larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2022-03-12 10:58 am

“the grey of evening fills the room / no need to look outside / to see or feel the rain”

Three links from [personal profile] janni:

When Eaglet was shown these pics from the live theater production of Spirited Away, currently playing in Tokyo, they roared, “I NEED TO GO! WHEN CAN WE GO TO JAPAN?!” Being informed that, after a Japan tour, they are hoping to take it elsewhere in Asia and Europe only made them grumpier. You and me both, kid.

I have sometimes contemplated a fic in which Monkey King meets Gilgamesh. Fortunately, I don’t need to stress it any more, because someone has already memed it for us.

Mandarin noblewomen poetry battle.

---L.

Subject quote from Domino, Genesis.
larryhammer: Yotsuba Koiwai running, label: "enjoy everything" (enjoy everything)
2019-09-03 02:52 pm

“And they laughed and grinned just like wild baboons,/ While they fired at him their sharp harpoons”

I learn from Wikipedia that:
In 2018 and early 2019, a musical comedy play titled McGonagall's Chronicles (Which Will Be Remembered for a Very Long Time) was toured in Scotland, retelling the story of the poet in "almost rhyme". It was directed by Joe Douglas and written by Gary McNair; McNair appeared in the lead role, with live musical support from Brian James O'Sullivan and from Simon Liddell, who composed the show's songs.
The citation is a broken link, but while I can confirm some performances, so far I am unable to find footage of a performance. And, clearly, I NEED to watch this.

Help me, Obi-wan Internets -- you're my only hope!

ObBonusMcGonagallery: From the article on The Famous Tay Whale (background) I learn that it has been set to music at least twice. A stunning thought, to be sure.

---L.

Subject quote from The Famous Tay Whale, William McGonagall.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (greek poetry is sexy)
2019-08-06 08:13 am

“The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out, / And sported his eyes and temple about”

That Shakespeare Bucket meme via [personal profile] oracne and [personal profile] rachelmanija (who also has a bunch of relevant polls), which involves listing productions of Shakespeare plays you've seen. TV productions are generally the BBC Complete versions from the early 80s (my family made a point of catching as many of those as possible when they were shown on PBS).

All's Well That Ends Well: Seen once on TV.

Antony and Cleopatra: Twice on TV, separate productions.

As You Like It: Twice live, once on TV. Want to see it performed more often.

Comedy of Errors: Seen at least four times, twice live. Favorite was the one with the Flying Karamozov Brothers, who really knew how to ham up the farce.

Coriolanus: Once on TV, want to see the movie.

Cymbeline: Once on TV and had nightmares.

Hamlet: Four times, TV & movies, plus a couple productions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (that counts, right?).

Henry IV 1 & 2: Both parts each once on TV.

Henry V: Seen live once, and the Branagh movie twice.

Henry VI: Part 2 only, on TV. (That's the part with the choosing of the roses, right? Whichever part has that, anyway.)

Henry VIII: Once TV.

Julius Caesar: Twice live, once TV. Narrowly avoided acting in it.

King John: I think I saw the BBC TV production, but have no memory of ANYTHING about it.

King Lear: Twice live, once TV. Didn't like any production. Plus also Kurosawa's Ran, if that counts here.

Love's Labours Lost: Live once. Gains the most of any Shakespeare play by being performed over being read.

Macbeth: Second live Shakespeare I ever saw, performed at Howard University with an all-black cast, set in an African kingdom. Acted in it (Lady McBeth's Physician) at the Folger Theater. Seen two other live productions. Once on TV.

Measure for Measure: Live once, TV twice.

Merchant of Venice: Live twice (one including a procession of the dead of Auschwitz after Shylock's sentencing, aka The Sledgehammer of Venice), TV once.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: Live twice (one set in Windsor Trailer Park, not a good directorial decision).

Midsummer Night's Dream: Live three times, two movies (Kevin Kline & Mickey Rooney versions), one TV.

Much Ado About Nothing: Twice live, the Branagh/Thompson movie several times, the Joss Whedon movie once. The last showed that it's possible to pull it off successfully even if Beatrice and Benedick have no chemistry whatsoever, which I had thought completely impossible.

Othello: Once live, once TV.

Pericles: Once TV. Remember hardly anything.

Richard II: Once TV.

Richard III: Once TV, twice live, plus Al Pachino's Looking for Richard movie (his multiple takes on the opening lines is a stunning piece of acting in action).

Romeo and Juliet: Two movies (Zeffirelli and Lurman), once live (a university production where everyone was outshown by a strikingly intense Tybalt), once TV. ETA: Oh, right, and also West Side Story twice, the movie and once on stage.

The Taming of the Shrew: Once TV, one movie (Burton/Taylor), once live. All of them cut the frame story.

The Tempest: Once TV, either three times live.

Timon of Athens: Once TV, which was more than enough times.

Titus Andronicus: Once TV. Almost saw it live, but my flight was delayed.

Troilus and Cressida: Once TV.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: Once TV.

