The Hollow Crown 1: Richard II

I have been in a state of nerd DEFCON 2 all year, I swear. 2012 is starting to feel like the apology for the (other than Thor) rather thin offerings of things that to watch in 2011. But I haven't just been vibrating with barely controlled glee over the various extravaganzas of shit blowing up and bad things getting punched in the throat (slow motion optional). I've been counting the days until the start of the BBC's The Hollow Crown, which is their presentation of four of Shakespeare's history plays: Richard II, Henry IV part 1 and part 2, and Henry V. The name "The Hollow Crown" actually comes from a line in Richard II (act 3 scene 2):

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits...
Nice pick for three plays about the life and death of kings.

I love Shakespeare. I have since my mother had me watch Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. I regularly go for plays in Boulder's summer Shakespeare festival, though unfortunately none for me this year since I'm in Houston. But hey, the BBC is helping me out with this one.

I actually took Shakespeare for non-majors to get my upper division literature credit for my BA. We ended up reading Richard II and both parts of Henry IV, though to my eternal sadness didn't continue on to Henry V, which is still my favorite out of all the plays. That class is also the source of one of the worst sentences I've ever written in my life (in a paper about Macbeth) but I digress. We did get to watch a video of the production of Richard II that Derek Jacobi starred in, and I liked it well enough.

Full disclosure: I probably would have just been at nerd DEFCON 3, if it weren't for the fact that Tom Hiddleston is playing Prince Hal/Henry V in the next plays. Favorite actor in favorite play ever? Gosh BBC, I would have just been happy with a box of chocolates and a stilted love letter, you didn't have to go to all this trouble, but THANKS.

I will admit that of the four plays listed, Richard II is probably my least favorite. I'm not really wowed by the fact that it's written in full verse, since I feel like the rhyming gets a little tedious or strained at times. I feel like it's got some structural weaknesses in the plot - for example, I've been trying for years to actually give a crap one way or the other when Richard's sycophants get put to death, but it's pretty hard to do so when they don't actually do anything as far as we can tell. We only hear about their misdeeds as a quick litany right before the head chopping happens. (I'm thinking this might have been less of an issue for audiences who were historically closer to the events being described, and also likely less picky.)

There's also the fact that it ends up feeling very uneven; Richard is basically deposed at the end of Act 3, and it takes two more acts (which feel a bit drawn out) of him emoting before the thing is really done. I watched the #TheHollowCrown twitter tag the entire time the play was going, and saw quite a few people who were unacquainted with the play feeling very confused that Richard was deposed with something like another 40 minutes to go, because that really does feel like the end right there. A lot of action happens offstage that makes it much less satisfying than what we get out of Henry IV and Henry V. And so on.

Which is not to say that I dislike the play. Obviously, I was still utterly geeked to sit down and watch it via streaming. I'm just setting what I feel are flaws of the play out because I went in expecting those flaws to be in evidence. They're structural to the play and can't really be escaped.

So with that in mind, I thought the production was excellent, and I enjoyed it even more than I expected to.

Costumes and sets were just fine for my untrained eye; to me it looked better than a lot of BBC shows I've seen in the past thanks to the magic of PBS.

Really what blew me away was the casting. There wasn't a single actor in there that I'd even begin to complain about. There were actually several non-white actors cast, which I thought was excellent. Lucian Msamati was the Bishop of Carlisle, and I thought he did great. Someone actually complained on twitter about it, which gave me some serious rageface¹.

Ben Whishaw did an absolutely amazing job as Richard, handling all of his lightning fast swings between manic hope and rage and utter despair deftly. On one hand he made me want to punch Richard in the throat for being such a self-absorbed, petty tyrant, and on the other he still managed to make Richard a sympathetic character at the end, because you really could feel his complete loss of all hope. There was some commentary on twitter that he was getting a rather effeminate treatment; maybe a little, but that seems pretty in keeping with the play, I think, particularly since it makes Henry look like more of a badass.

David Suchet made an amazing Duke of York. I loved him to pieces in every scene he was in. He had all the internal conflict of choosing between Richard (the rightful but total crap king) and Henry (the usurper but much better king) and it came through very powerfully.

And of course, Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt just stole it completely. Which I guess is what you'd expect from Patrick Stewart. John of Gaunt's big speech in Act 2 scene 1 just gave me chills.

