Yay, Brendon!

Not so yay for the vertigo, lisah. Get well~ma to you.

WS, if you keep going on about your R&J and Ophelia hate, you're going to force me to send you tapes of Slings and Arrows, dammit.

Bring it! Inside I am still seething about those two silly teens, and have only ceased ranting to avoid getting put into the loony bin. Seething, I tell you.

ETA: Yay, massage for Nora! Go, massage! Do wonders for her.

DAMN IT. I missed the Shakespeare discussion.

Um. I realize that as threats go, that one... isn't. "You shape up, you, or I'm going to send you 12 hours of Paul Gross being beautiful and eloquent and passionate and making you love characters you never thought you could! He's naked in one scene too! Don't you push me, missy! I'll do it, I swear to GOD."

To be fair, I had the same idea (of sending the tapes), and then realized that it wasn't much of a threat either. Thing is, I've never really liked Romeo & Juliet, even though I can certainly enjoy the Slings & Arrows bits and Baz Luhrmann's take on it. They both exhibit so much stupidity that it's hard to get behind the idea of Tragically Doomed Lovers. Shakespeare can write Tragic Doom like no one else, but R&J specifically are just... argh. On the other hand, it's a very good example of how love can make you do the wacky.

Does anyone (else) remember years ago the BBC did ALL of Shakespeare and, for the wars of the roses ones, used the same actors for the same roles throughout?

Ayup. We went through all of the BBC's productions in "Shakespeare On Film", and I loved that nice bit of continuity.

I LOVE Mad Margaret. LOVE. And even though most of Richard III is libel, it's some of the most well-written and playable and enjoyable libel ever. Richard is one of the best characters in the English canon.

{{{lisah}}} Vertigo is of massive suckitude.

does dance of having meara soon

Yay for massage!

I'm going to obsess about getting this for the rest of my days.

heh. yeah. I'm going to obsess a bit about it recurring.

Thanks for all the well wishes everyone! and I hope I'm the last one of anyone any of us know to get the vertigo virus!

I'd never heard of this horrible thing, and find out in the same morning that three people I know have had it. I'm going to obsess about getting this for the rest of my days.

I am Cindy, and I don't like it.

Lisa, that sounds dreadful. I'm glad you seem to be better.

Congratulations to Brendon!

Gronklies.

So, I don't have anything I need to do this afternoon. Should I try to get some research done (mostly, I need to fix up a lot of details on something where I already figured out the main gist), or clean my kitchen (desperately needs to be done) or just lounge around (tempting, but not terribly productive)?

Well, you've been suffering from insomnia. so I suggest something exercise-related, like cleaning or walking about. It won't be fun while you;re doing it, but you'll thank me this evening when you drift off to blissful sleep.

I'll be working at UCSF Mon-Thurs, but evenings will be free for seeing people

If you aren't all booked up for business lunches that entire week, you can always run around the corner for lunch here (or I could tote Matilda up to campus -- the taqueria ladies at the food court like to check up and squee over her).

R&J specifically are just... argh. On the other hand, it's a very good example of how love can make you do the wacky.

Yeah, I get that. I guess liking them doesn't make that much of a difference to me in how I react to the play. They make me cringe, a bit, but mostly because I see my own First Love craxy-ass brainless hormonally heightened-stakes selfish lunacy in them, and it's utterly watch-from-the-hall once you've had that experience and come out the other side.

And then I get gutpunched by the pointless viciousness of the family politics, and the sheer stupid unfairness of the cost to R&J. Most people get to be stupid and selfish and ego-ridden and ruled by hormones without dying of it; they're not the world's greatest kids or the world's greatest lovers (although, damn, as Slings and Arrows amply demonstrates, that's some of Shakespeare's most gloriously, shamelessly erotic language), they're just dumb and perfectly ordinary teenagers and it is thoroughly fucked that, because of their families, their very run-of-the-mill romantic stupidity costs them their lives.

Egad, everyone with the neuronitis and the migraines and the back pain. I'm so sorry! Sending brain and back and nervous system~ma to everyone.

Well, whatever I do will be followed by walking to Trader Joes and then walking back with a few bags of groceries, and then cooking. (Or, at least, heating up frozen things and topping with bottled sauce.) I think I'll do a cursury kitchen cleaning (take out the trash, get the dirty dishes in the dishwasher) and then try to do some research. Because I just remembered that I need to be at the department later on this afternoon anyway.

And then I get gutpunched by the pointless viciousness of the family politics, and the sheer stupid unfairness of the cost to R&J.

Very, very true. Especially Juliet's father coming down on her like a sack of oranges.

It helps that I've recently(ish) seen a couple good performances of Juliet. For a while, it seemed that she was being played as a modern 13-year-old, with that kind of sheltering, instead of as a girl who could reasonably be expected to start bearing children ASAP. That can't happen - Juliet needs to be a little more wordly to be believable, which is why I liked Claire Danes' performance.

Not to interrupt the Shakespeare fest, but...

PIIEEEEEE!!!

I am eating pumpkin pie. With whipped cream. At work. Work rocks.