Two Noble Kinsmen: Nope.

Twelfth Night: First production I saw live, with actors playing Viola & Sebastian who really did look like each other, and deliciously hideous purple cross-gartering on bright yellow stockings. Seen twice more live, plus one movie (Bonham-Carter), and once TV. Plus 10 Things I Hate About You. My hands-down favorite Shakespeare play. A+ would see again.

Winter's Tale: Once TV.

---L.

Subject quote from Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine, Matthew "Monk" Lewis.
larryhammer: a woman wearing a chain mail hoodie, label: "chain mail is sexy" (chain mail is sexy)
2016-09-27 12:34 pm
Entry tags:

"In the Congo your worst fears are never realized. Something that you didn't fear happens instead."

Maps of things:

National Geographic has a website that serves you printable versions of any USGS quad. Each quad is packaged as PDF with a lower resolution index plus four pages that each print on letter-sized paper. (via, with other useful map widgets in the comments)

Generated fantasy world maps. (via)

An illustrated flowchart of which Shakespeare play you should see. (via)

Subject quote from "On the Gorilla Trail," Mary Hastings Bradley (mother of Alice Shledon/James Tiptree).
larryhammer: a symbol used in a traditional Iceland magic spell of protection (iceland)
2016-06-09 09:50 am
Entry tags:

"It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal."

Following up on yesterday, a short shameful confession:

Despite all reminders to the contrary, my brain persists in thinking that "King Stephen was a worthy peer" was sung in Timon of Athens rather than Othello.

---L.

Subject quote from Henry IV Part 2, I.2, William Shakespeare.
larryhammer: topless woman lying prone with a poem by Sappho painted on her back, label: "Greek poetry is sexy" (classics)
2015-08-21 07:47 am
Entry tags:

"with all reverence I would say / Let God do his work, we will see to ours. / Bring in the candles."

How to title every book you ever write. (via) My debut novel Citrus on Quebec Street will be followed by the disappointing sophomore effort See the Thorn Twist (with the alternate title In Leather, Lace, and Chains in the UK), the collection The Tortoise Camp, then The FORTRAN Programmers, November in Osaka, The Wisdom of Post-it Notes, and Autumnwhaaa.

I admit it: a title like How to Settle Accounts with Your Laundress will make me click though to find out what the heck it is. Spoiler: a one-act farce published in 1847.

Stuff Business People Say. Yes, it's an ad. Yes, I've heard just about every one of these in person. The main wince-worthy one they missed is "out of pocket." (via)

---L.

Subject quote from "Abraham Davenport," John Greenleaf Whittier.
larryhammer: topless woman lying prone with a poem by Sappho painted on her back, label: "Greek poetry is sexy" (classics)
2015-01-30 10:16 am

"but where's the element / That checkers not its usefulness to man / With casual terror?"

It occurs to me that I've never actually linked to Bartleby's rich collection of poetry anthologies, the source of several I've reported on here (including Poems of Places).

And speaking of high art, given the number of secondary school and university productions of Into the Woods, it's no surprise there's a lot of low budget Milky Whites. My fave. (via)

And speaking of failures, this demo of supposed historical rapid-fire archery (via) is getting critiqued (via) a lot.

---L.

Subject quote from "Lines on the View from St. Leonard’s," Thomas Campbell.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (disappearance)
2014-04-10 07:48 am
Entry tags:

"and another one bites the dust / oh why can I not conquer love"

Kate Beaton writes about working for two years at a mining site: Ducks. (via all over)

Kawehi covers NIN's "Closer." (via?)

Shakespeare's plays summarized as three-panel comic strips. Well, mostly three panels. (via?)

(Up half the night coughing. Bleagh.)

---L.

Subject quote from "Elastic Heart," Sia.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (my fandom)
2013-09-02 07:24 am
Entry tags:

"that's when it turned on me / where bobby pins hold angel wings / it's alright"

The Buffalo News reviews a meeting of the local Board of Education as an experiment in absurdist theater. (via)

It may not be a catbus, but it is a catkindergarten. Or maybe a katzenkindergarten.

Ten (plus two) skybridges. (via GP)

---L.

Subject quote from "Future Foe Scenarios," Silversun Pickups.
larryhammer: drawing of a wildhaired figure dancing, label: "La!" (La!)
2010-10-28 07:39 am
Entry tags:

"Hermia, sleep thou there / and never mayst thou come Lysander near!"

The drama department of the University of Kansas is putting on a original pronunciation production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. As in, Irish Elizabethan vowels and all. Video of a three minute sample in the link. And, lo! -- the poetry rhymes! exactly! -- in the original pronunciation.

WANT. TO. GO.

---L.
larryhammer: Enceladus (the moon, not the mythological being), label: "Enceladus is sexy" (astronomy)
2010-02-08 08:56 am
Entry tags:

"Leave them standing in the dust / as you step into the light"

So I came across the phrase "poets alone should kiss and tell" and thought, "Oo, that'd make a good refrain for a ballade." Fortunately, before I got very far, I googled and found that, unfortunately, Dorothy Parker is way ahead of me here.

