Tohu Bohu

Book Report: The City & The City

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:10:03 -0500

My experience with China Miéville’s stuff was not, I think, usual. I had heard wonderful, wonderful things about Perdido Street Station, and then I read it.

Interestingly, the first time I referred to the book in the blog (May ’04), clearly I hadn’t finished reading it, and was balanced between the annoyances and the virtues. I didn’t blog the thing when I finished it, for some reason, so the next time I refer to it, it’s in the context of another book by another author. At that time (April ’05), I say it’s a book I liked but found frustratingly flawed. This is about the same time that I was evidently surprised by how much I liked the short story “Reports of Certain Events in London”, so it seems that the flaws or annoyances were already uppermost in my mind. Then, by November of 2007, I describe my reaction as more thoroughly negative, saying I did not like it. Didn’t. That was in my report on Un Lun Dun, which I did thoroughly enjoy, and I mean, thoroughly. In italics.

So, as of late 2007, I had formed the idea that I liked one of Mr. Miéville’s books and disliked another. That was based on a memory that was not altogether accurate, but incorrect despite that: if whatever Sources of Reader Pleasure I found in the book at the time had faded in my memory, whilst the Sources of Reader Annoyance had not, I think it’s fair to describe me as not liking the book.

Anyway, that’s where things stood when I started hearing about The City & The City, Mr. Miéville’s most recent novel, and I was not particularly keen on it for that reason. In fact, I had pretty much decided that I would happily read his next YA book, but I probably would not pick up his next grupp book. In addition, the news that he was messing around with the hard-boiled detective didn’t appeal to me (particularly since references wandered between hard-boiled detective, noir and police procedural, meaning that at least some of the people who were writing about liking that aspect had no idea what they were talking about), as if the writer got something I liked wrong, that would be a powerful Source of Reader Annoyance. I actually picked the book up of the New Books shelf at the local public and put it down again, more than once, before eventually taking it home.

So, what I say. My expectations were low. Take that into account, Gentle Readers, because I did read it, and I did move it to the top of my reading list, and I did find it gripping and provocative, and I did enjoy it, and all.

Or that’s how I remember it today.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

One Half and one half is still one half

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:13:00 -0500

Your Humble Blogger doesn’t have any news from last night’s rehearsal. We’re getting close, now: last night we did after-the-intermission twice, tonight we’re doing before-the-intermission (twice, I hope), and after that it’s just running the play through from beginning to end, over and over, until somebody starts applauding.

It is a trifle strange for, running the second half twice like that. The second half is my quiet half: I’m in IV,ii (at the beginning, and then exiting for a page or two and then coming back on) and V,i (my death, a one-page scene) and then I’m one of the ghosts in V,ii and that’s it. So I have a lot of sitting down in the green room in between scenes of tremendous emotion and stress. It’s not actually that hard to gear up for the tremendous emotion and stress; the hard part is sitting back down quietly in the green room afterward. The first half has a lot less backstage time for me, and a lot less emotion on-stage. Build-up, don’t you know. The second half is the payoff for my character#&8212;but since it’s not a play about the Duke of Buckingham, it’s a payoff well before the play actually ends.

And, of course, running the thing twice means that the moment I am backstage, I am thinking about what went wrong in the scene, and what I need to do to get it right. If we’re just running scenes, then I don’t have that moment—I’m just up and doing it again. If we’re running the whole play, then I know I can’t do anything about the problems until tomorrow, so that’s all right. But running half the play is the maximum time for me to fret about doing it again the same night, which is what really makes the whole sitting-in-the-green-room bit so difficult.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Information, Technology, Communication: choose two

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:25:14 -0500

So, a couple of fellows just came through here, around the back by the administration offices. The senior guy said that they were from IT, and that he had just shut down a ‘port’ because a computer had been ‘compromised’, and was sending out a ton of traffic, essentially a denial of service attack.

Now, it’s Spring Break around the university that employs me, so we are running with fewer people than usual, so I can’t altogether blame the fellow for not finding anyone more senior than YHB to tell his interesting story to. I mean, I’m a circulation assistant. All I’m going to do is pass the story on to somebody else. But it’s totally plausible that I was the only employee in the library sitting at a desk at the moment he was through, so what the heck, why not tell me as you are going out, in addition to sending an email or filing a whatnot. The fact that I am only vaguely aware that computers have ports and could not with any accuracy tell you what they do and don’t do, or how I could tell that a computer port had been shut down by IT, well, not his problem, I suppose.

All right, in the interest of passing the story along to somebody who has the unfortunate job of dealing with the now de-ported computer, I ask what seems like the first question someone will ask me: what computer is it? What room is it in? This is a bit of a stumper; the IT fellow has to look it up on his laptop, and his coworker has to co-look it up with him. But the laptop is slow and has difficulty connecting to our wireless, so this takes a little while. Hum de dum. Of course, it being Spring Break, we’re not so terribly busy here, particularly as I cannot (being the only one here) leave the Circ Desk and go shelve any of the five carts of books waiting for me. La de da. My understanding, by the way, is that the public computers here at the library (and of course there are dozens of them) have some sort of security in place specifically to prevent that sort of thing, but security doesn’t always work, does it? Aha! He has the information: the computer in question is in room XXXX, another wing of the building entirely, not in the library at all but in the Hmphm Department.

