30 December—When I opened yesterday’s email from the Lexus franchise across the river that’s been nagging me for a dozen years about servicing my faithful almost-14-year-old RX (as well as trading it in for a newer one with more gewgaws and less reliability, of course, not to mention abominable aesthetics to appeal to younger people with no taste), this picture greeted me:

The first thing that came to mind—and I kid you not, as Jack Paar was wont to assure “Tonight Show” viewers when television was black and white—was the opening scene of Shakespeare’s delightful “Macbeth.” Can’t you see those beautiful girls doing their thing to brighten up the Scottish play even more?

[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch: When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch: Where the place?
Second Witch: Upon the heath.
Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch: I come, graymalkin!
Second Witch: Paddock calls.
Third Witch: Anon!
All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

For those readers less than au courant with Elizabethan witches, a graymalkin—a variant of grimalkin—is a cat; and a paddock, besides being a corral in the vernacular of Litchfield’s manure and mink set, is a toad. Inferior demons that assumed the shape of cats and toads were common familiars of witches. Familiars, of course, still are witches’ and vampires’ servants, often treated as family members—and they may even be actual people.

Elizabethans probably would have pronounced “heath” almost (but not quite) like “hate” with a “th”; and many Scots still pronounce “Macbeth” to rhyme with it.

And let’s not forget how relevant the last line is today . . .