“Virgin”
In conclusion, in order to prevent the spread of HIV and because it’s important to remain a virgin until marriage, you should practice anal sex.
How I wish I could forward this to every Christian conservative parent in America.
Lets face it
So lets face it, at one time we have all been in love and swept off our feet across the mall area.
Sadly for me, that time was 30 years ago.
I’d sooner do the same on Monday or Wednesday as I do on a Saturday or Sunday. I don’t divide my life between labor and pleasure.
—Alan Fletcher
Real life, in my experience, is not rife with epiphanies, let alone lessons; what little we learn tends to come exactly too late, gets contradicted by the next blunder, or is immediately forgotten and has to be learned all over again. More and more, the only things that seem to me worth writing about are the ones I don’t understand. Sometimes the most honest and helpful thing a writer can do is to acknowledge that some problems are insoluble, that life is hard and there aren’t going to be any answers, that he’s just as screwed-up and clueless as the rest of us. Or I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.
—Tim Kreider, “The Power of ‘I Don’t Know’”
Vagina-first
Before her marriage bed was even cold, Gertrude jumped vagina-first into bed with Claudius.
And I thought Bob Falls’ interpretation of Shakespeare was bad.
Father of fashionable anthropology
Yes!
On the other hand, Levi-Strauss, the inventor of denim jeans is an example of structuralist opposition. He made the denim jeans fashionable and popular.
Holy crap.
PS this Tumblr is hysterical.
The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
—Ernest Hemingway
Details, Details
Our love was quick and deep and complicated and messy. We fell for each other so fast and so soon. but we savored every minute of it.
Do you remember the first time we met? Of course you do. You would tell me about it every chance you got. Over and over and over. You would tell me how I took your breath away, how my smile captivated you, how beautiful I looked in that yellow shirt.
But here’s the thing, I don’t own one yellow shirt.
And that is why we broke up.
Snow day in Montmartre…
Give a Man an Inch…
My good friend Lawrence gifted me with fifth-row seats to Measure for Measure at the Goodman last night. Partly because he was too busy to use them, and partly, he noted, because he can’t stand it when Bob Falls does one of his inevitable “concept productions” of Shakespeare.
In general, I get a bit piqued myself when directors feel compelled to “update” my dear Will. Although, as my theater companion argued, isn’t this precisely what makes Shakespeare so timeless? That it can stand up to pretty much any conceit a director has enough hubris to throw at it? I guess so; Shakespeare’s genius is unimpeachable to me (I am not one of the nonbelievers, even though great actors like Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance disagree). Then again, Shakespeare was the bosom companion of my youth. His plays taught me everything I ever needed to know about human nature, and rendered me wise beyond my years. It’s hard to hear anyone cast aspersions on the idol/ideals of your childhood.
That said, Measure for Measure has never been a play I felt compelled to revisit. The last time I read it I was 18 years old, and probably too inexperienced to appreciate the deep cynicism that suffuses this work. Maybe I was just disgusted by the hypocrisy and ethical relativism displayed by nearly every character in the play. Or perhaps I was simply peeved by the work’s ambivalence: Is it a comedy, a satire, a tragedy, or what? Scholars resolve this by simply labeling it one of the “problem plays.” I resolved it by simply declaring it boring. Until last night, I’d forgotten it was the source of one of my favorite lines ever: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” (Strangely, one of my other favorites is from another problem play, Troilus and Cressida. I contradict myself as usual.)
So, two strikes against Measure for Measure going in. And when my buddy behind the Starbucks counter told me his friend was in the cast and had worked out for weeks in frantic anticipation of being nude onstage, I rolled my eyes that much more. Nothing, but nothing, pisses me off more than gratuitous nudity in productions of classical theater.
Nevertheless, when the curtain opened on Walt Spangler’s awesomely gritty evocation of Times Square circa the late 1970s, I was pretty amazed, and bummed I was sitting too close up to really take it all in. To the moans of “Love to Love You, Baby,” a cast of sleazy characters bumped and humped in slow motion behind Isabella, who was praying fervently on her knees. I found myself buying into Falls’ interpretation, against my better judgment. Then again, you will always have me at “Disco.”
The actors, as well, were uniformly excellent (gold stars for Jeffrey Carlson’s foppish Lucio and Aaron Todd Douglas’ jive-talking pimp, Pompey) although some of Falls’ choices were questionable or weird. Such as deciding Claudio and Isabella would be Latino. Not an issue in itself, except that Kevin Fugaro’s Claudio sported a deliberate (if sometimes wavering) Nuyorican accent while his sister Isabella sported none, save for the few moments when she broke into Spanish. Giving Isabella a stronger accent might have lent interesting shades of racial and class tension to Angelo’s manipulations—tensions Falls did not shirk from when he anachronistically referenced the late 1990s Abner Louima scandal during a police assault on the African American Pompey. And I appreciated Falls’ acknowledging the ridiculousness of some of Shakespeare’s overused ploys, such as having the Duke (who has spent much of the evening disguised as the Irish priest “Father Moynihan”) reveal himself by simply removing his glasses a la Clark Kent.
All in all, Falls got my kudos for ratcheting up the comedy in what I always felt was a rather dreary drama. He had me happily drinking his poisoned Kool-Aid. Until the very last minute. And then, boys and girls [spoiler alert]: He changed the ending of the play.
This was not a modest infraction. As my companion put it, it was akin to having Romeo and Juliet end with the Friar exclaiming, “Psych! Everyone’s still alive!”
I appreciate that there’s no truly admirable character in Measure for Measure, because even though Isabella’s strident piety constitutes the (only) moral center of the play, the lady herself comes off as a big drip you really don’t enjoy spending time with. Maybe that explains Falls’ incredibly arrogant move. But Shakespeare’s final irony was to leave Isabella suspended amid one more choice between sacred and profane love. Falls’ final irony is…well, let’s not speak of it. I just wish he’d feared to attempt it.
