braindead fish

So I don't know if it's because I hit my head (still have a bump!) or because of finals or what, but I seriously look at my blog and feel blank space forming between my ears. So I'm just going to make a bullet-point listy thing of the random thoughts/ ideas/ observations that have crossed my path in the past few days.

--My Sharks totally just kicked Detroit derriere.

--Prince Harry is off to Iraq. Cadet Wales, or whatever it is he calls himself, has been demanding to be allowed to go to Iraq with his regiment for quite some time now, insisting that he should not be treated differently from normal people. I am inclined to agree with him. If the Royal Family is going to let him train up to be a soldier, they should let him be a damn soldier. While really the only purpose of the Royal Family these days is as built-in celebrities for the UK, soldiering is not something I believe you can do for publicity. He's trained to fight. Let him fight.

--It doesn't matter how good you are at putting words together, if your story doesn't say something it isn't worth the paper it's printed on. I gleaned this info from a semester in my upper-level creative writing class. It was good info to glean. I feel smarter.

--I am excited to see the rest of the "DC Madam's" client list. Oh, how easily are the powerful brought to their knees.

--The #1 emailed story at the NYTimes recently has been about how hard it is to get into Harvard. No, really? This isn't actually news anymore, folks. It was kind of shocking for a while, there, about all the valedictorians who weren't getting in, and it is indeed kind of ridiculous how much effort these kids are going to and still being turned down, but people shouldn't be surprised anymore. Maybe I'm just jaded.

--I am currently making chocolate chip cookies, which is why it has taken me about an hour and a half to write this post.

--Sir Mix-A-Lot does Gilbert and Sullivan on youtube. Some things just make you happy to be alive.

rugby pictures

So I've spent the past 45 minutes finding interesting rugby pictures instead of doing homework. This is a cool old poster....


This is Shakespeare inexplicably holding a rugby ball...and pierced....


An amusing cartoon....

A 2002 Frazz comic on one of the main differences between rugby and football (click on it to increase its size)...


...and between rugby and soccer....


And of course the beautiful Haka...


Ok, I'm done now. I'm off to do my homework, my wonderful homework of Oz. La di da. Please see my previous post about that concussion.

brain bouncing

I play rugby. Great sport. Fun to watch. Fun to play. Sometimes scary. Like when you hit your head really hard and get a concussion. That's scary.

I'm fine, except for a headache. No permanent damage. No worries.

But if my posts seem more rambling or airheaded than usual, this is why. Also finals begin soon.

review: The Merchant of Venice

Well, the rest of the audience seemed to like the Guthrie's Merchant of Venice.

I thought the thing was grotesque, and I can sum up my reasoning in one sentence: the play left you with the impression that the Jew got what he deserved.

Now, this is the way the play would have been received during its original performances, by Shakespeare's contemporaries. Historical fact. This is not, however, the way the play should be performed now. It is possible to perform Merchant (one of my top 3 favorite Shakespeare plays) in a complex and not anti-Semitic way. When done properly, Merchant is a thought-provoking and intelligent play. The Guthrie made it...grotesque.

Shylock is a tragic, skillfully-drawn character. The Guthrie presented him as an evil buffoon, a money-grubbing caricature of a Jew. When Shylock announces that his bond for the loan is a pound of Antonio's flesh, the Guthrie played it to pull a big laugh from the audience. It was disgusting.

There were other poor directing choices as well: The Prince of Morocco, Portia's first suitor, drew a laugh when referencing his skin color--I forget the exact line. The Prince of Arragon, Portia's second suitor, is a mincing, annoying, slapstick...thing...that gets too long of a scene. Lancelot Gobbo is also portrayed in a slapstick way; his first scene, while vaguely amusing, involved too much screeching and banging-of-heads-on-tables for my liking.

Some things were good. The acting was superb; I may not approve of what the actors were doing, but the way they did it lived up to the Guthrie's well-deserved reputation. Michelle O'Neill as Portia and Sally Wingert as Nerissa were two standouts. Jim Lichtscheidl as Lancelot Gobbo also did a fantastic, if over-the-top, job. Christine Weber and Sam Bardwell (Jessica and Lorenzo) were quite frankly sweet as all heck, presenting the young lovers in a way that showed them wrapped up in their own love and impervious to the outside world. Cute.

Robert Dorfman, Shylock, did a perfectly fine job at the job he was given; I blame the director Joe Dowling for the pitfalls in Shylock's presentation. No matter how Shylock would have been perceived in the 16th century (Dowling makes note of that era's anti-Semitism in the program), you have to recognize that you are performing him for a modern audience and that some things just aren't acceptable any more. Portraying Shylock as a disgusting monster is one of those things that isn't acceptable.

