Bun Fight at the OK Corral

Why do you want to be The Hairy Dude? At least you waxed your chest. Nonetheless, ‘Catt and I do not approve. We like #2.

What we do approve of, however, is Jose that just moved in. I have to figure out if he’s younger than my son. That’s the rule, right?

#2 is pretty but could not withstand concerted disapproval from his family. He would most likely cave and say Jesus made him straight. And marry Mary Ellen.

The rule is if he’s younger than your social security card. As in when it was first issued. I could be wrong. Catt would know better. He was part of the committee drawn up to give the whole nation a socialist communist number that would track them cradle to grave. Not unlike their Facebook account. He could advise you better about the ying yang ratio.

It’s good he knows me so well, I suppose. Gives us something to talk about when I go to see him at the home.

@JNOV: #1 has his charms.

/tru confessions/

Since we’re sharing, I recently became addicted to Dante’s Cove (it’s as if someone put Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The OC, and gay p-o-r-n in a blender) , and I’ve got it reeeeeeeel bad for Toby, played by out actor Charlie David. Sweet FSM, heez the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen (swoon!).

Great alt text, btw.

@¡Andrew!: OH!

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: I don’t like his pose. Hey! I thought you stopped eating the whole thing last Celebration of the Great Lie, AKA The Indians Should Have Listened to Metallica. \m/

@¡Andrew!: He is seriously fucking hot.

I finally watched the last two episodes of Weeds, and while I haven’t gone for blonds in quite some time, I do like Hunter Parrish.

I swear blonds are nothing but trouble.

@Benedick: Half your age plus seven, darling.

@mellbell: That number passed 30 when I wasn’t looking.

That doesn’t work for me. Unless I get to round down.

@JNOV: He is a WGIWF, for sure. There’s a scene in Weeds where he’s naked on his knees with an older woman, um, eating the whole thing.

SAY NO MORE. :-p

@JNOV: He has that he ne sais quoi.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: The woman with the cheese shop? Yeah. I remember. I also remember Saved by the Bell dude showing up. Er. Yeah.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: Well you’d better find out what he has avant la chute.

@JNOV: Believe it or not, it’s not an issue. Any competent bottom has that covered way ahead if time.

@mellbell: at least mine is barely under 40. :(

Are we back to penises?

@Benedick: We never left penises.

@Benedick: Always penises. Always.

I don’t know what shocks me more: that Loki is Prince Hal or that I (might…) understand even like that damn Shakespeare.

Tom Hiddleston’s penis.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: Hey. Speaking of penises (in case Bene in his dotage forgot), I’m the same height as Hunter Parrish. It makes vertical fucking easier, but still. I’m also two years younger than Mary-Louise Parker. Life is unkind.

@JNOV: Didn’t stop Greg Brady and Florence Henderson.

@nojo: Heh. I remember that.

BENE, DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?

@nojo: What’s funny is that he’s Greg Brady, but she’s Florence Henderson. I don’t remember any of those kids’ names. Not even Peter who had a reality show about something. Being Peter Brady?

@JNOV: I’ve met Florence Henderson. She’s a fan of mine. I didn’t ever see that show. And there’s no need to shout. One is not deaf.

Henry IV; part ii is one of my favorite plays. It’s not often performed. I made my professional debut as Thomas of Clarence. It’s possible I’m biased. Did not like Richard II and did not watch much of it.

@Benedick: One is not deaf.

Just checking.

I didn’t like Richard II, either. I’ve only seen part one of Henry IV, but I could *understand what they were saying for god’s sake*. I also liked the leather. Lots of leather.

I noticed during my basketball-playing days, which are long since over, that guys who looked like the gentlemen in the photo were not necessarily good at putting the ball in the hole, as the actress said etc. It’s all about function over form. Consider Dodger Juan Uribe and Tiger Prince Fielder (and his father, Cecil) who appear to train on doughnuts and beer and yet are (or were) playing baseball better than most of the lean, young competition.

@Dodgerblue: My basketball-playing days ended the moment everyone realized height is no guarantee of coordination.

@Dodgerblue: Are we back to penis?

@JNOV: Part I is the play most often produced. Certainly it’s the one with the most snap, crackle, and pop. But Part II turns into a beautiful meditation on fathers and sons, duty v responsibility, the new destroying the old. I admire it tremendously. It contains some of his finest writing; Hal and Falstaff; Hal’s repudiation of same; Hal attending his dying father; Hal, as the new king, greeting his terrified brothers who think they’re about to be executed; the tavern scene in which Falstaff goes too far; Doll Tearsheet; etc, etc. We did both parts in rotation. We had lots of leather too. And armor. And great big swords. We did three performances of both parts together. Curtain went up at 8 and came down at 2 am. I was too young to get tired. I did, however, break my foot. But, as an aspect of extreme youth, I was too dumb to understand and did nothing about it.

