Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 129

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

End of October, the clocks went back in Germany and other countries, and the USA followed last week.
Does the time change confuse you? My cats weren't confused. They made very clear that I simply have to get up whenever they want me to, no matter what time it is. Who spoiled them so much?
If you read my post about rainy days the other day, you will know that I'm not a fan of daylight saving and I don't mind it getting dark earlier now. Actually, it gives me a cozy feeling. I have never been one to have all the lights on in my flat, I like the dark with just a bit of light here and there. It would be really nice to have some candles around, but open flames around my cats are a no-go and way too risky for my taste.

Picture via pxhere

Are you ready for the weekend now?
As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week, our spotlight is on Living Outside the Stacks.

Danael says "I'm the blogger and photographer behind Living Outside the Stacks. ... I have been addicted to clothes and coffee since I was a kid. My unique fashion style is heavily influenced by my childhood in Italy. ... I've been a librarian for over twenty years. ... A little over a decade ago, The Hubs bought me my first camera and I've been chasing light ever since. ... My faith is important to me and is reflected in everything I do."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Do you love Monet? Read what Joanne shares about her immersive Monet experience!

Angie tells us how to fall in love with the dark romance style.

As a librarian, I'm legally bound to feature the post by Lisa about a brave librarian - in "The Mummy"! She and Erin have a Comfy, Cozy Cinema event going on for the season.
(Also check out Erin's post!)

Amy's winter squash mac and cheese, now does that sound yummy or what?



Let's link up!

You can add links to specific blog posts of yours, but not just to your blog itself. The posts can be new or older and cover any topic you can think of - books, movies, fashion, crafting, thrifting, travel, art ... but only family friendly, please!
Have a look around, visit some of the other blogs and leave a few comments. You might discover something new and exciting!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - A House Divided

Welcome to another short, a film directed and produced by Alice Guy-Blaché, one of the first film directors in the world (please, even if you are not interested in silent movies per se, not even in film history, but in the impact women made - often forgotten or even denied later - have a look at my blog post about her because she's one of those examples.
She made this short in 1913 under the banner of her own studio called Solax.
It's called "A House Divided".

The plot is told quickly (spoiler alert!).
Gerald and Diana are both very jealous. When they suspect the other to have been unfaithful - simply because Gerald got splashed with a bit of perfume by a salesman and because Diana has a pair of gloves lying around that a workman left behind -, their lawyer advises them to stay together, but without speaking to each other, so they start writing each other notes.
During a dinner party, they hear strange noises and Gerald goes to investigate. It turns out to be the maid who had forgotten her key and entered through the basement window.
The couple breaks into laughter and then explains to each other how it came to the misunderstanding about the perfume and gloves. Their lawyer who's a family friend and guest at the party is shocked to see them hugging and reminds them of the agreement, but Gerald tears up the document.

The first thing people usually say when I mention watching silent movies is that they would never make it through one. Fair enough, I hadn't expected myself that I would not only be able to watch a silent movie every week, but also enjoy it so much.
The second thing they point out is the overacting. I used to think the same, but so far there has not been as much overacting in the movies I watched as anticipated.
This short, however ... it's a comedy which allows for things to be over the top, but the gum-chewing secretary (I have a problem with watching people chewing gum) and her mannerisms, for example the way she kept putting her hands on her hips, were a bit much for me.

I just want to be done here and go home. Men, honestly.

What I really couldn't understand, though, was why Guy-Blaché who hung up the sign "Be natural" for her cast let Gerald get through with whatever this is. Even for 1913 that was too much and he reminded me a bit of a fish at times.

You think he's singing along to the piano? Wrong.
That's how Gerald talks, heaven knows why.

According to Fritzi Kramer's blog, trial separations were dominating newspapers at the time as a modern way to avoid divorce.
I know of divorced couples still living in the same house, but on different floors. Good for them if they can make it work. Living in one place and exchanging notes, however, sounds very awkward even after a mere row, but as a trial separation it sounds like a terrible idea if you can't avoid running into each other. Not that there was any doubt that the one here wouldn't be lasting very long 😉
From her smile when Diana showed her the notes, it looked to me as Mother would have agreed with me. Actually, Mother was my favorite character. She clearly didn't take the separation seriously.

