If Music Be the Food of Love Get Stuffed
It seems churlish to complain about it, but one of the many things I'm not catching up on (dishes, hand laundry, work, doing my taxes) is...filmed or zoom theater. It's almost time for Red Bull Theatre's production of The Witch of Edmonton, an obscure Jacobean play, which I will probably skip because I just watched the first half of the Globe Theatre's Two Noble Kinsmen, which has a LOT of Morris dancing.*

I love the Play On! series of zoomed table readings of Shakespeare plays in modern "translations," but....they're supposed to be every Friday! And I still haven't seen the end of King John! And they did Twelfth Night today, which, I'm fairly sure, is NOT Friday.

BTW speaking of the National Theatre, Frankenstein answers the traditional question a la stupidtvquestions. Everyone always wondered why Frankenstein assembled the critter out of so many ill-assorted components instead of just animating a single body. Well, as we know now, he only got half his Putrid Direct order and he didn't like all the substitutions, but there was nothing he could do about it.





*Considering the notably slash speech about how the two imprisoned cousin's are each other's wife, it can be argued that the play has both the things one should try everything except: incest and folk dancing.

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B7 Ficlet: As the Worm Turns (Series Finale)
Teensy little Gauda Prime missing scene:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23983219

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Drive-By: Peace and Quiet--We'll Go Masked
In retrospect, it now seems peculiar that Shakespeare wrote extensive scenes about masked characters in Much Ado and Love's Labours Lost, when Two Gentlemen of Corona was RIGHT THERE.

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Drive-By: Springtime for Narnia
Man, instead of always winter and never Christmas, these days it's always Good Friday and never Easter isn't it?

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Drive-By: Found in Austen
From Northanger Abbey (Catherine is talking to Henry): "You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words."

From Persuasion: "We live at home, quiet confined and our feelings prey upon us."

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Drive-By: For Your 2022 Oscar Consideration
THE SOCIAL DISTANCE: biopic about the billionaire developer of the Facemask app.

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Drive-By: Journal of the Plague Year
I guess the real Good Place was the people we stood six feet away from.

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Drive-By: Pajama Day in Purgatory
It dawned on me that when the Ghost appears in Gertrude's closet, he is wearing his nightshirt, suggesting that, like so many of us, he hasn't bothered to put on his Outside Clothes. (Actually, although Gertrude's closet is usually staged as her bedroom, so perhaps the Ghost was used to being there en deshabille, I've read that it should be more of a private parlor or indeed home office.)

Which leads me to wonder if the Ghost is violating a Work From Home order. Perhaps not, if he's been haunting Elsinore all along, although the play makes it sound like he's a new phenomenon. He seems to be acting on his own initiative--I don't think Revenge Influencer would have been considered an essential occupation.

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LeVar Burton reads stories on Twitter
LeVar Burton will be reading stories as a Twitter livestream--Fridays for adults, starting 4/3 with a Neil Gaiman story, and then kids' stories on Mondays and YA on Wednesdays:

https://allarts.org/2020/04/reading-rainbow-host-levar-burton-to-read-stories-aloud-on-twitter/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04012020

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Drive-By: Honor Among Thebes
Going back even further in classic literature to figure out how we got into this mess--well, obviously there is a long-standing connection between plagues and motherfuckers* but then I realized it isn't a good analogy because who could imagine Trump becoming King because there *was* a riddle he could solve?



*And I can hear you all saying to Trump "you have my brooch-pin!"

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Drive-By: Verona Crisis
From the one-act Romeo & Juliet: Juliet insists on proper social distancing from balcony, forcing Romeo to shout, which attracts the attention of the Capulet servants...

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It's Toile de Jouy, Bitches!
I saw a recommendation for "competition shows with really nice people" and, since I'm re-watching GBBO AGAIN I thought I'd spread my wings a little and try "Next in Fashion," which is a ten-episode competition (on Netflix) where teams of two fashion designers have a day and a half to design and make something really complicated. It's astonishing what they can do in the time, and they often make beautiful clothes, although the clothes that the designers themselves wear are eye-bleeding hideous.

They feature a lot of designers of color, and many of the guest judges are designers of color, and they mention many times that this competition offers opportunities that the broader fashion industry denied them.

So far most of the contestants do seem really nice. I've watched three episodes, and I suspect that Farai and Kiki got to stay (after being on the bubble the week before) and Julian and Hayley got thrown out is that everybody figured they'd better get Julian out of there before Hayley serges him to death. I mean, if this was an Agatha Christie, there would either be lots of suspects or they'd go all Orient Express with pinking shears. (...drink when Julian says "when I was in the military"...)

However, the second episode was "patterns" (where they got to either pick fabric out of a vast variety of mostly hideous things that look like they'd get dragged on frockflicks.com, or design their own patterns, to be custom-printed instantly) and one of the teams said the black-and-white design they picked was "a Chinese design" when ANY FULE NO it was toile de Jouy, and nobody corrected them.

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Directions for making face masks
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/20/1929503/-Do-you-have-a-sewing-machine-and-can-use-it-You-can-be-a-hero-and-save-lives?detail=emaildkre

There are a million reasons we're in this mess, but one of them is "disposable everything"--cotton masks can be sanitized and re-used.

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And Elliptical Billiard Balls
My version of longing to see the last king strangled in the entrails of the last priest is the hope that there will be a list, maintained forever, of Trump administration officials. And when one of them gets sick or needs an operation, they will be treated exclusively by health care personnel without masks or gloves. In fact I bet lots of them would volunteer to come in when they have a sick day especially for this purpose.

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Drive-By: Road of the King
THE STAND BY ME: A bunch of kids take a REALLY long roadtrip to see LOTS of dead bodies.

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Drive-By: Beware the Ides of March
BETH: Et tu, Jo?

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Drive-By: Workout of the Day
PILATES: aerobic hand-washing

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B7/Firefly Ficlet: A Long Way
I've been DW-stalking a new B7 fan, and she said she likes Firefly. This is an AU version of Breakdown--not spoilery, not shippy.

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Drive-By: Democratic sorting hat
Elizabeth Warren is just straight-up Hermione, so I can't see her getting elected Minister for Magic even if they *had* elections. And Bernie Sanders is Dumbledore, grouchy old guy who is capable of coming up with some VERY bad ideas. Biden, of course, is the loyal sidekick--Harry already had two terms and is ineligible to run again.

Leaving the question of whether the Death-Eater vote, with the crossover assistance of Emperor Palputin, is enough to re-elect Voldemort.

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Drive-By: B7 computer slogans
I've been reading about the history of online business, which leads me to wonder if, in the computer room of Servalan's Circ-Line fluorescent bulb space station there's a placard that says BE EVIL.

Now I'm sure that Avon stuck a post-it note on his flight deck position that says BREAK THINGS AND MOVE FAST.

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