Bewitched

    I overheard some lines from a movie Michael was watching.  It was all about witches.  Now I can't think about anything else.

     In the movie a professor was lecturing his class about how witches often use 'familiars'.  He explained that these are animals that do the bidding of their witches and said that cats are often used for this purpose.  

      Control A Cat?  Hilarious!  That's some powerful magic, indeed.


      I guess this proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I am no witch.  On the other hand, it makes me wonder if  our cat, Ella, might be a witch.  (Okay, duh, obviously she's a witch.)  Just as obviously, I seem to be the familiar in this set-up.  

      Witch references are even more plentiful than 'Miley Cyrus is a skank' references these days.  Popular culture is full them!  

      We have a love-hate relationship with witches and magic.  On the one hand we like the idea that some sort of magical powers are contained within us.  But we also love blaming our troubles on the powers of someone else to jinx us in some way.  It's not too surprising that witch hunts have always been so popular.  

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      A witch hunt was played out in the hilarious scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  They use some pretty crazy arguments to determine that a woman is a witch.  

     Peasants accuse a woman of witchcraft.   "We have found a witch."  

     Sir Vladimir tries decide the matter in a fair way and asks how they know.  The peasants present their case:  "She looks like a witch."   (Turns out the peasants dressed her up with a tall hat and fake nose.)  One man says she turned him into a newt.  Everyone stares at him....   "I got better.", he admits.

    King Arthur arrives and uses even crazier reasoning:  "What do you burn apart from witches?  Wood.  So why do witches burn?  Because they're made of wood...and since wood and ducks both float...if she weighs the same as a duck,...she's a witch."  

     With some help from everyone around (and some rocks on the side of the scale with the duck), it is determined that she does weigh the same as a duck...so they get to burn her.  (Which they wanted to from the beginning.)

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     We even blame good things, like falling in love, on witchcraft.  Stories are filled with 'love potions' and 'love spells'.  Sinatra sang about "wicked witchcraft".  He knew it was "strictly taboo" but couldn't resist:  "it's such an ancient pitch, but one that I wouldn't switch, 'cause there's no nicer witch than you."  Rogers and Hart wrote about being "bewitched, bothered, and bewildered".  Cole Porter begged to "Let me live 'neath your spell.  Do, do, that voodoo that you do so well."  Carlos Santana said he had "a black magic woman and she's trying to make a devil out of me". 

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       Our witches are portrayed in all kinds of ways.  Some are silly like Witchiepoo from "H.R. Pufnstuf", the cartoon Witch Hazel, or funny like the warlock, Miracle Max, (Billy Crystal) in Princess Bride who says to his wife:  "Get back, witch."  She says "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife."  (Which I like to say to Michael from time to time.)  

     And they're not all green complexions and warts either.  We've got a lot of hexing hotties out there:  The Witches of Eastwick  (Hello!  Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer), "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", Glinda, the Good Witch of the North (so pretty in pink), and Kim Novaks in the movie Bell, Book and Candle.  I saw part of that movie recently and was surprised at how much of it seemed to have been used as the set-up for the character of Samantha Stevens in the TV show "Bewitched".

     Of course, being evil is the way we most often think of witches.  Fairy tales are full of bad witches putting spells on young innocents, or fattening them up in their cottages in the woods to have them for dinner.  The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz set the bar high for evil witches.  She scared the Bejeezus outta me as a kid.  I guess those terrible flying monkeys were a good example of the 'familiars' that professor was talking about.  

     The Harry Potter stories made a whole new world of witches.  Within the story there are all sorts of types of witches and warlocks.  Some are good, some bad, some wimpy, some funny.  They use magic for good or they use the dark arts for evil.  

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     You don't much run into witches in real life.   There was once a man on one of my flights that had horns surgically embedded in his head.  (ouch).  He told me he was a warlock.  If you google witches or warlocks you will come across a number of groups that get together to, uh, conjure, or something.  The main thing I noticed about these groups is that they like to use Olde Englifh-esque spellings of things.  Mis-SPELLs?

     Speaking of spelling...I think we like to spell our labels for feisty women differently these days.  

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     I keep noticing that the witch chick in the picture above has some nicely developed upper arms.  If I could get those guns without any pushups I'd take a sip of whatever potion she's pushing.

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     You probably thought I'd eventually make a point with this week's blog...

     But...I'll tell you a secret:  This was just my way to cast a 'waste time on the internet' spell over you today.  

     And, yeah, be careful how you spell any names you call me.