I Kissed A Corpse (And I Liked It)

Both Maria and I are back in Bergen, so I've been rewatching Star Trek once again, yay!

She wanted to get more acquainted with season three (in spite of my warnings) so we gave 'Spectre of the gun' a watch. Much groaning about Scotty's new hairdo was had. And expressions of disbelief at how insane that part where Kirk and the sheriff is screaming at eachother is ("I CAN'T KILL THEM!!" "YOU GOTTA KILL THEM!!" "BUT I CAN'T KILL THEM!!" "YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM!!").

Also I had completely forgotten how extremely anticlimatic that episode is. Jeez, how is that even possible with all that shooting and even a smidgen of kirk-fu?

To balance the cowboys out we then watched "the one with the indians", 'The paradise syndrome':

Maria: "What... What is Kirk doing to that pine tree? God he's feeling that bough up isn't he. He can't go five minutes without - oh! Now Spock caught him, good Kirk, get rid of that bough."

And that ending, oh dear.

Kirk: "I! Am! KIROOOOOOK!"
Me: "Oh I always scream out my name when I'm frustrated too. There's a school assignment I can't figure out? 'I AM TILDEEEEE!'."

We also watched half of Star Trek XI, which Maria hasn't seen yet (she threw up her hands in resignation after Spock and Uhura made out and mumbled something about "This is just silly. Let's watch the rest some other time").

One of those random inclinations

We visited the Museum of Leprosy today.

I've mentioned before how I think it's a pity that the trend in the history education is making it more and more about The Bigger Picture and less about, well, people. People are interesting - not just the monarchs and the great innovators, but all of them. The Museum of Leprosy is all about people in a way, both the ones who lived there (the St. Jørgen Hospital) and the ones outside.

As a strict museum it's quite lacking - there are about a dozens posters (in Norwegian only) explaining what leprosy is, the search for the cause of it, and how the hospital was run. I learned a lot of things didn't know, but it was really the building itself that held my attention - just walking around in this preserved hospital from the 1700s with its dark corners and cramped rooms. I'm always grateful when historical buildings take care not to overlight (or even worse, use "artistic lighting") indoors.

The hospital chapel, which was mostly naturally illuminated by its narrow windows, had me awed. Wooden and crude, but with pews and pews where countless of diseased people, both children and adults, had still prayed to a God they believed had punished them with an affliction like that. I can't wrap my head around it. Maria said the place creeped her out but I'd rather have stayed.

Friendly old girl of a town

I sat down to watch Hans Christian Andersen (1952) to get my monthly dose of Danny Kaye, but the whole movie was pretty much the opposite of what I was expecting (I think the peak of disbelief came with Danny Kaye and Farley Granger doing straight ballet in a dream sequence). In a good way.

For one it's the first fifties' pseudo-biopic I've seen with a disclaimer at the beginning, going "This is not the story of Andersen's life, it's just a fairy tale". I thought to myself "I can get behind that. The story of Andersen's life is just a never-ending string of passionate infatuations with unobtainable men and women, who'd want to watch that?" and then the movie - even though it contains two wonderful love songs, 'No two people' and 'Anywhere I wander' - centers around a story of unrequited love. Holy shit, a saccarine fifties' musical aimed at children where the leading man doesn't get the girl?

And speaking of saccarine, you'd think Copenhagen looks almost exactly like Munchkin Land. But I can handle saccarine when Danny Kaye's involved. He's so adorable he makes the hordes of blue-eyed rosy-cheeked children seem drab.

And ungh stupid sexy Farley Granger.

And if you want a song that will never leave your head, look no further than this:

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