Fred Phelps and Virginia Tech

So that disgusting, disgusting man Fred Phelps (mentioned briefly in a previous post) intends to protest at as many Virginia Tech victim's funerals as he can, because this massacre is obviously another example of how God hates America. From the Westboro Baptist Church website, www.godhatesamerica.com, on the subject of the massacre:

He [God] willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.

I wanted to gouge my eyes out after a few more minutes looking at that garbage.

At the time of this post, almost 45,500 students on the friendsite Facebook have joined a group called Stop Fred Phelps & WBC from protesting at fallen VT students funerals! Many intend to form a peaceful ring tomorrow around the first cemetery that the WBC is targeting.

Disgusting.

The Libertine: Nigh Unwatchable

Don't get overexcited for things. It never ends well. Case in point: my long-standing desire to see The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp.

I'm a sucker for British costume dramas. Give me a British story, set before, oh, 1900, and I'm there. I'm happy. I heard about this movie, goodness, it must have been in early 2004 when it was preparing to release in the UK. I was excited. Johnny Depp. Tom Hollander, one of my favorite modern British actors. John Malkovich. All in wigs. There were even rumors that Shane MacGowan, lead singer for my beloved and then-defunct Pogues, was making a drunken appearance. Yes, I was excited.

I had to wait over a year for the movie to come to the states and to the Twin Cities. I then tried to go see it, but my friends convinced me that it would be more fun to see a movie that was actually getting good reviews, so I ended up at Pride and Prejudice (which also, incidentally, had Tom Hollander in it, so I wasn't too disappointed). Then The Libertine left town so it got relegated to Netflix. And finally, after a lot of dawdling, I got it home and watched it.

Blegh. Johnny Depp can act. I almost watched it just for him. But I couldn't bear it. Halfway through I turned it off and went to bed. I just didn't care about the Earl of Rochester (Depp). The story didn't seem to know what it was doing, and Rochester wasn't as vile as I'd been promised in the prologue-y bit and was therefore much less interesting. Nothing was happening. Rochester fell in love with an actress or something, but it was dull. I skipped ahead a bit and saw Depp wearing lots of bad makeup to indicate some sort of disgusting illness, but I didn't care enough to see how he got to that dire situation.

And Shane MacGowan's scene was cut out of the movie (another reason I was convinced to go see P&P) and I couldn't find it in the deleted scenes, which was disappointing. (that is an old old picture of Shane and Depp; I don't know what they're doing.)

The best part of the movie were the traces of Captain Jack Sparrow that glimmered through the beginning of Depp's performance--some head-bobbing and eye-craziness. I think he would have been filming this around the same time as the first Pirates.

Anyway. Bad movie. And it's making me less excited about Amazing Grace, which I still haven't had time to go see but which I have been pretty much excited for. I hope it's good.

Julie Andrews!

Finally, finally, Bedazzled is out on DVD. The good Bedazzled, with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. "The thinking man's comedy of the year!" in 1967. Finally.

Based on Faust and set in 1960s England, this movie has been one of my favorites for a long time. Moore and Cook, old buddies from the show Beyond the Fringe, wrote and starred in the film, directed by Stanley Donen (director of Singin' in the Rain).

Basically, Peter Cook as the Devil (alias George Spiggott) convinces Dudley Moore as short-order cook Stanley Moon to sell his soul in exchange for seven wishes. Stanley uses these wishes to try to gain the life he desires with his dreamgirl Margaret Spencer (Eleanor Bron), but somehow things never work out quite right, even when he's a rock star. I think I will not be giving too much away when I say that at one point he ends up as a nun.

Some of the humor is very very sixties, but I'm pretty much in stitches straight through anyway. Peter Cook's Devil is just a scamp; you'd think the Devil would have better things to do than sit around and make crank phone calls, but no. And Stanley is so pathetically funny.

This film is hilarious. If you haven't seen it, it is now available for purchase or rental and I highly recommend that you get on that.

To end with the immortal words of George Spiggott: Julie Andrews!

writing advice from Vonnegut

If I can't be the next Nabokov, I'm at least going to aim for following this piece of writing advice from Kurt Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box:

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

The list keeps going, and it's pretty good as writing-advice-lists go, but this is the main one I thought deserved repetition, because it is such an intriguing way of looking at your job as a writer.

my Sharkies

I guess it's time to out myself: I'm a San Jose Sharks fan. Fanatic. Nutcase. Whatever. (that's hockey, for those of you who are unenlightened.) Over on the right I've added a section where we can all keep track of how they're doing in the playoffs this year, because I'm sure you all care as much as I do.

And I would like to take this opportunity to humbly request that the Nashville players cease their attempts to kill my team. Two of our players have been seriously injured in two games, one a cheap shot to the back that has led to head and neck x-rays, the other a nasty knee-to-knee hit that has sidelined our top goal-scorer.

the magic of words

Yesterday I remembered why I want to be a writer.

