Wrong Turn at Albuquerque

Dear Mr. Fornshell,

            I’m sorry I’m a little behind on my reading, but last weekend I had to drive to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico to rescue my brother, Ian, who got stranded there by German Buddhists.

            Minutes after I made my last post I called Ian because there had been a rumor circulating that he was going to be in the greater Southwestern United States area. The conversation went something like this:

            “Ian, I heard you were in Arizona.”

            “No. I’m in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.”

            “What the hell are you doing in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico?”

            “…I’m kind of stranded.”

            Pause.

            “Do you need me to come pick you up?”

            “No. No. That’s ridiculous, it's like a quarter of the way across the country. I’ll be fine. I’m just going to get a ride up to Albuquerque and catch a plane to Chicago.”

            “Get a ride” meant hitchhike. I didn’t have any doubts that he would be able to handle himself. Ian used to be in the army and he’s a Buddhist. He’s my big brother so naturally I see him as indestructible. I told him that he should call me if he decided he wanted me to come pick him up. I mean, he would do the same for me.

            In May 2001 I was driving across Wisconsin in my old Plymouth Sundance. It was filled with all of my belongings because I was moving from Kenosha back to St. Paul, MN. After I finished college I moved home to Kenosha thinking there might be jobs there and that I could be close to my family. 

           The economy tanked, Bush beat Gore. I worked as a crappy high school soccer coach, a third shift hospital security guard and a substitute teacher. Not really a banner year in my life. My new plan was to spend the summer shooting a documentary with some friends about Minnesota small town festivals.

I left late that night because I had to stop in Racine to see WWF superstar Mick Foley who was signing copies of his new book Foley is Good, the second part of his memoir trilogy. Foley is Good was a piece of shit. But Mick’s first book, Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, is amazing. It was famously written out in 800 pages of adrenaline-infused longhand. He was inspired to write it after almost being killed in the legendary Hell in the Cell match. He knew he needed to find some way to support his family that didn’t involve getting choke-slammed through a chain link fence and falling thirty feet onto the floor covered in thumbtacks.

Ulysses S. Grant had a similar motivation for literary remembrance. His alcoholism had lost him all his money and instead of leaving his family in debt, he buckled down and wrote his memoirs, finishing just before he died. The book went on to be a huge hit, and kept his family from ever having to work a day in their lives.

A pair of American heroes.

            Because of my celebrity stopover in Racine, I was very late getting on the road. It was around ten when I stopped in Tomah to eat a Butterburger and crinkle fries and the engine trouble began. I made it only two exits farther to the Jellystone Park Campgrounds in Warrens, WI. There the car died and I was stranded in the parking lot.

            This was 2001 and I didn’t own a cell phone, so I called my dad from the payphone in the park and told him what happened. He said he’d pick up Ian and be right there.

            The people who worked at the park were incredibly hospitable. There was a kid, must have been about 16 and an older guy and girl who I think were a couple. We played a little air hockey and watched Remember the Titans in the Yogi Bear Lodge. At around one in the morning I told them I’d be fine just waiting in the car. Not the first time I slept in that car, but it would prove to be the last.

Ian and my dad got there at around 3 am. We transferred all my junk from my car to the minivan, and drove on to St. Paul. Getting there right around 6. They helped me unpack, stopped at the Grandview Grill for some Kamikazee Pancakes and then turned around and drove back to Kenosha.

            This is one of those things we do in my family.

So, after Ian said he was going to be fine hitchhiking to Albuquerque, I filled up my car with gas and stopped at the library to check out some books on CD. (I did not check out any Shakespeare because you can’t take notes in the margins of an audiobook).

            I looked at the map and saw how far of a drive it was. 12 hours. It was 1:30pm on Saturday. I called Ian back and got there at 3:30 am. Crashed in his hotel room until 7, and we were back in LA by 8:30 Sunday night.

            As you can see, Mr. Fornshell. There’s just no way that I could have another post ready this week that says anything significant at all about Henry IV. I mean, I’ve started reading it. I don’t know why I started the histories with Henry IV instead of with King John, which is the first historically. Let’s just chalk it up to an irrepressible desire to get to know Falstaff, the fat knight, the witty coward, the comic relief in an epoch of turmoil and rebellion. We all need to take a break from the profound events of the real world and do something ridiculous once in a while. Don’t we?

