Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:31 PM

I spent much of the afternoon trying to write. Even kicked Ian out of the house (to watch SoaP, so hardly a hardship) for a few hours.

I think my wordcount is actually shorter than it was before, as I eliminated my original opening sentence for the scene and then struggled with deleting about a dozen other scene openers, ending with none.

Nyarg.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:54 PM

I was playing around with MyHeritage.com's face recognition applet:

I'm also fond of this pairing:

Have you tried it? Any juicy pairings?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:11 AM

As I only just saw John Cole's Friday Catblogging this morning.

click to enlarge:

And all I can think when staring at this picture is the animated Tick episode, "Armless, not harmless" in which our heroes attempt to infiltrate a group of supervillains:

The Forehead: “Wait a second - something smells fishy here. I don't think you guys are villains!”

The Tick: “Oh no, We're - we're bad.”

Arthur: “Oh yeah, the worst!”

The Forehead: “OK, if you guys are so evil, why don't you just... EAT THIS KITTEN!”

Kitten: “Mew”

The Tick: “What? No way, Mister! That's just wrong!”

The Tick: “We'll take that kitten, you wretch! How dare you! I knew evil was bad, but eating kitten is just plain... plain wrong! And NO ONE should do it, EVER!”

Let that be a lesson to you.

Of course, that scene always reminds me of the demon poker game in the Buffy episode "Life Serial":

Three demons all turn to reach under their chairs. Each demon produces a small kitten. They put the kittens in a basket on the table. The kittens mew.

BUFFY: “You play for kittens?!”

SPIKE: “So, who's gonna advance me a tiny tabby, get me started?”

Has anybody ever noticed how much time one can spend "free associating"?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:15 PM

Been meaning to post this for a few days.

TSA "Junior Screener" Badge

The TSA screeners at SFO (San Francisco International Airport) are handing out these stickers to deserving young travelers.

Now, I can remember getting pilot wings from the airlines, or fake police or fire badges -- but TSA?

Every time I look at this, I'm reminded of a work of classic literature:

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.

Via Boing Boing     

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:50 PM

I check Bruce Schneier's blog for security news.

I wasn't expecting to run across something like this:

13-foot Tentacle Found off Santa Cruz Coast

And in other creepy animal news, I can't believe I never heard this cat story before. I'd consider it an urban legend, but I can imagine people being that stupid. Via Shadesong.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:32 PM

From The Stranger of Seattle, comes this article:

Shopping Spree:
How to Get Free Books, CDs, and Movies from Focus on the Family — Thereby Taking Money out of the Pockets of Anti-Gay Bigots — in 12 Easy Steps

Focus on the Family is a Christian-right politically-active organization founded by James Dobson. []

The long and short of it is this:

Go to the Focus on the Family Resource Page, and browse around for anything you'd want to own. Nothing in their "store" has prices -- just suggested donations.

There's a lot of shlock, but you can get last year's theatrical Narnia movie on widescreen DVD. Also, a bundle which includes the 1970s TV animated Narnia. They've got books on tape, abridged but with a full cast, including all seven Narnia books on 19 CDs and classics like Les Misérables, Little Women, and Silas Marner.

Keep the amount in your cart below $100. According to the article, "Focus on the Family won't send you more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip."

When you're ready, proceed to checkout. You'll need to create an account (and it annoyingly shows the screen twice), but then it takes you to a screen which asks: How much would you like to donate?

Radio buttons default to the product "price" and suggest several higher amounts.
The last radio button is: "Enter other total amount:" and you can just enter 0.

It'll prompt you again with an attempt to guilt you into spending more, but stand firm.

It's that easy.

If you're worried about spam, free email addresses are easy enough to get nowadays. And if you're worried about junk mailing lists, mung your name or address just enough that you'll be able to recognize anything that comes out of it.

I've been wavering back and forth a bit over the ethics of posting this, but since it has already been published by independent newspaper and is making its way across the blogosphere, I suspect my contribution will be a drop in the bucket.

Also, as Noel Black points out:

[I]f your conscience begins to bother you, think of it this way: Focus on the Family would probably like for you to have the materials anyway, because there's that minute chance that, once in your hands, the materials may inspire you to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

I'm not sure how long this will last; I can easily see them taking it down if too many people abuse the site, so act now!

PS: Since I started writing this, the site went down -- maybe they caught on. It appears to be up again now, but who knows for how long. Order quickly if you're interested...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:28 PM

Ian wrote this, but since my blog has more readers than his, I agreed to repost it:

I just put this together. . .