Oh, you young people ....

I thought the plot was interesting and the film was fun, but it could have been better with a little less overacting. Still worth investing the 13 minutes!

Source:

Fritzi Kramer: A House Divided (1913) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, February 15, 2019

Rainy days

"But we love the sun. We want to wear sandals and nice dresses."

1. I'm not a fan of some people in the medical profession still using "we" if they really mean me. It's not as rampant anymore, but you still hear it and it annoys me. Sometimes if I'm not in a nice mood, I will for example ask if "we" means that I also get to draw their blood.
If one of them then goes as far as using "we" meaning themselves and telling me that "we" love the sun when I'm very obviously suffering - that particular conversation took place during an extremely hot summer day, my head was about to explode and I felt like falling over any minute - it's very hard for me not to snap at them. I have always struggled with heat.
There is no categorical "we" for taste or feelings, no "everyone" or "no one", no "always" or "never".

I still remember that so well, it was the long
awaited relief on a very hot August day.

2. I don't love the sun. I'm very much a child of the shadows and of rain and always have been (and have mentioned it more than once on this blog, sorry).

Today (meaning the day I'm writing this) is a very grey and rainy and darkish day and I absolutely love it, not just because I'm inside and cozy under a blanket with two sleeping cats to keep me company.
There is a neologism for that now ... pluviophile, "someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days".
Although there seem to be more people now who are ready to admit that they are pluviophiles, there are a lot of people who don't seem to be able to accept that. They don't understand how anyone can be happy on a grey day and I've ben told more than once that it's impossible (just as it's obviously impossible to feel good about it getting dark earlier and hating DST).
Isn't it funny how someone else knows so much better how I feel than I do myself? 😶

Please forgive me if you've heard the following story before - because I sure like to tell it - or just skip it.
The first time I noticed loving rain was in school. I know it was in first or second grade because of the ground floor classroom we were in, so I was 5 or 6.
It was in summer and suddenly it got really dark because of a thunderstorm, but I didn't get scared at all. Instead it felt incredibly cozy, the dark classroom, the thunder, and the wonderful sound of rain.

Now you may argue it's easy to like rain if you don't have to be in it. Let's say it's easiER. I don't mind walking in rain and people are usually more shocked about my getting wet than I'm myself. I don't use umbrellas because I'm notorious in forgetting them and also I don't like holding them (as mentioned before). It has been a long time argument with the family who thinks I'm just being stubborn (which is true, but doesn't have anything to do with this).
But yes, of course it's still nicer to sit somewhere or hang out on my bed and listen to rain. There are so many sounds depending on how strong it is and what surface it falls onto and all of them are lovely to me - if I can be sure it won't come through a ceiling (had one or the other flat roof experience, never in my own flat, though), turn into hail or cause flooding which is really scary, but then all natural disasters are.
Listening to rain calms me down, even puts me to sleep. I have a small noise machine which is always set on "rain". Keep your babbling brook (although that would be my second choice), your crackling campfire, your wind or even the singing birds (because that is very much a morning sound to me). Give me rain.

Picture via pxhere

Then there's the smell.
You might have heard of petrichor before, the "earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil", a term coined in 1964.
Some scientists believe that humans appreciate that scent because water has always been important for survival.
(Are you interested in "scents and sensibility"? No, that's not one of my bad puns, it's from a BBC article sparked by a TikTok debate about "who can smell it better, Americans or Europeans".)

