Dave Does It Backwards

I haphazardly read a couple of Louise Penny "Three Pines" mysteries (A Trick of the Light and Glass Houses, the seventh and thirteenth books in the series, respectively) and though the pacing is a little slow, I enjoyed the French Canadian setting and characters—Chief Inspector Armand Gamache often travels from police headquarters in cosmopolitan Montreal to the rural hamlet of Three Pines, which is full of wacky denizens . . . anyway, I am now reading Still Life, the first novel in the series—and I'm realizing I probably should have started there in the first place; I would have avoided a lot of confusion and conjecture.

Dave Forges On, Despite the Futility of It All

Yesterday, I was doing my Basic Shakespeare Intro for my senior College Writing class, and I taught one of my students in this class, Gavin, two years ago when he was a sophomore—in Honors English—and Gavin vaguely remembered this lesson—back then we did 12th Night, and now we are starting Hamlet but it doesn't matter; the basics are the same: Shakespeare was born in England (not, as some students told me, Russia or France or Vienna or Italy . . . Italy I get, because they read Romeo and Juliet—but Russia?) and Shakespeare often wrote in iambic pentameter, and he coined many words and phrases (eyeball, unreal, knock knock who's there, etc) and then we talk about WHY we still read Shakespeare today, in modern times, and my three reasons, in order, are:

1. His CHARACTERS—no one in the history of literature created as many compelling, psychologically unique, and fascinating characters, bar none—he is the champ;

2. His way with LANGUAGE—a close second, between Shakespeare and William Tyndale, those two created a large portion of the words and phrases we use today, plus Shakespeare was often writing poetically;

3. EMOTION—Shakespeare plays are wild and dramatic; they don't teach us any lessons, or that's not the main point; they are entertainment, and the people populating these plays really put it on the line—so the plays are fun to read, act, and view;

I have the students come up with reasons why we still read Shakespeare first, before I tell them the actual reasons, and many of them say, "He came up with a lot of interesting plots and stories," and I break the news to them that Shakespeare stole most of his plots from various sources: poems, myths, history books, old tales, novels, and other plays from the repertoire—there were no copyright laws back then, and artists "borrowed" with impunity . . .

so we went through this lesson with various slides and activities, and then the students tok a quiz on the material, and then we had a few minutes left in class, so we took a walk, and on our walk we ran into another student from the sophomore Honors English class from two years ago, a great student (Humza) who was now taking AP English-- and Gavin said to Humza, "Quick, name the three reasons we read Shakespeare," and Humza wracked his brain for a second and said, "He invented a lot of famous words and phrases," and Gavin said, "Ok, that's the easy one, why else?" and Humza said, "He came up with a lot of cool plots?" and Gavin said, "He stole his plots," and Humza, with all sincerity and seriousness, threw his hands into the air, shocked, and said, "He stole his plots?!" and I said, "Why? Why do I teach you people anything!?"

Dave (and Shakespeare) Stick the Landing

Shakespeare's Hamlet has one of the finest endings of any piece of drama, and I think I did a pretty good job ending my podcast ABOUT the ending of Hamlet (and endings in general) but all I can ask is that you give it a listen and decide for yourself: Hamlet: Act Five, Part Two . . . The Readiness and the Silence . . . and if you like, leave a favorable review please . . . I just listened through, found one error, corrected it, and reposted the audio, and now it is as done as it will ever be—although I did forget to put in a clip from the very silly Steve Coogan film Hamlet 2 . . . perhaps I will go back at some point and add that, but for now I'm taking a much-needed break from recording, editing, and mixing  . . . hopefully, it will be easier when I record my next episode, which I'm going to try to write soup-to-nuts while I'm on vacation, and then record on a new computer (if it ever gets shipped).

Finished!

I am in a celebratory mood because I finished recording the audio for my final Pig on the Wall Hamlet podcast episode-- and in the nick of time, I think . . . as not only am I headed on various vacations soon, but my 2015 iMac is also on its last legs . ..  several times while I was recording and editing this massive, clip-laden project, the computer reported "System Overload" and slowed down to a crawl or stopped . . . I'm finally going to upgrade my computer to a new Mac Mini, but though I ordered it, I won't receive it until late September . . . I think the "vibe-coders' are to blame.

