Happy Bonfire Night! Enjoy the fireworks...
As well as watching all nine episodes of Agatha All Along on Saturday, John-John also dug out an old "X-Men" movie I hadn't seen - X-Men: First Class, that ostensibly covers the "origin story" of the mutant superhero team.
It has many flaws - not least playing "fast-and-loose" with the original comics version, including characters that were only written decades after the original team's debut, and dropping other integral characters altogether, which infuriated me throughout.
It might have helped if the dialogue, (some of) the acting, and the zig-zagging plot had been better. At times towards the end, I felt like I was reliving the utterly dreadful Independence Day, but with mutants.
It really comes to something when the best performance in the entire film was given by the lovely Michael Fassbender's impressive groinage! My kind of mutation....
Speaking of groinage...
It would have been Robert Mapplethorpe's birthday yesterday.
His 1989 touring exhibition The Perfect Moment, a retrospective following his death, caused huge furore and much clutching of pearls over the inclusion of the rather charming "Man in Polyester Suit" [as featured, left] (among other somewhat near-the-knuckle photos).
Portrayals of gay erotica were anathaema to the establishment in the Reagan era!
The exhibition's cancellation by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington provoked a censorship battle about national funding for the arts that was front-page news for the next year.
[click any pic to embiggen]
...and here's an appropriate number for the occasion:
All hail Priapus!