Elizabeth Taylor: Post-Mortem Tidbits
I ended up reading and watching a lot more of the Elizabeth Taylor post-mortem commentary than I expected. Tuning into CNN’s tribute last night, I almost expired, so constant were the cliches about “we’ll never see her like again.” I found myself more jazzed by the item saying that Taylor’s favorite L.A. gay bar, the Abbey, has come up with a special tribute cocktail to her called the Blue Velvet Martini, in homage not to the David Lynch film but to Taylor’s starring in “National Velvet.” The drink calls for Blue Angel vodka and blueberry schnapps. (I think I’ll pass.) The other Taylor piece I enjoyed contained the commentary of that interesting nutcase Camille Paglia, who riffed on La Liz for Slate. Camille-ion puffs: ‘”Butterfield 8″ was my Bible. She didn’t want to make that film. She hated it her whole life. But “Butterfield 8” meant everything to me as an adolescent. It formed so many of my ideas about the pagan tradition descending to us from Babylon and surviving the Christian onslaught of the Middle Ages. The first time you see her in the film, in that tight, white, sewed-on slip, it’s so amazing. Her dress is ripped on the floor, she brushes her teeth with scotch, and she goes up to the mirror and angrily writes “No sale!” on it in lipstick! To me she represented the ultimate power of the sexual woman.’
