never learned to speak English, never left Rome to compose, and for years refused to fly anywhere, though he eventually flew all over the world to conduct orchestras, sometimes performing his own compositions. While he wrote extensively for Hollywood, he did not appear in concert in the United States until 2007, when, at 78, he made a monthlong tour, punctuated by festivals of his films.
Mr. Morricone directing an ensemble in Milan in 2018.Credit...Luca Bruno/Associated Press
He gave concerts in New York at Radio City Music Hall and the United Nations, and he concluded the tour in Los Angeles, where he received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement. The presenter, Clint Eastwood, roughly translated his acceptance speech from the Italian as the composer expressed “deep gratitude to all the directors who had faith in me.”
Ennio Morricone was born in Rome on Nov. 10, 1928, one of five children of Mario and Libera (Ridolfi) Morricone. His father, a trumpet player, taught him to read music and play various instruments. Ennio wrote his first compositions at 6. In 1940, he entered the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, where he studied trumpet, composition and direction.
His World War II experiences — hunger and the dangers of Rome as an “open city” under German and American armies — were reflected in some of his later work. After the war, he wrote music for radio; for Italy’s broadcasting service, RAI; and for singers under contract to RCA.
Mr. Morricone’s survivors include his wife, Maria Travia, whom he married in 1956 and cited when accepting his 2016 Oscar; four children, Marco, Alessandra, Andrea (a composer and conductor) and Giovanni; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Morricone’s first film credit was for Luciano Salce’s comedy “The Fascist” (1961). He soon began his collaboration with Mr. Leone, a former schoolmate. But he also scored political films: Gillo Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers” (1966), Mr. Pasolini’s “The Hawks and the Sparrows” (1966), Giuliano Montaldo’s “Sacco and Vanzetti” (1971) and Mr. Bertolucci’s “1900” (1976).
Mr. Morricone, left, received a “Golden Lion” career award for lifetime achievement at the 1995 Venice Film Festival. Credit...Luigi Costantini/Associated Press
Five Morricone scores nominated for Oscars displayed his virtuosity. In Mr. Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978), he captured a love triangle in the Texas Panhandle, circa 1916. For “The Mission” (1986), about an 18th-century Jesuit priest (Jeremy Irons) in the Brazilian rain forest, he wove the panpipe music of Indigenous people with that of a missionary party’s European instruments, playing out the cultural conflicts.
In “The Untouchables,” his music POUNDED OUT the struggle between Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in Prohibition-era Chicago. In Mr. Levinson’s “Bugsy” (1991), about the mobster Bugsy Siegel (Warren Beatty), it was a medley for a star-struck sociopath in Hollywood. And in Mr. Tornatore’s “Malèna” (2000), he orchestrated the ORDEALS of a wartime Sicilian town as seen through the eyes of a boy obsessed with a beautiful lady.
Talking to Mr. Pareles, Mr. Morricone placed his ACCLAIMED OEUVRE in a modest perspective. “The notion that I am a composer who writes a lot of things is true on one hand and not true on the other hand,” he said. “Maybe my time is better organized than many other people’s. But compared to classical composers like Bach, Frescobaldi, Palestrina or Mozart, I would define myself as unemployed.”
Elisabetta Povoledo and Julia Carmel contributed reporting.
Robert D. McFadden is a senior writer on the Obituaries desk and the winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. He joined The Times in May 1961 and is also the co-author of two books.
Correction: July 7, 2020
An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to Mr. Morricone's American concert tour of 2007. He had made at least one previous visit to the United States; this was not his first. The earlier version also referred imprecisely to Mr. Morricone's composition "The Ecstasy of Gold." While it is heard in the movie "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," it is not the movie's theme song.
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Sunday, July 12, 2020
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Friday, July 3, 2020
Legally Blonde, book
by Amanda Brown
Lots of people watched a fun comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. But not everyone knows that the film was based on the book. The plot does not start too original. We meet Elle Woods. She is young, beautiful and socially active. Elle even won the title of Miss University. Her boyfriend is also very popular. Elle wants to marry Warner. But the guy is sure his girlfriend is too stupid and does not think about their future. He hides from Elle his plans about admission into Harvard. He also wants to find another more intelligent partner. When Elle goes to Harvard to her boyfriend, she finds out he has been already engaged to another girl for some time. This could be the beginning of a protracted depression. But Elle is not used to being discouraged. She decides to make Warner regret his hasty decision.
