I'm trying to remember if they fast forwarded or if the teacher put her hand over the screen in the (in)appropriate place.

I do remember the song, too, though (so damn earnest), but, then, I was not an adolescent boy.

I still like A Midsummer Night's Dream and I've seen it staged many times by vast ranges of talent. I only loathed one version. I'm usually fine with the Atlanta Shakespeare Company's resetting of Shakespeare into mobsters, flappers, flower children and the like, but the one in which they made Puck into Oberon's executive assistant, glued to a phone and blackberry, was truly annoying.

you teach my kids the victorians and I'll teach yours Morrison. No?

Hmmm..... well, given that my Victorians would be heavy on Carlyle and Darwin and light on Dickens...perhaps.

There should be a unit by unit teacher swap program.

In contemporary lit news, I'm reading the newest Junot Diaz books, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I have to say I'm not loving it. Anyone else read it?

In contemporary lit news, I'm reading the newest Junot Diaz books, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I have to say I'm not loving it. Anyone else read it?

I am reading it right now and absolutely loving it!

Really, lisa? I keep picking it up and putting it down and picking it up again. I feel an urge to finish it. The changing narrative voice is sort of offputting, and the one thing that remains true is my deep and abiding love for the badassness of Lola. But as a whole? It is so much slower than Drown was.

changing narrative voice is sort of offputting

hmm I was surprised by this (I thought the prologue was going to be the exception) but I am actually really loving it. Have you gotten to

Beli's story? In Santo Domingo?

I really, really love the mash-up of references. It feels very real to me. And I love all the DR history.

It's possible I'm just Full of Love these days, though.

I loved Oscar Wao, and talked about it some here, I do believe. I kept having to put it down, just because I like to read easier things much of the time.

Oh, lisah, I think you used the wrong quickedit up there.

See, I still like Midsummer Night's Dream, but that's because I have a week spot for things concerning the Faerie Court. I keep hoping someday someone will do a production of it where the majority of the story is treated like a horror movie. I think it could be very creepy, if approached properly.

The RSC did a production like this eight or nine years ago that you might have liked. I have to admit that I loathed it because I felt like they lost the whismy and humor of the play that I adore so, but they did make it downright creepy.

Kat, when I met Junot Diaz at the Key West Literary Conference this past January, he talked about why he kept changing the narrative voice and melding Spanish and English and geeky references as a way to imitate the immigrant experience--surrounded by words and people you don't quite understand and feeling like you're missing something all the time--which intrigued me. I bought Drown but haven't read it or Oscar Wao yet, but I'm hopeful they live up to my expectations.

And now I'm thinking about Mark Knopfler's "Romeo and Juliet," its weariness and yearning and nostalgia for that electric too-stupid-to-live time. I can't root for their doom; fuck, I was them. I never even had a boyfriend until I was 19, but I was them anyway. And I hope to God Matilda lives to be them, and lives beyond it, and lives to look back and say, "When we made love, you used to cry. You said I love you like the stars above, love you till I die" and know that it's gone, but remember exactly what it felt like, what it was to live in the eye of that storm. And R&J never get to outgrow it, smarten up, look back and regret and yearn.

Okay, I have to say it -- I love JZ more than almost everything. I adore that song, and this is just beautifully put.