 

Tamed and Untamed

I read The Taming of the Shrew pretty fast, and it coincided with a bit of a stressful week. This will be my only post about it. 

There was a girl once who let me tame her.

She gave up things that were special to her, all the things that made her independent and feisty and amazing. In a world where men bottle women like ships, she was a balsa wood vessel of creativity and spunk scaling the waves like One-Eyed Willie’s Inferno, set free, sailorless, at the end of Goonies. Filled with treasure. Then I came along.

Petruchio is an abusive ass. He wants to tame Katherine by denying her food and sleep like he’s trying to siphon information out of her about a terrorist plot.

 

She ate no meat today, nor none shall eat.

Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not. (4:1)

 

He trains her to agree with every word he says. So when he says the sun is the moon, she says:

 

Then God be blest it is the blessed sun.

But sun it is not, when you say it is not,

And the moon changes even as your mind. (4:5)

 

Katherine is brainwashed, not unlike Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped from her family and forced into a traumatic relationship. Katherine must undergo a traumatic experience in the company of her tormentor, who then is the one who props her up from her broken state. Maybe in 18 years, Signor Baptista will come to his senses and have her rescued and there will be hope for all of the poor girls married off to villains and rapists of noble birth. But in the meanwhile, Katherine is tamed. She gives her speech at the end instructing the other new wives in the arts of wifery:

 

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

            Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,

            And for thy maintenance commits his body

To painful labor both by sea and land (5:2)

 

And her strength and shrewdness and herself are erased:

 

Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts

Should well agree with our external parts? (5:2)

 

I know it’s possible to interpret Katherine’s tamed speech as ironic. She’s merely reciting the rules a woman must follow to live in peace in the world of man, she’s defeated, a martyr. And Shakespeare's unknown politics might fall in favor of sexual equality and liberation of the Elizabethan female. 

I took a class on the director George Stevens taught by Drew Casper. Casper used to tell us to take off our post-modern goggles so that we could appreciate the social innovation and feminism in movies from the 30s, Alice Adams or Woman of the Year. Movies where the female liberation was so slight that it was impossible for those of us who live in the age of Hillary Clinton, Chancellor Merkel and Sonia Sotomayor to admire it without laughing at its feebleness. If Shakespeare really meant for this speech to be a criticism of patriarchal society, then the scene at the end of Woman of the Year where Katherine Hepburn fails to make breakfast for Spencer Tracy arrives in the zeitgeist 400 years tardy.

Thank God for the modern updates to this story. Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You is not a bully and a criminal. And in the end, Julia Stiles doesn’t have to sacrifice all the things about herself that are strong, and independent. She’s weakened by love, made vulnerable, the way all people are, but she retains her vitality. (Yes, I'm asserting that Julia Stiles has/had vitality... deal with it).

For my part, I did not bully or harass like Petruchio, but I can be a villain of passive aggression. I’m quite practiced in the art from decades of Midwestern manipulation. Mine were abuses of inertia. Slow and steady movement away, barely detectable. Like an oil tanker that cuts its engines miles from shore when the port is only a dot on the horizon. Hers were abuses of neglect: neglecting herself for me. I’m guilty of other trespasses as well, infidelities of the imagination and cowardice.

She had a spark and I put it out. And the spark is what I loved most. I’m sure being apart has given her the power to reignite it, but it’s better not to reflect on the implication of that statement.

Reading these Complete Works is meant to be in part an act of self-improvement. But self-improvement can’t come without self-awareness. And that’s walking through the fire.

I’m glad this one is over.

A Minute to Learn, a Lifetime to Master

            Boom.

            We did it.

            Shakespeare wrote a hit play and I read it.

            We did it.

           

            It’s Othello. It’s a damn masterpiece. It's a seminal work of western literature. And what insights does this kid from Wisconsin have to lay before you today?