Soil being hit by a raindrop (public domain on Wikipedia)

Rain changes smells. The first one coming to mind for me are wet dogs (no rain on my inside cats) which I don't really mind.
One that really stuck out, though, was the smell in the underground station from where I took the local train after work, but only directly after or during rain. It was slightly chemical, my guess is that the ties had probably been treated with something like creosote?
Actually, there is a bush called creosote bush which is said to smell like rain.
I have no idea if that's the answer, at any rate that smell wasn't unpleasant to me at all. Don't judge. I only waited there for one or two minutes tops and didn't sniff my way along the tracks.
There are two long stairways down to the station and the smell usually hit me coming round the corner to go down the second one and then got stronger, but not overwhelmingly so.
Weirdly enough, I don't remember it smelling quite the same when I came to work, but maybe that was because I had already been in the tunnel? I didn't notice it on the train, though, neither to work nor from work.
Anyhow, I always got a warm, fuzzy feeling although my head told me that this couldn't be healthy. I guess it symbolized that the day was over and I was on the way home.

I created more than one rain related item over the years, from polymer clay or beads for example. However, I was never really happy with them and ripped them all up again.
For this post, I had started to make another one, but when I had already come quite far with it, it just didn't look like my vision. I want to try a different approach eventually, but my crafting time has become limited and my list is so long!

So, what about you? Do you like rain?

My October books

Can you believe that October is already over now? Ready for a new list?
However, I'd like to say first that I'm not trying to show off here: "Oh look, how many books I read."
I have more time on my hands because of not being able to constantly craft anymore. I happen to be a fast reader. I don't get out of the house much. I have the real world - as in working and housework - and I have the book world which sometimes takes priority over the housework.
I don't think people who have other things to do and other places to be are slacking. It's not important how much we read, but how much joy we get from reading what we have the time for. After all, this isn't a competition.
To me personally it's just interesting to have an overview of what I have finished in a month (not necessarily started in the same month) and what I have read to the cats (marked with 😸)
I will be adding a short explanation why I chose a book and possibly if it's a re-read candidate, but I'm not going to add real reviews or ratings (the cats also refuse to give ratings 😉). Should you want a personal rating for a book you are interested in, though, just let me know.


1. "Lady Living Alone" by Norah Lofts (originally under the pen name Peter Curtis), first published in 1945 😸

After writing a bestseller, shy Penelope Shadow is able to buy her own house. Unfortunately, she can't stay in it by herself because of a phobia. When this forces her to check into a hotel one night because her housekeeper has left without warning, she meets a man 15 years younger than her who seems to be the perfect solution.
Terry becomes her housekeeper and after a while they get married. A good idea or maybe not so much?

Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home has introduced me to the "British Library Women Writers" series. I read "The Woman in the Hall" in August and now this book (only afterwards I found she had also reviewed it).

2. "Polizei am Grab" = "Police at the Funeral" by Margery Allingham, first published in 1931
(Albert Campion 4)

Will Campion be able to help the bizarre Faraday family living together in an old estate in Cambridge? He's called in after one uncle has been killed mysteriously, but he won't remain the only one.

This is still part of my vintage crime project for which I keep getting books by Marsh and Allingham.

3. "Small Spaces" by Katherine Arden, first published in 2018
(Small Spaces Quartet 1) 

It's just a school trip to a farm, right?
Not if the owner of the farm has made a bargain with the supernatural.
Will Ollie be able to save the day together with her friends Brian and Coco?

The middle grade novel was a random find at OverDrive and a good start into spooky October. It was a quick read. I just wish I had liked the protagonist more, so the jury is still out about reading the next two books (the fourth one is not available on OverDrive).

4. "Ein Leben für Barbie" = "Let's Call Her Barbie" by Renée Rosen, first published in 2025

The history of Ruth Handler and the Barbie doll, not in a biography, but in a novel without a claim to telling the 100 % true and complete story which has been told in different versions by people involved.

Someone mentioned the book in a Barbie group on Facebook I'm a member of and my library happened to have it.

5. "An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good" by Helene Tursten, first published in 2018
(Elderly Lady series 1)

Maud may be 88, but if anyone inconveniences her in any way, she still takes matters in her own hands.
I wouldn't want to be her neighbor.

I read several of Tursten's novels about Inspector Irene Huss years ago and stumbled upon this book with six short stories about a murderous old lady on OverDrive.

6. "The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Screaming Clock" by Robert Arthur, Jr. (the books were published attributed to Alfred Hitchcock), first published in 1968 😸
(The Three Investigators 9)

Uncle Titus has bought a box of stuff for the salvage yard, among it an electric clock. When Jupiter turns it on, the alarm sounds like a screaming woman.
Who would want a screaming clock and why? Is their a bigger mystery behind this?