Well, then. Excellent. I mean, excellent for the library. Not so good for the Hmphm Department. When I began to direct this IT fellow to the Hmphm Department office, so he could pass the story along to them, he shrugged, put his laptop away, and said that no doubt they would call IT when they discovered that their computer didn’t work properly.

I’m mostly passing this story along to you, Gentle Reader, because I don’t really have anybody else to tell it to. I will try to drop by the Hmphm Department office later, but I do need to stay at the Circ Desk, because, you know, only fellow in the library (insert video of cartwheel). I am also passing it along because I am just utterly dumbfounded and flabbergast and disoriented: if this guy really didn’t need to pass along the info to anybody, but was going to wait until the aggrieved user called IT, then what was he doing here?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Book Report: The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:41:19 -0500

I have forgotten all about Jane Smiley’s The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton. That can’t be a good thing.

Hm. Now that I think about it, I do remember the book. Woman marries and moves to Bleeding Kansas. Lots of interesting detail about K.T., the which I had been largely ignorant of. About halfway through the book, the Action Kicks In and the book, perversely, becomes very dull. Not sure why.

This is another one of those Historical Novels in which famous, or at least moderately well-known, historical figures take minor part. Although, unless I am misremembering (which very likely I am, because my memory of the book is very vague indeed—there was some stuff about John Brown, and something about Charles Robinson and John Geary, I think) the Real People are all just off-screen, as it were, with their actions reported by other people, correctly or incorrectly as it might be. I suppose this would insulate Ms. Smiley against the particular criticism that she might be claiming to represent or potentially misrepresent these people. I don’t know. It’s possible that more immediate contact with the newsmakers would have heightened the story a bit. Although, really, much of Ms. Smiley’s point seemed to be a representation of the common folk on the ground, who saw only their neighbors and knew only what rumor told them.

Well, anyway.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Counting on history

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:38:55 -0500

I found myself wondering, as I picked up the census envelope this afternoon, whether I had written about the census before. It turns out I have not. Not altogether surprising, really, since ten years ago I hadn’t started blogging yet. We don’t do these all that often, it turns out.

And I started thinking that it is a bit odd, isn’t it, that the census is actually mandated in the Constitution. I mean, yes, it does make sense from a practical standpoint, given that many of the arguments had to do with the varying levels of population and population density in the States. I don’t know anything about the history of it, but it’s not hard to imagine that there were, in the Constitutional Congress, differing views about exactly how many people there were in Virginia (and how many “people”), and that it was considered important to (a) have an actual enumeration, (2) to have a plan for before that enumeration is completed, and (iii) to have a plan for after you have that enumeration. And somebody would realize that the different rates of population growth would give them and their State more power soon, if the Census were retaken, and managed to slip in a plan for a new Census later.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine that the language might simply say that an enumeration must be done from time to time or even that reapportionment, whenever it is agreed is necessary, must be preceded by an enumeration. At any rate, instead of what we have, a mandated ten year cycle, the Census could have been at the discretion of the Legislature.

And if that was the case, if it was not absolutely compulsory on the clock but could be postponed from year to year, and it figured to cost ten or fifteen billion dollars, and would, when completed, mean that some Representatives would lose their seats, and other departmental budgets would have new requirements (mostly more, but with always the risk of less), and that whatever happened, it would be change, and always at least a trifle unpredictable…

Would we ever take a Census again? In our system, with it’s myriad veto points and methods for delay and obstruction, with the magnificent Madisonian self-interest appeals and incentives that keep the old eye on the re-election ball, with any proposal on the timing of the thing being subject to partisan politicking and public demagoguery, can you imagine it would ever pass?

I’m just thinking about it, since at the moment, of course, reapportionment seems likely to be Bad for My Party, as the last one was, and since My Party is in the majority, they would not be well-advised to spend ten billion on it, in a recession and a war (or two). And if it was Good for My Party, the Other Party would throw a fucking fit if they tried to ram it through. I mean, some of them are having a fit anyway, but you can’t do anything about that; some of them are going to be crazy about whatever shit happens.

Just a thought. No real point to it. My instinct is generally to resist those kinds of restrictions, as if the Legislature isn’t doing some combination of what the people want and what responsible governance requires, there is an electoral remedy. And maybe my imagination is just wrong on this, too influenced by the politics of the moment. Still. That’s what went through my mind.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Book Report: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:03:52 -0500

Your Humble Blogger purchased The Mysterious Benedict Society as a Bedtime Book for my Perfect Non-Reader. It had been recommended, and seemed to be right up her alley. And we started it, and it was terrific. Perhaps beyond terrific. I mean, utterly ut; clever and fun and just basically wonderful. For, oh, a hundred and fifty pages or more. Then, not so much.

We went from delighted glee to boredom very quickly. Now, this was presumably exacerbated by the delay involved in a Bedtime Book: you can’t skim any bits that seem unimportant or even bull through a draggy bit in one go and get back to the action. And there was, eventually, an improvement, although the payoff at the end wasn’t, imao, worth getting there. See, here’s the thing: if you get together a team of Secret Agent children, each of whom has remarkable abilities (one has a trick memory and an astonishing store of trivial knowledge and languages as a residue of a quiz show career; one ran away to the circus and has athletic and acrobatic skills along with a gift for thinking physically, if you know what I mean; one has a puzzler’s mind, with lateral thinking and pattern-matching abilities; one is, er, incredibly rude and obstinate), and you get that team together on an island full of baddies, you need to get them using their various skills very quickly indeed. Not after fifty pages of ordinary snooping. Not after a hundred pages. Not after two hundred pages. Not if you want to keep me happy.

