http://www.theonion.com/content/news/stephon_marbury_embroils_celtics I love it when The Onion does it Shakespeare style.  “A Director Sets A Play In the Time and Place Shakespeare Intended” is still one of the great Onion stories of all time. When you throw in my Boston Celtics, well, then it’s comedy gold. "Weird thing is, he kept calling the other guys moors, which is just really messed up," the 12-time all-star said. "I mean, what is that, anyway? He didn’t say it like it was a good thing. If he plays good basketball he can do what he wants, but I’m not going to listen to anyone call me or my guys moors." All three men also commented that Marbury had at some point pulled each one of them aside and told them the other two had been "making the beast with two backs."

http://ask.metafilter.com/115818/Wanted-decent-nontraditional-Shakespeare-adaptations Over on Metafilter somebody’s asked for “interesting” adaptations of Shakespeare, either in book, film of play form.  The usual suspects are there, Kurosawa, Stoppard, 10 Things I Hate About You, etc… Here’s a few that were new to me: Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well (I didn’t know he did a Hamlet?) A Thousand Clowns (1997, apparently King Lear?) Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet   … Wow, either it’s a short list or I’ve just seen a whole lot of Shakespeare adaptations. 🙂

A long long time ago I found Shakespeare in XML, by Jon Bosak, and I’ve quite literally carried it around with me ever since.  If you’re not a programming geek you may not know the value of XML, so let me try to explain.  XML is like a database inside a file – it is self describing of what’s in it.  So instead of this:

Act 1, Scene 1

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
    FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO
BERNARDO
    Who’s there? You get something more like this: <Act> <Title>Act 1</Title> <Scene> <Title>Scene 1</Title> <Stagedir>Elsinore.  A platform before the castle … </Stagedir> <Speech> <Speaker> <Name>Bernardo</Name> </Speaker> <Line>Who’s there?</Line> </Speech> … Get the idea?  So if you’re a code geek you look at that and start seeing the logic you can apply, like “In Act #3 how many lines are there in all of the speeches spoken by Hamlet?” and it’s quite literally one or two lines of code. Anyway, I never found the Sonnets in XML.  There’s one or two out there as examples of how to do XML, but I never found the whole set of 154, and I wanted it. So I made it.  It’s very basic, but it does what I need.  If others find it useful and make enhancements I’d appreciate hearing about it. Enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/opinion/04dowd.html?_r=2&ref=opinion Fun story, full of Lear references, about how John McCain (the man who professed last year to not even knowing how to send e-mail) is now on Twitter.  Everybody is quite sure that it’s his people doing it, by the way, not him.  To be fair to the man, his long time injuries prevent him from sitting at a keyboard for extended periods. It is not a piece that is positive on Obama, in case you’d like to know that up front.  But it is hard to deny the facts (I am a supporter of Obama, not McCain) – there’s lots and lots and lots of wasteful spending still going on, now with Obama’s signature on it.   Can’t really argue that.  The best you can say to defend it is “Picking your battles.”   McCain’s entire argument seemed to be about trimming 7 billion dollars – from a 410 billion dollar bill.  Hopefully (and note I’m saying hopefully, not definitely!), Obama will pick some bigger battles to fight.

Random idea I just tripped over : Would it be possible, without completely destroying major parts of the script, to play Juliet as blind?  I can imagine it really heightening the various scenes where they are apart – if he’s not physically in contact with her, he might as well be a million miles away.  Not to mention really emphasizing her dependence on the others around her.  When she wakes up in the tomb that’d be particularly scary, until she feels Romeo there beside her, and has to figure out that he’s dead. Just something that hit me.  Somebody on Twitter said how could you play Juliet more vulnerable, and that leapt out at me.