            First off, there’s the obligatory contrasting to be done between Iago and Popeye:

 

IAGO

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In complement extern, ‘tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at. I am not what I am. (1:1 bolding is mine)

 

POPEYE

And I got a lotta muscle and I only gots one eye,

And I'll never hurt nobodies and I'll never tell a lie,

Top to me bottom and me bottom to me top,

That's the way it is 'til the day that I drop, what am I?

I yam what I yam! (Popeye, 1980 bolding is mine)

 

            Iago’s a good villain, but if he tried to outsmart Popeye and convince him that Olive Oyl was cheating on him, Popeye wouldn’t buy it. He’d eat some spinach and punch Iago so hard that his eyes would turn to Xs and his tongue would loll out of his mouth like a dead tapeworm. I suppose they would cast Bluto as Iago, which would be the best casting choice since Vince Vaughn played Norman Bates.

            Secondly, I want to address Othello’s attitude toward the murder of his wife. He has this line that disturbs me a little. He says to Lodovico:

 

An honorable murderer, if you will.

For naught did I in hate, but all in honor. (5:2)

 

Did Othello believe in honor killings? That it was his duty to kill Desdemona when he believed she had cheated on him, because she spoiled her honor and his by affiliation?

I don’t want to get into a big discussion about religion and honor killings and if Moor is really a geographic descriptor or a religious one. Besides, I checked out a copy of Laurence Olivier playing Othello and he was painted blue and he wore a giant cross on his chest. So my current conclusion is that Christian Smurfs believe in honor killings.

But I think even that theory could be debunked because Othello has been driven MAD by Iago’s conniving:

 

Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me

For making him egregiously an ass

And practicing upon his peace and quiet

Even to madness. (2:1)

 

            Any logic he employs after falling victim to these mindgames is the logic of a madman. (Which accurately describes logic employed by anyone who thinks honor killings are okay as well).

Finally, I want to talk about the Parker Brothers board game “Othello” and how despite being fun and excellent, it’s the dumb American version of “Go.” My cousin Erick has spent a couple of years learning to play “Go” and he tries to teach me every Christmas. We go have a bottomless cup of coffee at Common Grounds, which looks out over the harbor in Kenosha. Snow falls and as the sun sets the world turns blue like a Thomas Kinkade painting. 

We talk about how we used to play soccer together. We’d go down to Kemper Center and serve up crosses to one another and spend hours and hours trying to score headers and bicycle kicks. Then we’d sit in the grass and look out at Lake Michigan, sparkling and flat on the warm days, or churning, wild and steely on the blustery ones.

“Go” is a very different game than “Othello.” “Go” is played on a larger board, and when your pieces are captured, they can never be retaken. “Go” is more elegant-looking and at the same time endlessly more complex. When you do well at “Go,” you win large open spaces on the board and it’s called creating Life.

Ironically the movie Go is nowhere near as complex as the play Othello. One is about wicked manipulation and jealous rage leading to murder, it’s rife with racism and human weakness and honesty. The other is about taking Ecstasy, raving and going to Vegas.

           So, perhaps it’s best I take a lesson from Iago, and cut my insights into Othello short here before I prove myself the dumb American version of something more elegant and complex across either pond. I quote Iago’s somewhat unsettling final line:

 

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.

From this time forth, I never will speak word. (5:2)

11th Grade Gabe Weighs In on Othello

Gabriel Llanas

English 11

Ms. Tara Stewart

11/13/94

Desdemona: Prudish? Naïve? You Be the Judge

Everyone knows girls are better than boys. They’re way hotter and smarter, and they make the best English teachers in the world. Some girls, who are really into Shakespeare and are amazing teachers -- even though they just graduated from college two years ago -- are so incredible that they would make a young man do anything (ANYTHING) to be with them.

Desdemona is pure, beautiful and honest (much like some teachers I could name). After Othello has accused her of being unfaithful, he tells her to go home and wait for him and he will be by anon. Desdemona talks to her maid, Emilia, and it is clear she would never even think about cheating on Othello. She tells Emilia:

Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? (4:3)

Emilia, who is married to the deceitful Iago, has an understandably more down-to-earth perspective on this:

The world’s a huge thing.