Well, and you see, my disappointment (and my Best Reader’s as well) was more than sufficient to rule out purchasing the second book and reading it out loud. On the other hand, we were of course perfectly willing to get the second book from the library for our Perfect Non-Reader (who was not as cranky about the first one as we were) and letting her read it her own dam’ self. Which she did, and loved it, and then my Best Reader, being out of books for a bit, dipped into it, figuring (I suppose) that she could read the good bit at the beginning, and then when it started to drag, back to the library it would go. But to her pleasure and surprise, she finished it without reaching a draggy bit at all. So I’m about four or five chapters into the second one, and so far, so good.

Which goes to show.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Kings full of Queens

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:44:52 -0500

So, I have decided, unless I change my mind, to go with the easiest idea for a Richard III mix: songs about kings and queens. What the heck. I have a lot of such songs, and it looks to be a good mix, so why make trouble for myself?

Here’s an initial list, with some notes and possibilities, and then I’m throwing the floor open for comments and GR help. My restrictions on this were (a) no instrumentals, (2) no jazz numbers this time, and (iii) um, I had to kinda like the stuff. I am tempted to break the no-instrumentals rule to end the Mix with Queen’s recording of “ God Save The Queen ”, but then, they are my rules and I can break them if I want to, right? Your advice is, as always, gratefully appreciated, both on more tunes to add and what to leave off (as well as what must stay).

“I’m King”, B.B. King: I’m stuck between this slow sexy blues and “Riding With The King”, a duet with Eric Clapton.
“The King Of Bedside Manor”, Barenaked Ladies: A fun song, with some relevance to the Boar
“Kings Of The Highway”, Chris Isaak: a ballad, which could either provide a nice variation with a mostly uptempo mix or be a stone cold drag.
“Rock’N’Roll is King”, Electric Light Orchestra: Rama-lama-lama-lama!
“King Of Confidence” or “King Horse”, Elvis Costello: or, I suppose, “Brilliant Mistake”, which begins he thought he was the King of America; another ballad, though
“The King & Queen Of America”, Eurythmics: I had forgotten this song entirely until I did a search in my library for the words, but it’s a good song.
“Duke Of Earl”, Gene Chandler: This is the only song left on my list with duke rather than king or queen, but it does seem to belong.
“Wanderlust King”, Gogol Bordello: Gotta have some of that gypsy shit.
“The King Is Gone”, Heads: This is from that odd and inconsistent album that the rest of Talking Heads did without David Byrne; it’s a good song, in its way, and has a bit of that punk sound to it.
“New Crawlin’ King Snake”, Howlin’ Wolf: This is not about a king, actually, but a king snake. Well, it isn’t actually about a king snake, either…
“Babydoll, The Beauty Queen”, Jabbering Trout: One thing about a Mix Tape is the right combination of familiarity and novelty. I like to have a couple of obscure things like this one.
“King of the World”, Joe Jackson: a live cover of the Steely Dan song.
“King Of Spain”, Moxy Früvous: Gotta have this.
“King of the Dogs”, Iggy Pop: this sounds nothing like Iggy Pop to me, but I like it
“La Femme duDoight”, Queen Ida: The chorus goes Queen Ida/Is her name
“King Of Comedy”, R.E.M.: Off my least favorite album, one of those grungy songs, seems to suit the mood of our show
“King Of Bohemia”, Richard Thompson: Another somewhat obscure track, and, alas, another down-tempo one
“King Of The Hill”, Roger McGuinn: The former Byrd, the side is pretty much indistinguishable from Tom Petty, which isn’t a bad thing
“Sun King”, The Beatles: Hard to leave the Beatles of a list if there’s an excuse for including them
“The Rascal King”, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: Love, love, love this one, which is of course about Mayor Curley
“King Dork”, The Mr. T Experience: The chance to include this track is what made up my mind about using the K&Q theme.
“King Of The Hill”, The Nields: another obscurity, alas, but one that begins Gimme my bomb back, yeah
“King of Pain”, the Police: this Mix? Needs Moar Eighteez.
“King For A Day”, XTC: one of their cheerful Colin Moulding numbers

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Book Report: Four Plays (Wodehouse)

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:33:47 -0500

Your Humble Blogger has ruminated in the past about adapting Leave it to Psmith for the screen, at which time it was suggested by Gentle Reader Chris Cobb that I get my grubby paws on the stage adaptation. Yes, that was more than two years ago, but I only recently got around to requesting the thing through interlibrary loan. I was disappointed in the adaptation, frankly. For reasons that are not clear to YHB, they transported the thing from Blandings to another Stately Home very similar to Blandings, replaced Lord Emsworth with another Stately Peer very similar to Clarence, and replaced Lady Constance with a character substantially inferior to Lady Constance. And Phyllis Jackson is replaced by an entirely different character named Phyllis Jackson, one not married to Mike Jackson at all but engaged to Freddie (who is not Freddie). On the other hand, Eve is pretty solidly Eve, Miss Peavey is gloriously Miss Peavey, and Psmith is Psmith, which is the best thing you could say about anyone.

