Okay, I'm ready to say it--it's hard for me to appreciate a Shakespeare play nowadays. Recently I saw a beauteous production of As You Like It, a play I at least studied in high school, directed by Sam Mendes at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But unless I read a pretty comprehensive recap of the play, it's hard for me to know what's happening, and frankly, I don't understand what they're talking about a lot of the time. What's with all the "merry this" and "merry that"? And you're too long-winded, Will. In Romeo and Juliet (directed by my idol, Greg Cicchino), there are at least three points where the action stops and someone explains the story so far. Was it because people used to watch the plays while wandering around?

And as a playwright, I'll go even a step further. Back to As You Like It, how would a modern audience, much less a critic, react if the conclusion of a play was a character walking on stage and announcing that all the problems back at the court that caused everyone to flee into the wood in the first place had resolved themselves and you can all come home now, hurrah?

My sweetie sent me roses which required me to put myself into the picture to show you the scale. Yes, I checked the tag to make sure they were for me. As you can see from the first photo, he's got a treat in store, too. I'm making dinner, and topping it off with home-made whoopee pies. The recipe is from my friend Lorna, the heart stencil (and childish execution) were my additions.

Let me go all "How I Met Your Mother" on this post, 'so, kids, this is how we used to look when we got all dressed up for prom'. Not me personally, of course, this picture is of Mike Armour, a classmate of mine, and his posse. The dresses are most likely from Gunne Sax (wikipedia defines the look as "prairie revival"), the flowers from Bachman's, and the tuxes? Who knows, but if a little piping is good, a lot must be better. If the crowd were a little older, the dudes would have moustaches, but this was high school. Look at the bow ties--Weep, Windsor!

Really, none of them looks too psyched, do they? Well, kids, that was prom in the 70s, a grim duty, but we did it. Er, I mean, they did it. And perhaps later, they did it. No offense, Mike.

I saw the gosh-derndest thing yesterday! For the first time since I moved here in September, I saw someone in the back yard of the row of buildings of which mine is a part. He had a tool belt and I realized he was some kind of utility guy. He walked to what the English would call "the top of the garden" where there's a utility box on the wires, and without pausing, he climbed a tree to reach it! The tree-to-utility-guy ratio seemed unfavorable, and I was wondering how he knew he could climb it when I realized he must have done it before. Anyway, here he is.

And here's the same tree twenty-four hours later. And here's the view from my dining room window. That's industrial Brooklyn, y'all.

First off, the Manhattan LP has asked me to shoulder some of the blogging burden for Serf City, the deal being I can talk about whatever I want. The first installment is a capitalist's comment on the movie, "Avatar":

http://serfcity.wordpress.com/

So, there's that, but also, if a person were to be offended by this movie (as it seemed a lot of people expected me to be, but the movie is so laughable, how could I be?), I think there's a basis. Sully, the crippled marine/avatar, enters the innocent, peaceful, wondrous world of the Na'vi, and earns their trust, not by being especially curious, sensitive, helpful, etc. (Sigourney Weaver's character was all that and they'd already kicked her out) but by being klutzy, poking or kicking everything he doesn't understand, reminding me of something I heard about sharks recently, that biting things is their way of investigating them. Nevertheless, he's got that certain something, and once he picks up the local lingo, he's not only leading the Na'vi in battle, but marries their hottest female, who according to their custom, was betrothed to Wes Studi. (If this were the professional blog, I guess I'd look up their character names.) So when I boil down this huge watery stew, what I get isn't an indictment of capitalism, but the time-honored tale of the white man's mastery of the childlike indigenous population. Groundbreaking, Mister Cameron! My friend even summed it up when he said during a big battle scene when the hammerhead rhinos appear unexpectedly to push some tanks around, "Tarzan friend to all animals in jungle!"