There’s always been trivia contests about which movie didn’t get the Oscar, but should have.  How about the reverse?  How about those that won the awards and didn’t really deserve it?  Welcome to the Oscar Turkeys. And guess who is the big winner?  Most Undeserving of All Time for Best Film?  Shakespeare in Love. Oh, well.  I liked it.  I agree it maybe wasn’t Oscar worthy, but I liked it.  

Ever wonder what Petruchio and Kate would like like as wasps, what with that whole “where a wasp doth keep his tongue” banter?  Sketchy Thoughts wondered exactly that.  The results are pretty neat, actually.  It’s just sketches, nothing complete, but I appreciate the fact that he “just sketched them out over dinner.”  That’s exactly the kind of random Shakespeare reference I like to link to.  Man could have drawn anything he wanted, and he drew Petruchio and Kate.  Gotta love that.  

I go back and forth over whether “Shakespeare geek” means “I’m a geek about Shakespeare stuff” or it means “I’m a geek who’s into Shakespeare.”  In support of the latter argument we have this link about calculating how many of Shakespeare’s atoms we inhale. Sure, the science is silly, but it’s geeky and it’s Shakespeare. “Breathe in, hold it there, enjoy the Shakespeare, breathe out.  Aaaah.  Repeat!” BONUS:  “So there’s also a little Buddha in all of us.”  

So I had this weird Shakespeare dream this weekend.  This will probably make no sense :).  Apparently I had published some claim about  particular plot device of Shakespeare’s, claiming that Julius Caesar was the first time that he had used it.  However, an old college friend and I had just discovered that it was actually used in Hamlet as well, and we were trying to figure out how to reconcile the new discovery with our published conclusions.  What’s interesting, though, is that the plot device as best I could remember it had to do with one character seeking out another character’s killer (a whodunnit story, in other words), only to have it unveiled that he was the killer all along.  In the case of Hamlet, we were looking for the killer of Polonius.  But everybody knows that Hamlet killed Polonius, so it’s not really a mystery.  I have no idea how Julius Caesar played into it, since the dream seemed mostly to be about analyzing Hamlet.  Like I said, it basically makes no sense from the start because Shakespeare didn’t write detective stories. Once I woke up and this all dawned on me, I started wondering what Hamlet would have been like if it really was a mystery.  Perhaps Hamlet sees Polonius emerging from Gertrude’s bedroom.  Hamlet’s already pretty messed up in the head about what’s been going on in his mom’s bed, so he redirects some of his rage at Polonius (instead of Claudius) and ends up killing the old man in secret.  Now the play can go on quite differently.  Hamlet never has to be sent to England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Aren’t Dead.  Ophelia doesn’t necessarily go crazy and kill herself.  Sure, her dad’s dead, but it’s not like her boyfriend is the one who did it (as far as she knows, at least).  Meanwhile Laertes probably returns to avenge his father, but with no one to challenge he’s at a bit of a loss as to what to do next.  Perhaps Hamlet is smart enough to twist events so that everybody believes Laertes killed Polonius?  Then poor Ophelia probably would kill herself after all. The girl’s a bit fragile.   Anyway, now I’m just babbling, and I’ve got work to do.  I wanted to document that dream, since it’s not often I dream about Shakespeare.  

Somebody by the name of “Old Cheeser” (who is apparently younger than me :-/) gets credit for finding this link of the kids from FAME doing Othello.  Yes, you heard that right . The kids from Fame.  Remember that show?  They’re gonna live forever, even if their tv show doesn’t?  Doing Othello.  Thank you television gods for not making it Romeo and Juliet or Midsummer yet again.