I read this series a long time ago and am going through it again bit by bit after writing a blog post about it. This book is the ninth in the series.

7. "Crampton Hodnet" by Barbara Pym, first published in 1985

North Oxford in the 30s - a small community connected by afternoon teas, the church, gossip, and relationships of all kinds.
Pym wrote the book in 1940, but it was published posthumously after having been revised by her literary executor.

This is another book that has been published in the "British Library Women Writers" series (see 1.)

8. "The Bookshop on the Shore" by Jenny Colgan, first published in 2019
(Happy Ever After series 2)

Nina, the librarian turned bookseller, is pregnant and needs someone to help her with her mobile bookshop. Ramsay from the same village needs a nanny for his children. Zoe needs the money. Will she be the right person to help both of them and find a new life for herself and her son?

This is the second book in the Happy Ever After series following "The Bookshop on the Corner" which I read last month. Another quick and light read.

9. "Überstunden für den Totengräber" = "More Work for the Undertaker" by Margery Allingham, first published in 1948
(Albert Campion 13)

An old friend who rents out rooms to the members of the eccentric Palinode family is asking Campion for help after two of the Palinodes have died under mysterious circumstances.
Things get only more mysterious and puzzling from here on.

This is still part of my vintage crime project for which I keep getting books by Marsh and Allingham.

10. "The Kingdom of Carbonel" by Barbara Sleigh, first published in 1959 😸
(Carbonel 2)

Carbonel, King of the Fallowhithe cats, and his royal brothers have been summoned to appear before the Great Cat. Queen Blandamour will rule during his absence, but as they don't trust some of the other Queens, especially the ambitious Grisana from the nearest town, Carbonel asks Rosemary and her friend John to take care of his kittens, Calidor and Pergamond.
Promptly, the kittens get abducted by the witch Mrs. Cantrip and that's just one of the adventures that awaits the friends!

This is the second book in the Carbonel series whose first one was recommended by book blogger Nicole from Momlit.
Unfortunately, I think the book gave dem Dekan ideas as he considers himself to be quite royal, too. Also I have to admit that I teared up a little at one point.

11. "Stranded" by Sarah Goodwin, first published in 2021

A social experiment ... eight strangers living on a Scottish island for one year as if the world has ended.

This was a random find at OverDrive.
I don't deal well with the idea of strange people in a confined place (in the sense of "we can't get out of here") and it looks to me as if Goodwin's other books have the same theme. One was enough for me.

12. "Privatdetektiv Tiegelmann im Warenhaus" = "Tam Sventon and Discovery P3X" by Åke Holmberg, first published in 1968 😸

Stockholm based private detective Teffan Tiegelmann has to solve two cases this time, but maybe they are connected?
The victims are brothers, one the director of a department store which gets burgled three times, the other a Nobel Prize winning professor whose groundbreaking invention P3X has been stolen.

I got the book to complete my "Privatdetektiv Tiegelmann" children's book series about which I wrote here.

13. "Douglas Fairbanks: The Fourth Musketeer" by Ralph Hancock and Letitia Fairbanks, first published in 1953

This biography about Douglas Fairbanks, the "King of Hollywood", was co-written by his niece Letitia. It's full of anecdotes which made it very easy and often amusing to read, but of course you can tell it was written in the 50s. I will probably read another one eventually, this was just the first one I saw.

You could say this is part of my personal silent movie project.

14. "Privatdetektiv Tiegelmann in Venedig" by Åke Holmberg, first published in 1973

Teffan Tiegelmann is called to Venice where a gang steals artwork from palaces, among them that of Marchese Pronto. The Marchese is afraid that his niece's fiancé is the "spider" creeping up walls to break into palaces because he saw the burglar wearing the same colorful pants as Floriano.

I got the book to complete my "Privatdetektiv Tiegelmann" children's book series about which I wrote here.