Why yes, I should be working. Thank you for your kind enquiry.

At the risk of seeming uncool – I notice we’ve all been studiously avoiding any mention of it – are we all terrified what Thursday will bring?

@Benedick: I’ve been dropping Planet of the Apes and Strangelove references on Twitter. Mutual Assured Destruction is back, baby!

@nojo: It didn’t last long but I enjoyed having a savings account for my golden years. Oh well. Back to turning tricks.

@Benedick: What can we say? A US default will be like a nuclear bomb to our eCONomy–there’ll be a bang so loud that we won’t even hear it.

According to the conspiracy theories that I’m starting, the 1% want the US eCONomy to implode as the next act in their coup d’état. They’ve spent the last 30 years buying and stealing the majority of our nation’s assets, and now they want it all. Look what happened in Russia when their financial system collapsed in 1998: The middle class was completely wiped out, and then the plutocrats, oligarchs, and gangsters swept in and seized the last of the country’s assets since they were the only ones left with the means and resources.

My gawd, our neofascist kleptocracy is at stake.

@Benedick: Yes. I feel like we’re tied up in the trunk of Thelma and Louise’s car.

@Mistress Cynica: Without Brad Pitt.

@Mistress Cynica: The original cut included the entire crash.

I’m scared

I spent close to an hour trying to help a service member figure out who he could call to help solve his problem. It went kinda like this: you could call..no, they were sent home. Your PEBLO might be available. Wait. Your PEBLO is a civilian, right? I’m not sure of she’s working right now. Wait. You could call…no, actually you can’t. It was pretty fucked up.

@Mistress Cynica: and Toonces has taken the wheel.

@Dodgerblue: I had something to say about baseball before Mark McGuire and Bo Jackson, but I’m too upset.

@Benedick: you break your foot a lot.

Yes, I love how he loves his brothers. I don’t know what to think about Fallstaff. Did Shakespeare pick these names intentionally?

Oh wait, you’re in the real world. My thoughts are with you.

@¡Andrew!: do they realize that China owns us? Could they be Mooselum communists who hate America?

@Benedick: what? About the names? I am a Shakespeare idiot. Seriously. Blame the Quakers.

@Benedick and @¡Andrew!: Is it too late to withdraw all my money in Yen or Euros?

@SanFranLefty: They’ll go bust too.

@Benedick: Fuck, I guess that it’s all about going back to the gold standard. Good thing I have about 100 bottles of wine stored under my house.

@JNOV: He was a great naming genius who stole liberally from the classics and his sources. I don’t know how he got to Sir John Fallstaff. He was supposedly historical but not with that name. Many of the names in the Histories are, if not exactly historical then at least as they appear in Hollinshead. His brief was to bolster the newish Tudor dynasty by tearing apart the Plantagenets. The names are dynastic, based on the uber myth of English royalty climaxed by the War of the Roses that gave us Henry VIII and Elizabeth. The groundwork for which he is preparing through this quartet of plays and which will bloom in Henry VI.

He invented Miranda, and the ravishing names of his commoners; Bottom; Flute; Costard (a variety of apple); Mistress Page; Berowne. But when in the Histories the Earl of Crumbcake arrives with Harry Percy and Lord Cornwall, he’s usually right. I mean, the names are heraldic, passed on. No doubt the great-greats were sitting in the expensive seats on the stage come to see the exploits of their elders.

@SanFranLefty: You will never go poor.

@SanFranLefty: It’ll be easier to barter wine than gold. You’re good.

I have to go to Europe a week from today, and I’d really rather not have to face angry Germans who want to know why the hell we crashed the world economy.

@Benedick: The fairies in Midsummer’s Night Dream have the best character names ever.

Mustardseed and Peablossom are the two that stick in my mind. Besides Oberon and Titania. And Puck. Don’t forget Puck.

/whoa, my 8th grade English teacher would be so proud of me. I played Hermia in our class performance.

@Mistress Cynica: Then you and Mr. Cyn are sitting pretty with those barrels of wine. Good luck and hope you decide to return and not beg for political asylum while overseas.

@SanFranLefty: Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Cobweb, Nigel, … no wait, it’s Moth.