That night Elle and her two best friends stayed up late, making plans on how to bring Warner back.
At around 3:00 A.M. Elle decided that she would go to law school. If Warner was going to Stanford Law School to find someone "serious," he was going to find one serious Elle Woods.
Elle spent the rest of the fall semester studying for the Law School Aptitude Test, which she had decided to take in January.
Three months later, Elle was smiling as she returned from the LSAT. She finished the silly test four minutes early.
Several days after the exam, Elle walked into her mother's Los Angeles art gallery.
"Kiss noise!" Elle's mother said when she saw her. Elle and her mother exchanged air kisses not to ruin each other's makeup.
"Mother, I've got some news that may surprise you," Elle announced nervously as she sat into a chair in her mother's office.
"Oh, darling! You're finally marrying Warner!" Eva guessed.
Elle had always told her mother everything, but she couldn't tell her about the awful October night when Warner dumped her. She knew her mother would be devastated. Her mother had always told Elle that a woman's biggest achievement was getting a rich husband.
"No, Mother," Elle said, "not yet. The news is, I've decided not to work in the gallery this fall. I'm... well... I've decided to go back to school."
"Design or film, dear?" Eva smiled, but Elle could see her disappointment.
"I'm going to law school."
Eva almost jumped up. She stared at Elle for several moments before she could speak. "Law school? What are you talking about? Darling, one must pass tests for that and..."
"Oh, I know," Elle said, and laughed nervously. "I've already taken the test, and I think I passed it. It may seem strange, Mother, but I just totally want to be a lawyer."
"I see," Eva said. "Have you applied to schools already?"
"Well, of course! I applied to Harvard, and Pepperdine as a backup. And Stanford too, I think." She paused. "Yes, those three, definitely," Elle lied. She had only applied to Stanford. Why would she go to a school that didn't have Warner in it?
"Well, your father will be devastated!" Eva said.
Elle thought that when she brought Warner back, both of her parents would be happy.
In late April, while standing in the foyer of the Delta Gamma house looking through her mail, Elle found a very thin envelope from Stanford. She ran upstairs to her room, praying it was a letter of acceptance. After all, she had a 4.0 GPA, a perfect LSAT score, and tons of extracurricular activities. She also hoped that Stanford had liked her personal statement.
In her bedroom, Elle opened the letter with shaking hands and began to read: "Dear Ms. Woods, we are pleased to accept you..."
After graduation, Elle moved back to her parents', and from that day, with Underdog at her side, she began the project of becoming someone "serious."
At first, she wanted to turn to Cosmo for advice. However, when Serena found pictures of Warner's brother and his bride in Town and Country', Elle knew that it was her new bible.
Over the summer, with Town Country under her arm, Elle shopped at the malls, exchanged her BMW convertible for a Range Rover, and bought a pair of glasses. She also began wearing pearls.
In August, Elle Woods was ready. She packed her flowery dresses and pink furry slippers, zipped her Louis Vuittons, and went up north with Underdog.
CHAPTER SIX
Elle couldn't believe how depressing the university dormitory was. Her dorm room was smaller than her closet at home. Elle looked at her watch and realized she was already late. She left her dorm room with the puzzled moving men trying to fit all her stuff in, and drove to orientation.
She parked the Range Rover and started thinking what to do with Underdog.
"Sorry, dear," Elle said to the dog. "I'll take care of this really fast, and you can wait in the car." She poured Evian into his pink travel dish, opened the windows slightly, turned on his favorite CD, and left.
The crowd in the courtyard in front of Stanford Law School reminded her of summer camps. Groups of proud parents stood talking to their prodigies with terrible Hello My Name Is tags on their chests. Elle thought about her parents who didn't want to see her "wasting her talents at law school." Second-year law students worked at tables selling Stanford Law BUMPER STICKERS, T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, pens, notebooks, and backpacks.
Elle looked for an alphabetical line to guide her, but Stanford had a different system. "If you went to Harvard, pick up your name tag here," read one sign. "If you went to Brown, pick up your name tag here," said the other. There was an MIT Cal Tech table and the Smith too. Nervously, Elle came up to the "State Schools, except Penn (Ivy)", not sure if the University of Southern California was actually a state school. There was no nametag for her there.
