This post has no Shakespeare in it, just one of the world’s greatest living Shakespeareans. I know that’s upset some people in the past when we dare to look at the actors as people, rather than just their roles.  So consider this the disclaimer!

Sir Patrick Stewart has a new dog.  Specifically he and his wife are fostering a pitbull named Ginger. Here he gives the details on Conan:

For a clip I like even better you have to check him trying to take the dog for a swim. It does not go well, but it should certainly make everybody’s day. I wish I could embed the clip. That’s a link to his Twitter.  If you’re not following that you really should, he’s posting plenty more clips.

It’s true that this is the story of a person fostering a dog, something that no doubt happens all around the world all the time and is rarely newsworthy. I don’t care.  What I see is a 70+yr old man who hasn’t had a dog since he was a boy, who now gets to act like he’s a boy all over again. Pure joy radiates off the man, and that makes me happy. He’s given us plenty of things to he happy about, so if you’ve enjoyed his performance as Macbeth or Claudius or Prospero or any of the other myriad roles he’s played, time to enjoy him just being himself for a change.

 

Hi Everybody,

Hopefully everything’s settling in nicely to our home on WordPress.  I’ve spent most of my time making sure that 11 years worth of links aren’t 90% broken!

One of the main reasons to move off of Blogger was to take advantage of those features that are expectations of a modern blog, and one of them is better control over the appearance.  Right now we’re using a theme called Penscratch which I was using on my other sites Shakespeare Answers and Not By Shakespeare (both of which now redirect here, by the way). I chose it because it reminded me of the written word, crisp type on a white background.

 

Now that I’m in it 100% of the time, I’m wondering if it needs something.  I’d like to see some more color and images as part of the main browsing experience.  This theme does have the option of a “header” graphic – which appears in a horizontal bar under the title, and I wasn’t thrilled with it.  There’s also a “background” graphic which I couldn’t figure out how to work because every time I tried to set it, it hid everything else.

 

What do you think? Are there readers out there more familiar with the “standard” in WordPress theming that could offer some suggestions about ways to decorate?  I’m open to ideas!

I haven’t done one of these in a while.  Screen Rant offers us 15 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Based On Shakespeare. But really, if you’re at all a regular follower of what we do here, yes you did.  Their header graphic is the Lion King, for goodness sake.  Is there anybody out there today that doesn’t think Lion King is based on Hamlet?

The only reason I bother linking the list is that it’s got a good cross section of the different types of movies that Shakespeare’s original material can produce:

• Animated (see above)
• Teen comedies (10 Things I Hate About You, She’s The Man)
• Drama (My Own Private Idaho, A Thousand Acres)
• Musicals (West Side Story, Kiss Me Kate)
• Foreign language (Throne of Blood, Ran)
• Science-fiction (Forbidden Planet)

In case you’re looking for movie recommendations for the weekend, this is a great place to start.  While we’ve no doubt mentioned all these movies many times over the years, you probably haven’t actually seen all of them yet.

Today I learned, via @Reddit, that Barbara Feldon won the $64,000 Question in the Shakespeare category.

Ok, that is a very dated sentence, so let me break it down for everybody who is closer to my kids’ age than my own:

1. Barbara Feldon played Agent 99 on a television show called Get Smart in the 1960s, which my generation would have been watching in re-runs.
2. The $64,000 Question was a game-show that’s probably best compared to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.  The big difference, however, is that you had to answer questions all from a specific category. To give an idea of just how notoriously difficult the game was? Bobby Fischer, generally considered one of the greatest chess players of all time, did not get past the audition round in the chess category.

This clip of Barbara Feldon explaining how she got on the show is wonderful on a number of levels:

“I’m not an expert on anything.”

“You know, on my dressing table was a copy of King Lear, because I’d been re-reading the plays…”

Not just reading, re-reading.

Not just any play, King Lear.

Not just that play, “the plays”.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks!

The actual $64,000 question she “won” on is forgotten – but she tells the story of the $128,000 question that eventually sent her home. Do you think you could answer it, if you hadn’t known it was coming?