It is a great price for a small vice. (4:3)

And she continues:

-why who would not make her husband a cuckold to make

him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for’t. (4:3)

But Emilia rationalizes further and gets even more realistic about it a few lines later:

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

If wives do fall. Say they slack their duties

And pour our treasures into foreign laps, (4:3)

Just for example, say you have an English teacher at a prep school in… I don’t know, somewhere in the Midwest, and her “boyfriend” was a law student at some Ivy League Nerdversity. Well, being that far away from his totally hot and awesome girlfriend would probably be hard for said hypothetical “boyfriend” and he’s probably pouring treasures into foreign laps even as I write this alone in my room without my shirt on. Is it fair that said hot English teacher shouldn’t have a little treasure poured into her lap as well?

I mean, Emilia is certainly open to it:

And have not we affections,

Desires for sport, and frailty as men have? (4:3)

All I’m saying is that heavenly goddess English teachers who smell sweeter than magnolia nectar and whose smiles make a young man’s heart hop scotch across the playground of desire deserve a little “sport” sometimes too. Wouldn’t you concur?

Desdemona’s pure and all that, and maybe we’re supposed to think she’s better than Emilia, but I think she’s naïve and a prude and boring. Emilia is the more honest and human of the two of them because like Eazy-E she knows everybody’s “gotta get a nut.”

Ms. Stewart, I mean if you were honest with yourself, don’t you think -- hypothetically -- that you would like to indulge in a teachable moment with a young, virile, energetic, soccer-playing gentleman with a head of ample wing-shaped hair if you found out that the giant nerd you’re “dating” was sprinkling his affection on other girls’ foreign laps?

In conclusion: If you would like to discuss this further, I will gladly stop by your room in Macintosh Hall anon. I have honors study hall this semester, so I could even drop in during the evening hours. I’ll bring my copy of Othello, some scented candles, and my ready, able and surprisingly large brain.

The Convenient Handkerchief

My dad used to have handkerchiefs that were embroidered with his initials. They're part of this whole mysterious image I have of him and who he was when I was a boy and before I was born. He was a dad with handkerchiefs who played chess. He was a firefighter, and he and my mom would listen to opera in the backyard.

I used to think he had been some sort of continental gentleman, and the handkerchiefs were part of his uniform. Handed out after his graduation from a British, ivy-laden university. All gentleman must be equipped with handkerchiefs to offer to women who are in distress over small heartbreaks like an overturned slice of cake or a dead mouse.

Because of my allergies I had to carry a handkerchief around with me and actually use it for blowing my nose, which is gross. I felt bad when they were my dad's embroidered handkerchiefs, and I looked forward to my graduation day, when I'd receive my own fancy set of snot rags.

There was one time in my life when a handkerchief proved useful in a chivalrous manner. In my high school we had special literary events when we invited writers of modest success to judge short story contests and eat fancy dinners with us. My senior year, the writer was Stuart Dybek, and the winner of the short story contest was a sophomore girl named after a character in The Tempest. My short story about eating dirt unfortunately didn't even make the top three (thanks a lot, Dybek!). When this girl named after a character in The Tempest finished her story she was crying. I don't remember the details of the story, I think it was about her stealing something and then tasting pennies. It was a very moving piece of writing and I was quite jealous. But she sat down in front of me, and she was weeping, and I handed her a clean handkerchief, and she used it to wipe away her tears.

But it wasn't one of my dad's handkerchiefs. I didn't have one with me at the time... I was handkerchiefless right when I needed one the most! I was about to silently curse my ill-preparedness when all of a sudden there was a tap on my shoulder and Mr. Braverman passed me his handkerchief and I gave it to the girl named after a character in The Tempest. There were lots of other girls in that room -- sensitive, intelligent girls -- who saw my act of gentlemanliness and marveled. That's what I like to call Big Pimpin'. Thanks, Mr. Braverman.

Pretty convenient that a hanky should appear out of nowhere, just when I needed it.

So, the handkerchief in Othello is causing some problems for me. Iago is so cunningly undoing all of Othello's confidence in Desdemona's fealty already when suddenly this completely coincidental opportunity arrives with the accidental dropping of Desdemona's handkerchief that Iago's wife just happens to spot and pick up and steal to give to Iago because she says he's asked about it in the past. And of course this is the magic handkerchief which Othello gave to Desdemona on like their first date, which was a gift from Othello's mother and was made with Mummy juice and holy silk worms. Iago then plants the handkerchief on Cassio in order to fuel Othello's suspicion of their cuckolding.

