If you play it backwards, it says American Idol is Dead

Well, it’s surprising to me that I would sidestep Fred Astaire for anything whatsoever, but in this case, I would. I love Fred Astaire even more than I love Cary Grant, which is… A lot. Anyway, I think Grace Kelly was perfect for Tracy, being from the Philadelphia Mainline and all, but I also think she and Fred would’ve been very strange together. I’m not the world’s biggest Bing Crosby fan, but he and Grace Kelly go together (cough*she had daddy issues and a habit of boinking her much-older costars and supposedly Der Bingle was one of the boinkees*cough) pretty well.

Also, the way High Society was put together, nobody really needed to dance, and Fred and Gene were obviously dancers first and singers second. (See: Fred and Bing in “Holiday Inn,” doing “I’ll Capture Your Heart Singing/Dancing”)

I guess my general conclusion is that notwithstanding the Cole Porter score, “High Society” is a pale imitation of “Philadelphia Story,” that it was dopey to cast Grace Kelly in a musical, that CK Dexter Haven should not be a swinging jazz musician, that Cary Grant is the one and only CK Dexter Haven (sorry, poster here by that name, which should be shortened to Dex, by the way, since that’s what Tracy calls him), that I would rather just watch “Philadelphia Story” (or better yet, “Holiday”) and that Bing, Frank and Grace are the cast that suits “High Society” and its overly perky, Technicolor, tarted up self.

Having said all of that, I will admit that I loved “Daddy Long Legs” as a kid, even though now I realize that Fred with Leslie Caron is an even weirder match. So maybe he wouldn’t have been so strange with Grace Kelly. Although “High Society” came a few years after he lost his first wife, who was an East Coast socialite by birth, as well. Maybe that would’ve been too much of a reminder.

But I still love Camp Shoulda Been.

See, that, to me, is different. (The taking of the real book and injecting vampires or zombies into it, as is the current fashion, or taking someone’s characters and writing new adventures for them., I mean.)

But even so, the proof is in the pudding and there’s a difference between taking universal themes, like making “West Side Story” out of “Romeo and Juliet” or “Clueless” our of “Emma” or even “Bridget Jones’ Diary” out of “Pride and Prejudice.” I once considered writing a modern funny thing called “So I Dated a Serial Killer” as a riff on “Northanger Abbey,” but I never quite got the idea together and then chick-lit kind of took a dive, so…

Anyway, “Pride and Prejudice with Zombies” is different to me, because it rips off the real book, line for line, not just the idea or the basic plot or whatever, but the real thing, and then interjects vampires. Because it was popular, everybody has jumped on the bandwagon with the S&S with Sea Monsters and what have you. Doesn’t work for me anymore than making Elizabeth Bennet solve crimes or whoever wrote romance novels about Elizabeth and Darcy after P&P was done. But it’s a fine line. It works for a lot of people. And I have to say, Wishbone playing Mr. Darcy or Futurama sending a giant brain into P&P does not bother me in the least. I even liked the British thing with the chippy falling backwards into the fictional Regency period to romance Mr. Darcy. “Lost in Austen.” It was kind of funny when she showed off her bikini wax to the horrified Regency folk.

And in better news, Jane Austen’s manuscripts have been digitzed and made available online:

http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.html