The only thing for the production I really didn't care for was I felt like the divine imagery got hammered on a little too much. Yes, I get it. Richard being deposed was a massive blow against the idea of the divine right of kings. And he certainly felt himself persecuted. But somewhere between him laying out on the floor of the throne room in his white robe and being tucked in a coffin with some very well-placed wounds, it got to be just a bit too much for my taste. At the point the coffin was open and we got a full view of mostly naked Richard with his knees bent in a rather familiar pose, I turned to Mike and said, "He just went the full Jesus. Never go the full Jesus." So obviously, this did not have the desired effect on me as a viewer if my reaction was sarcastic paraphrasing of Kirk Lazarus.

Anyway, if you like Shakespeare, definitely give this one a whirl. If you want to try Shakespeare out, it's not a bad place to start, though the verse can be a little rough if you're not used to it. The actors are all excellent, though, so you can get a good idea of what's going on even if you have a hard time following some of the dialog - though I'd recommend perhaps reading a summary of the play first just in case since that does help.

What this has really done is given me a massive case of anticipatory squee for the next three installments. If they managed to impress me this much with a play I'm pretty lukewarm toward, I may just explode in a shower of sugary sparkles of happiness by the time we get to the Battle of Agincourt in Henry V.



1 - Obviously in his day, everything was about white dudes, and all the actors were white dudes, because duh. I'm really happy that non-white actors are finally scoring parts, and within the context of the plays it's being treated as a complete non-issue. I just keep wondering when women are finally going to get that chance in mainstream productions. There are obviously some places where that wouldn't work, but for example in Richard II it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of a difference if Bagot is played by a man or a woman. This is just a thing I think about on occasion, because if this were fantasy mirror world where I could actually magically be an actress, I would still never get to play any of the parts Shakespeare wrote that I love best, because back in his day women didn't get to do a whole hell of a lot. (Including acting, so hey at least we've gotten that far!) So it just makes me sad. Not that it stops me from reading scenes to my cats when no one is around and I feel like making dramatic pronouncements.

Burning

There's a new fire near Boulder. It's only 300 acres, but it's burning the flatirons, it's heading toward NCAR, and there are evacuation notices dropping.

The High Park Fire is still burning at over 87,000 acres.

My friends Susan and Galen have been evacuated from Colorado Springs. My best friend (their daughter) just told me that the fire has burned the home of one of her former students, that it's down the street from the school she taught at until this summer. People from my writing group have been evacuated, or we haven't heard from them at all.

@PatrickSandusky: This is colorado springs right now. Look at this photo and be shocked. Its f'ing armageddon here

Even away from the fires the air smells like barbecue. It's hazy. The horizon closes in, unnaturally for Colorado. Ash falls from the sky in some areas, like it did during the Hayman fire years ago. It's the most disturbing snow imaginable, gray fluff when it's hot and dry and you can look the sun in the eye because it's a angry orange ball cloaked in smoke.

9 active fires are burning right now: High Park, Chimney Rock, Flagstaff, Last Chance, Little Sand, Waldo Canyon, Stateline, Treasure, Weber. These are all places I have been, mountainsides that are old friends, trails I've hiked.

This is all I have, a dry recounting of names and facts. I know I would feel this helpless if I was home. I will feel this helpless when I'm home over the weekend. Because what can you do against fire? It's a force of nature. It's unseasonably hot days, no rain, and an uncountable number of dead pine trees, killed by beetles breeding over too many mild winters. There is nothing a single human being can do about that.

Is this climate change? People arguing over that are missing the point. Climate change is not one single event. It's the culmination of years and decades of gathering warmth and more easily attained extremes. So is this a warning? Perhaps. Years of warm winters and hot summers? Perhaps. There isn't anything a single solitary human can do about that either.

There's some hope that good could come from this, in the sense that this will consume the beetle-killed trees, and maybe it'll cut down on the number of pests. What we really need are our desperately cold winters back, two in a row. But so far that hasn't happened, and I don't find a lot of hope that it will soon.

But now I just feel helpless, sitting 1100 miles away and clicking reload on news feeds over and over while Colorado burns.

From the Denver Post: How to help.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Try, for a moment, to imagine the most ridiculously awesome thing possible. Imagine a unicorn composed of woven rainbows and cotton candy with hooves of chiming silver bells and a goofy, horsey smile. Imagine this unicorn galloping across a sky made of pie and pudding and baby giggles while Eric Prydz's Call On Me remix plays in an endless disco loop in the background. And on this unicorn's back are Lady Gaga and Tom Hiddleston, wearing matching meat dresses, holding hands and singing along while fireworks and magical sparkles burst into being and simultaneously Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks a velociraptor in the face over and over again for all eternity.

