Throne of Blood
Dec. 29th, 2004 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Just watched Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, which was his adaptation of Macbeth.
Someday I think I would like to have an extremely lit-geeky film festival and invite lit-nerds over to my house to watch great Shakespeare adaptations. For Macbeth, which I confess I've never read, I'd nominate the Kurosawa joint (notable particularly for its bizarre, mannered, Noh-influenced acting and for the creepiest fucking Lady Macbeth EVER, whose presence was consistently denoted by the weird rustlings and squeakings of her elaborate kimono) and, of course, Scotland, PA, which ranks among my top ten favorite movies.
Think about it. Shakespeare-as-reimagined, plus geeks, plus slumber party. Am I the only nominally-adult person who still thinks slumber parties are the shit, especially now that we're allowed alcohol?
If there are typos, do pardon me, by the way-- I went down to the basement to get something, slipped on the stairs, and caught myself, but at the expense of getting splinters in my hand and peeling back the fingernail of the a-key pinky. Pinky fingers get used a lot in touch-typing and you'd never realize it except when you hurt one. Bastards!!
I had today off. This morning I slept late, late, late. It was glorious. I still didn't sleep as late as I wanted, but I did spend the last hour lying in bed painfully working out the climax of Other Novel (the one with the Cuchulainn-style hero).
Then I went with Dave out to lunch to see one of his high-school buddies, Tom, an accountant who works for a firm that gets to audit big corporations. So Tom told us about all the cool stuff from the bloodless moneyshark consultant perspective: he recently got some guy fired for cooking the books, and was sort of laughing because these corporations pay through the nose for his type to come in and point out what they're doing wrong, and then don't want to hear it. Shrug! Somebody's gotta tell 'em, and now it's mandated by law that somebody's gotta tell 'em, so... There he is. The sweetest guy you could ever know, honestly, very shy and Catholic-schoolboy with the underlying wicked streak but you know, he looks totally innocent with that tie on. And he knows his shit when it comes to corporate financial systems.
So it was nice to see him. Dave also got to see his other high school buddy Sean last night, and they went to some of their old haunts-- the Essex and the Rendezvous, both on the Lower West Side. I worked, of course, and didn't even get to say hi to Sean. Hi, Sean.
Then I slept all afternoon. That was pretty cool. I just lay in my bed, and slept, and woke up sometimes and looked at the ceiling and it was getting darker, so I rolled over again, and I didn't dream or nothin'-- I just caught up on sleep. God, I love days off.
I woke up when Dave made dinner (mojo-marinated chicken thighs, broiled because the grill's outta gas, and beans-n-rice-- getting in touch with our Puerto Rican heritage, of which we have none, but hey we both have decent highschool Spanish so at least we can pronounce mojo), and then we watched the movie in my NEW DVD-Rom drive.
i don't have work tomorrow either. Now, I am glad to have another day off, to get more cleaning and catching up done-- I figured out many of the settings on the new phone, but still didn't import any contacts or anything-- but, y'know... I need more hours. Either place. Don't make me get a third job, people. Still and all, I didn't get the laundry done today because I slept instead, and without me Dave doesn't do much by way of cleaning or tidying or picking things up from where he dropped them, so I have some of that to do, and yadda yadda... But. I have bills to pay, and things to save up for, and if Dave's not getting a job I definitely need to be working more than three days a week. Even if one of those days is two days in one. (I'm still deciding whether I like Suicide Tuesdays. If the secret is food and drugs, it may be worth it.)
So... Oh, we have a plan for New Year's / Dave's Birthday, I think.
1) Get home from work. Do some shots.
2) Go down to Local Bar and have dinner there. (They're having a special on lobster tails. Why not?)
3) Come home. Drink more.
4) Make up a pitcher of Singapore Slings and watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
5) Pass out.
4 alone is enough to lay waste to my consciousness, so I'm thinking it sounds like a plan. What better way to embrace, nay, celebrate our lameness? It sounds like paradise to me.
And now, I do the blogger thing.
From![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
radaromalley, a well-put little rant that nicely sums up some of my more exasperated and possibly politically-incorrect feelings on American foreign policy.
Dear United Nations...
I don't agree entirely with everything he says, but I definitely think it was something that needed to be said, and I couldn't think of how to do so. So I'm glad he said it.