As for the adaptation, Mr. Wodehouse (and probably some other uncredited writer) put Act One at the door to the Tube station just down from the Senior Conservative Club. This allows for a lot to happen quite quickly. Alas, that means we only see Psmith go into the club and come out again with Comrade Walderwick’s umbrella, but we do meet Comrade Walderwick, not once but several times, as he is one of the Berties and Algies who come to the weekend at not-Blandings.

Which brings me to my real disappointment, which is that Mr. Wodehouse writes with a very free hand to paying castmembers. There are about a million of them. Many with lines to say. I cannot imagine attempting to cast the thing at a community theater, drawing on available talent, and I cannot imagine attempting to cast the thing at a professional theater, drawing on available money. Things must have been very different in the old days. I mean, I know it was, I have read plays of the thirties before. But this was ridiculous. Utterly prohibitive. The thing would require an altogether new adaptation of the adaptation, if anyone wanted to try it.

On the plus side, the play is in a collection called Four Plays, and although I didn’t manage to read the Jeeves play before returning the thing to my ILL hero, I did reread The Play’s the Thing, which really is a wonderful play. It’s good to be reminded of that, because I do prefer the adaptation by Tom Stoppard, which is called Rough Crossing. The original is called The Play in the Castle, and it is by Ferenc Molnar, who is, of course, wonderful. The last play is also an adaptation of a Hungarian play, this one by Ladislaus Fodor, and this one is really good. I mean, snappy. And with a managable cast, too. There is a moment near the end where our Leading Man threatens to rape the Leading Lady, which might ruin the whole play, though. I mean, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t mean it, and it’s very very clear that it won’t happen, but even to be brought up in talk, well, I don’t know. Do productions of Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam these days cut out the lines about rape? I certainly would. Well, anyway, I hadn’t read Bill before, and I really enjoyed reading it, so that’s all right.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Pirke Avot chapter four, verse three: davar

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:23:35 -0500

Let’s see. This is one of those verses that has a swing to it in the original that it is difficult to capture in English, so why don’t I try to transliterate the verse and perhaps embed a sound file, if I can figure out a good way to do it.

Hu hayah omer: al-t’hi vaz l’chal-adam, v’al t’hi mafleeg l’chal davar; sheh’ain lo sha’ah, v’ain l’cha davar lo makom.

21 words (depending on what one considers a word) Jacob Neusner translates it with 35 words:

He would say, “Do not despise anybody and do not treat anything as unlikely. For you have no one who does not have his time, and you have nothing which does not have its place.”

As an ethical precept, it’s pretty straightforward and unarguable, and in fact the commentary tends to leave it pretty much alone, other than giving some examples of sages either giving or not giving the due respect to a person who appears to be wicked or worthless, realizing or not realizing that that person, too, will have his hour. And some disagreement about whether the injunction is against dismissing unlikely things out of hand, with an implication that it is all right to dismiss impossibilities once you have put some careful study into their likelihood, or whether one should never dismiss a thing at all even after it is shown to be nonsense.

There is also a somewhat more mystically oriented tradition that says that the purpose of the verse is to celebrate, not necessarily the person who has his time and the thing which has its place, but time and space themselves, which are the Creations of the Divine without which nothing could, you know, be. Therefore even if a person has no value in himself, showing himself by his own actions to be unworthy of respect, yet those wicked actions take place, by their nature, in time, the gift of the Divine, and are a window into it. And any thing, whether it be a thing of value or a thing of putrescence, is a thing by virtue of taking up space in the Divine Creation, and being a part of it, and is a window into it.

There’s another point I’ll bring up, for which I am indebted to Irving M. Bunim, that the word here for thing is davar, which also means word or communication. The Ten Commandments are the ten d’varim; a davar is the Word (or logos) for a thing, as opposed to the Name for a thing. There’s a fellow on the internet who claims that thing is always a mistranslation, and that there is always a connotation of communication involved with davar. See, for instance, Genesis 11:1, where before the Tower of Babel the whole world was of one language (safah) and one speech (davar), or in the RSV they had few words. As opposed to things, which presumably existed in the same profusion as afterwards.

Digression: Your Humble Blogger was going to attempt not to reference the David Ives one-act play Babel’s in Arms, which contains the immortal line Mankind is in its youth, and hath not a word for every fucker, but I am giving up and putting into a Digression. I saw a production of this brilliant little gem at the theater where we are putting on R3, and hadn’t connected the author with the reviews I have been reading of Venus in Fur. The Babel play is really tailored for me, though: bible humor, slapstick, excessive profanity. What could be better than that? End Digression.

Well, if it is not every thing that has a place but every word that has a place, and must not be rejected therefore, well, that makes things a bit different. Do not reject people, and do not reject their words; people will have their times, and words will have their—what? Their makom, which is very definitely place. But what would it mean for every word to have a place. The word makom is related to kum, to stand up (the word has liturgical significance, for when we are upstanding in the service), so every word will have a place to stand, to rise up. Or, if you will, every word has standing, in the legal sense.

But what is it we are not to do with people and words? We are not to mafleeg, to reject them or dismiss them or carp at them, depending on the translation. Mr. Bunim claims the word is connected via its root to the word for shatter or split apart. Do not split yourself apart from people and their words? For each person has an hour and each word has standing for you to judge?