Got that all?

Okay. Now imagine something even more awesome.

You can't.

That's because you haven't seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter yet. You lack the necessary vocabulary for the sort of awesome we're talking about here.

Let me put it to you straight. This is not a good movie. God no. The pacing gets weird, some of the characters can't seem to figure out who exactly they are from one scene to another, and to call some of the dialog cringe-inducing would be a kindness. And it doesn't actually matter.

Because let's be honest. You aren't watching this movie because you want to watch something good. You're watching it because you want to see Abraham Motherfucking Lincoln kill a shitload of vampires. With an ax. Which he twirls around like he's in the color guard contingent recruited directly from Hell. You're watching this moving because it's shit-eating-grin cracked-out fun.

Which is exactly what it is. Anyone who tries to take this movie seriously (or thinks this movie is in any way taking itself seriously) is missing the point entirely. It's not supposed to be serious, or good, or compelling. It's supposed to be a thing that makes you giggle so hard with pure, child-like glee that you think you're going to strain a muscle in your face.

I paid $10.50 to see this movie and I feel like I got every penny of enjoyment I was owed and more, from the first ridiculous moment of bitty Abraham Lincoln running at a bad guy with a hatchet to the first part of the credits where they make a map of the US out of flowing cgi blood.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is one of those rare movies where what you saw in the trailer is exactly what you get out of the movie. So if you watched the trailer and thought "Hell yeah I want to eat some fucking popcorn and watch vampires with bad southern accents get chopped apart in random moments of super slow motion" then go to your theater, throw money at them, and get on your goddamn magic unicorn.

If me stating: Dude. It's a hatchet. With a gun in it. It's a fucking HATCHETGUN, doesn't make you want to instantly reach through the internet and engage in a serious brofist, this is not the movie for you.

Trust me.

Honest as Abe.

Embassytown

I've finally found a way to love China Miéville.

Which I feel really guilty about. Not loving him before, that is. I've tried to read The City and the City and Kraken and I ended up giving up on both books. I couldn't get into them. The prose was beautiful and simultaneously felt entirely opaque to me.

And for once, this isn't one I blame the author for. I feel like there's some sort of inner disfunction that I have going, preventing me from really sinking into the story. I'm a bit lazy as a reader, sometimes, and I tend to give up on challenging things because I'd rather read about people shooting at each other after I've had a brain-melting day at work.

However.

I decided I was going to read Embassytown since it's on the Hugo list, and I'm being a responsible voter. To be honest, I was dreading it a little, since I remember too well beating my head against The City and the City and feeling horribly guilty when I couldn't do it. Then, when I was asking for audiobook recommendations so I'd have something to listen to on long rides and the amazing Janiece suggested Embassytown. I gave it a try.

Riding along at 18mph and sweating fit to die is apparently a place where I can stop wrestling with prose and just absorb it. I let the words wash over me while I'm building up a good burn, and they just are. It was wonderful, and I finally understand why people have such fabulous things to say about China Miéville's books.

I'm thinking this might just be how China Miéville's works are meant to be consumed, at least by me. I think I'll try The City and the City once I run through my current set of books and see if I like it as much.

By the way? The actual book itself is very interesting. The aliens he came up with are utterly fascinating. There was a place or two where I could have done with a little less exposition, and some of the speechifying at the end went on a little for my tastes, but I found the characters compelling and the culture interesting. So I definitely recommend it. In audiobook format, of course.

Avon called and I didn't answer.

Someone leaves Avon catalogs in the ladies' restroom that's nearest my office. I have no idea who. Sometimes I look at them, because, you know. Anyone who claims they've never wanted a little reading material in the bathroom is lying, or possibly just made of plastic.

The Avon catalog is something I manifestly Do Not Get. Its contents are a complete mystery to me, with the possible exception of the nail polish. At the age of thirty-one, I still have no idea how to put on makeup as anything more than an abstract. I have two sets of makeup, both of which were bought for weddings with the help of friends (one for mine, one for my friend Marie's) and they sit in a little bag in the corner of the linen closet, exiled for all time. For both those sets of makeup, I had to have someone actually apply it to my face, because I'm utterly incompetent at it.

