Intent

Everyone is capable of enjoying cruelty, and none more dangerously so than moralists, idealists, and ideologues who deny they do, for they are the ones who – indulging in a particularly poisonous variety of sadism – will mask their cruelty as justice and fool themselves with their own mask. (Out-and-out criminals do more harm than moralists one-on-one, but moralists outnumber them and do vastly more harm en masse.) That is not to say we need yield to the impulse, but it is well to remember that cruelty is as much a part of human nature as kindness; it is all the easier thereby to turn the impulse in a more constructive direction – sublimation, to use an old-fashioned but still useful Freudian expression. Nietzsche argued that humor was sublimated cruelty, and few of us would want to go through life without humor. A harmless way to nourish our dark side is with such entertainments as murder mysteries and horror movies. Dramas with anti-hero protagonists or villains whom we on some level secretly admire remain enduringly popular, e.g. Dexter of the Jeff Lindsay novels or the Joker in The Dark Knight. A less lethal but still malefic pair are Kathryn Merteuil and Sebastian Valmont of the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions.

Based on the 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos but set in 1999 Upper East Side Manhattan, Cruel Intentions is part cult classic and part guilty pleasure. Mainstream critics for the most part were unkind to it at the time of its release, but it clicked with its target audience and critics have warmed to it in the years since. Premise: Wealthy private-schooled teen step-siblings Kathryn and Sebastian (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe) embrace decadent upper class hedonism and play cruel games. Sebastian plans to seduce the new headmaster’s famously virginal daughter Annette (Reese Witherspoon) before school starts but Kathryn bets him that he can’t do it: the stakes of the bet are Sebastian’s classic Jaguar and Kathryn herself. Meantime Kathryn plans to corrupt innocent young Cecile as a pawn in a revenge scheme of her own. Everything proceeds more or less according to plan until Sebastian falls for Annette and develops a conscience, the one thing he cannot afford.

The Kathryn character is arguably diagnosable as having ASPD (anti-social personality disorder), commonly called sociopathy. She nonetheless is impressive. Sebastian has less of an excuse: he is capable of empathy, but chooses prankish malevolence anyway. Both are wickedly enjoyable to watch, both when they succeed and when they meet their comeuppances. Also, the 90s soundtrack is marvelous.

A musical adaptation of Cruel Intentions is currently playing off-Broadway at Le Poisson Rouge, a dinner club in Greenwich Village. I couldn’t pass that up, so a friend and I drove into NYC last Saturday. It is a campy production in a fairly intimate setting, and is definitely worth a look, though seeing the movie first is, if not a must, at least strongly advised. Nostalgia is much of the point. There are a few of the iconic numbers from the movie soundtrack (Bittersweet Symphony, Colorblind, Every Me and Every You), but most songs are not from the movie. All are hits from the ‘90s, however, and unless you never turned on a radio in that decade you’ll know them. The audience was a mix of all ages but was extra-heavy on younger GenXers and older Millennials.

Cruel Intentions the Musical runs only until March, but I suspect it will turn up again in other venues. I recommend revisiting the Valmont/Merteuil residence if you get a chance, whether for this production or another one. It’s a fun way to tickle your dark side. Call it catharsis.

  

Catching Ketchum

Humans think of themselves – quite rightly – as predators. I’m referring at the moment to the food chain, not to other uses of the term. But of course we also are prey. Let us put aside for the moment attacks on us by tiny feeders such as mosquitoes even though they (or rather the diseases they carry) kill 725,000 people per year worldwide. Consider just the big ones. Even in the 21^st century 100 people per year are killed by lions. 25,000 are killed by dogs, but of course that is because there are so many more dogs than lions. The risk is very very low in today’s urbanized world, but it still happens. People still get eaten. For our hominin ancestors the risk was high and constant. For them the world really was full of monsters, and among them were fellow humans. Over millennia they honed the instinctual fears later exploited by horror writers and filmmakers.

There are many analyses in both popular and academic literatures on the appeal of horror fiction. They talk of catharsis and of the combination of fear with safety – much as a good roller coaster combines the two for enjoyable thrills. Whatever the source of the appeal truly may be, there always is a market for the stuff. While it’s not my first choice of genres, I’m not immune to its allure. I can and do read HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Bloch, and Stephen King with pleasure. One of the best authors, though not for the squeamish, is fellow New Jersey native Dallas Mayr, who died today at age 71. Mayr wrote under several pseudonyms for various genres, but for his horror fiction he went by Jack Ketchum.

