Stormy?

[click to embiggen]

I spent another long day yesterday at John-John's, catching up with all the "Marvel geek" stuff I hadn't seen - the whole X-Men: 97 animated series and not one, but two of the original (20th Century Fox) X-Men films [which are not a patch on the cartoon, and quite half-arsed in comparison to anything Marvel's own studio has produced].

Deadpool didn't get a look in this time around, but I found the above spoof versions of the sort of advert that used to be in the comics I had when I was young, which are too good not to share, dear reader!

I got home (via Uber cab) in the wee small hours, just in time for the most tremendous thunderstorm!

Coincidence? Maybe.

Although all that's blown over, and today's weather's not that bad, I still think this old fave is appropriate...

...a track I previously described as "a battle-royal between Miss Viola Wills and Miss Lena Horne":

Viola Wills - Stormy Weather (Disco Video Mix by Glenn Rivera)

Faboo!

Ngholl?

Wales is not there anymore.

After a brutal night of hefty winds, Britain woke up to discover that its western chunk had been sheered off and was now tossing in the north Atlantic, 150 miles off the coast of Iceland.

People in Herefordshire were first to realise the principality had been removed when they awoke to find themselves living on the coast.

Martin Bishop, from the village of Clifford, said: “At first I thought my house had been picked up and dumped next to the sea, like some sort of ‘Wizard of Oz’ fantasy that I’m always having.

“I said to my dog, ‘we’re not in Herefordshire anymore, Toto’, but then I realised that Wales wasn’t there.

“At last.”

Bishop’s neighbour, Margaret Gerving, said: “It seems very traumatic at the moment, but it’s for the best.”

Jane Thompson, from Shrewsbury, added: “The A458 is now a road to nowhere. Sorry, the A458 is still a road to nowhere.”

Meanwhile, the government said it was studying a range of options on what to do about Wales and would announce a decision sometime next year.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

[The "real" story.]

*Ngholl = "missing" in Welsh

Gloom and misery everywhere

Malign, that's what this weather is. We had one sunny-ish day on Saturday, then yesterday and today the miserable drizzling rain returned. Just in time to go back to the office, as if that weren't depressing enough already. Will we ever get a proper Springtime?

Hey ho, on this Tacky Music Monday, I have the perfect pick-me-up - a battle-royal between Miss Viola Wills and Miss Lena Horne!

Viola Wills - Stormy Weather (Disco Video Mix by Glenn Rivera)

Oh, that's better...

...and could have been equally at home on a Thank Disco It's Friday...

Hurricane season

From Harvey...



...to Irma:

Lois Bromfield - Sorority Girls from Hell

[An oldie - but goodie!]

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky

Had she lived (and she had a bloody good go - surviving almost to her centenary!), the marvellous cabaret singer and civil rights activist Miss Elisabeth Welch would have been 110 years old today...

On such an auspicious occasion, I have no qualms at all in featuring, for a second time, this scene described by George Melly as "arguably the campest, most sparkling moment in the history of cinema".

A most appropriate song for a grey Wednesday, it's Stormy Weather (from Derek Jarman's The Tempest (1979):

Elisabeth Welch - Stormy Weather

Elisabeth Welch (27th February 1904 - 15th July 2003)

A blue plaque for a Blues lady

The actress and singer Elisabeth Welch moved away from the racial difficulties of her homeland America in the 1930s and settled in the UK, where she lived for the rest of her life.

A favourite singer of Ivor Novello, Cole Porter and Noel Coward, she was an early pioneer of (then) unusual and difficult cabaret material - she introduced Stormy Weather to British audiences, was the first to popularise As Time Goes By (before Casablanca) and fell foul of censorship when she became associated with the song Love for Sale.

She performed for the British troops during the war and for the Queen at several Royal Variety Performances, and broke new ground by being the first black person to have their own BBC radio show and by starring with Paul Robeson in some early film roles where black characters were - gasp! - not just "the servants". Robeson, a passionate campaigner for black civil rights, urged her to join the fight. "She said 'Paul, my father was African and native American, my mother was Scottish and Irish, I've got four people within me, I can't make a stand for all of them, you'll have to excuse me.' He roared with laughter and hugged her, and the subject was never mentioned again."

Now she has finally, posthumously, been recognised with a Blue Plaque on her Kensington home. Despite being nominated for Olivier and Tony awards for her work, she surprisingly never received an honour from the Queen in her lifetime.

Read more about the plaque unveiling

Here is a most stunning performance by Miss Welch singing her "signature tune" Stormy Weather in Derek Jarman's The Tempest, a scene described by George Melly as "arguably the campest, most sparkling moment in the history of cinema":

Elisabeth Welch - Stormy Weather

Elisabeth Welch obituary from The Telegraph