15. "The bookshop, the draper, the candlestick maker" by Annie Gray, first published in 2024

Food historian Dr. Annie Gray tells the history of the British high street - "the main street of a town, especially as the traditional site for most shops, banks, and other businesses" (according to "Oxford Languages").
Gray takes us along from the markets in the late Middle Ages to 1965, in stories, anecdotes, citations from old newspapers and travel reports, with a lot of details and never boring.

I first learned about Annie Gray through the videos of "The Victorian Way" with Kathy Hipperson as the cook Mrs Crocombe and Annie Gray as Mary-Ann, her helper.  This is the third of her books I read - I also attended an online presentation of the book - and a fourth has just arrived.

16. "So Late in the Day" by Claire Keegan, first published in 2023

On the way home from work, Cathal is reminded of Sabine and is thinking about their relationship and why it ended the way it did.

A short story collection by Keegan has been the latest entry on OverDrive and while I'm on the waitlist, I'm checking out her other short stories on there. This is the first one.

17. "Foster" by Claire Keegan, first published in 2010

During a hot Irish summer in the 1980s, a little girl is taken to the farm of relatives. In the home of the childless couple - we later learn they have lost their son - the girl experiences the affection that she hasn't known in her big family yet. Then the moment comes when she has to go back.

A short story collection by Keegan has been the latest entry on OverDrive and while I'm on the waitlist, I'm checking out her other short stories on there. This is the second one.

18. "Ein unverhofftes Geständnis" = "Unnatural Causes" by P.D. James, first published in 1967
(Adam Dalgliesh 3)

Detective Superintendent Dalgliesh is glad to spend a few days off work on the coast as his aunt's guest, but a dinghy with the handless body of crime writer Maurice Seton in it disturbs the peace of the little rural community.

My neighbor was shocked to hear that I never read a book by P.D. James (as far as I can remember) and lent me two of hers.


DNF:

1. "Sometimes I Lie" by Alice Feeney, first published in 2017

"1. I'm in a coma.
2. My husband doesn't love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie."
Amber, a radio presenter, is treated badly by everyone. Her co-presenter wants to get her fired. To her parents she became invisible after her sister was born. Also, does her husband have an affair with her sister and did he have to do with her accident?

Honestly? After a third of the book, I didn't care anymore about any of it. I didn't like Amber, her colleague, her parents, her sister or her husband. I didn't care for the time jumps back and forth. I'm no fan of an unreliable narrator if it gets too much, even less after I peeked at the ending (after deciding to DNF).

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 128

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Also Happy Halloween!
I have prepared myself by getting a minimum of candy because chances are that I won't have even one trick or treater (unless the neighbor kids come up) and I will have to eat it myself (oh the horror! 😏). If someone turns up after all and I run out of candy, I will just have to turn off all the lights and hide.

Picture via pxhere

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week, our spotlight is on Caffeinated Frame.

Arpita says "Hi there! My name is Arpita Singh, and I believe myself to be a creative soul with an undying love for art and writing. I find myself constantly drawn to anything that allows me to express a matter creatively, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share my interest with you through this blogging website Caffeinated Frame."


Now let me introduce your hostess crew for the Weekend Traffic Jam.

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Who was Skanderbeg and even more important ... can I live in his nose?

How could I not pick this tribute decoration to Edgar Allan Poe that Debbie did so skillfully (I almost wrote skullfully by accident 😂)

Esme's keto zucchini wraps look like something I'd definitely like to try out!

Would you have the courage read the journals of a late family member or to know family members will be reading yours after you're gone? Lisa talks about her mother's journals.


Let's link up!

You can add links to specific blog posts of yours, but not just to your blog itself. The posts can be new or older and cover any topic you can think of - books, movies, fashion, crafting, thrifting, travel, art ... but only family friendly, please!
Have a look around, visit some of the other blogs and leave a few comments. You might discover something new and exciting!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - The Oyster Princess

Do you belong to the many people who have watched "Downton Abbey"? Then you know that the Earl of Grantham originally married his American wife Cora to save his estate with her money.
That wasn't unusual at all. Quite a lot of so-called "dollar princesses" married into titled families, most of them from Great Britain. Those needed the money and the families of the young ladies, often belonging to the "nouveau riche" (meaning "new money"), gained social standing. A win-win situation, right? Well, not always if the couple didn't fall in love like the Granthams did.