Ketchum rarely flirts with the supernatural. You won’t find any ghosts, werewolves or vampires. In She Wakes he did unleash Hecate – yes, that Hecate – but that was an anomaly. It was an effective anomaly, it must be said. Nine times out of ten his monsters are all too human, and all scarier for that. Be aware that Ketchum pulls no punches anywhere in his prose. When the plot turns violent (and it will) we get the full in-your-face unexpurgated picture. This unsettles some readers. Ballantine Books despite reservations took a chance with his first novel Off Season in 1981 and was pleasantly surprised by its commercial success. Yet, the very same publisher turned down his next manuscript Ladies' Night, a tale of a chemical spill that eliminates women’s (and only women’s) inhibitions against violence. It was published only in 1997 after Ketchum’s success with other novels.

Critics are of two minds about Ketchum. Early on, a reviewer in The Village Voice decried his graphic style. Yet he won a string of writing awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, and he counts many accomplished authors, including Stephen King, among his fans. Even his harshest critics admit Ketchum writes well: graphically but well.

Jack doesn’t just shock for the sake of shock. He has something to say. He likes to tell us that we all have a dark side, and that the difference between monsters and the rest of us sometimes comes down only to chance and circumstance.

Ketchum’s most successful novel is The Girl Next Door, which was made into a deeply disturbing movie (not the comedy of the same name) that Stephen King called a dark side Stand by Me. Based loosely on the very real Sylvia Likens case, the book and movie detail the abuse and eventual murder of a teenage girl by a suburban woman, her sons, and neighboring teens of both sexes. The protagonist of the novel, a neighbor boy, is fundamentally a good kid, but he is drawn into witnessing the abuse by the dark fascination of it all. He wants to intervene when the cruelty becomes extreme, but by then his own tacit complicity is an issue that delays him from seeking help. His dilemma is both appalling and understandable; adults as well as kids all too often fail to act morally when in similar binds.

A few other Ketchum novels also have been adapted to film including Offspring, The Lost, and Red. Red is probably the most successful. Once again, Ketchum is not for the easily offended, but neither for that matter is Poe, a granddaddy of the genre. The quality of the writing nonetheless stands out. I regret there will be no more titles from Mayr/Ketchum, but his books are on my shelf and I regard every one as a keeper.

Trailer: Red

Before the Thaw

According to forecasts the cold weather, after doing much hard work locally for the past month, will take the next week off. At this writing (8:26 EST Saturday morning) it is still freezing outside my door, but daytime temperatures should climb to 47 (8 C) today and then remain within spitting range of that number for the rest of January. I squeezed in a little winter fun yesterday while temperatures remained in the 20s, starting with running out of fuel oil for the furnaces and then by riding a toboggan (see photo in earlier post Brrr) down the slope in front of my house into the brambles. The latter was more fun – until the last few seconds anyway. At night I stayed comfortably at home with a movie and a book:

Impulse (1990)

Theresa Russell in Black Widow, which,
unlike Impulse, is pretty good

Back in 1990 I saw Impulse on the big screen. Directed by Sondra Locke and starring Theresa Russell (an appealing actress who looks sultry even when she doesn’t want to), the movie starts off as just another cops & crooks drama with an utterly clichéd drug-deal-gone-wrong. Then it takes an odd turn. Lottie (Russell) is a vice cop with debts she can’t pay and a creep for a boss. One night, after a particularly rough bust and still dressed as a working girl, she goes into a bar and quickly is approached by a man who puts down a ridiculously large pile of C-notes. Instead of arresting him she goes home with him. While she is in the bathroom at his house the man is murdered. She checks the body afterward and finds an airport locker key. The locker contains a case full of cash from that drug-deal-gone-wrong. She doesn’t turn it in. There is evidence, however, that could lead to her.

I remembered those basic details before spinning up the DVD all these years later. The flawed protagonist, as I recalled her, seemed an interesting type of character. Regrettably, I had forgotten why I didn’t rush out to rent the film for a repeat viewing when it became available on (at that time) videotape. Now I remember. The movie is dreadful. The dialogue is unintentionally hilarious while the acting somehow combines over-the-top with indifference. There was some potential in the movie’s concept, but it was lost in the execution.

