I actually spotted that headline over at 365 Days of Shakespeare, where it refers to steroid use.  But when I first saw it, being a life-long pro-wrestling fan, thought of juicing in the context of “deliberately cutting yourself with a razor in order to draw real blood.”

What would you do?  Imagine the stage combat director is an old pro-wrestler, and suggests to you that the scene will look more realistic if you take one for the team and drag a thin bit of razorblade across your forehead in the way that he shows you. Would you go for it? Or tell him he’s nuts and call the union?

It may sound like a stupid question, but there are legions of pro-wrestlers out there who do it regularly, and how different are they really from theatre performers? They’ve got a live audience, they do a show every night, they have to at least attempt to tell a story that was written for them. Imagine a play where it’s all fight scenes and later somebody goes back in and throws in some dialogue to tie it together.

Ok, this movie’s been a long, long time coming. I first mentioned this Disney project about red versus blue garden gnomes back in April 2006!

Well it’s four years later and the trailers are here!

I have to say, I’m disappointed.  This looks like it’s got about as much Romeo and Juliet as Camp Rock 2 did. Inspired by? Sure.  But from the trailer it looks more like West Side Story than Shakespeare.

I hope I’m wrong, I hope I discover that the gnomes do occasionally spout actual Shakespearean dialogue. I don’t expect it, of course, but it’ll be a nice treat.  It’s an animated Disney movie, so of course my kids will end up seeing it even without the Shakespeare connection. But it’s going to be very upsetting if we’ve waited 4 years for nothing more than a Shakespearean storyline 🙁

We haven’t spoken of Halloween much, I realize.  Usually because it’s upon me too late and there’s no time to really do anything exciting (with three little ones, I rarely think about any sort of grownup costumes or parties). With over a month to go, anybody got good Halloween ideas?  Doing anything Shakespearey?  My kids keep telling me to dress up like Shakespeare, but I’m not even sure how one would do that without going full out and getting a relatively fancy/expensive costume.  They’ve also told me to dress up like Hamlet (all black, and carry around a skull?) or Romeo (no idea how I’d pull that one off).  My oldest daughter at one point had the idea to go as pasta (ziti, specifically), but she decided that nobody would really get it, and went with the old standby (Wonder Woman) instead.  But that makes me think how genius it would be to dress up like ….. Bacon.  I don’t love that particular costume, but man, if I can keep my eye out for a better looking one?  I might just do it. I could ride on that joke for years.  Could put a little nametag on it, says “Hello! My name is Francis.” UPDATED: Worth promoting, @Bardfilm wrote:

Boy should go as Lear; girls as Regan & Goneril. After each stop, they should "disquantity" him of his candy.

[Context : I have three children, a boy and two girls.  The boy is the youngest.] Both funny and tragic, I can see that whole scene playing out in my house.  “If you want to walk with me, Brendan, you need to give me half your mini-Snickers bars.” “Well then I’ll walk with Elizabeth!” “Half your Snickers bars, eh? That’s a good idea, you have to give me half your Kit-Kats.” I can just imagine my little 4yr old boy stuck in the middle with nowhere to go.  I guess I’d play the Fool? 🙂

Watching Glee with the kids.  For those that don’t recognize it or don’t watch, Glee is one of the most popular shows on tv right now due mostly to the tie-in to the iPod generation.  It’s the story of, well, a Glee club.  So every episode is a bunch of modern cover songs (just showed the kids the Lady Gaga episode), anchoring a terribly stereotyped high school soap opera.  (Seriously, it’s awful.  When it first came on I couldn’t finish an episode, until I realized it’s *supposed* to be bad, and then it got entertaining.  God I hope it’s supposed to be bad…?)   Anyway, every week you’ll find that whatever song the Glee kids sing rapidly climbs to the top of the iTunes download charts, raking in a dollar or so with every download.  It’s genius. Everybody loves a good spin-off, right?  I want to take this exact same formula and make Bard, about the drama club instead of the glee club.  The show works, exactly the same way – every week a theme, a lesson for the kids to learn, and 3 or 4 anchoring “bits” from the source material that show the lesson.  Instead of Gaga week, they have, I dunno, Taming of the Shrew week.  Instead of MP3 files on iTunes, you get video clips. Just dreaming, I know.  But I’d love such a show.  The whole gimmick is that the stereotype for Glee club is that it’s for losers, and the show will change that.  Well, show the drama geeks some love too, huh? (*) For those that have no idea what we’re talking about, the L in the Glee logo is actually a hand making the letter, the universal symbol for “loser”.  I needed something to mimic that, and it’s the best I could come up with :).

[ This could turn not-safe-for-work (NSFW) pretty quickly, so beware …. ] We’ve had Bawdy Shakespeare and Filthy Shakespeare.  Whether or not you believe that every other word out of Shakespeare’s mouth was a euphemism for naughty bits, the simple truth is that these topics have long been one of the most popular Google searches. So, to have some fun and make it easy for the high school kids who want something to giggle at in English class, I ask : what’s your favorite Shakespeare dirty joke? One of my favorites, I can’t even really do justice here – but I’m talking about the scene in Comedy of Errors between Dromio and Antipholus of Syracuse.  Claiming that his newly discovered wife is “spherical like a globe” and that he “could name countries in her”, they do a hysterical schtick where Antipholus asks “Where was Ireland? What about Spain? France?” until finally getting in a big finish when he asks about her Netherlands.  Here’s a link to the full script, I can’t at the moment find a better link. I count this among favorites because, when I saw it performed, I laughed hysterically.  Malvolio’s comment in Twelfth Night about “her C’s, U’s and T’s” might be more filthy, but I don’t know that it’s as funny.  And I’ve always assumed that Hamlet was trying to be offensive, not funny, when he asked about country matters.