From the Chicago Trib:

Karr has apparently been living abroad since being released from a California jail in 2001 after an arrest on child pornography charges. He is being brought to Colorado, where he will face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, Ann Hurt, an official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in Thailand.

Like most sane people, my reaction was "WTF? Why the hell is the Department of Homeland Security involved in this, let alone in freakin' THAILAND?"

The 24-hour news channels are all abuzz with the potential confession of some random guy in Thailand who says that he killed Jon-Benet Ramsey, or however you spell it.

They're NOT all abuzz with the fact that President's warrantless wiretapping program has been found BOTH illegal AND unconstitutional.

Just sayin'.

Related links:

• Think Progress: Mainstream TV Media Drops The Ball On NSA Ruling, Instead Devotes Attention To JonBenet Ramsey (with charts showing exactly how much time the major network news shows devoted to each)
• Daily Show video: Algebra of Cable News -- War and terrorist threats are all less important than a break in a 10 year old murder case.

Added 7:45 pm:

Okay, others are noticing. The top story on Salon.com is:

Wait, was Karl Rove in Boulder this week?
It's the best explanation for the way an incredible JonBenet Ramsey confession knocked real news off the air.

I'm rather fond of this paragraph:

In fact, if he's smart, at this very moment, Rove should be standing outside Scott Peterson's jail cell, turning the key and yelling, "What are you waiting for? Run! Run, you idiot! Run like the wind! You have 24 hours before we call Greta Van Susteren!"

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:05 PM

• Stephen Colbert on Media Scare Tactics
• Jon Stewart on CNN's Target: USA
• Keith Olbermann on the Nexus of Politics and Terror

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:58 PM

Shania the octopus © Bill O'Leary

Via Gary Farber: Houdinis of the Deep:

A leading indicator of octopus intelligence is that they get bored. ... Hence, while better-behaved angelfish and clams entertain themselves, it is the job of the aquarium staff to entertain octopuses as if they were bright, spoiled and manipulative children demanding attention....

As [Shania's keeper and personal enrichment tutor, Rick] Quintero says, "Not every tank gets Mr. Potato Head."

Science-blogger Pharyngula has more on octopus brains.

In fact, if you're at all interested in cephalapods, you should read Pharyngula, who makes them a frequent topic. There's also Squid.us, a "blog for all things squid." [Related posts on this blog include: Undercover octopus, Giant octopus vs. shark, Baby octopus and Giant squid.]

Ian's backing down a bit from the Octopus Intelligent Design Theory he advocated last year -- he's become much less impressed since learning that squids' digestive process passes food through the brain to the stomach. He doesn't think much of a design that squishes one's brain every time one eats (although it's a useful bit of knowledge if you have to escape from a cephalopod)...

Fortunately, other people may be picking up the concept. Get a load of this Cephalopod Pietà (larger version; actual octopus and child). And what are we supposed to make of Signs of the coming Cephalopocalypse and this imagery?

Old news, but:

Australian scientists say global warming is turning the world's squid into much larger creatures, with huge appetites and fast breeding cycles....

Scientists say that they have found that a 1 per cent increase in water temperature causes juvenile squid to double in size....

"If places have been overfished or the squid have been removed, squids have often moved into those areas and established themselves very quickly," [Dr George Jackson, from the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies] said.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:06 PM

Sometimes, when I get bored, I go over to my SiteMeter statistics and look at what search queries people are using to find my site.

Ian keeps urging me to follow other bloggers' lead and write a post about some of the odder searches people conduct, possibly answering some of the unanswered questions.

But that's not quite the purpose of this post.

The last several days, I've gotten quite a few very similar queries...

• f5135 dell
• recall dell f5135
• dell battery recall F5135
• dell battery F5135
• f5135 dell battery recall
• dell battery recall F5135
• dell recall f5135
• dell battery F5135 recall
• f5135 dell

These searches come from all over the world, not just the United States.

So even though Dell may be saying that this particular model is safe and not on the recall list, it sure looks like other owners of this battery share my concern...

How is the F5135 related to the F5132 (which is on the list)?

Dell, investigate the F5135 battery and report back to us!

Any other F5135 battery owners care to share their experiences?

My laptop gets uncomfortably hot at times, and I'm not sure what to do.

For piece of mind, I'd like a new battery...

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:59 PM

Why my browser seems to hang trying to access www.journalfen.net addresses, but is fine with journalfen.net without the preceeding www?

I don't think this is a DNS thing upstream, because other browsers on my machine can access either without problem.

Alternately, sometimes Opera can't access any JournalFen addresses, but I can get there fine from other machines.

What gives, and how can I fix it?

