Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

Just as an aside, let me say that the Worcester Public Library is a gorgeous building, and so far seems to be everything a library should be. [Well, except for not having Wifi, although they do provide a list near the Internet stations of where one can get Wifi around town.]

Upon entering, there's a huge map of the building -- in relief, with Braille notation.

That's followed by an area for free local papers and flyers and announcements, demonstrating its role in community service.

Beyond that is a huge area for talking books and other services for the visually impaired.

The aisles are all wide enough for wheelchairs, and it's just a very beautiful and welcoming place.

[Written @ 9:35 am in the Worcester Public Library, where we're hanging out after breakfast and until the Ecotarium opens...]

BTW, the library also has a bookstore, where we spent a small chunk of change. Although we didn't get any of these, the man on staff informed us that they often get new unopened books returned by book club members. The publisher doesn't want them back, since they were officially "sold", so instead of pulping them, they go to libraries. And since they were free to the library, they don't cost that much more.

The Ecotarium is nice. It's half-zoo and half-science museum. Really more geared towards a younger audience, but the nature walks were beautiful, we had a lot of fun watching the river otters romp, and they had some gorgeous red foxes...

After that, we stopped off at Wholly Cannnoli, a bakery I've been wanting to try since they were featured in a segment on Phantom Gourmet.

And now I'm writing this from the car on the way to Lenox.

Last week, I saw Midsummer Night's Dream for the sixth time. Last night, I saw my fourth As You Like It, and we're on our way to Merry Wives of Windsor, which will be my second viewing of that play.

Rerun season on the Shakespeare circuit. Gotta love it.

12:56 pm written in the car

Before going to Worcester, I looked up directions on MapQuest, Google Maps and Yahoo Maps. For some legs of the trip, I printed out multiple versions, because they used slightly different routes, and/or I wasn't sure which would be easiest for navigation.

But here's a curious distinction.

Travelling from Worcester to Lenox. All three routes involve taking 290-W onto the Mass Pike westbound to Exit 2.

Google says that's 79 miles. Yahoo says it's 80.4 miles, and MapQuest, 80.6.

I suppose it all depends on where you think the ramps start and end, but that's a 1.6 mile difference...

PPS: Home now. 213 messages in my inbox since Friday afternoon, of which I suspect less than a half-dozen will not be spam. There has got to be a better way...

Expect reviews tomorrow...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 AM

I've heard people refer to the idiots in charge as a kleptocracy, but never seen it taken quite so literally before.

From AMERICAblog:

How can they give the confiscated airport items to the homeless if they don't know if they're explosives or not?

I'm talking about the new things they're confiscating at the airport. They say the products are unopened, but they're giving them to the homeless in Phoenix. Okay, then how do you know they're not explosives that you're handing to the homeless, since you haven't opened them? Apparently, the airport people, in Phoenix at least, know quite well that the stuff they took off of the passengers in line were not explosives. So why did they take it in the first place?

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport planned to give 11 boxes of surrendered items to the city's human services department, which will give the unopened bottles of shampoo, toothpaste and other items to homeless shelters, airport spokeswoman Lexie Van Haren said.

Same thing in Pennsylvania - seems YOU can't take it on the plane because it might be a bomb, but THEY can sell it on eBay without knowing if it's a bomb, or they're sure it's not a bomb, so then why did they take it in the first place?:

In Pennsylvania, state officials were considering pulling some discarded items for a state program that resells on eBay any items of value relinquished at airport security checkpoints, said Edward Myslewicz, spokesman for the General Services Department.

It's duct tape all over again.

Oh, and various blogs are reporting on an AP story that "While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology."

I've seen some stories that liquid explosives were first attempted against airlines a decade ago. So why act as if this is somehow unprecedented?

