ATDTDA 716

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

My first cigarettes [Lake st., Pasadena California, 1976] were the 
Sobranie Chaliapin cigarettes, a smoke that had a noticable premium 
in cost as compared to the Black and White Russians.

http://www.smokin4free.com/sobranie.html

Feydor Chaliapin should have been in Against the Day:

          But back in the winter of 1907-08, at the age of 34, Chaliapin 
          arrived in New York and set the city alight. Earning a staggering 
          $1,600 a performance [more than $33,000 in 2005 dollars], he 
          created a furore in the operatic world [reviews, below!] and 
          redefined the notion of dramatic performance by bringing a 
          fiercely committed intelligence to his roles and immersing 
          himself in them fully - bodily and vocally. Remember that a 
          basso, before Chaliapin, was neither an artist nor a star.

http://mlhart.com/WordsMusic/bio_Chaliapin.htm

Stanislavsky credits Chaliapin with creating the "method".

Sobranie Chaliapins were the color of the Yellow Submarine, with a 
deeper gold-yellow for the [recessed] filter tip, a lighter yellow for 
tobacco-filled tube at the front. While a pack of these smokes was 
as loaded with nicotine as a carton of Camels, the extraordinary 
smoothness of the delivery [much like Feydor's delivery] of the sweet 
smoke made it all go down as smooth as a Manhattan. One of the most 
efficient commercially available drug delivery systems ever, this bit 
of ephemera cannot be tracked on the web.

          Of a truth, the being within me which sensed this impression, 
          sensed what it had in common in former days and now, 
          sensed its extra-temporal character, a being which only 
          appeared when through the medium of the identity of present 
          and past, it found itself in the only setting in which it could exist 
          and enjoy the essence of things, that is, outside Time.

          Marcel Proust, "Time Regained", from the unpaginated
          scroll over at:

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96t/chapter3.html

[I suppose I ought to call it "Trackless Time", snigger, snigger, guffaw, guffaw. . . .]

          c) Balkan Sobranies, imported ($$$) smokes,
          "Sobranie" being Russkii for "Legislature"
          (sorta like the American "Parliament" cigareet,
          whose jingle was "You get the most out of mildness with
          Parliament - Cigarettes" - with the recessed filter)

          MB:
          I'm such a liar (Cretan too)

          flashback to 712, re the Mozart piece
          "either in or outside of his head..."
          and "It might have been prophetic, had he been listening."
          So either way, he's not paying attention, not "facing the music"

          ""romance" had slipped into an inexpensive subfusc of
          self-awareness, unnaturally heightening the effect of
          the outmoded pastels peeping from beneath"

You really need to listen to the work, it feels so self-absorbed, full
of self pity, like the "Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden" (Ah, I feel 
it, it is gone) - Pamina in Act II, Scene IV aria from "Die Zauberflote".
There is a Radiohead-like sound of self-pity, the involution of the Chronic 
Depressive, a poor soul bemoaning its lonely fate. In other words, as 
Iggy Pop would put it: No Fun.

          (cf. p 491 - "the boys were lounging about Ratty's rooms
          drinking ale, smoking Balkan Sobranies, and trying without
          notable success to mope themselves back into the
          lilies-and-lassitude humor of the '90s")

          90s - a) the "gay" 90s

          b) wasn't that era like, Aubrey Beardsley 'n' them?
          some really lovely stuff (imho)
          and, it was referenced and flashed back to in
          a similarly "pastel" period - the 1960s -
          which were in Vineland compared/contrasted
          with the more "subfusc" 1980s

Wouldn't zactacly call it "pastel" time, myself. Rocco to Classical
moves from pastel to pastel, while the "Gay" 90's had a big impact on 
the sizzling '60's. Joseph Spencer had an original Mucha print from 
wayback, reeking of patchouli and seances and in no ways pastel even 
though it was nearly one hundred years old when I first saw it. 

If the 60's were the 90's. . . .

          c) Balkan Sobranies, imported ($$$) smokes,
          "Sobranie" being Russkii for "Legislature"
          (sorta like the American "Parliament" cigareet,
          whose jingle was "You get the most out of mildness with
          Parliament - Cigarettes" - with the recessed filter)

"Recessed, you see. Like 'Sobranie' is 'Recessed'. Is joke you see. HA!"

          ----- and indeed, there is now (2008) an actual
          Macedonia with its own Sobranie
          (where before there was only a Macedonia question,
          and then under Tito - who in my extreme youth was
          regarded as kinda ok for a Commie - a socialist republic)
          (and if you go WAY WAY Back, Mr Peabody...
          there was this ancient fellow called "Phillip of
          Macedonia" - and Phillip means horselover,
          which may be referenced in AtD, page 492:
          "A sigh.  "Shetland...I say how does one...well,
          actually, Shetland ponies...")

Ah yes, Horselover Fats. . . .