Word: vat
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...place. Within a year she held all the strings of power, manipulated the Emperor like a puppet. On her secret instructions, the former Empress was horribly done to death-after a ferocious flogging, her hands and feet were cut off and she was left to drown in a vat of wine. In the next 35 years, sometimes as policy but always with pleasure, Lady Wu murdered five of the Emperor's sons (including two of her own), two of her brothers, one of her sisters, the sister's daughter and several hundred of her husband's relatives...
...dating to the 16th century, including yard-long shears. In the penthouse studio, the restorers ("Most important men here," says Rorimer) contemplate a Renaissance Piero di Cosimo for months before attempting to remedy a millimeter's flaking. In the dungeon basements, a crusty bronze Vishnu lies in a vat of alkali soaking nearly a year until cleanliness restores it to godliness...
...amateur Grand Guignol about a pair of sleazy, sullen chambermaids running amuck in Bedlam. When they are not dancing or screaming, they stab the furniture with hatpins, chip the plaster, bring in termites, pulverize the best china, wallop their mistress, throw fish at her daughter, uncork the wine vat, scrape rubbish off the floor and dump it into the master's soup. "What did you put in the closet?" asks one. "The chicken droppings," replies the sister...
...family is what the Spanish call olla podrida, or rotten pot, a mess. His brutal father dies, literally, rabid. His imbecile brother, whose ears were chewed off by a hog, drowns in an oil vat. Rosario, his sister, is the only one Pascual even begins to love. She is a whore practically from puberty. His feelings for her are more than slightly incestuous. When her lover seduces Pascual's wife, Pascual kills...
...jokes are funny as the plot is bitter. The humor is broad ("Vat 69--that's the Pope's phone number"), there are lots of loud, funny songs, and people fly on and off the stage in the best slapstick tradition. You can't help laughing...