Month: June 2007

http://thesezipperblues.blogspot.com/2007/06/wherefore-art-thou-314159.html In essence, if you make each letter of the alphabet equal to an arbitrary numeric combination (for instance a=1234, b=2345, c=3456…) then in an infinite number such as Pi (3.141592654….) you would not only eventually stumble across Romeo and Juliet, but you would also stumble across a version of the play where neither of the two end up dying. Is that right?  Kind of like the parallel universes theory, I suppose, expressed in infinite numbers.  That’s already got the geek side of my brain going and I’m plotting to go see if I can dig up some open source code that will generate the digits of pi one at a time so I can write something to look for the word “Romeo”. Update  I found what I was looking for, a widget that will turn the digits of pi into letters and let you search for words.  “Romeo” does not appear in the first 31million digits.  Not saying it’s not in there, of course.  It’s just a geeky gadget to play with. http://sepang.nottingham.edu.my/~hmichael/cgi-bin/pi.pl?search=ROMEO

http://geek.shakespearezone.com/?p=2559 Play the Salman Rushdie parlor game where you turn Shakespeare titles into works by Robert Ludlum.  There’s only four to guess, and they’re pretty obvious if you think about.  Still, different.

Eh now, what’s this?  The Next Best Thing is a new reality show where people do impressions of famous people.  Nobody’s actually “doing” Shakespeare yet (although that would be interesting, wouldn’t it?) but I was surprised to see them highlight two auditions who used Shakespeare as a monologue piece.  There was a Jackie Gleason dressed up like Ralph Kramden from the Honeymooners, who did a medley (ranging from “To be or not to be” to “My kingdom for a horse”), which I thought was good but he didn’t pass.  And then there was a John Travolta who was lousy, who read a passage from Romeo and Juliet directly out of the book while doing his Vinnie Barbarino (from Welcome Back Kotter?  Anybody?)  He was lousy. Made me pay attention for a few minutes. 🙂  

http://www.cinemas-online.co.uk/films/ayli.fhtml
Trailer’s up for Kenneth Branagh’s newest film, As You Like It (apparently opening in September, 2007).  Looks neat, I hope it gets wide distribution so I can actually enjoy it in a theatre and not have to go hunt it down on DVD later.

http://alaydhien.blogspot.com/search/label/Costuming I’m glad I stumbled across this blog by “Anniina” who has been tasked with designing the costumes for a western version of Taming of the Shrew.  In her own words, “…my task is to create a Wild West as if it were Wild West on another planet or universe … think that episode of Star Trek Next Gen where Picard and pals visit the wild west planet.”  Nice!  She’s got sketches for Kate and Petruchio as well as a few different ideas on Lucentio and Tranio. Don’t forget to click on the picture to enlarge them where you can actually read her notes on material, color, and so on.  Great stuff!