I mean, I'm only to the end of Act 3, but this all seems like sloppy storytelling to me. Why didn't Shakespeare just write in a scene where Iago asks his wife to steal the handkerchief?

Maybe it's a little thing to bump on, but it's like Iago says:

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ. (3:3)

Anyway, it's nice to know even the bard -- despite all his poetry -- has to rely on a convenient handkerchief once in a while too.

In Medias Res

I got in a small argument with my friends Simon and Raamla at a Toga party the other night over the exact meaning of In Medias Res. Simon lives in this great house in the Silverlake Hills with an unbelievable view and it was his roommate's birthday. I didn't wear a toga myself.

 

The last toga party I went to was my senior year at boarding school when we had the Labor Day weekend toga party in the new student center. Josh Klein and I borrowed some loafs of round decorative bread from the cafeteria and tied them on our heads. I'm sure there is photographic evidence of this in a shoe box in my dad's basement somewhere. 

That was a good party. I had a big crush on a girl named Muna, and although I don't think I danced with her or anything, it was nice to see her back from the summer in Saudi Arabia with a little sun-kissed tint in her hair. Thank heaven for the little things.

But anyway, I -- for some reason -- believed that flashbacks were a necessary part of the in medias res technique. It appears that I'm incorrect about this and I apologize profusely to Mr. Fornshell for my confusion and misrepresentation of his infallible instruction.

So Othello... 

Damn.

Not to state the obvious, but this is some good stuff.

Even before the play starts, Othello has eloped with Desdemona. Roderigo and Iago seek to destroy Othello by going to tell Desdemona's father, Brabantio,  about the elopement. Everyone is racist against Othello and Brabantio is convinced that Othello used witchcraft and cast a spell over Desdemona. There's a great build up to the introduction of Othello, and then when we meet him he is so respectable and commanding that it undermines the villainy of Roderigo and Brabantio -- but not Iago.

I heard that when they were trying to get Ricardo Montalban to play Khan in Star Trek 2 they had a meeting with him and he said "Khan is not in this movie very much," and they thought he was going to say no or ask them to rewrite the part to be bigger, but he continued: "but when Khan is not on screen... they are all talking about KHAN!"

In the introduction to the edition I have, Burton Raffel points out that Iago has a greater stage presence than Othello in this play, appearing on stage 64% of the time, while Othello is on stage approximately 59% of the play. Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, all appear on stage more than any other characters in the plays that bear their names.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with Iago's scheming, and how his greater presence on the page affects my reading of the play.

We love the mischief-maker, cause they want things and they actively seek them out. We all have moments in life when we're overlooked or bested and we want revenge. The Joker is the guy who makes The Dark Knight interesting, and even though we like to think that this appreciation of the villain and the anti-hero is some recent evolution in the complexity of an audience, it will likely become clear that Shakespeare understood this better 400 years ago than we do today.

9th Grade Gabe Gets the Last Word

Gabriel Llanas

9th Grade English

Mr. Fornshell

1st Period

November 5, 1992

Response to The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Shakespeare's play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, can be summed up in one simple lesson: bros before hos.

Valentine and Proteus are bros. They got each others' backs and they look out for each other. That’s why Valentine doesn’t want Proteus to be in love with Julia:

Love is your master, for he masters you;

And he that is so yoked by a fool

Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.(1:1)

Valentine is trying to warn Proteus, that Love turns people into fools. Which is one hundred percent true, as I can tell you from first-person experience. I thought I was in love with Rachel Howie and I asked her to Winter Formal, and she said no. And then I was telling Tito and Brandon about it and I was saying that I was going to try asking her out again, and Tito had my back. He said, “Gabe, you’re retarded. She’s a senior and she’s hot and you’re a dork.” Bros speak the truth even if it hurts your feelings.

Likewise, Proteus has Valentine’s back later on. When he sees Valentine is stupid in love with Sylvia, he says:

When I was sick (with love), you gave me bitter pills,

And I must minister the like to you. (2:4)

Word to that. Proteus even goes above and beyond the call of brohood when he gets Valentine banished for trying to elope with Sylvia. Anytime a bro is going to go and do something stupid, other bros have to step in.