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:54 PM

So, Ursula K. Le Guin has seen a preview of the Earthsea film by Studio Ghibli.

Here's her first response.

I've never actually read the Earthsea series, but I feel sorry for her and her fans, given comments like this:

Of course a movie shouldn't try to follow a novel exactly -- they're different arts, very different forms of narrative. There may have to be massive changes. But it is reasonable to expect some fidelity to the characters and general story in a film named for and said to be based on books that have been in print for 40 years.

Both the American and the Japanese film-makers treated these books as mines for names and a few concepts, taking bits and pieces out of context, and replacing the story/ies with an entirely different plot, lacking in coherence and consistency. I wonder at the disrespect shown not only to the books but to their readers.

Both because I've been intermittently discussing whitewashed casting for the past week^1&2, and because that was one of the major complaints about the Sci-Fi channel's version, here's what Ms. Le Guin has to say about that aspect of the adaptation:

My purpose in making most of the people of Earthsea colored, and the whites a marginal and rather backward people, was of course a moral one, aimed at young American and European readers. Fantasy heroes of the European tradition were conventionally white -- just about universally so in 1968 -- and darkness of skin was often associated with evil. By simply subverting an expectation, a novelist can undermine a prejudice.

The makers of the American TV version, while boasting that they were "color blind," reduced the colored population of Earthsea to one and a half. I have blasted them for whitewashing Earthsea, and do not forgive them for it.

The issue is different in Japan. I cannot address the issue of race in Japan because I know too little about it. But I know that an anime film runs smack into the almost immutable conventions of its genre. Most of the people in anime films look -- to the American/European eye -- white. I am told that the Japanese audience perceives them differently. I am told that they may perceive this Ged as darker than my eye does. I hope so. Most of the characters look white to me, but there is at least a nice variation of tans and beiges. And Tenar's fair hair and blue eyes are right, since she's a minority type from the Kargish islands.

Via Whileaway, a feminist F & SF discussion community, which also has more info about the forthcoming film.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:50 PM

So, only two weeks after I blogged my concern over my Dell laptop getting hot, Dell has expanded its laptop battery recall by another 4.1 million battery packs.

Here's Consumer Product Safety Commission release, still pointing to the same DellBatteryProgram.com.

I'm not sure whether they fully updated the list of battery models, because I still don't see mine (F5135)...

Nonetheless, it has me concerned.

I've become quite careful about making sure my laptop is well ventilated underneath, not putting it on padded surfaces, etc, but it still can get uncomfortably hot.

And if there is a problem, I don't think I should have to bear the cost of a replacement on my own, assuming they've tailored their recall as narrowly as possible.

Grumble.

© John Gurzinski

PS: Slashdotters say the page has been updated. Still doesn't list my battery, though.

And get a load of this scary photo & story from the New York Times:

[A] Dell notebook in the cab of a pickup parked alongside Lake Mead in Nevada caught fire, igniting ammunition in the glove box and then the gas tanks. The truck exploded. "A few minutes later and we'd have been coming up out of the canyon when the notebook blew up," said Thomas Forqueran, owner of the computer and truck. "Somebody is going to wind up getting killed."

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:48 PM

More stories making the rounds about last week's terror plot.

First, from Greg Palast:

So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says...

But wait a minute. I'd better shut my mouth. The sign here in the airport says, "Security is no joking matter." But if security's no joking matter, why does this guy dressed in a high-school marching band outfit tell me to dump my Frappuccino and take off my shoes? All I can say is, Thank the Lord the "shoe bomber" didn't carry Semtex in his underpants.

Today's a RED and ORANGE ALERT day. How odd. They just caught the British guys with the chemistry sets. But when these guys were about to blow up airliners, the USA was on YELLOW alert. That's a "lowered" threat notice.

According to the press office from the Department of Homeland Security, lowered-threat Yellow means that there were no special inspections of passengers or cargo. Isn't it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn't use these pretty color codes.

He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day's terror color.

"I can't say I ever have. I mean, who would?"

He smiled. "The terrorists."

America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won't be monitored. You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to get a jump on George Bush's team.

There are three possible explanations for the Administration's publishing a good-day-for-bombing color guidebook.

1. God is on Osama's side.
2. George is on Osama's side.
3. Fear sells better than sex.

A gold star if you picked #3.

Continued...

Meanwhile, in the UK, Craig Murray writes:

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

Continued...

Thanks to Susie and Anna for the links.

PS: From BoingBoing comes this announcement:

Following on the now-infamous pictures of confiscated liquids and gels being dumped into plastic bins, some other bloggers and I thought that this called for a new anthology of short fiction. We're launching a contest to find stories for a new anthology called "It Came From Airport Security."