Which sounds like a good excuse to mention other things I've encountered on the 'net. 'Cause, peoples, there's some funky stuff out there. By the departments: And in conclusion, [livejournal.com profile] thefourthvine watches Star Trek: TOS for the first time -- hil-lar-ious writeups ensue for Amok Time, The Trouble with Tribbles, and City on the Edge of Forever. (via)

---L.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2008-05-09 08:10 am
Entry tags:

"Some things never change / my middle name's still Risk"

Catching up, with links. Which is not the same thing as catching up with links, though I'm doing that as well.

As part of working out why I like Yotsuba&! so much, I've started doing a critical reading of a chapter a day (as befitting a slice-of-life series with nearly daily episodes) in [livejournal.com profile] yotsubato: one, two, three so far (ETA: and now four). Feel free to read along and join in. Maybe by the time I reach volume 6, ADV will stop delaying the release.

I can see why Browning's Aristophanes' Apology was not as popular as Balaustion's Adventure -- and why I've bounced off it both times I've tried to read it. The narrator, Balaustion, is more or less the same character but her voice is nowhere near as appealing as before. It doesn't help that the Euripides play is this time done as a script direct instead of, as in the first poem, a retelling by a fourteen-year-old girl of a performance -- thus abandoning two layers of imagination and mediation. (See previous comments about Browning being less interesting without personas.) Not to mention, Herakles isn't as interesting a play as Alkestis. ---L.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2007-02-03 09:26 pm

Further Dispatches from the Poetry Front

I knew the new Collected Poems of William McGonagall has additional works not in his three collections. I hadn't known one is a previously unpublished play: a sub-sub-Shakespearean wonder called Jack o' the Cudgel, or The Hero of a Hundred Fights. (Note to [livejournal.com profile] angevin2: It's set in the court of Edward III.) Judging from extracts quoted in reviews, it's never been performed because it's unperformable.
Leave the minstrel, thou pig-headed giant, or I'll make you repent
For thou must know my name is Jack, and I hail from Kent.
Declaim that iambic pentameter with a straight face, if you can. Later, when the king knights him:
Sir Jack, I give thee land to the value of six hundred marks
In thine own native county of Kent, with beautiful parks
Also beautiful meadows and lovely flowers and trees
Where you can reside and enjoy yourself as you please.
Clearly, I need this.

---L.
larryhammer: topless woman lying prone with a poem by Sappho painted on her back, label: "Greek poetry is sexy" (classics)
2006-07-18 10:59 am
Entry tags:

Protocols

Short shameful confession: I do not think of All's Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure as comedies -- they're problem plays, on the same lines as problem novels in YA. This analogy won't survive critical scrutiny, but thus my brain works.

For my next trick, I will assert that Shakespeare's sonnets are not a Petrarchan sonnet sequence but a problem sonnet sequence.



There's a type of manga that bemuses me when I stumble upon it. It's not a genre -- these seem to cross all genres. I've no better name for it but didactic manga -- seeming to exist to instruct, with story and fanservice and soap-opera-y bits tossed in to keep you reading on to the next nugget of information. Or maybe the audience just wants to learn how to cook curries (a recipe in every chapter!) or the mechanics of sex (set-up for that one's a couple married by arrangement who are both virgins -- the page of diagrams explaining how to remove a bra was especially amusing) and are skipping over the plot. Though not, I suspect, the fanservice.*

I've no doubt that somewhere out there are manga that teach automobile maintenance, or all about the natural history and hunting of whales. Uh, wait, that last's a those two are Western comic books and novel. Never mind.


* Random bits of titillation. Poorly motivated nudity and gratuitous panty-shots are especially common forms.


---L.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2006-07-03 07:47 am
Entry tags:

"They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command"

Every year, the city puts on a free Shakespeare play in the park. Community theater, so it's rarely brill -- but it's rarely wretched* either, and sometimes the director brings good insights to the play. This year was The Taming of the Shrew. We went anyway.

And were surprised to see the frame story actually performed for once. Also, Kate and Petruchio almost were convincing -- if their chemistry and pure lustful heat had been continuous instead of sputtering, the final scene would have worked. Mind, "working" means making an otherwise fluffy play as disturbing as Measure for Measure -- but I'd like to see it do that. So I sat back and laughed at the well-turned slapstick and rapid-fire banter. There was one absolutely brilliant moment, when Petruchio showed up antic for his wedding and asks
Wherefore gaze this goodly company,
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet or —
and that, dear people, was when the baseball field next door started the fireworks.

The production stopped for ten minutes to watch, from the stage, the pretty booms bang off. A minute in, Petruchio said to the audience, "Now that's some monument." The cast worked in ad lib references for the rest of the play -- such as Petruchio's apology for being "in some part enforced <gestures towards the fireworks> to digress."


* The Midsummer with a Peter Pan Puck was probably the low point.


---L.