One More Day of Recording!

I am finally in the home stretch of my Pig on the Wall Hamlet finale—I will finish it tomorrow morning . . . just in time, as my computer is on its last legs and we're about to go on vacation (there's nothing like a hard deadline to get you motivated).

 

The End is Nigh, The Rest is Silence

I've been working like a dog every morning, for hours at a time, and I'm damned close to finishing my Hamlet podcast . . . and bringing this thing to an end is difficult and it's freaking me out.

Alas Poor Yorick, Alas Poor Ophelia, Alas . . . Alexander the Great is Stopping a Bunghole?

 

I truly and sincerely believed I was going to complete my podcast series about Hamlet with this episode, but this play, which has a mind of its own, was not having it—there's just so much to cover in scene 5.1—and so, like the play itself, my podcast will not end; it is stuck in a loop of indecision and deliberation and contemplation . . . but next episode, I promise, things will be resolved (and it's going to be tragic . . . but also I will also be quite relieved when everyone dies).

One More Act to Go!

 

It nearly killed me (and Shakespeare is to blame . . . too many things happen in this section of the play), but I have finally finished my Pig on the Wall episode analyzing Act IV of Hamlet . . . so if you love Shakespeare and you've got two hours to kill, check it out.

Sunday, Day of Running Around?

No rest for the wicked today (or the good, as my wife got a lot of shit done as well) but I went to bed early last night; awoke early; finished Act 4, scene 6, of my Hamlet podcast-- one more scene to go and then Act IV is done, hooray-- then reffed a game in Metuchen; met my wife for lunch at the Metuchen Corner Deli; reffed another game in Metuchen-- which was delayed because of thunder so our third ref took off early to Monroe, where our last game was located, and we finished the second game with just the two of us (and it got a little out of hand; one team was particularly obnoxious) and then Carlo and I drove from Metuchen to Monroe, where our third game had already started, and we took our AR positions, finished that, split the cash, and then I stopped at my mom's place in Monroe and jumped in the pool, and then I drove home and walked the dog and then loaded up my wife's car with the rest of the disassembled bed and dumped that in the park dumpster, and then I finally headed home to shower and eat-- Mexican lasagna-- and I don't even want to get into all the stuff my wife got done today, but maybe we should become Puritans and actually rest on Sunday.

Over the Hamlet Hump!

 

I am past the halfway point in my insane podcasting project: a thorough analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet with a myriad of embedded clips from various productions-- it's close to breaking me because not only am I producing all this carefully edited content, but I'm also trying to achieve professional sound quality and loudness (-16 LUFS? should I normalize, compress, or use a limiter-- or do all three? it's nuts) but I'm over the Act III hump, so it's clear sailing from here (aside from the pirates) and while Act Three, Part One is elegant and professional, Act Three, Part Two is much more akin to what it's like to be in my classroom-- at times, things get a bit weird and meta . . . I hope you enjoy it.

Sage Advice from Ferris Bueller and Hamlet

It's twenty years to the day since my youngest brother passed away-- this time frame is shocking to me, but as Ferris Bueller reminds us: "Life goes pretty fast, if you don't slow down and look around once in a while, you could miss it"-- so here's to slowing down and enjoying the time we have, and as Hamlet reminds us (after he survives his pirate adventure and prepares to duel Laertes) sometimes we can't slow things down, they become impending and inevitable so "the readiness is all"-- we don't know what life will throw at us, or when things will happen, so all we can do is enjoy the good times and be prepared for the worst. 