Thumbs Down.

**** ****

Why Acting Matters by David Thomson

There are some people (all too few, but still some) who are great company thanks to erudite and free-ranging minds. In an age when click-sharing simple-minded propaganda passes for philosophical discussion, they seem to have something original and thoughtful to say about everything. Movie critic and prolific author on the popular arts David Thomson is one of those people. That this book is not very focused is actually to its benefit. Thomson digresses about his personal experiences, about the history of theater, about acting schools, and about the human condition. It’s a pleasure to join him on his wanderings even when they are distant from the supposed topic of the book.

He does return to the main question now and again, however. Thomson repeatedly turns to Olivier and Brando as representatives respectively of the traditional and naturalistic acting schools, though, as he points out, neither really can be pigeonholed as neatly as that.

Thomson’s basic point is that we all are actors (yes, that William fellow once said something similar) who adjust our personas to time and circumstance. (Persona, btw, is Latin for “mask.”) Witnessing someone act well on screen or stage is as rewarding and edifying as seeing someone do so in “real life” – the distinction not always being so great as we imagine. Observing the career of a favorite actor from youth to age is a template for the roles we ourselves play in the different stages of our lives. He concludes: “Acting is an entertainment, but it is a model for our existence and collapse. We try to act human. That seems the least we can do, and as long as that condition prevails – do not trust it forever – then acting is our engine and we are driving on a desert road.”

Thumbs Up.

Trailer Impulse (1990)

Dry Season

I saw 2018 arrive in my favorite place and state: at home, warm, and dry – dry in beverage sense. The hangover cures that peppered newspapers and net sites on and shortly before New Year’s Day were of pleasantly little personal interest. Besides, there are no cures. There are minor palliatives at best. Hangovers ultimately have to wear off on their own, and (ceteris paribus) this takes longer for some people than for others. I’m one of those for whom it takes longer. Frank Sinatra once remarked, “I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.” In my case the morning after bibulation is as bad as I’ll feel all day – sometimes the next day, too. The usual supposed preventatives (hydration, fatty foods, white liquors only, etc.) make little or no difference to me. (Yes, moderation is always an option, but the topic is excess.)

I’m not virtue-signaling. I like a good buzz as much as anyone. Alcohol accordingly was something of a hobby for me in my 20s. The hangovers were not milder then. In that decade I simply was more willing to accept the price for the nights before. I have no judgments to make about those who still are, or who pay lower prices as a matter of course. By my 30s, however, for no other reason than pain avoidance I had tapered back to an annual intake about equal to the CDC’s suggested maximum for a week (14 drinks). Yet, even now I can see wisdom in Raymond Chandler’s advice: "A man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it." Twice has been about my number in recent years. It’s enough to remind myself why I don’t indulge the other 363 days, and also enough to remind myself why so many people do. There is much to be said be said for the night before. We all are aware of the risks and downsides (some potentially lethal) to the night before, but there is still much to be said for it. My preferred tipple on those two days: Wild Turkey 101, a flavorful moderately priced bourbon that, at 101 proof (50.5% alcohol), achieves its intended effect expeditiously and with no worse (albeit no better) aftereffects than any other pick.

The intended effect is a change in perspective: an altered state that can be revealing. (Altered states can be achieved without extraneous chemicals, btw, but that is for another discussion.) The ancient Persians who, according to Herodotus, considered every important question both sober and drunk before making a decision may have been onto something. I suspect, though, that the significance of that story got turned around in Herodotus’ colorful retelling. I suspect that it was less a matter of sober Persians saying, “Let’s see what I think about this drunk” and more a matter of drunks saying, “Let’s see what I think about this sober.” I think the good sense of the latter is self-evident.

What brings all this to mind, besides the time of year, is a re-watch with a friend last week of Joss Whedon’s 2012 version of Much Ado about Nothing, a remarkable side-project shot in 12 days with B&W handheld cameras at his own home. During the first viewing I didn’t pay much attention to how much the characters drink, which is a lot. Yet, their intemperance was an inspired directorial choice. The characters, after all, don’t make very sober judgments, so it makes eminent sense for them to be not sober. This is unlike so many movies in which characters seem weirdly unaffected by drinking: e.g. Nick Charles, who retains his sharp deductive skills despite awe-inspiring consumption in the Thin Man movies; James Bond, who remains quick of wit and reflex despite those shaken-not-stirred vodka martinis; and the Western gunfighter of your choice who is as sure a shot as ever despite guzzling whiskey in the saloon.