In a nutshell - stories can be of any genre (and we mean *any*) as long as they deal with the results of someone (or something) being exposed to the chemicals in one of the confiscation bins. There are prizes (and room to add more prizes, should we come across any additional to give), and yes, there is a submission fee - but we've tried to keep it small. All stories must be licensed under a BY-SA 2.5 license, and the resulting anthology (and the website accompanying it) will be licensed the same. All entries - not just the top selections - will be considered for publication on the website.

Further details on rules and prizes.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:45 PM

Just wanted to point out that today's Astronomy Picture of the Day makes a lovely desktop wallpaper...

Not all of them work; some (like APOD's birthday) are too busy. But some are quite beautiful. Get a load of Friday's, for example.

Hmm... has anybody combined an aggregator with a wallpaper randomizer to automatically update the wallpaper to today's APOD?

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:05 PM

1. Okay, it looks like I wasn't the first to think that Merry Wives of Windsor would make an excellent story for Lucille Ball.

Get a load of this Playbill cover from a 2003 production by the Shakespeare Festival/LA.

Sounds like the show itself merely used a more generic 1950s setting, rather than recreating the sitcom characters, but still...

2. Last week, I blogged about Branagh setting his AYLI in Meiji Japan while casting very few Asian actors.

About a day later, Kate Nepveu wrote about Oliver Stone's World Trade Center turning two real-life rescuers from black to white.

Hollywood reality is less diverse than real reality.

3. Scanning the blogs, I see others beat me to the TSA-banning-liquids/Mentos+soda connection.

dood abides on My Left Wing even offered photoshopped images. [via Interesting Times]

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:15 PM

Relatively unrelated to the performances. Includes spoilers for 400-year-old plays:

Has anybody noticed that the very first line in As You Like It is, effectively, "As you know, Bob...":

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness...

As a matter of fact, there are several exchanges in the first two scenes in which characters rehash what they already know for the audience's benefit:

There's no news at the court, sir, but the old news: that is...

Possibly also Rosalind and Celia's introduction as well...

For that matter, the ending of AYLI (from line 2550 or so, on) can be summed up as "My denouement iz pastede on, yey."

Yet more proof (if any were needed) that skilled writers can break the rules.

---

In Shakespeare's Shakespeare, John C. Meagher discusses the dramaturgy of doubling.

He points out ways that Shakespeare indicates to the audience that an existing actor is onstage in a different role (such as the way Lear calls for his fool four times before the fool appears), and then some of the misdirection Shakespeare uses for an audience familiar with this custom.

One example of the latter, he suggests, is Oliver's return in Act IV Scene 3. Over 45 lines pass where this stranger narrates the story of Orlando rediscovering Oliver. It's told in the third person, with Oliver described most uncharitably (and most unlike the polite fellow telling the tale), until at last, it's revealed that this is Oliver.

Meagher argues that this makes Oliver's conversion more plausible, since the audience is already led down the path to believing this is a wholly different character.

Unfortunately, doubling isn't as common in modern plays, but we were wondering if there were any way of staging the scene in this manner for modern audiences...

---

In the midst of watching Merry Wives of Windsor, I suddenly envisioned the wives as played by Lucy and Ethel, with Desi Arnaz as the jealous Master Ford. It would so work.

I saw a production of Loves' Labour's Lost which turned the minor characters into Marx Brothers; this is a closer fit. Like I said in my review, it's a classic comedy setup.

Ian rebutted by proposing W.C. Fields as Falstaff for such a production.

Any other appropriate casting suggestions, for this or other plays?

---

What would happen to the respective stories if Mistress Quickly swapped places with Friar Lawrence as go-betweens?

And wasn't there a LARP somewhen which combined Shakespeare's stories and characters into one large milieu?

---

With respect to Merry Wives, I'm still thinking about the delay caused by scene changes.

There aren't many sets...

I wonder if anyone's tried an inverse theater in the round, where the audience sits in the center (on swivelling seats) surrounded by more permanent sets. The northeast corner is the Garter, the west wall is the street scene, the northwest corner has one house interior, the southwest corner the other house, and so on...

---

I was quite delighted to discover that both plays I saw this weekend concluded with jokes over the confusion between girls and boys wearing dresses.

For those unfamiliar with the history, in Shakespeare's day, girls were played by boys in dresses.

So playing around with that turns the whole play totally meta, imo.

I suppose that's all I have to say about it right now.

Anyone else have something to contribute regarding these plays?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:42 PM

Okay, my RSS feed is back below 150k. Of course, given LJ's peccadillos, it won't re-check my feed until sometime tomorrow morning.