Personally, I haven't commented on the tsunami situation because I haven't the words. It's horrifying. At work on the 26th there was the widescreen TV on CNN with its half-hour loop of the same shit over and over, and it was all extremely disturbing footage of the whole thing, and I kept bursting into tears and having to go in the back room where I couldn't see the TV, and then I'd brood, and it was all senseless and inarticulable. I am powerless, and my powerlessness is only exceeded by my brokeness. And I don't have the sort of relationship with God where I believe that my words influence him-- prayer is a way for me to focus my intentions and better understand the divine nature; asking it for something is kind of, well, not how I think it works. So I can't really offer any of that either. (What would I ask for? Dear God, make it go away please, and oh, I'd like a pony? If God gave people what they thought they wanted, would the Black Plague have decimated Europe, and smallpox the Aztec Empire? My prayers won't keep cholera away; I can only wish that it wouldn't get worse than it is.) I can only offer condolences and best wishes, and you know, that's more appropriate for someone's grandmother's funeral, not for tens of thousands of senseless and horrifying deaths. I'm glad my government is doing something, and I'm appalled that others would waste their time picking at my government for not doing enough. Come on. Those of us who have a vote can bitch all we want and not change anything-- why do they think their bitching would be helpful? So, that's just making the whole thing worse. if that were possible.
And, on a completely different note, I followed a link from an entry inqowf's journal to see what infinitemonkeys's icon was, only to find that it was a reference to a show I'd never seen. Still, I stuck around and read a bunch of entries because they were fascinatingly-worded and amusingly written, and came across this one, which has a point near the end that resonated strongly with me. (After a long and quite amusing series of updates about homing slugs, yelling at inanimate objects, a good review of the Bourne Supremacy that led to my adding it to my Netflix queue after forgetting where I'd read the review (oh there it is!), and the phrase, "I didn't so much drink gin, as gin happened to me," which struck me as exceedingly witty.)
Someday I think I would like to have an extremely lit-geeky film festival and invite lit-nerds over to my house to watch great Shakespeare adaptations. For Macbeth, which I confess I've never read, I'd nominate the Kurosawa joint (notable particularly for its bizarre, mannered, Noh-influenced acting and for the creepiest fucking Lady Macbeth EVER, whose presence was consistently denoted by the weird rustlings and squeakings of her elaborate kimono) and, of course, Scotland, PA, which ranks among my top ten favorite movies.
Think about it. Shakespeare-as-reimagined, plus geeks, plus slumber party. Am I the only nominally-adult person who still thinks slumber parties are the shit, especially now that we're allowed alcohol?
If there are typos, do pardon me, by the way-- I went down to the basement to get something, slipped on the stairs, and caught myself, but at the expense of getting splinters in my hand and peeling back the fingernail of the a-key pinky. Pinky fingers get used a lot in touch-typing and you'd never realize it except when you hurt one. Bastards!!
I had today off. This morning I slept late, late, late. It was glorious. I still didn't sleep as late as I wanted, but I did spend the last hour lying in bed painfully working out the climax of Other Novel (the one with the Cuchulainn-style hero).
Then I went with Dave out to lunch to see one of his high-school buddies, Tom, an accountant who works for a firm that gets to audit big corporations. So Tom told us about all the cool stuff from the bloodless moneyshark consultant perspective: he recently got some guy fired for cooking the books, and was sort of laughing because these corporations pay through the nose for his type to come in and point out what they're doing wrong, and then don't want to hear it. Shrug! Somebody's gotta tell 'em, and now it's mandated by law that somebody's gotta tell 'em, so... There he is. The sweetest guy you could ever know, honestly, very shy and Catholic-schoolboy with the underlying wicked streak but you know, he looks totally innocent with that tie on. And he knows his shit when it comes to corporate financial systems.
So it was nice to see him. Dave also got to see his other high school buddy Sean last night, and they went to some of their old haunts-- the Essex and the Rendezvous, both on the Lower West Side. I worked, of course, and didn't even get to say hi to Sean. Hi, Sean.
Then I slept all afternoon. That was pretty cool. I just lay in my bed, and slept, and woke up sometimes and looked at the ceiling and it was getting darker, so I rolled over again, and I didn't dream or nothin'-- I just caught up on sleep. God, I love days off.
I woke up when Dave made dinner (mojo-marinated chicken thighs, broiled because the grill's outta gas, and beans-n-rice-- getting in touch with our Puerto Rican heritage, of which we have none, but hey we both have decent highschool Spanish so at least we can pronounce mojo), and then we watched the movie in my NEW DVD-Rom drive.
i don't have work tomorrow either. Now, I am glad to have another day off, to get more cleaning and catching up done-- I figured out many of the settings on the new phone, but still didn't import any contacts or anything-- but, y'know... I need more hours. Either place. Don't make me get a third job, people. Still and all, I didn't get the laundry done today because I slept instead, and without me Dave doesn't do much by way of cleaning or tidying or picking things up from where he dropped them, so I have some of that to do, and yadda yadda... But. I have bills to pay, and things to save up for, and if Dave's not getting a job I definitely need to be working more than three days a week. Even if one of those days is two days in one. (I'm still deciding whether I like Suicide Tuesdays. If the secret is food and drugs, it may be worth it.)
So... Oh, we have a plan for New Year's / Dave's Birthday, I think.
1) Get home from work. Do some shots.
2) Go down to Local Bar and have dinner there. (They're having a special on lobster tails. Why not?)
3) Come home. Drink more.
4) Make up a pitcher of Singapore Slings and watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
5) Pass out.