Their arrogance truly knows no bounds.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:05 PM

A few quick links and excerpts regarding recent events:

• Boing Boing: If the liquid could be explosive, why are you dumping it in a crowd?:

  POUR IT INTO A RECEPTACLE? Don't you think that some of these potentially explosive liquids might be more dangerous when, I don't know, mixed in a big vat in the middle of an airport?

• Suburban Guerrilla: Uh Huh:

  Of course they wouldn't use something like this for political gain! But hey, isn't it great that terrorism is so good for the poll numbers?

  [The president's] remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn't: News of the plot could soon break.

• AMERICAblog: White House official gleeful that terrorists wanted to kill thousands of Americans on ten US airlines over the Atlantic:

  "Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances.

• Plaid Adder: Touch Of Gray:

  Wouldn't you rather have someone in power who did not see terrorism as a political godsend? Wouldn't you maybe trust a guy more whose whole political survival didn't depend on things like this happening? Who, you know, didn't think terrorism had an upside?

• DCCC Timeline: A Profile in Politicizing Terror:

  [After quoting remarks by the President and Vice President, an RNC fundraising email, and the anonymous Bush official above]
  
  4:22 p.m.: The RNC follows with a statement attempting to elevate the war on terror above those who would crassly use it for politics sake: "On a day when American authorities are working with our allies to stop a global terror plot, instead of focusing on political attacks, we should focus on the fact that we are at war and need every tool to win the War on Terror."

Even someone who I don't consider a conspiracy theorist at all emailed me yesterday (he can identify himself if he wants) about the way TV was covering the story:

Having flown from London to Boston, I can't imagine enduring such a flight without something to read -- especially when trying to stay awake to prevent jetlag. Heck, I always pack books even for even short flights. And having to worry about damage to my laptop going through the regular luggage crunch? *wince*

Meanwhile, in local news, The Boston Globe reports Ban on liquids hits Vermont where it lives -- maple syrup (which is often sold in airport giftshops). And an author whose LiveJournal I read reports she lost close to $100 in makeup because a TSA official made her dump them. All on domestic flights.

Someone could make a killing selling shipping services to the people waiting in line for security... I mean, if someone discovers too late that they're carrying contraband, who wants to lose their place to stow it and then have to line up all over again?

Heck, why isn't somebody doing this already?

Maybe because this is turning into a moneymaking racket for the government. You can buy TSA seized items on eBay. So why would they want to make it easier for people to retain their items rather than just hand them over for the government to resell?

PS: More comments from the wise guys folks at Making Light.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:03 PM

BTW, I recently mentioned to someone that multiple filmed versions of Macbeth are in the works, but wasn't near a computer to provide further details.

For the record, here are three forthcoming feature films:

1. Macbeth  [IMDb / Official site]
   A contemporary retelling set in the ganglands of Melbourne.
    
2. Macbeth  [IMDb / Official site]
   A modern retelling using the original text; adapted so that the action takes place around vigilante London Gangs, somewhere in the future.
    
3. Come Like Shadows  [IMDb]
   Not modern dress" an "accessible, but classic interpretation." Slated to shoot in Scotland in the fall.
   Starring Sean Bean and Tilda Swinton, and ooh! by John Maybury of the Marlowe biopic screenplay!

I can't look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, but this looks like a bumper crop!

“A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come!”

BTW, I still can't find any reliable information on release dates for Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It beyond "Fall 2006." It's already got its MPAA rating; that should mean it's coming out relatively soon, right?

As much as I adore the play and enjoy Branagh's adaptations (yes, I'm one of the few who both saw Love's Labours' Lost in the theaters and liked it!), I do have some qualms about them setting the play in Meiji Japan without Asian actors in any significant roles.

Looking at the IMDb's cast list, I see four Asian names:

• Yee Tsou as Charles the Wrestler (33 lines)
• Paul Chan as William (8 lines)
• Justin Hoong-Fai Chan as "Duke's Man," and
• Youki Yamamoto as "Senior Man"

That's not a lot, and they're all minor characters -- so much so that I couldn't even identify which attendants the latter two might be.

