Month: January 2008

Help for Rachel

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

A long time ago I wrote up a tutorial on iambic pentameter over on my other, family blog.  I still periodically get comments on it.  Like today Rachel asked for help with iambic pentameter, and pointed me to a sonnet she’d written:  http://www.eliteskills.com/z/49778 I wrote back telling her about my new blog and how many this would be a better place to discuss it.  Hi Rachel, I hope you stopped by! If you’re most concerned about the iambic pentameter, your last couplet is probably the closest if you flip a few words: Forgive me, sir, for sins have I to tell.
Repent or not–condemned am I to hell. There are times and places where you can get away with bending the natural pronunciation of a word (is it “washed”, one syllable, or “wash-ED”, two syllables?) but in general you need it to flow pretty naturally.  I liken it to trying to play music without a beat.  You can’t really do it, you just end up with a string of notes and nothing holding them together.   Your reader needs to find the flow immediately and not be left struggling for it. A few years ago I wrote an Elizabethan sonnet for my daughter Elizabeth’s first birthday, if you want to check it out:  http://blog.shakespearegeek.com/2005/08/gift-for-my-daughter.html I’m no poet, but your original question to me was about iambic pentameter, so hopefully that’s an example you can work with that’s not quite as hard to follow as some of Shakespeare’s.  You can clearly see places where I snipped a syllable here or there to fit the form (such as “e’er”, one syllable, in place of “ever”). Good luck!

Help! Movie Title Needed

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

For a presentation we’re doing at work, I need the image of a mystery behind a door.  And the first thing that came to my mind is an old movie poster that shows this big dark, mysterious door, and there’s light peeking out around all the edges from the other side.  Standing in front of the door is a little kid in his pajamas, like he’s trying to decide whether to open it. Anybody have any idea what I’m talking about?  My first thought was Poltergeist, and others have said that too, but I can’t find this image associated with that movie.  That movie is famous for the girl sitting in front of the television screen. Another thought was Close Encounters, where the door is open and the kid is watching the space ship land, but I don’t think that’s what I was thinking of. Anybody know what I’m talking about?  It’s killin me! (My apologies for the offtopic post.  I figured my regular readers will forgive me :))

Comcast Commercial

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Comcast (the US cable provider) is running a new commercial for their “high speed” service that shows two actors performing the death scene from Romeo and Juliet.  The gimmick is they’re in a hurry, so they rush through it.    They actually seem to stick to script (I didn’t care enough to actually see how accurate they were).  I think it would have been funnier if Juliet actually said “Blah blah, yadda yadda, oh happy dagger….” Not terribly funny, and I have no smart comments, I just felt obliged to acknowledge it :).