The Miracle of Hot Running Water (and Sanity)

Like most people, unforeseen expensive house repairs put me in a dark funk (although this particular repair was not exactly unforeseen, it was more imminent and inevitable . . . but still, replacing a tankless Navien hot water heater/boiler is not a particularly fun or anticipated purchase-- it's not like buying a dirt bike or a jet ski) and that funk obviously carried through the weekend-- because I went to early morning basketball (which is normally on Tuesday but because it is Thanksgiving Week, we had an unprecendented Monday game) and the main reason I went was so I could take a hot shower before school-- over the weekend, I showered at the gym-- and obviously I also wanted to play some basketball, but my knees and hamstring weren't especially excited about waking up early on a Monday, after playing a few hours of pickleball on Sunday, and I had some trouble getting moving and then when I got to school, I realized I had forgotten my school bag at home-- the very important bag with my school issued computer and my gradebook and all the items I needed to grade-- so I had a choice to make, I could either drive back home and get my bag, and miss basketball-- or I could play basketball, check out a loaner computer, and make the best of it . . . I decided on the latter, which was the right choice-- I had a good time playing basketball and though I had trouble getting the loner computer to do anything I needed, I still managed to print out some guided reading questions, right before class, and teach the bulk of Act IV of Hamlet . . . and show some movie clips-- but I didn't get any grading done-- and then when I got home, I received some good news-- the plumbers were able to install the tankless boiler/heater without any problems, improve the venting and draining, use the larger gas line, and fix everything else that needed fixing, without any additional cost-- and I did remind my students to appreciate the miracle of hot water in their homes and I also told them that I was proud that despite all the financial and cold-water related trauma over the weekend, I managed to hold my sanity together, unlike poor Ophelia.

AI and Computers, You Can't Live With Them, But They Will Be Our Overlords

I nearly forgot to write a sentence today because I burned my eyes out trying to grade senior synthesis essays about Susan Faludi's "The Naked Citadel" and Hamlet-- a brand new combination of texts which did produce some fascinating ideas . . . but I made the kids handwrite the essays to avoid the whole AI issue and much of their handwriting is close to illegible . . . I'm getting too old for this shit, so perhaps next time I'll make them handwrite and then allow them to type that up, with some revision-- but there's honestly no good answer.

The Ghost is a Meta-Ghost!

What a fucking week-- loads of standardized testing and proctoring, and then actual teaching-- the seniors were not as fascinated as I am by the mind-blowing possibility that Shakespeare played the Ghost of Old King Hamlet and thus, in scene 3.4, when Hamlet visits his mother in her bedchamber and gets very sidetracked by his Oedipal obsession with his mom's sex life with Claudius, he describes her "honeying and making love" in the "rank sweat" of their "nasty sty" and things get so gross that the Ghost visits to remind Hamlet to "whet" his "almost blunted purpose" and exact revenge on King Claudius and leave his mom "heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge" and stop berating and harassing her and get on with killing Claudius-- so the implication here is that the writer and director of this rambling and brilliant play about drama and procrastination gets up on stage and chastises and reminds the main character to get on with the plot of the play because he has lost his way and gone off on a filthy Oedipal tangent-- so he's essentially chastising and reminding himself that this play needs to get back on track and Hamlet needs to fulfill his father's demand for revenge-- the writer and director is directing both Hamlet and himself-- but thsi is a moot point because the play already exists (and has a run time of four hours) so it's actually too late to do anything about the inherent structural problems of the play . . . and perhaps nothing should be done because the structural problems actually lay bare the possibility that most theatrical presentations are contrived and imitate humanity abominably and that perhaps the only way to truly portray a human is to break all structural confines and expose him over four hours and 1506 lines (the most of any Shakespeare character) but it seems even Shakespeare is wary of this, and thus enters as the Ghost to chide Hamlet of his tardiness and push him to move the plot along . . . it's fucking super-meta and very wild but tough to convey last period on a Friday (but the students were fascinated and disgusted by the  Franco Zeffirilli/Mel Gibson version of the scene, which REALLY plays up the Oedipal nature of the dialogue-- so at least that caught their attention (and then I went to Happy Hour and the ladies were discussing a hypothetical beach trip to Aruba in which they would all be topless and there was much postulation on how their toplessness would be perceived . . . I contended it would not be a very big deal, and they had already seen me topless, so what's the difference?