Branagh's quite familiar with crosscasting, and has used minority actors in all his Shakespeare films (except the pseudo-historical Henry V). He was sensitive enough in LLL to not pair up the two black actors -- instead of three white couples and a black couple, there were two white couples and two interracial ones. Heck, he's already crosscasting black actors as Orlando and Oliver De Boys...

I will wait to see the film (and I do intend to see the film) before making final judgment. Maybe he's come up with some clever setting to explain why these characters aren't associating much with the locals. Maybe IMDb's listing is incomplete [For example, I don't see mention of the other Duke, unless Brian Blessed is doubling and playing both.]

Firefly and Serenity garnered a lot of criticism for offering a pseudo-Asian atmosphere without hiring Asian actors for any major roles. [For example, read "Asian Objects in Space" in Finding Serenity, Again with the inscrutability!, and Cultural appropriation and Firefly/Serenity.] And that raised my awareness of the issue.

Something tells me to anticipate similar rebukes of this film.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:35 PM

This morning's mail included The Serpent's Tongue, the latest newsletter for Friends of Actors' Shakespeare Project.

The company's first production of the new season will be Hamlet, starring Ben Evett as the title character, with Marya Lowry as Gertrude, Robert Walsh (Brutus in their Julius Caesar) as Polonius, along with Ken Cheeseman and Sarah Newhouse in roles not yet listed. [I suspect the latter for Ophelia, although Ian pointed out ASP regularly cross-casts women in men's roles, which only raises my curiousity.]

A scene from Hamlet with Ben Evett and Marya Lowry… and ooh is that Allyn Burrows?

It also includes an essay "Why Hamlet Fascinates Us" by scholar in residence David Evett, which I'd like to quote:

     This play is impossible to pin down. It has three distinctly different source texts: the first quarto (1603), the second quarto (1604), and the folio (1623); the relationship of those texts to what Shakespeare wrote and his company performed are still being passionately discussed. (For further discussion, watch the company weblog, at http://actorsshakespeareproject.squarespace.com.) Among them, the three versions raise hard questions. Is Hamlet himself an insecure adolescent, or an alienated 30-something, or a true ruler-in-the-making for whom the time is out of joint? How serious is he about Ophelia? Does he catch on that Polonius and Claudius are eavesdropping on his conversation with her? How crazy is he? Only pretending? Really around the bend? Why does he pass on his chance to kill the distracted Claudius? Is the Ghost real, or only a diabolical pretender? Was the elder Hamlet as fine a father and man as young Hamlet thinks? Did Gertrude and Claudius get it on before the elder Hamlet was administered that earful of deadly hebona from a vial? does Claudius see the dumb-show in which his murder is re-enacted? How does he react? Is Polonius a self-important fool or a wise advisor out of his depth? Do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern know what's in that letter? Does Fortinbras matter?

I'm tempted to interject: “For the answers to these and other questions, tune in to Hamlet by the Actors' Shakespeare Project, October 19th through November 12!” But David Evett is a better man than I am, so I'll let him continue as he intended:

     Because there are so many questions, and so many possible combinations of answers, any particular approach will be different from any other: the play always seems new, no matter how many times it is produced, or how many times you've seen it.

Evett goes on to make a few more points, concluding that the combination of director and set and cast and audience "all adds up to something larger than the sum of the individual contributions, and will be new and unique at every performance."