Walking past these signs, Elle felt terrified. Maybe that acceptance letter had been a joke, a mistake? But at the far end she saw a single table with the sign that she knew was meant only for her.
"If you went to Santa Monica Community College for summer school, pick up your name tag here," read the sign.
Nobody was there, and Elle's nametag and her orientation schedule lay on the table under a rock. "Very funny," Elle said, blushing. She had passed her math exams at Santa Monica but certainly didn't think of it as her alma mater. She put the terrible nametag into her Prada bag and quickly went to the second row of tables.
Pushing past badly dressed people, Elle found a young woman who wasn't with her parents, and asked her if she knew where they were supposed to go next. Somehow, the woman looked familiar.
"I don't know." The woman said. She looked Elle up and down and shrugged . "I'm waiting for my fiance."
"Thanks," Elle said and moved to a nearby table to look at the pamphlets there. Finally, she found a wooden bench, sat down, and read her orientation schedule for the next day.
Tuesday
9:00 A.M. - 10:00 A.M. Registration
10:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M. Book Purchase
12:00 P.M. - 1:30 P.M. Barbecue
1:30 P.M.-3:00 P.M. Campus Tour (including Law Library)
3:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M. You and Others: Meet and Greet
5:00 P.M. - 7:00 P.M. Dean's Welcome
7:00 P.M. Pizza Party
"Terrible," Elle said and groaned. The pizza and barbecue were bad enough, plus the schedule covered every minute of the day. How could she even begin unpacking her stuff before classes started on Thursday? She thought of Underdog and decided to go to the bookstore immediately to avoid the "book purchase" rush the next day. But when she found the Law section, she saw a crowd. Bad luck: dozens of eager law students were already staring at the casebooks they would soon read.
Elle gathered her twelve heavy casebooks and took her place at the end of the line. An MP3 player and sunglasses would've been a good idea, she thought as she tried to ignore people and noise around her. She pulled out. I's September issue and turned the pages trying to show that she was doing an important reading. Eventually, totally annoyed, Elle left the line, thinking that there was no need for her to miss her regular manicure time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At nine o'clock the next morning, Elle was back at the law school for registration.
"Elle!" Warner exclaimed with surprise when he saw her. "What are you doing here?" He looked with curiosity at Elle's flowery dress and pearls.
"I'm registering. Like everybody else." She hadn't seen Warner, and his simple question caught her off guard. Elle noticed that Warner's yellow shirt matched his hair. A pale, frowning brunette was standing beside him. Elle recognized the woman she had met at the orientation. She had thought of a million lines to say to Warner alone, but seeing him with another woman ruined her confidence.
"Registering for what? This isn't the design department, Elle." Warner laughed.
"Really? I'm happy to hear that! Otherwise, I would have been standing in the wrong line for hours to register for, like, fashion design when I came all the way here to enter law school," Elle answered, smiling. She glanced at the young woman who was pulling Warner's sleeve for his attention.
"This is... Sarah," Warner said, turning to her. Elle stared at Sarah through the pink sunglasses and tried to smile.
"We went to the same school," Warner said. Now Elle remembered seeing pictures of Sarah in Warner's Groton yearbook. Her grandfather's portrait was on a postage stamp. Grandma Huntington must be quite happy.
Elle and Sarah shook hands. "I'm sure Warner's told you about me," Elle said. Sarah looked at her with CONTEMPT. To her, Elle was like a Barbie doll - certainly nothing like the friends she'd had at Groton.
Warner had told Sarah about Elle, but he hadn't needed to. Everyone knew about Warner's foolish college girlfriend. "Mark my words, that woman will never, never call herself a Huntington," Grandma Huntington had often said at family dinners.
With her right hand, Sarah straightened the huge diamond ring on her left hand. "I'm Sarah Knottingham. Warner's fiancee," she said.
Elle couldn't believe her ears. She stared with her mouth open at Sarah, the Rock, and Warner, trying to understand what had just happened. She thought it was a nightmare and shut her eyes, hoping that when she opened them, it would disappear.
But it didn't.
In her dorm room, Elle fell on her bed. "Underdog, you have to stay quiet," she told her Chihuahua. "You're not allowed here, but I need a friend." She SIGHED. Then she got up, put on her Delta Gamma T-shirt, and began unpacking.
