It's probably useful to know that I am a huge fan of those old cast-of-thousands movies. Silent era, black & white, Cinemascope Technicolor, anything before it all goes wonky in the mid-1960s. Special bonus if the cast of thousands includes Merle Oberon, Charles Laughton, Fredric March, or Richard Burton glowering and showing off his knees. (I had a schoolteacher who used to call me CB—after Cecil B. DeMille, as in, "ready when you are, CB," as the old anecdote goes. Little did my teacher know it would all end up with the Blues.) But, I digress...