Couple additional points:

• There is a LiveJournal feed of the ASP blog, @ actrshakespeare.
  If you like Shakespeare, it's worth reading -- even if you're not in the area to see their performances. They write about the rehearsal process, characterization and interpretation, plus more essays by David Evett. Insightful stuff.
• Interesting historical note: apparently in Danish superstition, anyone who killed a madman risked catching the victim's insanity. Thus, feigning craziness can be considered a canny means of saving one's skin. Puts a slightly different spin on Hamlet's motives, doesn't it?
• One of my college instructors pointed out that Act III, Scene 3 is very curious scene. Until Claudius' private confession (line 2316 out of 4075 -- more than halfway thru the play), the audience had no way of knowing whether the Ghost told the truth and fratricide actually occurred, or if Hamlet just suffered from paranoid delusions. Given other ambiguities in the story, it raises the question of why Shakespeare felt it necessary to include it...
  [Though now that I think on it more, officials would probably reject a play which celebrates the deposing of a rightful monarch, making it important for external reasons to spell out Claudius' villainy. Still, I think the play's much more intriguing without it.]
• When I last visited my parents, I noticed a copy of the bad quarto on their bookshelves -- annotated with stage directions. It turns out that in college, my Dad acted in an avant-garde production of the bad quarto. I find that so cool!

I was surprised how little interest I had in seeing this summer's Hamlet by Shakespeare & Co. [According to reviews, they've made some innovative directorial decisions.] But something about the description didn't feel worth the three-hour drive to Lenox.

Between ASP and Actors from the London Stage (September 18 - 24 @ Wellesley College^*), it looks like there's no shortage of Hamlet in my future.

PS: I just noticed that ASP's flyer for next season has added a few cast members to each listing:

• A Winter's Tale (January 25 - February 18)... With company members Jennie Israel, Paula Langton, Doug Lockwood, Richard Snee, Bobbie Steinbach and Greg Steres, and guest artist Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, among others.
• Titus Andronicus (March 29 - April 22)... With company members Robert Walsh, John Kuntz, Michael Walker, Ken Cheeseman, and others.

Anyone for guessing games? My experience with Titus is largely limited to the Julie Taymor film, but given the names above, I can already picture Robert Walsh as Titus and John Kuntz as Saturninus.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:42 PM

For the record, the earliest reference I could find to the phrase helicopter parent was the "Buzzwords" column by Ned Zeman in the September 9, 1991 issue of Newsweek:

Kids aren't the only ones who use slang in school. Here's some vocabulary that teachers aren't teaching:

• Helicopter parent: A nosy grown-up who's always hovering around. Quick to offer a teacher unwanted help.

Meanwhile, I've been looking up a bit of the generation theory espoused by Howe and Strauss.

Wikipedia gives a good overview, and the authors' website, FourthTurning.com includes brief explanations of generations & archetypes and history & turnings, along with historical charts of the generations and turnings over time.

I haven't read much of their work, but their dreaded impending Fourth Turning Crisis reminds me suspiciously of past best-sellers like The great depression of 1990 and Time bomb 2000.

Besides, as Ian remarked when I tried to describe the theory -- how can you take seriously a generational cycle which doesn't pair up the flappers and the boomers?

PS: I know that journal comments have been wonky all day; sorry, not much I can do about it. If it continues tomorrow, I may create a temporary separate comment page for the journal, but hopefully it won't come to that...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:56 AM

The Chronicle of Higher Education provides some historical context to the shifting relationships among parents, students and schools:

Courts once considered colleges to be standing in loco parentis — literally, in place of parents — and responsible for the supervision and protection of their students. The in loco parentis doctrine met its demise in the wake of the student-protest era in the 1960s, when courts concluded that colleges did not have the power or the ability to regulate students' off-campus conduct.

In the 70s courts went further, making clear that the modern university could not be considered an ensurer of the safety of its students, whom the law treated as adults. Continuing that trend, throughout the 80s and 90s courts generally rejected the notion of a special relationship between colleges and students that would shield students from accepting responsibility for their own behavior. In general, they held that college is an educational, not a custodial, institution, and that it is both unrealistic and inconsistent with the objectives of higher education to hold institutions liable for injuries resulting from irresponsible student conduct.