"What am I doing here?" Elle sighed again, sitting down on the floor among the boxes. A narrow bed, a desk, and a chair were the only furniture in her GLOOMY new room. A year ago, she had imagined her life after college quite differently. Elle had been sure that at this time she would be planning her wedding. Instead, she found herself in a law school dorm.
"What have I done?" she GROANED. She SOB BYBED, remembering Sarah and her pale hand with the Rock - the family jewel that should've been Elle's.
"Well, I'm here now," Elle, decided, at last. "Warner, Sarah, my parents... just wait and see'!" She stood up to look for the telephone.
Legally Blonde film Intro "Perfect Day" Song
Elle
Margo
Serena
The anti-bra feminist
The Dean
Sarah
Claire
Sidney's father, Lee Ugman
CHAPTER EIGHT
After finally finding her pink Princess-style phone, Elle lay on her bed and held Underdog tight. She decided to call Margot and Serena. She knew they would be home at this time, as they never missed an episode of their favorite TV series. Elle smiled as she thought of her friends.,
Margot picked up right away. "It's Elle," she said to Serena, putting the phone on speaker.
"Hi, you guys!" Elle was so happy to hear their friendly voices.
"Elle! How are you? We miss you already!" Serena said.
"I miss you guys too! You can't imagine..." Elle began, but Margot interrupted her.
"How is shopping there?" Margot asked. "Is it as good as here?"
Elle started to say that she hadn't had a chance to go inside a store yet when Serena asked her, "Elle! How's Warner? Was he surprised to see you? Did you get the Rock yet?"
Elle didn't know where to begin, and it was just too depressing to repeat the horrible events over the phone.
"Warner's fine, but no Rock yet," Elle lied. "I'm getting ready for classes though, and you wouldn't believe how many books I have." She sighed heavily.
"Oh, you poor thing!" the girls cried together. "We are so glad to be out of school," Margot added. "Well, we're dying to hear more, but we're late for a meeting."
"Meeting?" Elle asked.
"Jesus is the Weigh!" the girls cried together.
"It's a new spiritual weight-loss program," Serena added.
"You have to come with us next time you are in L.A.," Margot said.
"Got to go! Much love and send Warner a kiss!" they cried together.
Elle hung up feeling worse than ever. Serena and Margot had found Jesus, and Sarah had the Rock. She fell onto pink silk pillows and cried until she had to get ready for her first law school event.
Elle tried to think of something positive as she walked across the Stanford campus on her way to the Dean's Welcome. She noticed a few tables with interesting signs. One table's sign read "Hum Your Bra." A woman with a bandanna and frizzy brown hair was standing there, and Elle was glad to see something familiar. She smiled as she remembered the bra-burning party she'd given for Serena after she had got her new boobs.
As Elle came up to the table, the woman jumped up to yell, "Bra burning is a political thing!"
Elle noticed that the woman was not wearing any bra. She slopped, puzzled. "Are you talking to me?" Elle asked her.
"Free women from the male dominance and capitalistic body image! Boycott the bra!" shouted the woman.
At that, Elle left the place quickly.
Students and parents filled the law school's auditorium waiting for the dean's speech. Dean Haus was known around campus as "Great Haus," both for his warm personality and sense of humor, as well as his superb ten- bedroom house.
But Elle didn't think the Dean's Welcome was very welcoming.
Dean Haus began by listing the achievements of the 180 students chosen from thousands of applicants for a place in Stanford's first-year class, pointing out a few special ones.
Elle looked around, searching for Warner. He was seated with Sarah two rows in front and to the left of her. Elle watched him to see if he would look in her direction. She was so involved in this activity that the dean's next introduction shocked her.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, what class would be complete without a sorority president?" the dean asked, and the audience laughed. Even Warner was laughing. "Ms. Elle Woods," the dean said and gestured for her to stand up, "Who also happens to be our only homecoming queen!"
Elle reddened. Then she gathered her things and left quickly.
CHAPTER NINE
Elle's first day was a disaster. When she arrived at Criminal Law, the first class on her schedule, Elle realized she had forgotten to bring her name card. Each seat had a special desktop slot for these large cards, which helped professors to humiliate you by name. Elle was the only unlabeled person. She groaned as Sarah walked into the room and sat down behind a card that read "Knottingham, S."
