Month: November 2010

[Argh, I hate this client, it eats my posts and I never know until somebody tells me.]
I think everybody remembers that dreaded day this summer when Sarah Palin didn’t know how to spell repudiate, and the world exploded. Trust me, I remember it well, I was on vacation and woke up to about 10,000 messages telling me that Palin had compared herself to Shakespeare. A book even came out of all the ShakesPalinisms that were spawned.
I would happily forget the whole thing. Except that the New Oxford American Dictionary has made her nonsense word the Word Of The Year, thus continuing to demonstrate the uselessness of dictionaries. I’ll leave it to Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers to eviscerate her, and them, the right way.

I don’t know what Prezi is, exactly, but I like the idea behind this presentation on Shakespeare’s Biography. It’s as if someone laid out a whole bunch of index cards on a big screen, some text, some graphics, and then played connect the dots with them. The player/browser walks you through the cards in the intended sequence, but be sure to click the X inside a circle (next to the Play button) which will bring up the entire map at once and yet you jump around.
I’m not linking this for the quality of the Shakespeare info. It’s ok, and even covers some info that’s often overlooked (like the deer-poaching story, or the fact that when people speak of Shakespeare “inventing” words, that doesn’t really mean what you think it means). But it’s also pretty light on everything else, and never really mentions any plays at all, just timeline stuff.
What’s interesting to me is the potential for something like this. Play with it first, so we can discuss it. Got it? Ok, good.
Imagine this thing on an iPad. You’re using your fingers, getting in there and driving your way around Shakespeare’s life. Now like I said, this particular sample is pretty shallow – but imagine a really deep one that went into all the plays? Or even better something that had a certain amount of wiki to it, where people could continually comment and add ideas? It’s easy to write one sentence that says “Shakespeare had twins Judith and Hamnet, and Hamnet died at 11.” But think about all the different places throughout Shakespeare’s work where you could link possible examples of how his son’s death impacted his work.
Imagine it interactive! This was apparently created by a teacher, for his class. So why not have something in there were students could post questions back to the teacher? Or have homework where they have to create their own branches?
I love stuff like this that’s got obvious educational potential.

Even though it constantly gets in the way of my Twitter streams :), I don’t mention Shakespeare’s Pizza (Columbia, MO) that much.There’s two reasons for that. First, I don’t know exactly what it has to do with *our* Shakespeare. I mean, I don’t talk about the music group Shakespeare’s Sister much either.
Second, I’m totally jealous that people in Missouri get to actually say stuff like “Hey I’m going over to Shakespeare’s to get a beer,” and I don’t. 🙁 A we have in Boston is stinkin’ Cheers, and that’s been off the air for ages. 😉
But, seriously, Shakespeare’s just won Good Morning America’s Best Bites : College Edition competition. So not only do they have the best name, like, ever, but they’ve got a dedicated following and apparently pretty killer food to boot. Congratulations!

Been watching the early seasons of The Muppets via Netflix. Last night:
The Phantom of Muppet Theatre: “I played Hamlet! I played Othello!! I was killed on opening night.”
Kermit the Frog : “Who killed you?”
Phantom: “The critics.”
<cue laugh track>
My kids? “Daddy, Othello! Hamlet! Shakespeare!”
I like that they recognized Othello, because we don’t talk about that one much at the house. Hamlet they’d recognize, though, sure. I should break out the board game, they’ll get a kick out of that.

I had no idea what Shakespeare in Studs was when it came through my newsfeeds so I skipped it at first. Turns out it’s a Wall Street Journal piece on the costume design for Julie Taymor’s upcoming Tempest movie!
When the initial images were starting to circulate and they ended up on one of the computer-geek boards I frequent, it didn’t take people long to say “Zippers? Are those zippers I see on those costumes? Pretty sure they didn’t have zippers back then!” (Bonus points to the guy who responded, “You do realize that there’s magic and fairies in this too, right?”)
The zippers were deliberate. A lot of thought (and not a lot of budget!) went into the costumes.

The film had a limited costume budget, a relatively small $200,000. Ms. Powell sewed zippers on costumes herself during filming on the rocky Hawaiian island of Lanai. “I don’t always do that,” she says, “for anyone who’s reading this and wants to hire me.”