On second viewing I recommend Much Ado about Nothing even more heartily than after the first. It may be the most accessible Shakespeare film in decades. I recommend seeing it sober though. Well, once anyway. Persian fashion would work, too.

WC Fields’ debt: clip from Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

Brrr

The winter storm that rolled over much of the East Coast this week merely glanced my inland NJ location on its way from battering the South to pummeling New England. Nonetheless, the few inches of snow in combination with temperatures of 7 degrees (-14 C) were enough to make me question once again why I live in a Northern state. They also make me wonder once again why our early modern human ancestors moved north at all.

Migrating into the cold was not the first instinct of our ancestors. Those that left Africa some 65,000 years ago (after not having bothered for 100,000 years) hugged the southern coastline of Eurasia in their initial trek outward. They reached Australia before they reached Europe. This seems eminently sensible to me. We are, after all, tropical creatures. Unclothed humans feel chilly at 77 degrees (25 C), so even a sunny Mediterranean climate requires some protection most of the time. Besides, Europe and much of Central Asia already were inhabited by cold-adapted Neanderthals and Denisovans; the small but notable percentage of DNA from both archaic species currently found in non-African modern humans dates from this early phase of the out-of-Africa migration as they brushed against the southern flank of their ancient cousins’ range. It was only after the southerly regions were in their hands that modern humans turned north and took those lands for themselves. Why did they? There were abundant resources up there. Colder climes were rich in fish and game – particularly large game such as ibex, aurochs, red deer, and horse, which provided a feast with a single kill – as well as edible nuts and plants. These attracted bands northward while the annoyance of fellow humans to the south repelled.

Still, I imagine they had second thoughts when the winter winds whipped up and their bearskin clothes failed to stave off shivers. More than a few must have succumbed to hypothermia. In subfreezing temperatures without proper protection this can happen in minutes. Even in fairly recent times cold proved to be a deal killer for would-be settlers. The Little Ice Age lasted roughly from 1300 to 1850, reaching the most bone-chillingly low temperatures around 1600. It put an end to Norse settlements in Greenland and North America. It scuppered several European attempts to secure a foothold in North America north of Spain’s tenuously held St. Augustine settlement in Florida. Jamestown was a very near thing – and that was Virginia.

My quasi-niece & friends enjoying
the cold

There are still attractive riches in northern regions, of course, which explains in large part why 21^st century humans choose to live there. It is possible to adapt to extreme cold even without modern conveniences. The Inuit, unlike the Norse, thrived in Little Ice Age Greenland. My own perseverance owes more to inertia than ambition, however. I grew up here, friends and family are here, and my home is here. Picking up stakes and moving would be both expensive and troublesome. Nonetheless, in a straight-up choice I’d pick a tropical grass hut over an arctic igloo any day. The day yet may come when I pick it over my current house, too.

Clip from Nanook of the North (1922)

Seven Eves

We are told that the onset of the new year is the time for fresh starts and looking forward. Given the nature of time (or at least the human experience of it), looking forward is not really an option. We are driving in reverse gear in a car with a stuck accelerator, no shift, and no brakes; further, all the glass is painted black except the windshield in front of our eyes, so we can see only where we’ve been. We do have some steering control, but we merely try to surmise what’s ahead based on what’s behind. Most of the road hazards we encounter are complete surprises. We often miss the ones about which we’re most worried only to slam into something we never seriously considered.

We all know this, which is why nostalgia outweighs expectations on New Year’s Eve. The song, after all, is Auld Lang Syne, not New Times A-Comin’. True, there are some years that we are happy to see come to an end – more than a few people felt that way about 2016 – but that, too, is a retrospective way of evaluating things. At this stage in my life, I’ve had far too many retrospective New Year’s Eves to recall each of them individually; even if I could, I’m far too lazy to write about them all – and am kind enough not to try to inflict such a tome on a reader. I’ll be unkind enough to recall ones at decade intervals, however.