This is like in Star Wars, when Luke is about to try to take on the whole Death Star by himself, and he’s all alone versus Darth Vader and the Empire and then Han Solo comes flying out of the sun in the Millenium Falcon. Because they were bros, Han couldn’t let Luke do something stupid like taking on the whole empire without a little help. I think Chewbacca and Han Solo are two of the best examples of bros in all of western literature.

Also there’s the girl, Julia, who wants to get Valentine to love her again, and so she chases after him dressed as what? I’ll give you a hint: A BRO. That’s right, she put on a wig and tried to be a bro, because she knows word is bond.

I think you’ll find the smartest character in the whole play is Thurio. Thurio was the scorned suitor of Sylvia before Valentine showed up spitting game. And at the end Valentine says he’ll fight Thurio for Sylvia’s love, and Thurio backs down:

I hold him but a fool that will endanger

His body for a girl that loves him not. (5:4)

Thurio knows that young women are not worth fighting over. It’s like the Fresh Prince says: “Girls of the world ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”

In conclusion: Bros Before Hos. Word is Bond. May the Force Be With You.

The Crutch

As I type this I'm watching what must be one of the worst productions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona ever committed to cheap BBC video. I am too curious to see how they stage the rape/forgiveness/human trafficking finale to turn it off, but this staging is a perfect example of why people hate and fear Shakespeare. It's foreign, false, melodramatic and the actors are all douchebags.

I'll have more to say about this play before I move on to Othello, but first there's a couplet I want to look at more closely.

Act 3 Scene 1. Proteus has just orchestrated Valentine's banishment from Milan by telling Sylvia's father that Valentine planned to elope with her that evening. Now Proteus is comforting his friend even though he was the agent of his grief. Proteus says:

Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that

And manage it against despairing thoughts.

I've been in love twice in my life. They were two different kinds of love because they were two different girls. Both ended sloppily, but when the first one ended I held on for so long. Much longer than is healthy I'm sure. At one point I told her that I was optimistic and that I had hope that we would be together in the future. She told me that hope undoes optimism. Because when you hope you long for things you don't have, and in order to be optimistic you have to see the good in things the way they are.

"Hope is a lover's staff." When I read this I see a crutch. I see the lovelorn hobbling back toward something, when, if they dropped the crutch, they'd find they could walk ably in other directions.

As things went bad with the second girl I didn't hope. I didn't want the crutch. I dropped it and walked away too soon.

My dad gives notoriously misinterpreted advice. For example he used to say to me: "Never close any doors." Meaning that you always want to have choices and opportunities, but what I took away from that was: Never make any decisions. Which is obviously a stupid way to live. But there is one thing he says that's always been helpful: "Everything in moderation."

There's a time for the crutch. It's very useful right after you've been injured. But once things are mended you can put it away. Just remember where you put it. Bones and hearts are always in danger of being broken again.

Hollywood Execs Travel Back in Time, Ruin Ending of Shakespeare Play

A pair of hot, young Hollywood Executives traveled back in time to 1590 and gave Shakespeare notes on the final scene of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The revisions have rendered the play unproduceable in any era or culture which doesn't view a woman as absolute property of the man who loves her.

"We both felt the ending needed some action. Most of the play is a bunch of talking heads on stage talking about things," said one exec, who refused to provide his name fearing recriminations against his ancestors.

"And there weren't enough turns in the story," said the other exec, who identified herself as Genius McSmarty. "People go to the movies, and the theater and want to be surprised by the ending. Like Planet of the Apes or Orphan."

The play's original ending has now been lost to audiences and readers alike due to the instantaneous revision of the last 400 plus years of history as a result of this irresponsible tinkering with the space-time continuum.

The play now ends with Proteus nearly raping Sylvia, the love interest of his best friend, Valentine. Valentine interrupts the violence, Proteus apologizes profusely. Valentine accepts the apology and then very bizarrely offers Sylvia to Proteus as a token of their friendship. Proteus refuses the offer and when his ex-lover, Julia, pulls off her wig and reveals that she is not a boy, Valentine unites Proteus and Julia and takes Sylvia for his own. This all happens in approximately 40 lines of the script.