Here sleeps Titania sometime of the night… Funny thing about that play, the women are wonderful parts: Hermia (kudos), Helena, Titania (hm, all ending in a); the male equivalents are almost unplayable. Oberon has good things to say but why? The lovers, Lysander, Demetrius, are entirely beached by time, belonging to a tradition of looking at human relationships that are meaningless now. It’s one of the first romcoms and when it’s working it’s always joyous. One of his other versions of that play, Love’s Labours Lost, is so beautiful because just when it’s all going to turn out well it doesn’t. Grief cuts across the stage and summer turns to ice. He was It. Funny thing, you know the whole Nine Men’s Morris speech of Titania’s about the world having gone mad on account of the war in heaven? He stole it almost word for word from Ovid. I was so thrilled when I discovered that. Not like it’s entirely news but when you didn’t got to school and find it out on your own… (cue violins)

@Mistress Cynica: Don’t mention the war.

@SanFranLefty: Puck was a local holdover from the old gods. Robin Goodfellow. An aspect of the devil, or at least an imp. Called Goodfellow so as not to insult him and cause him to make mischief on you. Stratford was still surrounded by an enormous forest and Puck was a childhood sprite; malicious in his intent to burst the vanity of mortals. It’s the great masterstroke of the play that he is given its epilogue as he tries to conjure safety for the newlywed couples in a world he doesn’t know. The poetry takes on a stilted, declarative quality.

Hey, everyone! Happy global financial collapse!

@Benedick: Yes, I think I saw all of part 2 and fell asleep on Henry V. I know how that one ends. :’-(

And Hiddleston’s penis.

@SanFranLefty: I’m either stocking up on toilet paper or moving to Mars. Maybe both.

@Benedick: Earl of Crumbcake? Seriously?

“Plantagenets” <– I know that's real, but it makes me think of sci-fi.

NojoBro, then 7, got to suffer at the hands of Richard III. Nojo, then 17, learned the next best thing to walking a cute dog around cute girls.

@SanFranLefty: I honestly don’t think there’s anything that we can do. Predicting the after effects of an unprecedented US debt default is impossible since other countries’ economies are so closely tied to ours.

@¡Andrew!: Fortunately, I don’t have any $$ on the Dodgers.

@¡Andrew!: I would like to think that one consequence is the thorough discrediting of teabaggers and their masters, but I know that’s sheer fantasy.

@Benedick: Oh! And The Governor from The Walking Dead was in Richard II. Freaked me out. That bitch from Dowdytown Abbey was Percy’s wife in Henry Whatever.

@nojo: Jesus. Which one is that?

Why can’t these folks stop recycling names as if marrying your cousin isn’t enough? And they get to choose one if they become queen/king, don’t they? Who do we have hanging around now? Let’s see…(make sure to read The Royal Family Cookie Policy). Whoa. Investitures? What?

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary – okay. I think two is fine. The Mary part is odd.
Edward Antony Richard Louis (he seems normal)
Andrew Albert Christian Edward — Abby Normal
Charles Philip Arthur George — hahahahaha! Dipshit.
Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise (uh)
William Arthur Philip Louis
Henry Charles Albert David

and there’s more! But I’m bored.

If I wanted to write the queen, this is what I’d do: [P]eople may write to The Queen with the formal opening ‘Madam’ and close the letter with the form ‘I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant’.

Sycophantic bullshit Just. Like. In. The. Plays.

To put it in nerd terms, the debt default will be bigger than when the Death Star blew up, but smaller than when Kahn detonated the Genesis device.

@nojo: The problem always will be that we’re just not right-wing, neofascist enough.

@¡Andrew!: Presuming it’s more toward the latter, who goes in the coffin?

@nojo:
I would have to say Barry. I’m currently sitting here at Pearson International bound for Vancouver (wedding)

@JNOV: They don’t choose their names. in H 4, ii after the old king is dead the prince known as Hal presents himself to declare himself the new Henry. But that’s his real name all along. Hal is a pet name. The nobles in the histories, and in other plays, are known by their titular name – if that’s what it’s called. So the Earl of Essex is known as Essex. That’s not a family name. Hotspur, another nickname and I think historical, is Henry Percy – that’s the family name. And so on. He didn’t invent too many of the plots, they were often made up from bits and pieces he found in various sources and he’d bring over the names from them. There was a play before King Lear that he used, same with Hamlet, which is the name he gave his son in the Hamnet version which it seems was an interchangeable spelling.