1957: I still sometimes wear suspenders
but I've given up on bowties

1957: I truthfully can’t say I recall this New Year’s Eve, and I would have been in bed as 1958 arrived at midnight anyway. However, I do recall specific events (and presents) from that holiday season which includes the Eve. I can’t say I yet had acquired a reflective nature either. At age 5, upon how much is there on which to reflect? If I had thought about it, I probably would have recalled my first day of school, which was a major life event of 1957. In those benighted days (though somehow we still tested better 12 years later on SATs than today’s students) they didn’t really teach us anything academic in Kindergarten. It was just about getting socialized to the school experience and to other kids. At the end of the first day I got on the wrong bus. I’ve been searching for the right one ever since.

1967: I was a sophomore and suitably sophomoric. To the extent I had a Holden Caufield year, this was it. There was much teen angst and awkwardness on which to reflect. I did win my one and only blue ribbon earlier that year in a horse show event. Mostly, though, it was a year of re-evaluation – which is to say one of finally accepting that I wasn’t as exceptional as I would have liked. I actually remember watching on TV at home the ball drop at midnight in Times Square as 1968 arrived. I don’t know why: I remember few of the others specifically, but that one sticks.

Eyes across the table

1977: This was the high point of my youth. At 25 I was as fit as I’ve ever been and my adult life was coming together in a hedonistic decade that only those who experienced it would believe. Moreover, there was that one. You know the one. We all have the one, even if we didn’t end up with her or him and are glad we didn’t… yet still the one. I don’t remember New Year’s Eve specifically, but a few days earlier I was at PJ Clarke’s with those eyes across the table. 1977 was a good year.

F150 parked by my cabin in the
woods

1987:  For me, 1987 was a mixed bag, congruent with broader events that included a booming economy terminated by an epic stock market crash that was worse than 1929 or 2008, albeit with far milder aftereffects than either. I didn’t own stocks then, so the market movements didn’t affect me directly, but they did indirectly. I had a pleasant but fragile relationship (not live-in) that already had lasted more than a year and wouldn’t end until ’89. I owed a substantial (for me) mortgage sum, but I owned my home and it was a good investment. I still had my favorite vehicle to date: a simple 1979 Ford F150. The truck did have a quirk though. The shift on automatic transmissions in that model year sometimes would hang up between P and R so that you could think you were in Park when you weren’t. One time I slid the shift into what felt like P and left the truck to open a garage door. Suddenly the F150 was off backwards. I ran after it yelling, “Stop!” For some reason the truck didn’t listen. It arced off the driveway, slipped between two big black birches, and smacked into a flexible young cedar. The cedar bent enough to stop the Ford without significant damage. I scolded the truck for running away but praised it for its choice of trees. I don’t remember what I did for New Years Eve that year so it must not have been very memorable. 1987 was OK.

1997: Storm clouds brewed in 1997. I really can’t explain that further without being more boorish than I want to be even 20 years later. The year wasn’t without excitement, true enough: stormy weather rarely is. But 1997 is a New Year’s Eve I remember, and the year closed with a deep sense of foreboding that proved well-founded.

2007: The almost decade-long rough weather (including deaths of friends and family) subsided in 2007. The year ended with a sense of calm I hadn’t felt in years. I looked forward to more of the same as the clock ticked toward 2008. I don’t remember exactly what I actually was doing that particular Eve, but I’m sure of the feeling because it had lasted a month. Favorite memory: just sitting in a chair doing nothing but enjoying not being swamped by immediate worries. In the event, 2008 proved to be tumultuous financially, as it was for so many other people, but not in other ways, so my prognostication was mostly right.

Imposing on poor Samantha Fish after
a 2017 NYC concert

2017: Well, (as anyone who has done the math so far knows – though I can’t imagine who would have troubled to do the math), there is Social Security, isn’t there? There are also senior discounts at movie theaters, but, since the ticket sellers sometimes give me the discount without my asking for it, the discount comes with a bit of a sting. That happened to me for the first time last spring and a couple times since then. 2017 was a good year for me: not as good as ’77, but nonetheless a good year. I’m very aware that my life clock is no longer in the wee numbers, of course, but that’s OK, too.