Today's silent movie is about such a dollar princess. It's Ernst Lubitsch's "The Oyster Princess" from 1919.

I present to you - the plot. With spoilers.
Be prepared, this movie is subtitled "a grotesque comedy".

First we meet Mr. Quaker, the American oyster king.
He's so obscenely rich that he has more servants than you can count, four of them just to hold his ridiculously huge cigar, blow his nose, put the coffee cup to his mouth, and comb his hair.
Mr. Quaker has one daughter, Ossi. She's so spoilt that she throws a tantrum breaking vases when a fellow debutant marries an Earl.

"I'll buy you a prince." Said and done, Dad orders Ossi
one from the matchmaker via letter.

The matchmaker chooses the impoverished Prince Nucki, but Nucki tells him his friend Josef with whom he's sharing his place will have a look at the lady first.
When Josef arrives at the Quaker palace (awesome production design!), he's asked for his card and presents one Nucki's card because he doesn't have one of its own. After waiting forever for Ossi to get ready to see him, she hardly says hello before dragging him off to the wedding - performed through a window, no time to lose.

No need to ask him to say "I do", Ossi decides
"Prince Nucki" doesn't have a say in this matter, anyway.
On the way home he even has to sit in the back of the carriage.

And as it was such a quick wedding, the celebration is really small, too.

One servant per course per guest, can it get any smaller?
Of course there are a few more people in the kitchen ...

While "Prince Nucki" enjoys the food and drink, the real prince is torn away from his pickled herring by his friends and joins them for a bender.
Still drunk in the morning, he gets picked up and taken to the "Association of Billionaires' Daughters for the Prevention of Dipsomania" where he catches Ossi's eye. She's not the only one interested in him, so the only solution is of course a boxing match between all of them - unsurprisingly she wins it.

Nucki is overwhelmed by so much womanpower.
I'm overwhelmed by that amazing outfit.

Ossi and Nucki are attracted to one another right away, but there's the little matter of Ossi being married to Josef ... or is she?

Here's looking at you, kid.

Just when they break out in tears about their hopeless love, Josef comes into the room and tells them that everything is alright because he got married under Nucki's name! Not sure what the priest would have to say about that (although there have been royal weddings with a stand-in for the bridegroom in the olden days), but they have their happy ending now!
As I said, this is labeled as a grotesque comedy and therefore the plot itself isn't really as important as the individual jokes, so we can ignore little things as the quick wedding with the wrong man under the right name.

The whole movie is like a whirlwind blowing us from one situation to the next one and I thoroughly enjoyed it which is weird because if you looked at it rationally, you probably wouldn't approve of any of the main characters.

Mr. Quaker is so rich that nothing can impress him anymore. Wherever he goes, a crowd of servants follows him. When Ossi says that the Shoe Polish King's daughter has married an Earl, Mr. Quaker writes to the matchmaker that obviously oysters are better than shoe polish, so he'll need a prince. He's not much interested in the wedding itself, though, as long as the bridegroom's family tree is suitable.

Ossi is so spoilt that she needs about 20 maids just to take a bath and get dressed. She marries the fake Prince Nucki just for the title.

Prince Nucki doesn't have anything but his title, but when the matchmaker visits, he's still trying to keep up appearances by sitting on the most ridiculous "throne", with Josef standing by his side.
He even has to borrow the money for the night out with his friends.

Josef, well, for a bit I wondered how they would solve that because Josef doesn't just enjoy the opulent meal, but he wouldn't even say no to a night with his new bride under false pretenses. What a friend.
At least he's loyal to Nucki at the end.