Standardized Testing . . . Ugh

New Jersey's NJSLA adaptive field test was delayed due to technical issues with the testing platform, but that didn't stop the state from implementing a statewide field test of some non-adaptive version of the test . . . so the sophomores and juniors in my school have been testing for three days, totally screwing up the schedule and stealing hours and hours of class time from ALL the classes (the seniors get to come in at 10 AM . . . wahoo!) and the long and short of this is: we are never going to finish Hamlet . . . which is fitting and totally on brand for the level of procrastination in the play, but I guess to truly enact this I would have to sabotage and destroy the test, but not until all the time was wasted and the test was in its final throes of evaluation . . . my wife is also suffering through this-- she teaches fifth grade-- and her kids had to write for two hours straight yesterday. . . you would think a fifth grader would need to LEARN more stuff, at that point in life, and that regular class time would be very valuable . . . who wants to read two hours worth of fifth grade logic?

Methought the Kids Knew This Word

Woe is me . . . or perhaps I should say: "sad is me" or maybe "methinks I am sad" because yesternight,  methought that high school seniors knew the meaning of the word "woe" but today, while teaching Hamlet, I learned that the majority of students do NOT know the meaning of the word woe-- or as my fellow Language Arts teacher Denise said: "the distance between the students and the English language keeps growing larger."

Hypothetical Hyperbolic HW Nearly Foments Real Revolution

Last Friday, my senior College Writing class read the first scene of Hamlet, and we learned that the nation of Denmark is worried about an unsanctioned Norwegian invasion, led by a vengeful Young Fortinbras-- who wants to recover the lands that his father lost in a battle with Old King Hamlet (who appears in the play as a ghost) but Young Fortinbras did not get permission from his bedrid uncle to spearhead this invasion so Young Fortinbras has gathered a wild band of desperadoes and organized a rogue mercenary army to do his bidding . . . but the Shakespearean description of this is rather dense and difficult reading, so I always preface it by saying, "Ok, this is your homework over the weekend"-- which piques their interest-- and then the kids are confused but, slowly but surely, we figure out the passage:

Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in it, which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost.

and the students finally recognize that I am telling them to collect-- or "shark up"-- their most "lawless" friends and acquaintances and go out and do some vengeance upon their enemies and perform some deeds that "hath a stomach in it" and we chuckle about this absurd suggestion and move on . . . but I now realize that my sarcastic hypothetical hyperbole might have been lost on a few students because a kid from my class passed me by today in the hall and he asked, sincerely, "What was that homework we had to do again? It was confusing," and I was like, "Yikes . . . I was just kidding . . . please don't shark up a bunch of lawless resolutes and form a rogue army and recover any lands by strong hands and then say I had anything to do with it."

The Best Way to Teach Hamlet is NOT to Finish

I covered an extraordinary amount of Hamlet in my first two classes today-- the nunnery scene; the play-within-the-play; MY play-within-the-play-within-the-class; Hamlet's advice to the players . . . along with my acting stunt that mirrors his advice; and finally-- the Zefferelli-directed Oedipal Mel Gibson/Glen Close incestuous bedroom scene-- it was utterly exhausting but I'm trying to finish the play before the end of the year . . . alas, best laid plans: during my last period class we had an endless lockdown (because of a "swatting" incident at the elementary school across the road) and because of the delay, I didn't get very much done at all . . . and it was fine . . . because it's the end of the year with the seniors and it's Hamlet-- and who loves a delay more than Hamlet?

THIS Is Where You Get a Break From the Smelly Teenagers?

Due to a damp and rainy week, the English Office-- the place where my colleagues eat, hang out, swap stories about the youth, and escape the pungent odors of teen spirit-- today our office smelled, as Hamlet might put it: "rank and gross in nature" or as I put it: like sweaty mildewed socks.

It Is Act Five!

We started Hamlet today in my senior classes, and I taught them a few basic things about Shakespeare and his works, including the fact that all Shakespeare plays have five acts-- and that all the good stuff happens in Act Five . . . and one student asked if it was Act Five of the school year yet and I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations in my head (so my consciousness was the envelope?) and then I said, "Yes, it is Act Five!"