But while most courts viewed students as adults, responsible for their own actions, others found ways to find colleges liable when they attempted to protect students through security measures or regulation of conduct but injury resulted nonetheless. One case occurred in the 1980s and involved dormitory security, and then others involving such conduct as fraternity hazing and alcohol use followed in the 90s. The disagreement among courts on the standards for assessing institutional accountability continues today. Now the courts appear to be moving more in the direction of in loco parentis or the creation of a special relationship between students and the university so as to impose a more rigorous duty on institutions to supervise the activities of their students. While the reasons for the shift are unclear, it may reflect the normal swing of the pendulum, general litigation trends, or maybe even pressure from helicopter parents.

In addition to such judicial precedents, another rule is worthy of mention: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, also known as Ferpa or the Buckley Amendment. That federal statute generally limits what administrators are permitted to tell parents, absent student consent, about their children's academic performance and social conduct. It is based on the assumption that students are adults and their college activities are their own business, not their parents'.

Does anybody else find it ironic that the college students of the 60s and 70s who so stridently fought for their own autonomy and to get schools off their back are now the parents striving equally hard to put their own kids under even tighter scrutiny?

Hypocritical, much?

PS: Okay, it's not just me.

I've found several references online to a 2000 article titled "Understanding our students" by Laurence Smith, published in NetResults.

I can't access the article itself, but these quotes (which are reproduced in multiple places) sum it up very nicely:

• "In effect, baby boomers have projected their college behavior and attitudes onto their own children. And since baby boomers who attended college exceed in percentage and numbers any other generation of Americans at that time, their voice is very loud and their power very real."
• "It is strange that the generation who, in their youth, fought so hard for their own personal freedom and to liberate themselves of parental control, has tethered their own children with pagers, cell phones and parental notification policies."
• "These are some ironies. Baby boomers are the generation who toppled 'in loco parentis.' Today, as parents, they demand through the laws and policies they advocate and pass, as well as through the numerous lawsuits they bring, that today's college and university administrators act on their behalf to manage and protect their children."

So, since the generational aspect is apparently known in academic circles, why can't somebody please give these parents a clue?

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:05 AM

Monday morning, Ian and I were discussing the trend of overprotective "helicopter parents," so called for their tendancy to hover over even adult children, prepared to swoop down at a moments' notice at the first hint of trouble.

It's a major issue for colleges and universities; needless to say, The Chronicle of Higher Education has been all over it, reporting that some schools have even trained "parent bouncers" for orientation:

  One father [...] was adamant that he would register for classes with his son and refused to back down. He said that "we" — he and his son — would balance art classes with business offerings. Ms. Comey[, director of University of Vermont's orientation program,] calmed him down and grabbed an academic adviser to join the conversation. The son registered on his own and emerged with a schedule that had art courses and one in economics.
  The University of California at Santa Barbara employs a similar strategy, using orientation staff to keep parents at bay when new students choose classes. Carolyn Buford, associate dean of students at the university, says communication is important. For example, she says, "We explain to parents that a course on vampire literature does meet a requirement."

And they note the challenge this poses for colleges:

  When today's parents were in college, there typically was a pay phone down the dormitory hall and a long line on Sunday of students waiting to use it. It was embarrassing if parents tried to call their children — and mostly it was impossible to get through, so they usually didn't bother. Today students and parents are in constant communication by cellphone, text messaging, and e-mail. Parents are much more involved in the minute-by-minute lives of their children — or at least have the illusion that they are.
  That parents and students communicate easily and frequently has to be a good thing, but the change in parental expectations raises challenges for colleges. The good intentions of helicopter parents often collide with the "teachable moment" instincts of administrators who believe that students should assume responsibility for their own academic and social progress. If parents plan their child's course schedule, and the courseload turns out to be more than the child can handle, the helicopter parent will often neither take ownership of the decision nor encourage the student to take responsibility. Instead, helicopter parents are inclined to criticize academic advisers or other administrators for failing to provide adequate guidance. Yet college is a time for maturing adolescents to learn how to make decisions for themselves, whether good or bad, and then learn how to manage the consequences. Parents who become too involved in their children's college experience deprive them of this crucial opportunity to grow up.