4 alone is enough to lay waste to my consciousness, so I'm thinking it sounds like a plan. What better way to embrace, nay, celebrate our lameness? It sounds like paradise to me.
And now, I do the blogger thing.
From
radaromalley, a well-put little rant that nicely sums up some of my more exasperated and possibly politically-incorrect feelings on American foreign policy.Dear United Nations...
I don't agree entirely with everything he says, but I definitely think it was something that needed to be said, and I couldn't think of how to do so. So I'm glad he said it.
Personally, I haven't commented on the tsunami situation because I haven't the words. It's horrifying. At work on the 26th there was the widescreen TV on CNN with its half-hour loop of the same shit over and over, and it was all extremely disturbing footage of the whole thing, and I kept bursting into tears and having to go in the back room where I couldn't see the TV, and then I'd brood, and it was all senseless and inarticulable. I am powerless, and my powerlessness is only exceeded by my brokeness. And I don't have the sort of relationship with God where I believe that my words influence him-- prayer is a way for me to focus my intentions and better understand the divine nature; asking it for something is kind of, well, not how I think it works. So I can't really offer any of that either. (What would I ask for? Dear God, make it go away please, and oh, I'd like a pony? If God gave people what they thought they wanted, would the Black Plague have decimated Europe, and smallpox the Aztec Empire? My prayers won't keep cholera away; I can only wish that it wouldn't get worse than it is.) I can only offer condolences and best wishes, and you know, that's more appropriate for someone's grandmother's funeral, not for tens of thousands of senseless and horrifying deaths. I'm glad my government is doing something, and I'm appalled that others would waste their time picking at my government for not doing enough. Come on. Those of us who have a vote can bitch all we want and not change anything-- why do they think their bitching would be helpful? So, that's just making the whole thing worse. if that were possible.
And, on a completely different note, I followed a link from an entry in
qowf's journal to see what infinitemonkeys's icon was, only to find that it was a reference to a show I'd never seen. Still, I stuck around and read a bunch of entries because they were fascinatingly-worded and amusingly written, and came across this one, which has a point near the end that resonated strongly with me. (After a long and quite amusing series of updates about homing slugs, yelling at inanimate objects, a good review of the Bourne Supremacy that led to my adding it to my Netflix queue after forgetting where I'd read the review (oh there it is!), and the phrase, "I didn't so much drink gin, as gin happened to me," which struck me as exceedingly witty.)I was having a discussion with someone about LJ the other day and she said that the above is the reason why she's less than enamoured with it. Lots of people talking about the minutiae of their lives and oh my god, I don't care to the power of infinity. (well, that and the whole high-schoolish vibe of friend's lists and I quite agree about that)
There are some people though, who can write about minutiae in a compelling way, who can make "I went to work" an interesting tale.
Alas, this LJ entry is the written equivalent of kicking a can up and down the street because you've been told to go out and play , rather than a reasoned entry with, you know, an actual interesting subject.
I haven't made an entry in a while but nor have several of the people I would love to hear from and I suppose I'm writing this in the hope that they will hear the tinny rumble of the can and come out to play too.
A person gets bored. A person likes to hear compelling minutiae.
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Kurosawa + Shakespeare
Date: 2004-12-30 01:20 pm (UTC)--Qwerty, authorized movie geek
Re: Kurosawa + Shakespeare
Date: 2004-12-30 02:03 pm (UTC)But I've never read Lear either, nor am I aware of any other particularly good adaptations of it for film, so... I'll put that one tentatively in the future sometime, once poor Dave has recovered from this one. He loved Seven Samurai, but in that kind of don't make me watch that again kind of way. (We have movie theme sets; that one was among Gladiator, The Thirteenth Warrior, The Two Towers, and Blade Runner filed under "Death In Rain", and there's only so much Death In Rain you can take before you absolutely crave a good comedy.
I also have kind of a hankering to see Anthony Hopkins in Titus again, but I don't know what Dave would make of that. Pretty damn gory, what with people's arms cut off and tongues cut out and mothers fed their own children in pies and killed with spoons and whatnot. That's hardcore Shakespeare. We'll have to rachet Dave back up to a higher Shakespeare tolerance first.
Re: Kurosawa + Shakespeare
Date: 2004-12-30 03:06 pm (UTC)If this is false, blame Professor Levitan, not me.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 03:23 pm (UTC)I love her posts. They make my day. The only thing better is having a pint with her near the Globe. That's much better.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 12:15 am (UTC)I enjoy your rambles, but I'm not much of a conversationalist myself.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 02:46 am (UTC)He had to do either a paper or a dramatic reading, and I begged and begged him to do a sock-puppet rendition of the scene in R III with Lady Anne confronting Richard over Henry VI's corpse, the scene where it starts bleeding afresh because Richard is the murderer-- I had a great prop idea involving a jelly doughnut-- but Dave wouldn't do it. I told the teacher and she was as disappointed as I was.