There weren’t all that many names used by the kings; Richard, John, Henry, Nigel. Is it in Richard 3 that he uses this very idea as the three widowed queens lament the death of their husbands; “I had a Richard till a Richard slew him.” By ‘cousin’ they don’t mean they’re literally related, at least not always. He often used that to mean close friends. Celia calls Rosalind her cousin but they’re not related.

Something I recently found out that I found interesting is that Shakes’s actors very likely used what are known in the trade as ‘sides’. Each actor would only get his part written out. Before each speech would by the last few words of the character before, the cue, and after the speech the first few words of what follows. So no individual actor would have the whole play and they’d only hear it, probably read by the author, at the first rehearsal. The same technique was used here through the 40s and in summer stock till the late 60s. Saves a ton of paper and reproduction costs.

The roils’ family name is Windsor. It was originally Battenberg (I think that’s right) which was anglicized to Mountbatten and the Louis contingent are named for Louis Lord Mountbatten who was assassinated by the IRA.

@Benedick: yeah. I know Hal, Harry and Henry are the same, but I thought Elizabeth chose her regnage, whatever that is, and said she wanted to be called Liz II. Meh. I’m tired.

@JNOV: That’s because of Liz I. Hope you’re back to paid employment very soon.

@Benedick: yeah. But I figured since she was asked the question, she had a choice. Like Lola or something.

And thanks. Yeah. We’re not working overtime, but we’re beat. I guess it’s stress. I dreamt something was burning, papers, and it was my fault because I left them somewhere. When you start having anxiety dreams about work…

I hope they do something for us, like give us a vacation when the others return to work.

@Benedick: anglicized to Mountbatten

During the Great War, of course. Hide the Hun!

Yeah. According to The Royal Family Cookie site, they didn’t start with the last names until Windsor, which is a castle and not, like, a human, and then Lola I let that racist doofus hyphenate his name and blah.

I’m taking a nap.

@Benedick: I have read that this fact — that Shakes’s actors very likely used what are known in the trade as ‘sides’ — made the texts of the original printed version of the (entire) plays somewhat suspect.

@nojo: Saxe Coburg! was that Albert’s name or Victoria’s? I know it was the original name of the Old Vic theatre. The family were all German. They had to be taught English and I find it all inexpressibly demeaning. It’s like having to study in school the Romney family tree.

@JNOV: Windsor is the town not far from London and site of a royal palace which gave its name to a vile soup that came to epitomize bad English cooking. A few years back there was a bad fire which destroyed or damaged many priceless art works belonging to the roil collection (aka us, motherfuckers) because they are all amateurs.

Couldn’t watch Henry. If you’re not yelling and spitting on everybody it’s just not Shakespeare. They cut so much of the text – soooooooooooo much of the text that nothing was left of his structures or resonances. It was all a drone. And Richard Eyre is a fine director who’s done this kind of thing before much better. It all seemed so boring! Done well it’s really not. And those terrible young actors! Good God, who was that Hal! It was like Bristol rep. I see that RADA is still open for business.

@Dodgerblue: I heard some ‘scholar’ from Bard (which isn’t far from here) yapping on about it – he’d written a book – and was struck the fact that I’d never heard of such a thing suggested before and also that he had no idea that it was the custom here till not that long ago. I’ve worked with actors who used that system. It seems very bizarre to us now but it worked. It used to be that summer stock theatres could rent the sides for a particular play which would then be returned after rehearsals were over. I think that still goes with musical scores. Pages given to actors for auditions are still called sides even though they now come as PDF files.

I have no idea how his actors learned the words. I don’t know what proportion were even literate. It’s still not that common today. But learn the words they did. I’m sure they had prompters and all the rest of it but even so. Does ‘Speak the speech’ really imply that the playwright taught the actors? God. How did he have time? The incredible boredom of spending hours listening to some dolt destroy your work. I’ve always thought that speech was a send-up to be enjoyed by the company more than something to be taken literally.

Now I shan’t sleep till I know.

Annnnnnd…were BACK to working MADATORY overtime! I was like, um…can it be voluntary? Are you going to prorate it instead of expecting 20 extra hours before the end of the month? Huh? Please?

They started at 10 hours and changed it to 7. There’s been quite a bit of teeth gnashing here.

@Benedick: please tell me you’re not talking about Hiddleston’s Hal.

I’m going to write HRH a letter and ask her if she likes any of her kids.

Your humble and obedient servant…

@JNOV: Like her kids? Why would she?

I don’t know who that is. I just recognize the Look I’m a Rogue I’m Smiling act.