As far as I can remember, my mother never wore makeup when I was growing up. (And still doesn't now.) Perhaps that's why it was never a thing that was on my radar. A friend I had in grade school had one of those awful play makeup sets, and I recall spending one afternoon messing with it before the charm was completely lost. Maybe I had more overtly feminine [coded] moments when I was even younger, but if so I can't remember them any longer.

I have this weird, occasional pang where I wonder if I ought to make it my business to learn how to wear makeup properly, build up a little stock, actually do the thing occasionally. Considering it's not something I actually want, that fleeting thought never experiences any kind of follow-up. It could be that I'm just that lazy. It could also be that I don't like how makeup feels on my face, and I don't really like how it makes me look not myself - that can't be Rachael, she doesn't wear lipstick.

It's not just the makeup that I don't get. It's the jewelry. I have eight earrings which cannot be removed without using pliers, and I never get around to wearing anything in my earlobes, the only place earrings can be easily changed. The only other jewelry I ever wear is my wedding band and my Thor's Hammer necklace, because that's like an automatic tic where I roll out of bed, turn off the alarm and slip the leather string over my head. A catalog full of cheap but cute jewelry, little bits of shiny that are meant to be combined with specific outfits leaves me utterly mystified. I want my shiny utilitarian, daily wear, and by preference not all that shiny.

It's also the dresses, the obviously disposable shoes that are very pretty but would functionally be horrific to wear. I don't want to think about running stairs in those things. And don't the fake flowers glued on to the sandal straps make your feet itch? Every now and then when I'm at Lane Bryant, desperately trying to find a shirt I can wear for work that doesn't make me feel ridiculous because it has ruffles on it, I try on a dress and feel utterly silly.

All of these things, I just don't understand. My happy place is a tank top, jeans, and Pumas. Or bike shorts and an Arrogant Bastard jersey. So why is it that every now and then, I have this weird, almost guilty pang, as if something awful in the back of my brain is whispering, you're a girl, you should get this stuff.

It's total bullshit, of course. It's just fine if there are people who like shiny and makeup and brightly colored things. It should be just as fine for there to be people who don't. And it should be fine that I'm one of those people. So where does this thought even come from? Alien mind control slug? It doesn't even feel like something I'd think, and it never goes further than me trying on a dress, looking in the mirror, and going Oh hell no.

Sometimes I like to imagine that maybe there's a boy out there who got my societally mandated portion of shiny and makeup. I hope he looks utterly gorgeous. And I hope all of his friends are as understanding of him as mine are of me and my complete inability to even want to wear eye shadow.

Roly poly interlopers

Just today, I've removed three pillbugs from my apartment. I have no idea where they're coming from, but they really like to hang around my kitchen. Maybe they're hoping for a cup of tea. Or a beer, it's pretty hot out even in the morning.

Pillbugs are the least offensive arthropods I've encountered since moving to Texas. There's the giant cockroaches that everyone tries to pretend are okay by calling them palmetto bugs, but let's not kid ourselves. There's the tactical mosquitos. There's the thing in my bathroom that I crushed with a wad of toilet paper this morning that we will not speak of further. There was the other thing that I encountered in my shower, which I mercifully can only remember as a mahogany-colored blob (I wasn't wearing my glasses at the time) that I beat into a disturbingly large smear with a shampoo bottle.

I've got fond memories of pillbugs from growing up. What kid hasn't had fun poking these little guys and watching them curl up into little grey-black, segmented pills?

Pillbugs are crustaceans (so they have blue blood), they breathe through gills (but spend all their life on land), and they're exceedingly cute. They also tickle if you let them walk across your skin, kind of like millipedes. They also eat their own poop (to recover excreted copper), but thankfully have not done so in my presence.

Apparently the ones in Texas are mostlyArmadillium vulgare, which I'm pretty sure are the same ones we have in Colorado. I think it's pretty neat that their family name is Armidillidiidae, which I'm guessing was named for armadillos, since those can also curl up into a ball. Though unlike pillbugs, armadillos aren't nearly as cute and can apparently seriously fuck up your car if you run over one. Armadillium vulgare is apparently actually a European pillbug, so it's a transplant.

Oh yeah. And they're in order Isopoda. Which means they're related to these guys, which I think is another argument for returning pillbugs safely to the wild habitat of the courtyard garden outside my window. Because I don't want one of their big brothers showing up while I'm in the shower and chittering at me in a menacing fashion to indicate its displeasure that I stepped on second cousin three times removed Rita.