According to a recent College Parents of America survey, “One out of every three parents (34%) communicated with their child either daily or more than once a day. Additionally, 74% of those parents responding communicated with their son or daughter at least two or three times a week.”

Research on the 'electronic tether' shows “technological changes have influenced the transition to adulthood during the college years.”

[See, this is the kind of social informatics that fascinates me, and why EPCOT's Future World will always remain obsolete. The most interesting changes aren't the technological advances, but the societal changes they cause. And that's both inherently controversial and hard to find corporate sponsorship. But I digress...]

How far does it go? From a Time Magazine article last year:

  Mara Sapon-Shevin, an education professor at Syracuse University, has had college students tell her they were late for class because their mothers didn't call to wake them up that morning. She has had students call their parents from the classroom on a cell phone to complain about a low grade and then pass the phone over to her, in the middle of class, because the parent wanted to intervene.

Oy!

I suppose meddling in college may seem like a natural outgrowth from involvement in a child's early schooling. But they don't leave off after graduation. Get a load of these stories:

• A March WSJ article says parents are involving themselves in their kids' jobhunting efforts:

    Helicopter parents are going to work. From Vanguard Group and St. Paul Travelers to General Electric and Boeing, managers are getting phone calls from parents asking them to hire their 20-something kids. Candidates are stalling on job offers to consult with their parents. Parents are calling hiring managers to protest pay packages and try to renegotiate, employers say.

• And the January/February Fast Company notes these efforts continue beyond the hiring process:

    Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," [psychiatrist Dr. Charles] Sophy says.
    A 22-year-old pharmaceutical employee learned that he was not getting the promotion he had been eyeing. His boss told him he needed to work on his weaknesses first. The Harvard grad had excelled at everything he had ever done, so he was crushed by the news. He told his parents about the performance review, and they were convinced there was some misunderstanding, some way they could fix it, as they'd been able to fix everything before. His mother called the human-resources department the next day. Seventeen times. She left increasingly frustrated messages: "You're purposely ignoring us"; "you fudged the evaluation"; "you have it in for my son." She demanded a mediation session with her, her son, his boss, and HR -- and got it. At one point, the 22-year-old reprimanded the HR rep for being "rude to my mom."

Where does it end?

Now I've often asked my parents advice with various matters -- but that's initiated by me, and at my request. And generally speaking, we talk to our parents and then apply the advice ourselves (or not). I don't think my parents have even met any of my coworkers, except those we invited to our wedding. The closest our parents have come to taking over an issue have been (1) my dad coming into town for the closing on our house, and (2) Ian's dad helping deal contractor-to-contractor with the post-fire construction. But again, those were at our request.

At any rate, Ian and I realized that we grew up during the era of the latchkey kid "crisis" and before the notion of "quality time" took hold in parenting advice. And we feel incredibly grateful for that. Our parents trusted us with responsibility and left us alone, rather than micromanaging our schedules. And, we grew up into relatively self-sufficient adults.

So, thanks, mom and dad!

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:00 PM

[No, I'm not being self-referenial.]

So, I've given up on Peter Ackroyd's Albion: the origins of the English imagination for now.

The book is supposed to be a look at the popular image of England.

It started out promising, with a first chapter on the enduring importance of trees and woods, from Druidic worship through Robin Hood to Tolkein's Ents...

[Although even then, I wondered about Germanic forest fairy tales and similar primal imagery in other parts of the world. For that matter, Joyce Kilmer, who wrote one of the most famous modern odes to trees, was American, not English.]

Certainly, riddles are prevalent in English literature from the Anglo-Saxon day through Lewis Carroll, but is that a particularly English innovation... or just a human one? It's hard to tell without mention of other cultures in comparison.

Or what about this passage?

As Taine puts the question (of the Anglo-Saxons), “Is there any people which has formed so tragic a conception of life? Is there any which has peopled its infantine mind with such gloomy dreams? . . .