Lubitsch is really poking fun in all directions, not just at the nouveau riche, but just as much at the aristocrats who would do anything to have some money again.
And for some reason it works. I didn't really dislike any of them although they would have deserved it.
My favorite was Ossi. Ossi Oswalda - the "German Mary Pickford" - played the brat with such energy and charm that she was simply cute. It's hard to describe it. There are a few really fun scenes, such as Ossi's attempt at caring for a "baby", but also the sudden outbreak of a "foxtrot epidemic" which makes the whole house dance including the staff. As Josef is still busy eating, Ossi just asks a servant in the hallway if he can dance the foxtrot and off they go.
The foxtrot scene is really hilarious, they all just get swept away by the music.

With a band leader like that - what could go wrong?
He was in it with heart and soul ... and body!
Made me laugh so hard.

I had heard of the movie before and really wasn't disappointed by this early Lubitsch comedy which he called (according to the German "Lexikon des internationalen Films") his "first comedy with a definite style", the step "from comedy to satire".
Definitely one for the re-watch list!


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Oyster Princess (1919) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, March 15, 2013
2. Jim Tudor: The Oyster Princess / Meyer from Berlin (1919). On: Zekefilm, July 11, 2023
3. Vor 100 Jahren: Uraufführung von "Die Austernprinzessin". On: Stummfilm-Magazin, June 12, 2019 (in German)

So it begins ... Lego Art WIP

Ten days ago, I told you about my Lego "collection" whose pieces so far all have been gifts (so far because I found out about a minor, but really dumb mistake which required immediate retail therapy, so I bought Lego for myself for the first time). 

In that post, I mentioned my Lego Art set of "The Beatles" and how I've had it around for a few years because I couldn't even decide which Beatle to make. Well, on the day the post went live, I chose George because I just liked his picture best.

What even is Lego Art?
According to Wikipedia which has a load of quotes for articles on the topic, the theme was introduced in 2020 (which I think was also the year my friend gave me my set in order to make self-isolating easier, but being used to working on Lego projects together with him, I didn't see the appeal at the time).
The product line started with four mosaics, one of them "The Beatles", and didn't use 3D bricks, but 2D 1x1 studs. Later items also featured bigger tiles.

The sets depict iconic personalities or art, for example Warhol's Marilyn Monroe or Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
During our Crafternoon - a Zoom meeting of bloggers coming together to chat and craft - I started working on the first square.
There are nine squares and fifteen different colors of studs and also tiles for the "frame".
The squares get attached to each other to form the whole picture.

Now I had to make another decision about how to work on the squares. Should I do one color after the other which means I would have to concentrate on counting or should I lay out all the colors I need for a square and do it spot by spot either horizontally or vertically?

As most of the first square was just black and dark grey, I went for the counting. I did the grey first, then filled up the gaps with black and did the few colors in the end.
I don't know yet if that will be a good idea once there are more colors on a square. If I had enough empty bead cups, I could set them all up like beads for beading or bead looming. Or I could use a bead tray if I had one, but that's not how I bead. We'll see.

Usually, when I started something like this, I kept going until I had finished. My pal and I spent hours chatting, laughing, and bricking, but these days I simply can't sit for that long anymore.
Ponder and later Gundel loved to help out.

Just checking if you left some of the bricks in
the shipping box.

Let me sort this out for you, Mom,
before I lose any interest at all forever.

During Crafternoon, I found out that der Dekan does NOT make a good Lego helper. The studs were too tempting and I'm too old to crawl around on the floor and look for little colored dots everywhere. Not only did he go for the ones I had taken out of the bags - very few at a time because I had expected that - but he also tried to rip out the studs on the plate, both with claws and teeth!
Possibly it would have helped to have my pal around because der Dekan is strictly a family guy meaning he usually retreats to the top of the wardrobe if non-family comes around.
My goal was to make one square a day, at least on the weekend. Yeah, that didn't happen. I finished the first one during Crafternoon on a Saturday and the next one on the Thursday after that.

Well, and now it's Tuesday and this is as far as I have come until Sunday afternoon (of course I'll have to take the one square off again because I have to finish the whole row so I can attach it).
And der Dekan helped after all. We found a way. The next time we didn't. Then we did again, but in the end he fell off the table because he had rolled around in the open lid of the box too wildly. We'll keep working on it.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.