The point, for me, in all of this, in expanding the possibilities of the text and its connotations, is that (a) this is yet another example of how this kind of Hebrew magnificently compacts these kinds of repetitive aphorisms in a way that English does not, and (2) while the usual translation and idea are straightforward, the application of them is not, and the expansion of connotations, I think, is productive in wondering what, exactly we should do about those people, things, texts, elements that seem to be worthless or a waste of time. It is, of course, not only easy but justifiable to avoid the avoidable and curse the unavoidable.

There’s a story about Abraham and a stranger. Y’all know that Abraham was the epitome of hospitality, that not only would he happily feed any stranger that came to his house, he would go out and seek wayfarers at the crossroads in hopes of being able to provide hospitality for them. Well, it seems that one day he brings home a rotten old man who eats all his cabbage and acts like a savage, swears and blasphemes and generally is a grade-A asshole. So when the old fart has eaten his fill and has been offered water and all, Abraham pretty brusquely gives him the old heave-ho and gets rid of him. And the Divine says to Abraham, saying nu, why in such a hurry? Not even a blessing or a go-in-peace? And Abraham says Lord, I thought I was gonna plotz. I couldn’t put up with that momser in my house for another minute. Says the Divine You couldn’t put up with him for another minute? I have put up with that bastard for seventy years, and you couldn’t put up with him for another minute?

Well, you see? Whatever else that old man was, he was in time and space—and time and space are the Divine Creation. The Divine not only puts up with us all, thank the Divine, but gives us each the gift of Time and Space, which fundamentally cannot be wasted, only misused.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

ETA:

R3 Spoilers: Warning!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:52:28 -0500

No, seriously, actually, this isn’t about plot spoilers, but about production spoilers. Because it occurred to me that four Gentle Readers of this Tohu Bohu have already made plans to see the thing, and it’s possible that perhaps half-a-dozen more are contemplating it. Which y’all should be, if the logistics work out—I’m starting to get the feeling that this is going to be a good show. It’s early yet (two weeks from tonight!), but there are bits that are very good indeed. So if you can come to Greater Hartford on a weekend night in April (or late March), come. If you need details, let me know and I will email them to you.

And there are a few details of the production that will probably work better if you haven’t read too much about them beforehand. So I was going to refrain from writing about, oh, the really cool thing that we did the other night, because I don’t want to Ruin It for the folk who are coming to see.

Still, of the three dozen or so Gentle Readers, two thirds at least are simply unable to arrange a trip. Not going to happen, and I do understand. Frankly, I understand even if you could possibly make it to town and you don’t. I have missed my friends in shows this Winter just out of laziness and cheapness, and I’m OK with that in myself and others. And I believe that some of those GRs who are not coming (for whatever reason), are amongst those most interested in Shakespeare and theeyater. So. Rather than continuing to refrain, I think my plan is just to mark some of these notes as containing SPOILERS for the production.

SPOILERS

Really, not just warning you to avoid wagering on Richard in the final battle (I will give you 7-2 odds) but that as with any production, we have made some new choices and you will enjoy the show more if you don’t know what all of them are. So if you are even thinking about the possibility of coming and seeing the show, stop reading here. You can always come back in a month or two and tell me how it worked out for you.

OK?

Everybody good with this?

Ready for the production SPOILER? It’ll be a letdown now, I know, but still, it’s a bit I do like, if I say so myself.

Right, then. Act V, scene i: my death scene. We have discussed the scene before, and how it ends with my telling my executioner to covey me to the block of shame and the closing couplet. I haven’t talked about the beginning of the scene, where I list the dead:

Hastings, and Edward’s children, Rivers, Grey, Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward, Vaughan, and all that have miscarried By underhand corrupted foul injustice.

In the full text, Buckingham is addressing the shades of the dead, whose moody discontented souls are invited to mock him as he dies. We cut that bit of the address, as we have cut a lot of the supernatural elements of the show. So as I was preparing the scene, I was just listing them, in a sort of hysterical laughter: he knows he’s going to die, and now look at the people he has had killed for (it turns out) no benefit at all. A cosmic joke, and the panicky laughter as he faces his own addition to the list was, I must say, working for me.

And then I happened to sit in on the rehearsal for IV,i (in which Buckingham does not appear) and saw that Lady Anne responds to the summons of Lord Stanley that Come, madam, you must straight to Westminster, there to be crowned Richard’s royal queen. is stunned and panicky laughter, rising to hysteria as she contemplates the cosmic joke that her own curses redound on her head as the unhappy wife of the accursed Richard. And that was working very well, indeed, and was not only pathetic (in a good way) but a highlight on her basic instability (as opposed to the Duke of Buckingham, who is not inclined to regret and second-guessing). Only… if I respond the same way twenty minutes later, it makes me look dumb, and make the show work worse. So. Ah, well, what the hell. Back to the old proverbial, eh?

What to do, what to do. And then what comes to the rescue but my trusty notebook, and the rumination of the other day that I had a little list and could, in my own words, Cross them off, one after another. So, despite it making no real-world sense whatsoever, I determined that when I was caught and brought to execution, I would be clinging to that notebook of mine, and

[opens Notebook, glances at executioner, shows him page] Hastings [Rrrrrip!], and Edward’s children [Rrrrrip! Rrrrip!], Rivers [Rip!], Grey [Rip!], Holy King Henry[Rip!], and thy fair son Edward[Rip!], Vaughan[Rip!], and all [Rip!]that have miscarried [Rip!]By underhand [Rip!] corrupted [Rip!] foul [Rip!] injustice[Actually, by this point I have torn out the pages, torn the covers from each other and am surrounded by the fluttering shreds of my life].