Anybody care to make any bets on when that might be? My vote is for sometime around 11am. Higher? Lower?

PS: Added later: Okay, it read my feed sometime around 3:30 am. Better than I'd expected, though still not as good as a few years ago...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:39 PM

Okay, it turns out somebody has created a Motivational Poster Generator, which people have used for such things as these RPG posters, Star Trek posters, and other pop-culture references.

Much fun to be had, but I just wanted to point out that when I made these back in 2002...

...I designed them all on my own.

I still think they're pretty good, although the context may not be as obvious.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 PM

After refusing to read my syndicated feed all day (how I miss the days LJ checked my site hourly!), LiveJournal just choked and said my feed is too big.

So, a couple shorter posts to clear the congestion...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:42 PM

If anyone still thinks of Shakespeare as elitist highbrow entertainment, send them to Merry Wives in Lenox, where we enjoyed the gamut of lowbrow comedy: bathroom humor, bawdy slapstick, double entendres, drag, ethnic stereotypes, fat jokes, funny accents, malapropisms, meta-jokes, you name it. One bit of shtick that had the audience roaring was entirely conveyed by sound effects!

Falstaff (Malcolm Ingram) informs the disguised Mr. Ford (Michael Hammond) that he has a cunning plan to seduce Ford's wife... Photo: © Kevin Sprague

You see, Sir John Falstaff wishes to seduce Mistress Ford and Mistress Page -- either or both of them. Not just for lust, but he's hoping to see some lucre, too. Yet the women realize they're being played and decide to turn the tables on him. Add in a jealous husband, plus three rival suitors for the Pages' daughter, and you have a classic comedy setup.

The play opens with a quick dance involving the entire cast, which seemed somewhat archaic to me. But it then speedily gets into the action, with several righteous men complaining about the company Falstaff keeps, and making plans to woo young Ann Page.

The two less-suitable suitors were quite amusing. Dave Demke played Slender as flamboyantly foppish. [Ian preferred the more gormless characterization by Theater @ First.] Jonathan Croy's Dr. Caius was so funny, I had to check the text to see whether some of his lines were actually Shakespeare's (they were). Meanwhile, Ryan Winkles, as Master Fenton, made a most impressive entrance.

Of course the center of the play is provided by Falstaff and the two wives of the title.

Malcolm Ingram certainly dominates the stage as the larger-than-life Falstaff, though that's helped by heavy makeup and abundant padding. Everything about him was excess.

As Mistress Ford, Elizabeth Aspenlieder was funny and sexy and sometimes in over her head, but always entertainingly so.

...but not if Mrs. Ford (Elizabeth Aspenlieder) and Mrs. Page (Corinna May) have anything to say about it... Photo: © Kevin Sprague

Corinna May's Mistress Page was the more sensible of the two, at times reminding me of Katherine Helmond.

However, the true delight of the cast was Michael Hammond as Master Ford. Whether fuming in jealous rage, disguised as the mysterious Master Brook, or enjoying his happily ever after, he was always a delight to watch.

There are so many more names I'd like to mention, including Elizabeth Ingram as Mistress Quickly and Robert Biggs as Sir Hugh Evans, but really, the whole cast was superb. Looking through the program, I was surprised by how few I have seen before, after several years watching the company's Shakespeare plays. And most of those were almost unrecognizable in their costumes and makeup. Perhaps more of the big names are busy with Hamlet? Whatever the reason, the show didn't suffer for it.

I do feel I owe an apology to the cast of Theatre @ First, who performed Merry Wives last summer. Quoting Ian's review:

The biggest problem I felt with the production, however, was the scene changes. They were done quite professionally and rapidly -- lights down, an efficient crew moving the props and changing the scene, and lights up, with recorded Elizabethan music playing. But even though the crew did a fine job, the very fact of scene changes brought the momentum of the play to a screeching halt a dozen times. [...] I'm used to a Shakespearean scene change being indicated by, as one group of characters walks off stage left, another group walks on stage right, maybe a lighting cue, and the new group says something like, "Well, here we are in blah blah blah . . ." -- trusting the dialog and the actors, and trusting the audience.

Multiple times during the show, Shakespeare & Co. dropped the lights for scene changes. They were much quicker about it than Theatre @ First, but then that's a professional company vs. amateur theater. So I wish to retract some of my criticisms of the T@F production.

All in all, this was a fine show, and a perfect demonstration of how much performance can add to lines which may appear flat in print.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 PM

Maybe this explains why Homeland Security is confiscating sodas

Inspired by a comment on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

NPR. Educational radio.