I stopped by the library on the way to a friend's house to pick up a copy of Lolita, which I need to read for a class and have never read before. I took this book, one of those old, leather-y, library-bound books, over to a friend's house, where there were a few people hanging around trying to decide if they wanted to watch a movie.

I sat down and ruffled through the pages, letting my glance dart over the words, simply trying to get a feel for the book's density so I could budget my reading-time appropriately. I ended up on the first page of Part I.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

Fifteen pages later I came up for a breath to discover that my friends had begun watching a movie. I have no idea what the movie was. I left and I've been reading Lolita ever since. This morning on my way to work I almost walked into the side of a bus because I had my nose buried in the book and didn't realize the sidewalk was ending.*

And I want to do that to someone. That is why I write. I want someone to walk into something (doesn't have to be a bus, I'm not picky) because of something I wrote. I want to create that magic.

I have no illusions. The world can only produce so many Nabokovs, and the chances of me being the next one are slim to none. But I have to try. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a book to go read.

*edit for any mother-like people who may be reading this: When I walk and read at the same time, I listen for dangerous things like buses and have successfully not been run over by many vehicles because I can hear them coming.

Bollywood Star: Mike Tyson

Things like this make my life worthwhile. Mike Tyson is going to make his Bollywood debut this year. BBC article here. Really, can life get any better than this?

Dickens World

You can't make this stuff up.

Opening next Friday in Chatham, England--A New Themed Entertainment Visitor Attraction Based Upon the Life, Times, Books and Characters of Charles Dickens, Our Most Famous and Enduring Author--Dickens World, the Charles Dickens theme park. I can die happy knowing that there is now a Dickens theme park. I mean, seriously, the world was not complete before. But now--yes. Dickens theme park.

There are rides, a Dickensian shopping mall, a cinema, and bars. According to Yahoo there's a Fagin's Den playground. I don't know how many of you got to that part of Oliver Twist, but Fagin's Den is the last place I'd want any child of mine to play in. And people like Fagin and Uriah Heep and the Artful Dodger will be wandering around much like Mickey and Goofy at those other theme parks.

But they aren't trying to Disneyfy Dickens, says the manager, Ross Hutchins. Oh no. They're just trying to make money. They claim they're trying to bring Dickens to the masses, but that's pretty much unnecessary. Dickens was and is one of the most famous and widely-read of British authors. So what they're really trying to do is make boatloads of cash.

That is the same Mr. Ross Hutchins, by the way, who claims that basically nobody under 30 can name 5 Dickens novels. Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, and Hard Times. I've read them all, too.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

I don't understand Belgians.

The New York Times published an article yesterday about the Belgian obsession with the Middle Ages. Perfectly ordinary Belgian citizens, after they're done being nurses and accountants and whatever else Belgians are, pretend that they live in the Middle Ages. They live in castles, stage mock-hangings, and generally play make-believe.

Of course they leave all the nasty bits out. One woman is quoted as saying things were "much less stressful" in the middle ages. Well, two points. One, she is pretending to be a Duchess. I don't think Duchesses had many problems in any time period, and they certainly weren't worried about where their next meals were coming from. Unlike, y'know, the serfs and all who made up the majority of the population. Two, she can pop back into this century, with all its medical advances and voting and whatnot, whenever she likes.

I believe I sound somewhat dismissive. I apologize to Belgium. I'm just kind of amazed at the extent to which the country is tying itself to the Middle Ages, and how eager people are to do so. This phenomenon would be an interesting one to study.

I guess the reason I'm vaguely disturbed by this is the ignorance it's perpetrating. It's one thing for a lot of little kids to go to Renaissance Faires and want to joust and be princesses and all without any mention of plagues. Some illusions are ok when you're a kid. Adults, though--I guess I don't have a problem really with their playacting, it's just the general oblivion to the reality of the time they're lauding that gets to me. "Less stressful?" Yeah. Try being a serf next week. Not as fun as Duchess. Or chop a limb off in battle and watch it get infected. Or, yeah, there was that plague thing, too.

Introducing Martha Jones

I'm not actually a Doctor Who nut. Really.

That said, here's a brief review of episode 1 of season 3 (Smith and Jones), which introduces us to the Doctor's new companion, Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman).

After only one episode, I like Martha Jones about 100x better than I did Rose Tyler. Rose was a good character, don't get me wrong; Martha is just not as annoying somehow. She's a medical student, and the first Black companion in the series; the first non-Caucasian, I believe. She's with it. She's intelligent. She freaking saves the Doctor's life in the first hour of their acquaintance. She has a good dash of wit and humor and seems capable of holding her own with the Doctor. I'm eager to see how she develops over the season.

The rest of the series elements seem the same as in previous seasons: excitement, aliens, clever Doctor, clever little storylines. Season 3 looks to be just as good as the previous two.

As a final note, Smith and Jones has Roy Marsden in it. Please see my post about the Sandbaggers. Yeah. Supercool.

Ok, so I am a Doctor Who nut.