"Sex, danger and a happy ending. This'll be a great late-summer release," the mystery exec said, referring to their plans to adapt Two Gentlemen into a major motion picture.

They purchased the movie rights to the play from Master Shakespeare for an unprecedented ten pounds, threepence.

"We both knew we wanted to do a modern version of a Shakespearean Play, like setting it in a high school or fraternity row, but all the good Shakespearean plays have already been re-done. We needed something virgin," Genius McSmarty said.

Shakespeare was an easy target because he had no Agent, Manager or other legal representative and needed the ten pounds threepence to see a Doctor for a possible case of Syphilis.

"Shakespeare was resistant to the changes, but we explained where the real power is in this business, and he rolled over. Creative always thinks they know the best way to tell their stories. They have to learn best does not always mean best."

The two execs denied that they wrote the changes themselves. "Not that we couldn't have. I'm familiar with Robert McKee's screenwriting method. I haven't read his book, but I did see Adaptation and that scene he was in inspired the notes we gave Shakespeare," Genius McSmarty said with a satisfied smile.

The Two Gentlemen of Alpha Kappa Nu begins filming this winter. Megan Fox is slated to play Sylvia.

2 Acts of 2 Gents and a Model Tree Kit

I did most of this reading on the balcony at the Barnes and Noble at the Americana at Brand in Glendale while they were setting up the Christmas tree. It was a real tree, but what they did was hoist up the bare tree trunk like the frame of an Amish farm house and then some guy in a cherry picker hammered each of the individual branches into place. Like a piece of semi-disposable Swedish furniture. Never seen that before.

Two Gentlemen of Verona is Shakespeare’s first romantic comedy. You will probably remember some bits of it from the movie Shakespeare in Love. The soliloquy which Gwyneth Paltrow uses in her audition for the role of Romeo is from Two Gentlemen. And the play that’s being performed for the queen early on is also Two Gentlemen. “Love and a bit with a dog.” I believe that was also the Farrelly brothers philosophy when they wrote There’s Something About Mary.

The Two Gentlemen are Valentine and Proteus. Valentine is headed to Milan to learn to be a gentleman. He tells his buddy Proteus that he’s whipped by his beloved Julia and he should get out there and see the world too. Valentine arrives in Milan and falls in love with the beautiful Sylvia. Proteus gets sent to Milan against his wishes and he falls in love with Sylvia too, despite the fact that he has promised to marry Julia. Proteus plots to betray Valentine and steal Sylvia away. And Julia, believing Proteus’s love sincere, disguises herself as a boy and goes after him in Milan. That’s Act One and Two.

There’re anti-Semitic remarks throughout, there are bad puns and wise-cracking servants, but it is Shakespeare and it's obviously poetic and lovely. Lucetta thusly describes the virtues of Proteus’s love, which he does not oft express: “Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.” (1:2).

Sylvia plays a neat little game on Valentine. She knows that he loves her, and she asks him to write a letter for her to give to the object of her affection. He is tortured about it, but when he presents her the letter, she gives it back to him, since he is the object of her affection. Hurrah!

If I had a nickel for every time a girl has solicited some romantic speech or trail of compliments from my heart to hers I’d have at least… well, maybe fifty cents. But girls are mysterious and elevated. I know the things I adore about them and I could go on and on in flirtatious metaphor. If I were ever asked to do what Valentine had to do and describe for a girl what she loves about me, well, I think I would fail miserably.

I don’t know how men earn the love of women. Even the girls I’ve been in love with in my life I assume loved me somehow by accident or through some folly in judgment. (At this point they would probably say the same thing). If I had to guess I would say that most girls love the men they do because they seem somehow less offensive than the other options in the moment. And because they’re loyal. I imagine loyalty is an essential quality as well... because men are dogs.

So far I like the play. Proteus is getting ready to take action and hurt all of his friends, which should make for some entertaining speech-making and skullduggery. Proteus says: “Love bade me swear, and love bids me foreswear.” (2:6) He’s too susceptible to the whims of love, which are always irrational and too often hypocritical.