Richard III
Last Saturday was a pretty spectacular day. We meandered over to Jimmy T’s, Capitol Hill’s finest greasy spoon breakfast diner for omelettes and fried, jalapeno cheddar grits. Then we began our walk over to the National Gallery of Art’s West Building (whose collection is, basically, art before WWII).
Our path took us by the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is, of course, one of my favorite underappreciated DC destinations. A poster was up on their administrative offices for their upcoming production of Richard III.
As a teenager, I had a minor obsession with this play. I memorized the opening soliloquy (you know: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent…) and stayed up until 3:30 in the morning to watch our local PBS station’s 1:00 am broadcast of the movie version starring Laurence Olivier as the titular hunchback (in Tampa Bay, if you enjoy good live theater, well your main option is go somewhere else; probably to another state).
But, you know, I’ve never seen it performed live.
So, we went into the theater and, after wrangling over our respective schedules, purchased two tickets for the second night of the play.
She noticed that there was a sign in front of the theater doors that said the theater was in use, but a fellow sitting in the lobby said that we could go upstairs onto the balcony if we wanted to watch the rehearsal.
The actors and director were still blocking scenes and we walked in on the one where Richard is standing over the body of Warwick and plotting to marry Anne. The fellow who told us we could watch came in and revealed himself to almost certainly be one of the actors (though I didn’t get see what his role is).
I could have stayed there all day, but she had never seen nor read the play nor was her knowledge of Western history and culture deep enough to know the story of an admittedly minor player in English history (though a looming figure in English cultural consciousness) and did not want to ruin the surprise of not knowing how things would end when we saw the full play.
So. Great freaking day, right?
Cold Weather Disproves Stupid Libtards
Thank god for the polar vortex. Maybe now those a stupid liberals and their scientists will shut up.
You see, if there were extensive and significant disruptions to global weather patterns, everyone knows tat would only cause one type of change to weather patterns: making it hotter everywhere.
Instead, we have seen many different varieties if extreme weather in many different regions, so there can’t be global climate change.
So, on account of record low temperatures suddenly affecting vast swathes of the country, we can say for certain that climate change is a myth.
‘The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug’
The second part of The Hobbit movie trilogy is much more fast paced than the first. Unlike the Lord of the Rings, where the second movie was also the best, I felt this installment lacked a little something compared to the first. Characters got a little short shrift throughout; I felt we hardly heard from Bilbo, the titular Hobbit, at all!
And here is where the addition of new material, not in the book, really shows through. I don’t mind, but it also reminded me of what a perfect little gem the novel is. The movie, unlike the book, is burdened with the history of the later/earlier movies. It must match up with story told in the Lord of the Rings movies, whereas the novel, while taking place in Middle Earth, was content to be a fun adventure for children (and for adults to read to remind themselves of childhood). The ring could just be a magic ring that made the wearer invisible, but this movie cannot escape the knowledge of what the ring will in the future continuity of the story and, more importantly, already was in movies that were released a decade ago.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug is too restrained by the technology that modifies his voice for him to really be the villain I know he is capable of being.
But it’s an exciting ride, nonetheless, and it’ll be a long wait until next Christmas to see the final installment. And I more eager than ever to re-read The Hobbit, which was first read to me by my mother when I was seven years old.
Weekend Reading – The Existential Despair Of The Political Hack
Amiri Baraka Died
He was seventy-nine.
For those who don’t know Amiri Baraka, née LeRoi Jones was proudly politically aggressive and militant, committed to justice for African-Americans. At his best, one of America’s best poets. At his worst, an enormous ass. But there you are. And I’m sad he’s gone, especially since there are none like him, least ways, none with his public profile, coming down the pipe.
I Was Almost Cast As A Time Machine Crank
That title probably requires some explanation, but I also think it holds up on its own as an incident my family would not see as being all that unlikely. I’m not saying that one Easter, they wrote down their top ten “Things that will probably happen to Christoper before he dies or is put in solitary by Nurse Ratchet” and that this was on that list, but more they say, well, yeah, that makes sense.
I was contacted by a casting agent, who was looking for people some sort of faux reality tv thing, because he had been led to believe that I was building a time machine in my garage.
I know what you’re thinking: Christopher doesn’t have a garage! He depends on street parking!
You’re also thinking, like my family, that the time machine is not unlikely. Now, you don’t think I’m building a working time machine, you just think I finally cracked and am using plans given to me by Nikolas Tesla, which he secretly writes in invisible ink on paper napkins from the napkin dispensary on booth four of the Waffle House on US 19, near Countryside Mall. You think that’s why I won’t throw out the napkins on the floor of my car. And you’re not entirely wrong, however, I am not actually building a time machine.
When I was contacted, I rather suspected that a mistake had been made and that the casting agent believed he had found some crank.
This was confirmed when he gingerly asked, hey, before we speak, I understand that you’re building a time machine in your garage… um, how’s that going?
I felt that I had to admit at that point, that no, I am not.
But this also feels like a cool segue into quantum entanglement.
It’s been a banner year for quantum mechanics — a set of researchers just published a result that purports to show that quantum entanglement bridges both space-like AND time-like distances (e.g. the entangled pair can communicate across time.) They claim to have entangled one photon with a second photon which had been destroyed before the entanglement procedure began.
That was part of a lengthier conversation with a friend, and while the focus was on what the potential loss of the certainty entropy meant for what little certainty he felt like he had in life, it’s also kind of cool, because that’s a kind of time travel, isn’t it? Entanglement with something that only existed in the past?
The earlier conversation had been about how the universe, in certain contemporary models, appears perfectly static from the outside, but new models explains how that can be the case and still be in constant, roiling change. Basically, an outside observer would see a static, unchanging universe and anyone with the universe would see something quite dynamic. Sort simultaneously giving hope to both Parmenides and Heraclitus (his first thoughts were of Parmenides and mine of Heraclitus… any psychological insights from that, people?).
Because he’s more of science-y type and I’m more of a humanties-y type, we went in different directions. Mine was that this could provide an intellectual model for a better understanding of how a god could be omniscient in a universe where humanity has free will. But that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.
In the meantime, I will not be appearing on television, showing off my time machine.
And, in case you’re wondering… this the blog post that convinced them that I was building a time machine: https://coffeephilosopher.com/2012/07/05/im-building-my-time-machine-for-real-this-time/
Wrong Backlash
I wrote some briefly critical remarks about a New York Daily News profile of five woman poets.
Well, I was not the only to notice that some of pictures were a little sexy. Nothing wrong with that, but my feeling was that it did not respect their poetry. Not that it disrespect Poetry, capital ‘P.’ The poets themselves took advantage of an opportunity to get some publicity for their work, which was entirely appropriate. I was just disappointed because I felt the sexualization of some (only some) of the poets showed a lack of faith on the part of the publication in the poetry itself.
Ugh. Now I feel rather bad, that I was part of a piling on, as it were. And I have little doubt that many of the criticisms directed at the piece was little more than thinly veiled sexism directed at the poets themselves. I just hope that’s not what I did.
the coffee philosopher 