At least it doesn't say Huntington yet, Elle thought.
Sarah was chatting with Claire Caldwell-Boulaine. "Like a talking Barbie," Elle overheard Sarah whisper. "Wait and see!" Claire said.
The balding boy next to Elle, obviously a Star I fan, labeled "Garney, T.", was busily typing something on his laptop computer. Elle wondered what he could possibly be taking notes of already. The boy paused to check the time on his watch and looked around the room. He noticed Elle's pink pad and a fuzzy pink pen. Shocked, he asked her, "Where is your laptop?"
Ignoring Garney, T., Elle glanced again at her schedule, hoping it would show she was in the wrong room. Looks like I'll be seeing a lot of Sarah, she thought. And Warner can walk in any minute.
She looked at the door when it suddenly opened. To her surprise, it was not Warner, but Sidney Ugman. Elle had known and avoided Sidney Ugman for years. He was her next-door neighbor in Bel Air, and they had gone to the same school. Sidney had followed her for years, like a bad dream.
Sidney's father, Lee Ugman, was a major client of Eva's gallery. Because of that, Sidney had a chance to meet with Elle more often at dinners and gallery events. His parents often said that Sidney and Elle had a "special relationship," which is why Lee Ugman bought so much from Eva's gallery. "To keep it in the family," he explained. Of course, THERE WAS NO "SPECIAL IF RELATIONSHIP" because all of it was just Sidney's imagination.
Sydney recognized his Star Trek friend, the balding boy next to Elle, and took a seat in the same row.
The class was what Elle had already known about law school: everything was totally different from her previous life. NERDS like Sydney and his balding friend Garney, T. grouped together to discuss new hi-tech inventions. High society girls like Claire and Sarah met at coffeehouses to do crossword puzzles in foreign languages. And only Elle had no one to talk to. She realized that she, Elle Woods, was unpopular.
CHAPTER TEN
Elle
Sidney
Elle's professors
Finally, Professor Kiki arrived. Catherine "Kiki" Haus was a Stanford Law School professor and the wife of the dean. She was STURDy, wide-faced, about forty years old. She often looked into her notes and spoke with an "uh" between every few words.
"All law... uh... is biased. Um... against women," she lectured.
Was this Criminal Law or feminism? Elle thought they'd talk about lawyers, guns, and money.
Kiki CALLED only ON women. In her introductory speech, she said that women have to balance work and family life, while men are free from this responsibility. Nobody had any idea what this had to do with criminal law, but they were typing it on their laptops anyway.
"Uh, you, without the, uh, name card." Kiki pointed at Elle. "Uh, what's your name?"
"Elle Woods."
"Uh, Ms., uh, Woods, uh, why did you, uh, come to law school?"
First question, first day, Elle thought.
Sarah turned around with interest. The room was quiet.
"To be a lawyer?" Elle guessed.
Kiki SMIRKED. "And, uh, why do uh, want to be a, uh, lawyer?"
"So I can do my own divorce papers," Elle answered, smiling. She glanced in the direction of Sarah and Claire to see if her words had any effect on them.
"I see," Kiki said and turned away to write on the board. "You all want to be lawyers, but first you have to pass my class. And last year only half of the students who sat in these seats did it..."
Elle was called on again in Torts class for a question on the reading, which was actually assigned before the first class, but Elle hadn't gotten to it yet, and didn't even have her books with her. With no name card and no books, Elle was an easy target.
Torts was the class of basic personal injury law. A "tort" meant an injury over which you could sue somebody. The class focused on everyday talk-show things like car accidents or annoying phone calls.
Today's word, which Elle might have known if she had read the assigned chapter, was "subrogation," a way for the bad guy to escape paying damages by suing somebody else.
"You, without a laptop or a name card..." Professor Glenn, a white-haired red-nosed man, pointed at Elle. "What do you think of subrogation?"
Elle wondered if this professor was into feminism too, like Kiki. "Well," she answered, "it's a part of our society. Especially the subjugation of women."
The class was laughing, and Elle couldn't understand what was so funny.
Professor Glenn shook his head sadly. He was sober that day and regretted it. "Thank you, Ms. Woods. Let's turn to somebody who's done the reading," he said.
