MOTUS A.D.: Which side of the fence are we on?

Monday, March 21, 2011

Which side of the fence are we on?

Welcome Mommy Life Blogsters!

So far the photo ops from our South American trip have been worth every cent we paid:

From the fancy footwork demonstrated with a soccer ball

To the warm welcome everywhere Big Guy goes:

Well, OK, It wasn’t exactly another Brandenburg Gate moment, butt you must admit, it’s still impressive:

Huge crowds, one deep, line up to see Obama. The crowd is nearly double the size of the military guards standing by.

Nearly

Security was evident everywhere we went.

Beach surveillance

Butt the optics I’m having trouble with are the the ones that keep giving me flashbacks of an old movie loaded on my hard drive. Is it just me, or did Big Guy’s and Lady M’s trip through the slums of Rio remind anyone else of Tennessee Williams’ creepy Suddenly Last Summer? If you’re unfamiliar, I’ll try to do a tasteful recap of this 1959 Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn movie – to the degree “tasteful” can be applied to this twisted tale.

Violet’s (Hepburn) beautiful poet son, Sebastian, with whom she is abnormally obsessed (think Oedipus), dies while vacationing on an island with his equally beautiful cousin, Catherine (Taylor). We join them in New Orleans after the mysterious death, as Violet tries to have her niece lobotomized because of all the creepy things she says about her Aunt and cousin. Clift plays the shrink to Catherine’s traumatized, possibly nymphomaniac, character.

In truth, Catherine’s homosexual cousin used her (and his own mother before her) as bait to attract horny, poor, potential rent-boys who hang out on the other side of a fence separating the rich, private beach resort from the squalor of the slums. I won’t spoil the ending for you, other than to mention that it involves cannibalism.

Not that our trip to Rio has anything to do with that movie, butt just take a look at the optics, and see if you don’t think I have a point.

First, the beach barbarians at the gate, anxious to see, touch, revel in the object of their desire.

Sebastian and Catherine, on the other side of the fence

suddenly last summer Residents of the City of God favela in Rio de Janeiro await the arrival of Big Guy

Then there is the issue of the sun dress Elizabeth Taylor wore in the film;

which looks a lot like Lady M’s own sundress:

And then there is Catherine’s habit of spreading her digits while wearing beach appropriate wrist bangles:

you see where we’re going here?

…and of course, there is that whole eyebrow thing that Lady M’s got working:

I guess I’m just experiencing some jet-lag short circuiting, I see now how silly this is. After all, Big Guy and Lady M departed from Rio this morning,in tact and gaily dressed:

while we know that Sebastian’s fate wasn’t quite as rosy:

So, despite his liberal dems being up in arms (so to speak), over Obama’s approval of air strikes in Libya, I don’t believe that Big Guy’s demise is at hand. Indeed, he seems to be blessed, somehow.

Go in peace, little man.