My gut response was Russia, much more than the English.

And it goes on in this vein.

This kind of exceptionalism without context makes me want to second-guess all Ackroyd's claims.

Given the complexity of the prose, the book is not terribly well-suited to reading in small interruptible chunks. And since that's what my time has been like of late (reading mostly at lunch and a bit before bed), I've put the book down for now, only 42 pages in.

In the meantime, I picked up Shakespeare and the Jews from the library yesterday, and while I've only just finished the introduction, I'm already enthralled.

Similar to The Anatomy of Puck and King James and the history of homosexuality, it looks at what the English of the period believed about Jews, which in many respects has a greater impact than the actual facts of Jewish life.

Shapiro excerpts some reading notes Samuel Coleridge made while browsing John Donne's sermons, expressing astonishment at the "absurd legend" Donne espoused:

"It was, I am aware, not an age of critical account: grit, bran, and flour were swallowed in the unsifted mass of their erudition." [...] For most of the nearly two centuries since Coleridge wrote wrote these words, historians and literary critics have sifted through the cultural record of early modern England, carefully separating out the grit from the bran and flour. One of the aims of this book is to recover some of the grittier and, for many, less palatable aspects of this age.

Oh, and I'm rather tickled by the theory that "Jews, after their expulsion from England, had migrated to Scotland, which was thought to explain why the Scots were so cheap and hated pork." Heh.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:11 PM

                                                                                 Copyright © Jorge Cham

Yes, I am such a geek...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:06 PM

Stephen Colbert is a very funny man. He was a geek who played D&D in high school and currently teaches Sunday school.

A recent Conan O'Brian interview reveals all! View the top clip and watch it for yourself. (source)

My husband is also a very funny man. He is a geek who played D&D in high school and currently teaches Sunday school.

Stephen, honey, if you're out there? If you ever need a stand-in some night, give Ian a call, okay???

Further evidence of Colbert's geekiness: Jon Stewart interviewing Viggo Mortensen, Colbert on balrogs vs. the Devil (YouTube).

And can't you see that Sunday school training when he interviewed Congressman Westmoreland regarding the Ten Commandments?

[For that matter, Ian heard about the Sunday school gig and said "no wonder he can handle government officials so well."]

Finally, have you heard about Wikiality (rhymes with "Reality")? It's a clip worth watching if you've ever used Wikipedia.

Stephen Colbert did actually edit his Wikipedia entries on the air, as the Wikipedia logs show, and the account has since been blocked (the talk page on the decision is rather amusing, too).

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 PM

“Let me be your spaniel; I'm in love... with... you...”

So, yesterday evening we went to see the New England Shakespeare Festival perform A Midsommer Nights Dreame -- the sixth production of the play I've seen.[*]

It was a perfectly servicable production of MND. Unfortunately, by this point, I think I've seen the play so many times, that adequate isn't enough. The first act (before intermission; not Shakespeare's Act I) really didn't do much for me; I enjoyed the second act much more, particularly given several creative innovations I haven't seen elsewhere.

But I'm not really NESF's target audience. This was a free performance in the park, and one of the most inspiring things I saw was the overwhelming number of families with small children in attendance. Not all the kids were paying attention, but I spotted many of them totally engrossed in the story. And anything that gets kids into Shakespeare... well, it just warmed my heart.

NESF's shtick is that actors only get cue scripts for their characters, and they only rehearse fights, dances, and songs. Actors carry their rolls onstage with them and visibly refer to them during their scenes. A prompter sits onstage with the book in case somebody loses their place or forgets a line.

Despite certain claims to authenticity, they're definitely having anachronistic fun. The bookholder is dressed like a referee and blows a whistle when things get too off-track. [He also whistled for time-outs several times when helicopter noise drowned out the sound.] And, to make sure actors don't get too comfortable with their roles, the cast rotates parts from performance to performance. This style of acting doesn't lend itself to nuance or particularly inspired performances. And unfortunately, I don't have a list of who played what in last night's show to even credit the actors properly.