A couple of things to note: first, of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that I love but don’t do well, what I have called physical inventiveness, coming up with bits of business that bring out something in the character and the text in a way that would not be present without the business. As such, I am really, really hoping it works. I have done it once, and it seems to work, but, you know, it is a bit over the top, and I can only justify it by doing it really well. A trifle daunting.

The other thing is that this business brought out Buckingham’s anger at his betrayal. Buckingham, of course, is a mix of emotions at this point (as is everyone at every point, but this is dramatically heightened, being, you know, in a play), and the text emphasizes his acknowledgement of the irony, his wittiness, as it were, over everything else. But of course he is also angry at Richard’s betrayal of him (I feel sure Buckingham never sees the raising of a rebel army as a betrayal on his part), and afraid of his immanent death and damnation. Regret? Sure. Defiance? All right. All of that. The question is which come to the front in the portrayal to make the better theater. And when, urged to by the list-shredding, I brought the anger to the front, it seemed to make the scene work better, and (I think) the play, as of all his emotions, the anger is the most Richard-directed, and the play is all about Richard.

And best of all, it brings the whole Buckingham’s-notebook thing to a satisfying conclusion. It’s a version of Tchekov’s law, right? If you show the audience a notebook in Act One, somebody has to tear it up before the final curtain.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Book Report: The Two Towers

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:53:54 -0500

YHB has read through The Lord of the Rings about a million times, I guess, a piece of news that will not shock y’all in the slightest. For many years, through my adolescence and into my college years and postcollegiate stretch, I found that every time I read through the books I found my attention focusing on something different. At one point I was enthralled by the tragic persistence of Sam and Frodo, at another I was taken with the heroism of the Three Friends, another by magnificent wrongheadedness of Eowyn, or the profound sadness of the Scouring of the Shire. And I figured that would continue throughout my life, each time through being a different book, as I was a different me.

It was a bit disconcerting, then to find that this time through The Two Towers was pretty much how I remembered the last time. Now, it has been a year since I read The Fellowship of the Ring, so that’s a difference (usually I would read the whole thing in one go), and for another, I have a daughter now, so there’s a thing in the back of my head that wonders about whether she’s ready for them yet. I dismissed that pretty quickly, though; maybe next year or the year after, but not yet.

Anyway, I found that I still like Book Three and don’t much like Book Four. I noticed some new things that I don’t much like about Book Four—the structural things, how the pattern of travel-until-thwarted, discuss-whether-to-trust-Gollum, decide-to-trust-Gollum, travel-until-thwarted repeats itself so often. And the things that thwart them are so familiar by now that they all seem the same, too, and I am unable to keep from my consciousness that they will be quickly and rather simply overcome. I am unable, now, to remember what I thought the first time they met Faramir. Was there real peril, there? Was he a threat? Now he is Faramir the moment he shows up, and not only Boramir’s brother but as the future Steward, Gandalf’s favorite, the hero of Osgiliath, the great hope of Gondor. So there is no moment where I wonder if he is a good guy or a baddie. Ah, well.

On the other hand, I am still noticing new things. Not quite the same way, and not (at this point) things that are fundamentally changing the experience of the book. I am noticing some authorial choices that I hadn’t before—what bits of information get told when and in whose voices. Just a kind of awareness that Mr. Tolkien could have told the story of the destruction of Isengard in a different spot, or had the Battle of Helm’s Deep narrated by one of the characters, and so on. The sort of thing they call ‘sophisticated’ reading, I think, although I was not doing any particularly clever analysis or anything, so it’s not clear to me where the sophistry comes in.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Off, book!

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:16:28 -0500

A couple of days ago, when my Director asked if we had any production or schedule type questions, and I asked for an off-book date. She said that we should definitely be off-book by the 26th. That is Opening Night, you see. A little joke.

My preference is to have a deadline, some date to prepare for, after which any actor clutching a script will be scorned and derided. I have been in shows where actors were simply Not Allowed to clutch a script after that date; I don’t approve of that. So, I suppose there’s some sense in being unwilling to declare a deadline you are not going to enforce. Still, there has to be a time.

Now, as for myself and the Duke of Buckingham, we both carry around a folder. And, in fact, it’s the same folder. Although, presumably, what’s in the folder is a trifle different—the Duke probably would not carry around a printout of everything he is going to say for the next two hours. He might, if he could, but most likely he does not.

So. I found myself, at that rehearsal, carrying around a prop notebook with an actual script. And although I am mostly off-book, I mean, off-book enough to be off-book, but not yet off-book enough to get all the lines exactly correct, the temptation to open it up to the correct page and take just a little peek was overwhelming. Just, you know, while somebody else is talking, open the folder and glance down at the page and back up, refreshing my memory that I address the Queen as Madam not Highness or that it is for shame if not for charity and not vice versa. And we’re not past some deadline for off-book-ness, so it’s not, you know, cheating. There’s no scorn or derision. There’s only the beginnings of the formation of a bad habit.

