Titus Andronicus - pretty awesome

Titus Andronicus cast list
Originally uploaded by pseudopistol

I'd just typed out a long, pretentious review of Georgia Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and then I accidentally closed the window. Allow me to summarize:

The play's a gore-fest that's basically a rough draft of Hamlet with all the introspection replaced with stage blood. And rape. And bloody rape. If you've ever seen the Scott Tenorman Must Die episode of South Park, you've got a little idea of what's in store.

The production wasn't bad, and the major actors were quite good. Titus was played with a manic glee that reminded me of Hugh Laurie, and Aaron the Moor was just plain incredible. The kid was played by an actual kid, with expected results. They really should have replaced the baby with a 10 pound flour sack or something so the actors would quit swinging it around.

There's live music by a one-man band named Klimchak. Just Klimchak. He played a mini didgeridoo and a theramin, among other unidentifiable instruments. The music bordered on distracting at times, but that might be because I'm a music dork.

The costumes didn't make any sense, so much so that I have to think it was intentional. The Goths looked like either Sabbath fans or Klingons, depending on the scene. Members of the Roman army were dressed in military garb from a variety of eras, starting at the French Foreign Legion and ending someplace in the near future when Mad Max robs an army surplus store. Sometimes the cast wore robes, sometimes Nehru jackets, sometimes modern suits. It was really distracting, and I'd love to know if there was a reason for it.

Overall, it was a fun production, which is why it's such a shame that the house was (unsurprisingly) on the empty side. This isn't a play that really brings in the typical white-haired Southern arts patron. But if you want to know where Akira Kurisawa and Quentin Tarantino got all their ideas from, go see it. We got our tickets for $15 each, and we got bumped up to the mezzanine. www.gashakespeare.org

Yahoo Pipes, or Burn in Hell, Cory Doctorow

I have an irrational hatred of Cory Doctorow.

If you have never heard of him, you can stop reading now. You're all the better for it. If you have heard of him, you're probably either with me or against me on this. He's a pretty polarizing guy - he's either the savior of the internet or the douchiest douche who ever douched in douchebagville. I'm obviously in the latter camp.

For years now I've been trying to get my boingboing without Cory's incessant whinging about copyright, or steampunk crap, or his bizarre Disney obsession. Not to mention his relentless self-promotion. I found a few rss feeds that stripped his content out, but they all just quit working at some point.

Today, while looking for a new feed, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. It's a really easy way to modify RSS feeds. I think works for other kinds of web 2.0 crap too, but I didn't really look in to it. Within 5 minutes, boingboing without Cory was born. I just copied somebody else's pipe and modified it to do what I wanted, so I don't really know all of the capabilities. But if you've got a news feed of some sort, and you want to modify its stream, this seems absolutely ideal. I'll probably do this with some of the other blogs I read to remove the kinds of posts that I don't bother reading anyway.

And now I'm out of increasingly baroque ways to avoid studying for the quals. I guess it's back to work.

The Decemberists kicked my ass yet again

Whole stage
Originally uploaded by infinitooples

I was really waffling about whether or not to go to this show. On the one hand, they're easily in the top 5 live acts I've ever seen. On the other, it was 40 bucks, and I've seen them before, and I'd be going by myself. Then I thought about the shows I've missed before, for what I'm sure were good reasons at the time (Tenacious D opening for Weezer, for instance), and how I still really wished I'd gone, so I headed downtown for the Tabernacle box office.

Bonus - tickets are cheaper from the box office than directly from Ticketmaster, so that was cool. I saved $7 which was promptly spent on one beer inside (oh yeah, this is why I don't go out much). But the show was absolutely incredible, even if it was a million degrees inside. I forwent the old people chairs in the balcony, and for the first time in ages hung out with the kids in the middle of the floor. To my surprise, my fellow fans were extremely polite, and I wasn't shoved or doused with beer once all night.

The first set was their latest album, The Hazards of Love, performed all the way through without a word or a break. I've only listened to that record once, but the performance was awesome. Then they came back for their usual participation- and banter-heavy routine, including July July, O Valencia, 16 Military Wives, and so on. All in all, a great show. I'm lucky the one in Minneapolis in a few weeks is sold out, or I'd be trying to go to that too.

If you click on the picture above, you can see the rest of the shots from the show. I was amazed what this little Lumix could do. I just turned off the flash, waited for times when the stage was well lit, stood very still, and got a lot of pretty decent pictures. Even more amazing were the videos, which I may post sometime if I can figure out how. Well, at least the ones where you can't hear me giggling like a little girl in the background.

I don't think I ever started believin', akshully

Francin Art - Steve Perry
Originally uploaded by Howl406

Last year, Ellen got me a big box of vinyl she'd rescued from an auction. I've slowly been shuffling through it, getting rid of the things that were too scratched to listen to. Here's a very, very small sample of what was in there.

Rolling Stones: Hot Rocks and Sticky Fingers - Both pretty hissy/poppy
Steve Winwood: Welcome to the Canteen - Also pretty noisy
Donovan: Mellow Yellow - Scratched to hell.
The Beatles: Second Album - No gouges, but pretty unlistenable

Journey: ESC4P3 - Immaculate

What a cruel world.

(Ellen, I kid, there are some great records in here. This Dave Clark Five record is almost untouched, except for "Bll F." written carefully on the label)

Holy Crap!

Klingon, Trekkie
Originally uploaded by kazstrzepek

So, the new Star Trek movie was actually good. Like, really good. My expectations were low. I hadn't even bothered to read anything about the movie, so I was surprised to see the star power. Kumar's been having such a good time lately, I was glad to see Harold get his turn. Of course, I was then sad to realize that his casting means there's really only one young Asian actor working these days. Simon Pegg's appearance is only spoiled by the fact that he shows up far too late. Doesn't matter if you aren't a Trekkie, or a Trekker, or a basement-dwelling virgin of any persuasion. It's a good movie.

The movie may have been extra effective because I'm getting off my SSRI now. Lexapro had been very good to me for two years, but it also made me gain a bunch of weight and sleep all the time, so I figured it was time to quit. I'd been cutting it down slowly for a few weeks, then quit entirely about a week ago. It's not so bad, I'm just dizzy a lot and really spaced out. So sitting in the 5th row or so with a gigantic action movie in front of me was pretty awe-inspiring.

April 28th and April 21st

Whoops.

That was meant to go on my show's blog, cowtippersdelight.blogspot.com, but in my sleep-deprived state, it went here instead.

Dang finals week.

Deep in the frog pond

Deep in the frog pond
Originally uploaded by infinitooples

I've finally decided to rip out Tamale. It just wasn't going to lie flat, no matter how much surgery I did. I'll re-do it someday, with a different yarn for the red, and I'll knit it flat and do intarsia rather than do stranded knitting in the round. I was at least able to salvage much of the yarn, though having cut many of the floats caused a lot of shredded mess to be left on the floor.

Luckily, I had old Dr. Who on Netflix to keep me company. City of Death is great. First off, it's a Tom Baker/Lalla Ward series, so at least annoyance caused by the actors is kept to a minimum. In addition, it features a delightful cameo by John Cleese, and the villain is the wonderful Julian Glover. Depending upon what generation of nerd you are, you might know him as either a bad guy from The Avengers, Aristotle Kristatos from For Your Eyes Only, General Veers from Empire Strikes Back, or the evil Nazi archaeologist from the Last Crusade. I think he and Donald Pleasence form a spanning set for British bad guys in dorky movies.