http://www.shakespearepost.com/2008/09/03/david-crystal’s-‘pronouncing-shakespeare’-website-goes-live/ Where does John get all the good scoops? I’m jealous. Check out the audio sample from Romeo and Juliet.  It sounds…hmmmm…I hate to say “Scottish” but that’s about as close as I can think to describe it.  It’s not at all what I would have expected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IH85WQp4fo If you never saw Mystery Science Theatre 3000, let me try to explain.  It’s a rather zany concept about a man (a janitor, really) who was sent off in space by an evil scientist who is going to torture him by making him watch bad movies until he slowly goes insane.  To keep his sanity, the man (and his robot friends, whom he made from a gumball machine and lacrosse set) make fun of the movies.  The show ran a good 10 years, although in its later years with none of the original cast left it greatly suffered.  “Manos, The Hands Of Fate” gained fame on this show as people recognized it for the worst movie ever made. Well.  In this particular episode, Mike (our human) wins a game with the evil scientist where he gets to pick his own movie.  “Just send me Hamlet,” he says.  “It doesn’t matter which one, they’re all good.” Wrong!  Our mad scientist sends up a dubbed German version for him to suffer on. As far as an MST3K episode goes, it’s …. well, not good.  At all.  Most of their jokes fall incredibly flat, and they find almost no opportunity at all to riff on anything actually Shakespearean.  Lots of “Danish” jokes, stuff like that. The movie is…equally bad.  For some strange reason, Gertrude looks like a space alien.  At one point they call her “Queen Dilbert’s Boss” which might have been one of the funniest jokes of the episode (once you see her hair, you’ll understand).  And the ghost as well looks very Martiany, with the big high plastic collar for no reason and the generic flowing robe.  Claudius’ voice is done by Ricardo Montalban (and they do sneak in a “rich Corinthian leather” joke).  It’s a rather odd combination, a German movie about Danes done with a Spanish accent.  Even more so when Hamlet is done with a German (Austrian?) accent.  Half way through the movie he started sounding like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and I could barely stand it. With any filmed Hamlet it’s interesting to see what they skip and what they emphasize.  There is no ghost in the queen’s bedroom, for instance.  And during the climactic final scene, Claudius voluntarily drinks the poison (granted, he’s already been stabbed at that point).   There’s a bunch of others but I watched it on my ipod and didn’t take notes, so it’s hard to remember every little thing.  They did do a whole big repeating joke on Laertes’ line about cutting Hamlet’s throat in a church, which really made me appreciate a line I’d never noticed before.  Hamlet has a chance to kill Claudius at prayer (arguably, “in a church”) and does not take it.  When asked the lengths that he would go to avenge his father, Laertes uses that as the example of how far he’d go.  (Laertes, by the way, is particularly terrible.  He looks like a blonde Meatloaf and acts worse.) Still, there were times when I actually liked the actor playing Hamlet — Maximillian Schell, who seems like he should be familiar to me but I can’t place where.  Anyway, I liked the whole “where is Polonius” scene, as well as the final blood bath.  Keep in mind that we’re talking about a movie that gets a 2 out of 10, and I’d give Hamlet himself maybe a 4, so it’s not like he’s rivalling Brannagh here.  I’m just looking for something good to say. If you’re into the MST3K idea we can talk about better episodes.  But once I realized this one existed, I had to watch it and blog about it.  Too geeky to miss. 🙂

I’ve owed you folks this story for quite some time, but I didn’t want to post until I had pictures of the final product.  Which in itself turned out harder than expected, as I took a bunch (along with my daughter’s 6th birthday party) and then lost the memory card :(.  But I’ve got them now, so on with the story!   Background:  A long time ago I got it into my head to get my wife a “Moebius” bracelet.  You’re perhaps seen them, it’s a neat little physical ring with a simple twist that – technically – makes it an impossibility, as it becomes a three dimensional object with only one side.  I like to call it an “infinity bracelet.”  When I found such bracelets with Sonnet 116 engraved (close to 300 characters!) I had to have one, but I wanted my own quote.  Ideally sonnet 17, the one used at my wedding.  I can’t recap the entire story here, but the long and short of it is that I thought that a personally engraved infinity bracelet was an impossibility, until I found a vendor in Arizona who said that they would do one for me.  Deal!   When last I updated everybody, my bracelet had “apparently” arrived because we were on vacation and when we returned there was a note at the door from the postman saying that a package was waiting for us.  This was displeasing to me as I told them to send it to my office – I planned to hide it until the end of September, for my wedding anniversary.  But when a random package shows up at the house, I’m not a good liar. We sign the slip and put it out for the mailman the next day — no package.  