Therefore Your Humble Blogger, being a Good Lad, has transferred the sides to a new folder, a new blue folder, and put a bunch of random pages out of the recycle bin into the black folder I will be carrying properly. I will probably want to make up something that looks good (for mid-70s values of good) before we go up, but the key thing is to get the book out of my hands so I get used to being without it.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

More about Oscars, because nobody is tired of the Oscar talk

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:36:22 -0500

Well, and as Your Humble Blogger is still thinking about the Oscars, I might as well write my response to Kim Elsesser’s Op-Ed at the times suggesting Gender-Neutral Oscars should be extended to the acting categories. My initial response was that it was a terrible idea, practically speaking, as the nominees for Best Actress were generally from obscure movies that would not, if it weren’t for the Oscars, ever be seen by anybody other than critics. But when I went to give examples from this year, it turned out to not be so true: two of the five nominations were in mainstream popular movies, and one of the other three was the sort of controversial film that might have made a splash in the absence of a potential Oscar nominee. The remaining two (Carey Mulligan in An Education and Helen Mirren in The Last Station) were the sort of things I was thinking of, but were roughly equivalent to two of the Best Actor nominees (Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart and Colin Firth in A Single Man). In fact, while only two of the five films that had Best Actress nominees were Best Picture nominees, that was true of Best Actor as well. So it was roughly even this year.

To make the language easier on myself, I’m going to make up a term for a particular kind of movie. This is the movie that gets made largely because there is one great role, that either never gets wide distribution or fades very quickly from it. There is an Oscar push, not only because the performance is terrific but because that is the only chance to make any money from a deserving flick. If there were no awards, no-one would ever hear about these movies. I’ll call them Actress Movies—and I’ll keep calling them Actress Movies even when talking about the ones for male actors (such as Crazy Heart and A Single Man) because (a) I think they fall into the same category, and (2) I think, before doing the research, that there are way more of these for Actresses than Actors. OK? So, having found essentially two Actress Movie nominees on each side for last year, I am left wondering if that assessment is right.

Last year, I count Kate Winslet in The Reader, Angelina Jolie in Changeling and Melissa Leo in Frozen River. Of those, The Reader got a Best Picture nomination, and Changeling was a Clint Eastwood picture, so you could argue them, but I count them. On the left side, Richard Jenkins in The Visitor and Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, neither of which got Best Picture nominations. Hm.

The year before: Laura Linney in The Savages, Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth I part II, Julie Christie in Away from Her and Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf. Four out of five. Total tickets sold: five. On the left, Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises and Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah. I don’t count the Daniel Day-Lewis, but you could, although you have to note the Best Picture nomination.

Another year back: three at least on the women’s side, and the men’s side very difficult to count. Oddly enough, and I didn’t notice this at the time, the Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Picture nominees comprise 14 different films with only one overlap (Helen Mirren in The Queen). I wonder if there has ever been a year with no overlap at all.

We’re in the Oscars for 2006 now, and it’s clearly 3 out of 5 Actress Movies on the right and either one or two on the left (I wouldn’t count Capote as an Actress Movie, but it’s close). Another year back and it’s three of five for the women (including Annette Bening in Being Julia, which may be the canonical example of the Actress Movie) and maybe one on the men’s side. And another: four out of five, and one for the men. The 2002 films are tricky—is Frida an Actress Movie? I’m going to say not, which leaves one real Actress Movie on that side, and on the men’s side, at least two and arguably as many as four. That’s the first time we’ve seen it tip that way, isn’t it? Let’s just finish up the decade, though: 2001 films have two on each side and the 2000 films have two for women and three for men. So for those years, it was pretty even, or even tipped toward the men, but overall I think I was right about my instinct.

The point, essentially, is that I think that there are a limited number of slots for those nominations, and if there was one category for Best Acting, the Actress Movies would lose out. Except, thinking about it, that I’m not sure they would—the Academy might focus even more strongly on those, leaving the Best Director and Best Picture nominations for more popular movies. Hm. Perhaps I’m wrong about this.

By the way, a quick trivia question: What is the most recent movie to have performances nominated for Best Actress and a Best Actor both? When was the most recent year there were two such movies, and what were the movies?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

My Year in Movies 2009 (and 2008)

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:39:52 -0500

As the Oscars passed me by, I thought it might be time to do my Year in Movies 2009, in which Your Humble Blogger details all the movies I have seen so far that came out in that year. I had been thinking, last night, that it was Not a Good Year for movies for YHB, but that turns out not to be so true. Here are the flicks, as best as I can remember them.