Though of course, there's also the parasitic tongue-eating isopod that makes me glad I'm not a fish and oh god I wish I could unsee that.

Suddenly pillbugs seem... less cute.

Fitness for Fat Nerds: Close Encounters With Nature

Since I started exercising regularly, I've learned a thing or two about our six-legged insect overlords. First, there's way, way more of them than there are of us, and we should be thankful every day that they're still susceptible to the business end of a wadded-up tissue. Second, insects really, when you come down to it, want to be inside us.

This is both more and less disgusting than it sounds. Less, because at least if you live in my part of the world you don't have to worry about horror movie-esque things like blowflies. More, because it means you spend a lot of time blowing insect parts out of your nose. That's how they want to get in, you see. You'll be trotting along on a trail, nodding along happily to some Katy Perry song (because hey, you're listening on ear buds it's not like anyone else can hear you and judge) and then out of nowhere something composed of seventeen wings and approximately a thousand legs will fly up your nose. As you are inhaling. And you'll feel it catapult directly into your sinuses.

If this followed the format of my normal blog posts, now would be the time that I'd give you a bunch of great tips on how to avoid this horrifying eventuality. Sorry, kids. It's going to happen. Make your peace with it.

Sure, you could avoid close encounters with nature like this by, for example, never leaving the house. If you can manage to do all your exercising inside and still find it interesting, more power to you. That's not something I've ever managed. There aren't enough books and bad TV shows in the world to make me enjoy running on a treadmill. But if you exercise outside, it'll happen eventually. Probably sooner rather than later. There are a lot of bugs out there. A lot of them. They're all like tiny, six-legged old school samurai who have been raised with a romantic philosophy of death, and each and every one of them wants to commit suicide using you.

The first time I ever ran on a track, a small moth darted out of the field and flew up my nose. That was an awesome way to finish my last quarter mile, let me tell you. The first time I ever did the 19 mile trail ride down to Denver on my bike, I inhaled something around mile eight, and it was disturbingly (yet, I'll admit, fascinatingly) intact when I blew it out of my nose eleven miles later. I had to spend a long moment staring at a puddle of my own snot and wondering if my sinuses have some kind of TARDIS-like quality, where they were actually bigger than my entire head in order to fit a bug that size.

If you're going to be out for a long time in a place where you're worried about ticks (or mosquitos), bug spray isn't a bad idea. (It also helps to wear long sleeves/long pants even if it's kind of hot; that's how I hike, since it prevents sunburn as well.) But DEET doesn't seem to stop the suicidal little bastards that just want to fly up your nose. Maybe the desire for the sweet release of death overpowers the chemical stench.

All you can really do is carry a bit of kleenex with you, if you even have a pocket to put it in. Or make peace with blowing your nose using leaves if the sinus tickle is blinding you. Or use your sleeve. That's what sleeves are for, people. You're just going to sweat through them anyway and presumably chuck your shirt in the laundry basket as soon as you get home.

Honestly, I'd much prefer to eat my bugs than inhale them. There's a lot less snot that way. Hey, meat on the hoof, right? Because that's also going to happen, especially if you ride a bike. You're going to eat bugs. Go with it, and swallow quickly, because going 20mph down a narrow trail you're sharing with pedestrians is not a good time to get distracted by little things like some extra protein in your diet.

And let's be honest. If you've ever eaten a Cheeto, you've put something far more disgusting than a gnat in your body. 

Loki's Continuing Adventures in Houston: In Which There Is Pie

Another day, another hive of pitiful mortal activity to be subjugated.

Everything is, indeed, bigger in Texas. Loki is forced to wonder for what the mortals are compensating.

Loki demands that he be brought the fiercest champion of the House of Pies.

"All of your precious strawberry jam is mine, mortals! AHAHAHAHA!"

More strawberry jam, or perhaps the blood of his wounded foe? You are defeated, Monte Cristo - COUNT on it.

Loki first takes a moment to simply roll in the bounty of pies offered unto him by the trembling waitress. He expects no less.

The Monte Cristo did not prove a worthy foe. He demands a new champion, the so-called 'house specialty' of this temple of pies.

A mighty battle ensues.

"Admit your defeat, cursed Bayou Goo!"

The noble pie's stillness is answer enough. Loki takes a moment to savor his victory before succumbing to a food coma.

Next time, House of Pies. Next time.