Hello from the little college town that celebrates VEISHA every year, except for when they ban it.
I'm here because Nathan failed his German last semester. The funny thing is, he didn't fail, he just didn't pass. It's like when I took my driver's ed course: I got a C+, but you had to have a B in order not to take the DOT test. (Why they don't just make these things pass/fail, I will never understand.) Same basic case with The Boy, he was supposed to get a C- and he got a D. So he didn't graduate. However, since he's already accepted to grad school and all that, he had to find a place he could take the class, because uni doesn't offer summer German. They offer summer Spanish, which he's failed once already and would have to take and pass both semesters of.
Instead, he's leaving at six thirty every morning and driving all the way down here for class. He makes it back by two. Today, I got to go with him to keep him awake. We'll be home sometime around two. So, it's fun sitting in a freezing cold uni lounge, listening to the thunderstorm outside and playing on his laptop whilst hoping he passes the two tests he has today. I think it's two and a quiz rather than three tests... It's a quick pace doing six chapters in four weeks- it's the sort of pace at which I would LOVE to take classes. That means there's no waiting for morons, which there shouldn't be any of at a university level, but this is America, who believes that even the slowest and stupidest should be given a chance to run the country. Ah well.
I've been watching bits and pieces of the football on ESPN. First I saw was Argentina v. Croatia Montenegro, and would have easily agreed with anyone that it's a boring sport, except that the announcers were coming on every twenty seconds to say that it was one of the most boring matches they'd ever seen because Croatia had stopped playing about twenty minutes before I started watching. I caught the end of the Sweden v. England match yesterday, and that was fun to watch. I haven't found out yet whether America got it's ass kicked, but I certainly hope they did. We have no right to be any good at a sport the rest of the world reveres so much more highly than this country.
I told you that story to tell you this story. I adore that Adidas commerical they're running now with the Spanish kid playing with the World Cup players. The commerical's pretty good in and of itself, but I adore the song. I looked it up, and it's an English guy, Jim Noir, I think his name is. They're releasing the Adidas song as a single (I think it's called Einey Meany, but I can't remember exactly) here in the next month or so, and the album's set to come out in August, but you can order it from Amazon for almost thirty bucks. I want the whole album, because the reviews I've read say that all the tracks are pretty much in the same style. If you don't know the advert, start watching World Cup coverage, if you do, you know how awesome the song is.
I finished my semi-biography about Shakespeare. It's a fun book, based almost entirely in conjecture, but it's much better supported conjecture than I read from the "Shakespeare never existed" school. It's probably not worth reading past the first two chapters if you're not interested in Shakespeare's plays, but it's a book I wish I'd read (except I don't think it had been published yet) when I did all my director's research for Midsummer and wrote my Shakespeare history papers.
I also finished a book of JD Salinger short stories. He's good. I'd only previously read Catcher in the Rye, but I think as far as fun, the stories are a little better. As far as a character, Holden's much better developed, but I think Salinger is doing much more interesting stuff in his short stories- like Holden's older brother DB with the invisible goldfish story, that's the kind of short stories he's writing.
SO, having exhausted my summer reading two months too early yet again, I've begun reading lesser Louisa May Alcott online. Deadly dull stuff- like Little Women if you cut Jo out and put in a hell of a lot more Beth. See, would that be a fun book? They're interesting, but the characters are about an arms length away and she stops to preach almost as often as the characters do.
Luckily, I was momentarily saved from this problem by dear Friend Q, who sent me the latest revision of his play. It's good, but still way too much exposition. I told him as such. It's hilarious, and I love the funny bits, but you have to get through thirty pages of what's essentially one liners first. It's a whole triology based on the coming together of the Oedipus trilogy and Lear, Hamlet, and, Romeo and Juliet I think, but perhaps Macbeth. It's creepy how close Lear and Oedipus at Collonus are, read them sometime. He's pairing Hamlet and Antigone too. It's a fabulous idea, it just needs more work.
I've been thinking about the possibilities about writing a Shakespeare inspired play. I think everyone in theatre just has to write a Shakespeare/theatre spoof and be done with it. I wrote an updated version of King Lear (it wasn't very good, but it had some interesting parallels to Meet Joe Black, watch the movie again and see if you don't see Lear), but it's not the same thing. It's not a spoof.
My spoof idea has something to do with a lost play of Shakespeare's. He and John Fletcher (who probably took over as playwright for the King's Men after Shakespeare retired) wrote three or four plays together, and one of them is this lost play. They know the title, but I can't remember it (I used to have such a head for that stuff). I've been meaning to do some research, see what I can find, and either write a play about John and Will writing it, or write the play about a theatre finding and performing it.
I think that latter would be much more fun.