Coraline: Certainly the creepiest movie of the year, and a strong contender for Most Disturbing Movie Ever. Of course, that’s a personal thing, mostly because the great Neil Gaiman and the great Henry Selick happened to hit my sensitive subjects: needles, eyeballs, spiders. Ick. And definitely would have been my top animated pick over Up (see below), but then I haven’t seen Ponyo or The Fantastic Mr. Fox yet.
District 9: My comment about halfway through this one was that it was more like the specfic I had been reading lately than most specfic movies are. There were some flaws, sure, but I enjoyed it a lot. I was pleased to see that they avoided the scene where the infected human lead and his wife meet and, well, that wouldn’t have been a good scene however it went.
Invictus: This was enjoyable, although I was disappointed in the portrayal of the rugby, which was the last four or five hours of the movie. Also, I felt that it was a mistake for the stadium people to install a digital clock that makes a really loud thud noise whenever the display changes. On a more serious note, I was irritated by the pointless ghost scenes of Mandela in prison, and was very impressed with the supporting actors. Also? Needs Moar Cricket.
Julie and Julia:Too much Julie. Stanley Tucci was brilliant (as he so often is), and Meryl Streep was a hoot. On the whole, I didn’t find the movie as annoying as the book, mostly because of the bits that were based on the other book.
Inglourious Basterds:What a mess. Good bits, but it sure seemed like it aspired to profundity without wanting to make any actual statements. Yes, I see, we-the-viewers are contemptuous of the Nazis in the movie theater as they cheer for the soldier on screen killing Americans, and then we cheer for the Americans on our screens killing Nazis. Yes. It is possible to construct highly self-referential situations at once reductive and regressive. But all of that was distracting from the fun, which this movie promised me and did not deliver.
Love Happens: Was I on a plane? I can’t remember why I saw this, but it was terrible.
Monsters v. Aliens: This was quite close to being a good movie, but it never happened. It just didn’t.
Up: A lot of fun, with some really brilliant bits at the beginning. I never really warmed to the boy, though, and it is probably one of my more serious character defects that I fear and loathe dogs, so that kinda detracted from the experience for me. I mean, a good movie, all in all, but not a Great Movie. Loved the beginning, though.
Watchmen: See, here’s the thing. YHB inadvertently picked up from the local public library not the theatrical release, which I probably would have thought was too long, nor the Director’s Cut for people who have lots of time, but the Ultimate Unending Uncut Version, where they threw in extra footage of people standing around and some extra stuff they had in a can in the shed, and I think they may have just shown some clips of people looking at each other more than once, and, and, well, all of this in addition to the acting being terrible, just terrible, and, the point is, I gave up during the prison riot. Maybe if I had seen the short version, I would have enjoyed it, particularly if I had seen it in the theater, but not this version. As a side note, I also shut off Zack Snyder’s film of 300, which makes me two-for-two on his. And I don’t give up on movies that often.

That’s it for the year. So far, anyway—I do most of my watching at home now, so it’s likely that I will see more 2009 movies over the next few years. There are half-a-dozen or so I really do want to see at some point. The only ones I saw in the theater were Coraline and Invictus, by the way.

It seems I never did a 2008 list, either. I won’t go back and fix it, but for y’al’s information, the movies I have so far seen from 2008 are Bangkok Dangerous, The Bank Job, Be Kind, Rewind, Burn after Reading, Death Race, Hellboy II, Hulk, Igor, In Bruges, Leatherheads, Milk, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, The Tale of Despereaux, Tropic Thunder (much of it, anyway), and Wall-E. I think Wall-E stands out as my favorite, but Miss Pettigrew was wonderful, and both Milk and Be Kind, Rewind were good as well. The others range from has-good-bits to oh-dear-me.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Pirke Avot chapter four, verse two: s'char

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:50:40 -0500

Ben Azzai said, Run to do even a slight precept, and flee from transgression; for one good deed draws another good deed in its train, and one sin, another sin; for the reward of a good deed is a good deed, and the wages of sin is sin.

I am using Joseph Hertz’s translation, because it so pointedly uses wages instead of reward. If you ask people what are the wages of sin? (or for that matter what is the wages of sin?) the chances are very good that the response will be the wages of sin is death (or are death). I don’t know what the response would be to what is the wages of a good deed?, but I suspect it would not be another good deed. But it should be.

I think that s’char mitzvah, mitzvah; s’char aveira, aveira is not only an excellent first principle to teach and live by, it’s a seriously accurate description of the universe (the one I perceive). Certainly more so than many other ethical precepts. I know that when Saul of Tarsus said that For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, he wasn’t talking about the death of the body but death of the spirit —but then, see, we’ve stopped describing any universe I recognize. I’m not saying it’s ineffective as inspiration, but when we are talking about how the world turns, Simeon ben Azzai seems to me to be simply telling the truth.

Do a mitzvah, do another, do another, and they start to come easy. Allow yourself to fall short once, fine, nobody is perfect. But the second time is easier, and the third easier yet, and then transgressions follow each other in a train until it seems impossible to stop them. Of course, transgressions of diet are the obvious ones to think about, but peculation, particularly stealing from the workplace strikes me as an even more powerful example. The first time you take a five out of the drawer, or walk out with something in your pockets, you may think you will pass out from the fear and shame. But you get away with it, because most of the time people do get away with it, and so you do it again, and again, and again, until somehow you think of it your right, inviolable, to walk out with a CD or an extra hour’s pay, and any enforcement is an outrage.

The first time you give a dollar as a handout, almost anything could happen. If you do it, though, and then you do it again, and then again, pretty soon you could have a habit, a dollar a day to help the homeless, and you will do it almost without thinking. Not entirely, but without misgivings or trepidation, and even without resentment. A bad habit is harder than a diamond to break; a good habit is more valuable than a diamond to keep.

Which is why we adopted the precept, which ben Azzai refers to as running to do a mitzvah, that any mitzvah should be done as early in the day as possible. Some are time-sensitive, of course, but still, if there is a range of time, it is better to do it at the beginning of that range, as if s’char mitzvah mitzvah you have time for the next one. Whether this applies to, er, marital relations is unclear; ben Azzai, for all his piety, did not run to follow that particular precept and remained unmarried and childless until the Romans killed him after the Bar Koziba catastrophe. Goes to show, doesn’t it?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.