The biggest flaw in the production was the sound. Several mikes were set up around the "stage", but the actors often wandered amongst the audience. While it made for a more interactive experience, the dialog was often totally inaudible. This is particularly inexcusable for a production geared towards people not already familiar with the story nor comfortable with the language. Either the performers need to stay within range of the stationary mikes, or somebody needs to directly mike the performers.

Ian and I read along with the actors, and aside from the occasional flubbed line, they did perform the play almost totally unabridged. They skipped over the fairies blessing of the house in the final act, and went straight from Theseus' departure to Puck's "If we shadows have offended." No big loss -- particularly since the kids in the audience seemed to be reaching the limits of their attention spans -- and that was the only cut we noticed.

Costuming was pseudo-Elizabethan, except for Hippolyta (wearing a Madonna-esque cone-shaped bra) and the fairies. The lovers were color-coded according to their intended pairings: Helena and Demetrius in green, Hermia and Lysander in shades of rose.

The cast doubled several of the roles (as is typical for MND): Theseus/Oberon, Hippolyta/Titania, Philostrate/Puck, Hermia/First Fairy, and mechanicals/fairy attendants. Because of the doubling, they rearranged the end of Act IV, Scene I somewhat: Bottom awoke before Theseus and Hippolyta found the sleeping couples, thus giving them time to change out of their fairy costumes. No affect on the plot, just interesting to note (and something I'll be watching for in the future).

Finally, two particularly clever bits of slapstick they added to Pyramus and Thisbe that I haven't seen before:

"Wall" is instructed to hold his arm outstretched with his fingers forming the chink through which the lovers kiss. That's generally how it's played. In Shakespeare's Shakespeare, John Meagher provides textual evidence to suggest Snout's arm got heavy and he lowered it to somewhere near his crouch. ["My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones..."]

Well, that's how NESF played it! Pyramus and Thisbe crouching between Snout's outspread legs...

Also, Thisbe had particularly... buoyant... falsies, and when she stabbed herself, they popped!

The New England Shakespeare Festival have six more performances scheduled over the next week in New Hampshire, Vermont and Lowell, MA.

Apparently, the Arlington Center for the Arts shows a Shakespeare in the Park every summer. Now that I know, I'll be on the lookout; expect announcements in Bard in Boston

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:00 AM

We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously!

Bit of a last minute notice (though I did post about it a couple weeks ago on Bard in Boston).

This afternoon @ 5pm @ Menotomy Rocks Park in Arlington:

FREE Midsommer Nights Dreame

by The New England Shakespeare Festival

Directions, further details and map

We'll be there. Should we expect to see you?

Also, forthcoming Shakespeare plans for next weekend:

• Friday night, going to Worcester for As You Like It by Redfeather Theatre Company
• Followed by a Saturday matinee of Shakespeare & Co's Merry Wives in Lenox

We're getting a hotel room for the night in Worcester rather than drive back and forth. Not sure what we'll do Saturday morning before the matinee: Maybe a museum like Higgins Armory or the Eric Carle Museum, or the Yiddish Book Center... Maybe just bop around and see the sights... Who knows...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:15 AM

So, I've been reading various reviews and retrospectives of Lumos, a Harry Potter symposium held last week in Las Vegas.

And a portion of this comment stood out for me:

If you want to run an academic-only conference, then fine...I know of many such conferences. However, you can't include fannish programming and games and activities and encourage people to wear costumes. (i.e., the kinds of things Lumos did that attracted the majority of the registrants) and then hope to convince everybody that Lumos is entirely about formal scholarship.

Am I wrong that this makes me want to see (and attend) an academic Shakespeare conference where people can show up in costumes?

PS: The Daily Snitch has been collecting Lumos con reports here and here