We call, and are told “You have to wait at least 2 days.” Next day?  Nothing.  I call the vendor and ask if there is any sort of tracking on the package so we can verify that it is not lost.   The next day I get a call at work from the vendor in Arizona, saying “I just spoke to your local post office, and they have it for you.  They’re waiting for you to go pick it up.”  I said, “Lady I work in Boston, an hour away from the post office, I can’t pick it up!”  Oy, vey!  I call the post office to see if my wife can pick it up.  They explain to me that it was misfiled in certified letters, and no they can’t deliver it, someone has to come get it.  But yes, she can come and get it. So she gets it, does not open it.  To complicate matters, are you ready for this?  THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN.  We decide on the spur of the moment to take the kids to the circus, so I meet the family at a restaurant for dinner and head over there.  The package has waited this long, now it has to wait a few more hours. At long last – maybe 10pm that night – I finally got to unveil it.  This is the first time I’ve seen it, as well.  I don’t even get the opportunity to see if it came out good.    It came out *great*.  My wife loves it.  Totally doesn’t understand it at first, but sits with me as I explain the whole gift:  She likes jewelry, I like Shakespeare, I wanted a gift that symbolized something that was important to both of us.  I could have gotten a canned, mass produced one with some generic sonnet, but I didn’t want that, I wanted quotes that meant something to us, something that would make it unique in the universe.  It begins with, “If I could write the beauty in your eyes, and in fresh numbers number all your graces, the age to come would say This poet lies, such heavenly touches never touched earthly faces.”  That’s from our wedding, and that part represents the past.  Then we have, “I will swear I love thee infinitely,” that’s the present, that’s how I live every moment of every day. I even verified with my experts that the character being quoted there means what he says, and I was told that they’ve got one of the best marriages in all of Shakespeare.  Lastly we have “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” from The Tempest, the first Shakespeare play that the kids understood.  That’s the future.  Then it’s signed, “Kerry and Duane, September 30, 2000”, and it’s back around to the beginning where it starts all over.  I call it an infinity bracelet. I then had to say it all again, going over every character (something like 280 of them).   When we got to “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” she said, “That’s not what it says.” “Excuse me?” “It says a made on.” “Excuse me?” “Right there, look.  We are such stuff as dreams a made on.” She’s right.  There’s a typo on my one in the universe hand made anniversary present for my wife I’ve been working on for two years.  OH I’M GONNA KILL SOMEBODY. “You are so not returning this!” she said.  “I love it just like it is.” At this point I’ve spent so much time getting my hands on it that I have no plans to return it.  Still, it’s a little upsetting.  I send a lovely note off to the vendor speaking of the typo, where I promise I used little profanity.  I dig through my archives, and I discover exactly where the problem occurred.  On the very last day we spoke, over the phone, I went over every character with her.  So I knew we had it right.  She then emailed me the final letter count and invoice, which I never checked, since I’d just spoken to her an hour ago.  And that email had the error.  So, whose fault?  Theirs for introducing it, or mine for not catching it?  The way I see it, it just adds to the story we tell :). At this point that was…two months ago (my last post on the subject was June 30).  My wife has not taken the bracelet off yet, so I guess she likes it :).   Honestly, I’m very happy with the final product, and the vendor was nothing but nice for the entire process.  You have no idea how long it took me to customize this thing – from the individual infinity symbols between each quote, to lining up the spacing just right so the end of the last quote rolled right into the start of the first one.  They were perfectly patient and accomodating through the whole thing.  And the price was very reasonable!  They charge per character, with a pretty good discount the more characters you use. The vendors are Marcia and John of http://www.mobiusproductsandservices.com/.  Tell them Duane the Shakespeare Geek sent you, and no hard feelings about the typo. 🙂

http://people.boston.com/forums/news/local/general/?p=discussiondetails&activityid=5893652700183531193 When my inlaws told me this news today, I was surprised I’d missed it.  But, there it is — Citi will no longer sponsor Shakespeare in the Park for Boston.  The Shakespeare folks, however, say “The show will go on.”  Personally I hope it’s a good thing.  Citi Group never seemed interested in Shakespeare, they merely inherited it when they bought the Wang Center.  As we all know they tried to cut us down to a single week, but people got pissed enough that it went back up to three weeks this year.  Maybe next season they can have a sponsor who doesn’t whine and cry poor about it all season?