Elle now realized that the time she had spent reading Cosmopolitan's Life after College issue had been a total waste of time. She understood she might need a new source of advice like watching Oprah shows or Larry King, or something.
Leaving the room after class, Elle gasped as Sidney's hand grabbed her arm. "Hey Elle," he said. "Come on, this isn't Bel Air. You're not so popular here, you know. People don't even like you."
Elle twisted her arm to get away from him but couldn't.
"I have so many friends here already, Elle. You should be nicer to me... I might let you into my study group," Sidney continued.
Elle turned around and faced Sidney, finally freeing her arm. "Sidney, don't make this worse than it already is for me," she said. "Just leave me alone, will you?"
Sidney's laughter was her answer. Now he was the king and she was a joke. Law school was his chance to make her pay, and he was going to enjoy every minute of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elle
Josette
Right after class Elle went to the beauty salon, she had found during orientation week when she skipped the barbecue. It was in the Stanford Shopping Center, and she found a nice French manicurist there who brought her back to life. Elle had booked enough time for a pedicure as well as a manicure; she really needed to talk to someone and would have stayed even longer if she could.
Sighing deeply, Elle put her left hand under the air dryer. "Josette, it got even worse."
Josette, a good-looking brunette, was working on Elle's right hand, shaping her thumbnail. "Worse? Elle, what you told me before... it was already horrible!"
Elle looked around the salon. "See, I have to go to class because I don't have any friends, and I don't know who would lake notes for me if I was absent," she explained.
"You should make a friend then," Josette advised.
"No, Josette, wait till you hear what these people are like! This one guy from MIT, the Gummi Bear Man, sits behind me in Civil Procedure, and he says he's doing some kind of scientific experiment... whatever. Anyway, he is eating Gummi bears' all the time."
"Eeeewwww," Josette said. "And what about the other students?"
"Well, there's also a guy called Ben who for law school. He watches Court TV when he's not reading the Legal or cases. He reads the Stanford Law in the library when we have an hour break between classes. He carries around piles of casebooks. He loves law school so much! He told me that he wanted to be a law professor since he was seven years old!"
"I think I wanted to be a ballerina when I was a little girl," Josette said. "Or a princess. And what about the girls in your school?"
Elle put both hands under the air dryer. "Josette, all of them are boring and badly dressed."
Josette laughed. "Why are you in law school, Elle?"
Elle thought about it and wondered if she should tell her. "I followed my college boyfriend, Warner, here," Elle explained.
"He broke up with me before he came to Stanford, and I thought I'd go to law school too, you know, to win him back. But now he's engaged to this awful young woman named Sarah, and I'm stuck here!"
"Maybe you should see another man?" Josette suggested.
"I know, I'm pathetic."
Josette needed to get to another client. "Do you want the same time next week?" she asked Elle.
"Yes, please, the same time next week," Elle, answered. She put on her sandals and went to her career-counseling seminar.
The seminars were once a week after classes. Elle had signed up to see what the future promised. She also hoped to see Warner there. The career counselor told her to work on her resume, spending more time in the library, studying cases.
Returning from the seminar, Elle found a note on her dorm room door. It said that keeping a dog in the room was not allowed, so Elle would have to find a new home for the dog, or find a new home for herself and the dog.
"Guess we've got to find a new home, Underdog," Elle sighed and took her dog outside.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Elle
Eugenia
The professor
Most classes in law school were a torture. Civil Procedure class was all about cases in court. Anyone who could read and follow directions could understand Civil Procedure. You only had to memorize things for the exam.
Elle was reading her magazine when Professor Erie called on Ben to answer a question. He would be talking for the rest of the class. Elle was glad she'd brought the new Vogue.
The young woman next to Elle offered her a piece of gum. "It's apple," she whispered, "my favorite."
"Thanks," Elle said, smiling. The girl next to her was unlike most of her classmates. She was pretty, with ivory skin and clear blue eyes. Plus she was sort of blonde, or could be, with some highlights.
"It all sounds like abracadabra to me!" the young woman whispered again with a smile.
Elle looked at her neighbor curiously.
"What the hell is quasi in rem jurisdiction?" she wrote a note on a paper, which she passed to Elle.
"I don't know, sorry," Elle wrote back. "I skip this class a lot because of Gummi bears."
