culture

I hit Shakespeare on the Common last night as part of the Keri's Angels Gang. Keri picked an excellent evening for it, a super-cool, non-stick Boston summer night.


Is it ON the common or IN the common? I feel like the language of WAR OF THE WORLDS taught me ON the common (the first missile the journalist encounters crashes into the common), but I'm not sure...


Anyhow, except for having to maintain a perch on top of a stack of sketchbooks and novels to see through the fat heads of the jerkos that set up their chairs in front of us 10 minutes before showtime, it was a really fine evening of free Boston-tinted culture.



"Taming Of The Shrew" was adapted by this year's Commonwealth Shakespeare Company for a 1950s(?) Boston North End setting, with father of Shrew Kate and Gentle Bianca, Baptista, playing owner of the restaurant 'Tista's. Updates to the play include some swapped out dialogue, swinging tunes and fashions, and a couple of well-placed wicked accents. I'm surprised the Sox, the "curse," and Kelly's Roast Beef didn't get any play. Or maybe they did and I just didn't pick up on them.

Ran into friend and back-in-the-good-ol'-days coworker Jessica before the show started. Caught her on the way to getting to saved spots for herself, her cute blue-eyed blue-bowed baybay, and her feller. Quite the together family unit. =) She informed me that she'd just run into another buddy ol' pal, Kelly, who was there as part of a company outing. Once I let Jess and company go, I tried to find Kelly via cell, but she wasn't anywhere nearby and it seemed like it was getting close to showtime. I told her I'd try her again at intermission, but when the lights went up for the break, I found that while hiding out in Big Red, my phone had spent most of its battery and I couldn't make a call. Bleah. O well.

I noticed on Monday that MickeyD's is giving away something called "Polly" to the girls and frickin frackin HUMMERS (the gas guzzlers, not the knob gobblers) to the boys in their Happy Meals. Is that REALLY necessary? Maybe to add some realism, they should lock down the toy's wheels until you fill the car with soft serve ice cream. And then they'll only roll until the ice cream melts, and then you need to get some more soft serve. I wonder if any of the models are military, and if the armor comes in additional separate Happy Meals?

I caught a trailer for Oliver Stone's WTC a few movies back and was surprised to see how the movie (or at least this trailer cut for it) seemed slanted towards a melodramatic perspective of the day, complete with bites of cliched dialogue and a scene of asking for volunteers to enter the towers. Since then I've seen TV ads that seem a little less inspiration-bent, but are instead soaked with more of an eMpTyVee flavor, with voiceover about a moment that defines a generation, and some rock song swelling behind it driving the ad...

If you feed Oliver Stone and 9/11 into the movie-making machine, well, I wouldn't expect to get the film that these ads seem to be promoting. I really don't know what to make of it, and unless it turns out friends or family are really keen on checking it out, I'll be just fine not seeing it for a while.

PRINCESS BRIDE is playing at the Boston Harbor Hotel this Friday evening. I've missed all the free outdoor movie options so far this summer, and despite all the packing/moving whatnot I have yet to accomplish, I'd really like to check this out at least once before the fall. I'll probably toss a coin Friday afternoon to figure out what to do, what to do...

Keep on keepin on~