What of 2018? Well, as mentioned up top, all we sense of that is guesswork based on the road behind. With any luck, next New Year’s Eve 2018 will have counted as another good year. I hope it is for you, too. Happy New Year.

The Offspring – Days Go By

The Raiment under the Tree

I am not a clothes horse and never have been. This is unlike my dad who enjoyed being a natty dresser. As a builder he wore plaid flannel and work jeans on most days, but he enjoyed the opportunity to spiff up in tie and jacket at Rotary meetings and Builders Association meetings and other occasions when more casual attire would have been perfectly acceptable. He left behind a walk-in closetful of jackets and dress shirts – even a tuxedo.  Even in my trim days they didn’t fit me, so I don’t still have them. Nor did I inherit the natty gene. Once out of prep school (where tie and jacket were required by the dress code) I tied a half-Windsor so seldom that whenever my mom spotted me with one she took my picture.

Autumn 1970. If the items
still fit I'd probably still wear
them, bell bottoms and all. 

I was not (and am not) actually averse to the notion of donning semi-formal or formal attire. I just don’t bother much. Moreover, like many long-single men, I keep and wear clothes not just for years but for decades, and so look typically a bit rumpled. When the garments eventually are tossed out or donated, it is not because they are out of fashion. It is because they truly have frayed away or no longer fit. Save for one overcoat, I don’t believe I have anything in my closet remaining from the 1960s but there is more than one item from the 1970s. These items remain because they still fit, meaning they were considerably too big at the time they were bought.

The reader might remember being disappointed as a small child when a gift under the tree turned out to be clothes instead of toys. Those days are long gone, for in 2017 I’m gifting myself with more clothes than in any year in the past decade – maybe more all other nine years of the decade combined. I’m happy to get them, even if I begrudge the cost. Not that the budget for them was high: just high for me. This splurge was because I’ve finally accepted that I will not fit into 1997 clothes ever again. 1997 was the last year I could wear something from 1972 without straining buttons or fabric (though perhaps straining taste). I think 20 years is long enough to sustain the fantasy that my corporeal dimensions of 1997 are recoverable. So, I emptied out much of the closet and acquired apparel that fits. I still won’t look natty, but at least the buttons will button.

People have been donning fashions for a very long time. Prehistoric and ancient clothes don’t survive well in the archeological record, so we don’t know what the earliest ones were like. Though ancient garb is depicted in early historical art, we don’t have many samples of the actual articles; those few come only from sites extraordinarily well suited to conservation such as Egyptian tombs. We can’t know for sure why people started wearing clothes in the first place, but we can make a pretty fair estimate of when thanks to lice. Lice are persnickety creatures. Each species of louse prefers a specific species of host. Though uncommon, it is possible for a louse to jump host species, but when this happens it quickly adapts over surprisingly few generations to become a new species itself. Nearly every mammal species has only one cohabiting louse species. Humans are rare in having three species of louse that are ours alone: head lice, body lice, and pubic lice. DNA studies can show how long ago species diverge, and body lice diverged from head lice some 107,000 years ago. (DNA shows pubic lice diverged from gorilla lice; the less said about that the better.) “Body lice” is a misnomer, for they do not cling to the body. They instead have claws specially adapted to cling to the interior of clothing, which means clothes have been around for at least 107,000 years. That is some 40,000 years before modern humans spread beyond Africa, so warmth probably wasn’t the prime motivation for dressing up.

Sumerian catwalk

What fashions looked like for the first 100,000 years or so is anyone’s guess. We have 5300-year-old remains of cold weather attire from Ötzi, a middle-aged fellow whose body was found in the Alps where it had been frozen in ice for all those millennia. He had a sheep hide coat, goatskin leggings, bear fur hat, intricately made deerskin and string shoes stuffed with hay, and a woven grass cape. A man after my own heart, he repeatedly had repaired his well-worn coat. He’d probably owned it for decades. Had Ötzi not died a violent death in his mid-40s – a flint arrowhead is lodged in the body – he might have kept it for a decade or two more. Middle-age spread was less of an issue with residents of Europe’s cool climes back then, so he wouldn’t have needed tailoring or a replacement.

Not being Ötzi – and on the whole I’m pleased with that – I do need replacements, but now I should be good for another 20 years. 

ZZ Top – Sharp Dressed Man