"I know. Isn't that gross? By the way, my name is Eugenia," was the response.
Elle laughed. This girl was all right.
"Miss Iliakis?" The note passing was interrupted. "Is Miss Iliakis here today?"
"Uh, yes." Eugenia raised her hand. "Back here."
"Miss Iliakis, here is the second problem. Let's see if we can help them get into court."
Eugenia looked helplessly at Elle, who shrugged. Professor! Tie waited a bit, then turned to Ben again, who happily demonstrated his knowledge.
In the hall after the class, Eugenia asked Elle, "Do you want to grab some lunch before Torts?"
"Sure," Elle answered, shocked that someone was actually speaking to her and asking her to lunch.
The margaritas at lunch were perfect. Eugenia suggested they call it a day. "I can get the notes from Claire or somebody."
"Cool," Elle said.
Over lunch, Eugenia told Elle she was from a Greek neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Elle listened with interest.
"Growing up in Pittsburgh and then going to Yale, I thought I'd enter the creative world, you know," Eugenia said.
Elle laughed. Eugenia was impressed when Elle told her that her mother had an art gallery in L. A., and that she herself wanted to be a jewelry designer, not a lawyer. Eugenia didn't even ask why Elle was at Stanford Law.
Elle was thrilled. Had she actually found a friend in law school?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elle
Worner
It was early October and Elle was still in her dorm room, studying, when the phone rang. She decided to let her answering machine PICK UP.
She froze when Warner's voice began speaking.
"Elle, uh, I wanted to call you earlier to see how things were going for you at law school. As you probably know, Sarah, my fiancee, is in your class, and from what she tells me, you're still the same old Elle!"
Elle glared at the machine.
"Anyway, listen, Daniel's coming to visit, and I promised I'd show him our videotape from Vegas. If you lend it to me, I can make a copy, or just borrow it. Okay, honey?"
Has he just used the word "honey"? Elle thought.
There was a pause, then: "Thanks, Elle. Call me soon."
"Oh, God, the Vegas tape!" Elle fell down on the bed, laughing, and stared at the ceiling.
Unknown to his family, and probably to Sarah, Warner's secret ambition was to direct films. For three years he had taken Elle to film after film, and later he began "directing documentaries" of their own adventures.
The videotape he asked about was a hilarious adventure weekend of Elle, Warner, and Warner's old friend, Daniel, on the streets and in the casinos of Las Vegas. The "documentary" ended with the Imperial Palace suite, its grand bed, and a huge Jacuzzi.
Elle picked up the phone to call Warner back; then hung up. She smiled. I'll make him wait. I'll make him wait until Daniel's in town, she thought.
Instead, Elle called her new landlord. The crazy old man didn't recognize her at first, though she had met WITH him only two days before.
"Mr. Hopson, it's Elle Woods. I'm moving in... Today?"
It was the only nice place Elle could find that allowed pets m the condominium.
"Right, right, sir. The jewelry designer. I'm bringing my dog, remember? Yes, I know that I have to pay an extra deposit lot pets. We discussed that before, Mr. Hopson. I wrote you a check. Yes I did. Yesterday. I just wanted to tell you I'm coming this afternoon. Yes, Elle Woods," Elle repeated, frustrated. "W-o-o-d-s. Thank you."
CHAPTER FOURTY-EIGHT
Elle
Chutney
Christopher Miles
Chutney's lawyer
Judge Morgan
Sarah
Elle was staring at Chutney's frizzy hair as she took her seat in the witness stand.
"Chutney, please describe to the court where you were on the day of your father's death."
To CORROBORATe Chutney's activities, Henry Kohn had called Philippe LeBlanc, the head stylist at Frize of Beverly Hills. Philippe brought a page from the salon's calendar, showing that Chutney had been scheduled to get a permanent wave that morning. He had done her hair himself, and he testified that Chutney acted perfectly normal.
Then Maxine Maximillian, of Max Fitness Center, testified that she had spoken with Chutney at the gym in the afternoon at around 3:00 P.M. when she had just finished teaching her aerobics class, which began at 1:00 P.M.
Chutney testified that she had returned home to an empty house after working out. She went upstairs to take a shower and ran downstairs to grab a drink from the kitchen. That was when she found Brooke, who was SHAKING WITH FRIGHT, trying to move Heyworth's body. She surprised Brooke, who probably hadn't heard her upstairs and who then fainted in the kitchen. Chutney called the police while Brooke was unconscious. The police arrived and arrested her in the kitchen.
When Christopher Miles began questioning the witness, at first he asked Chutney to describe the house. "You were surprised, you said, Ms. Vandermark, when you saw your father downstairs?" he asked next.
"Of course!" Chutney gasped. "For God's sake, my father was... he was dead!"
"So you didn't notice anything unusual, then, before you came downstairs. And nobody was there when you got home," he continued. "So... so it happened while you were upstairs."
He paused, looking for another question - for anything - to keep Chutney on the stand.
Chutney glanced at her lawyer, who shrugged. Judge Morgan was watching Christopher Miles. Elle touched her silky hair and thought that she would never want it to be frizzy like Chutney's. Suddenly, she jumped up.
"Wait!" Elle exclaimed.
Judge Morgan pounded her gavel. "Order. Order."
"Your Honor," Elle came up to the bench, "I'm an INTERN for Mrs. Vandermark's defense team. May I ask Chutney a question?"
Judge Morgan, glancing at the student audience, decided to agree. She wanted to publish an article in the Stanford Law Review. "Mr. Miles?" she asked Christopher.
Elle looked at him and raised her eyebrows, like a child asking for a present on Christmas Eve.
All is lost already anyway, the lawyer thought. "A fine idea, Miss Woods," he smiled. Sarah gasped in horror.
"Your Honor," Elle nodded seriously, "it's relevant, I promise." She turned to Chutney, who grinned. "It's about your hair," Elle began. "It looks nice."
"Thanks." Chutney stared at Elle with curiosity.
"Did you just get a perm?"
"Yeah, before the trial. Philippe did it." Chutney pointed to Philippe, who nodded.
"He did your hair during college too, didn't he?" Elle asked.
"Oh, yes," Chutney answered, "he has permed my hair since the first time I went with Emerald." Chutney's mother nodded proudly from her seat. "I never do anything to my hair unless he tells me it is okay. He's totally professional."
"And you've had..." Elle wondered aloud, "how many perms?"
"Well, one every six months since I was about ten. That's like twenty at least."
"And you got a perm the day that Heyworth... your father was murdered," Elle said, thoughtfully.
"Yes," Chutney answered. "As I had already said, I was at Frize."
"But your father was shot a little later, after you got home," Elle continued, with her back turned to Chutney.
Sarah frowned. "Do we need to go through this until Elle gets it straight?" she whispered to Warner.
Elle turned around and came up to the witness stand with her hands on her hips. "But you didn't hear anything, not even a gunshot."
"Yes. For God's sake, I told you. I was in the shower. I worked out after I left Frize, and when I got home, I took a shower. I'm sure I didn't hear anything, any shot, because I was washing my hair. I wash it every day." Chutney glared at Elle.
Elle walked towards the court gallery, smiling. "Chutney, veteran of twenty perms, graduate of hair management," she turned to face the witness, "it is absolutely elementary, absolutely the first rule of hair care, that you can't wash your hair for twenty-four hours after a perm."
Chutney gasped, raising her hand to cover her open mouth.
"Is that not a fact?" Elle demanded. "Chutney?"
"Yes," Chutney whispered, beginning to cry. "You have to wait twenty-four hours."
"And you were washing your hair!" Elle asked the witness. "Three hours after you walked out of Frize?"
"No!" Chutney cried.
Henry Kohn jumped up from his chair, objecting.
"You would never wash your hair right after getting a perm, would you, Chutney?" Elle said, not listening to Henry Kohn's furious shouts.
Judge Morgan pounded her GAVEl. "Let her answer the question, Mr. Kohn."
"No, no, no," Chutney sobbed, "never! I wasn't in the shower, of course not!"
"You lied then, Chutney." Elle folded her arms, staring at the witness. "Tell the court again where you were when your father was shot."
Chutney turned in her chair, pointing at Brooke. "She is younger than I am!" she shrieked. "She was in my class, and she married my father!"
Henry Kohn still tried to silence Chutney.
"You stole my father! You ruined him! You ruined my life!" Chutney yelled at Brooke. "I didn't mean to shoot him! I meant to shoot you!"
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