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!"

Dave Goes "All Out" for Halloween

While I generally do not partake in costume-wearing at work, I didn't want a repeat of this epic failure and so when Liz K. told me to dress as Hamlet for Halloween, I quickly and congenially agreed (aside from the cape she wanted time to wear-- like Edna says: No capes!) and I really went all-out, I purchased a "Get Thee to a Nunnery" t-shirt on Amazon (which is a big deal for me because I generally do not wear t-shirts with words or slogans on them . . . once my yellow "Mosquito Control" t-shirt disintegrated, I was done with that phase of my life) and so I was one of the "main characters" from the novels and plays we teach-- perhaps you can identify some of the others . . . my wife opted for something less educational, but right on the nose for her: "a rock star."

Half Day of School (That Was Half Good)

Today was the last day of classes at my high school-- next week is exams-- and the day started in a lovely fashion, I played morning hoops and I made my very first shot-- a three-pointer to win the game-- and, after much sweating, fouling, rebounding, and running around-- I made my last shot-- another three-pointer to win the game (and who remembers all those missed shots in the middle? nobody!) and then I walked off the court, happily, and into the locker room, where I showered up and prepared for an easy half-day of yearbook signing (or makeshift yearbook signing since the school collected back all the yearbooks because of the yearbook debacle) and watching "Trini 2 DE Bone" the Hamlet 5.1/alas poor Yorick/Laertes jumping into the grave adjacent Atlanta episode-- but then things took an odd turn: we were watching the eulogies for Sylvia and a student from one of my other classes walked in, and-- some context-- the seniors can be exempt from exams, if they have certain grades or have completed certain requirements, it's teacher's discretion, and its a nice senior privilege-- but this student had cut the last two classes and hadn't taken the test that was required to get an exemption form (which needs to be signed by a parent or guardian) and she came into my room today and attempted to hand me an exemption form and I was like: "what? I didn't GIVE you an exemption form" and she was like "I wasn't here when you gave them out" and I was like "Okay, then you needed to come ask me for a form, not filch one and forge it and then hand it back to the originator and think they forgot that they didn't give you a form?" and then I told her to come back later when I had processed the absurdity of this event-- but she never did-- and then I wrote her up and emailed her parents and now she's coming in on exam day, the only student in that class that is coming in-- so annoying-- and she'll take the 12th Night test and some other exam that I cook up for her . . . and if she would have just asked earlier in the week, I would have told her, take the test and then I'll give you an exemption form but instead she took this oddball road, which is inconvenient to all parties involved (but I had to draw a line in the sand on this one . . . so obnoxious and entitled and just plain silly-- I can't think of the proper metaphor for this: is it like going to the DMV with a license that you made yourself and asking them to certify it? is it like giving your doctor a prescription for opioids that you wrote out yourself?)

I Also Got Kneed in the Quad

I completed a classic Quadrathlon today: I finished teaching Act IV of Hamlet; biked to the park; played an hour of pickleball; and then played two hours of full-court basketball with my son Alex and a bunch of youngsters . . . and now I wish I turned the A/C on before I left.

Dave's Lunchtime Planning Bites Him in the Ass

This year, I epically failed at Teacher Appreciation Week: Tuesday the administration bought us sandwiches but I never saw the sign-up email (and I had to take a half day to move Alex out from Rutgers) so I totally missed that and Wednesday Chick-fil-A delivered us a truckload of free chicken sandwiches, but my wife made me a delicious salad with blackened chicken-- so while I tasted a bite of Terry's chicken (first time I ever had Chick-Fil-A . . . pretty good) I didn't go to the cafeteria and procure an entire fried chicken sandwich because I was all full of healthy salad and today our boss bought us these delicious Italian sandwiches from this Italian Deli in Middlesex (Sapore) but I packed a bunch of super-tasty leftover Mexican food from La Casita (although I did manage to eat one little sandwich . . . on top of all the Mexican food, and then I could barely teach Hamlet the last period of the day) so next year I need to plan better (or plan worse!) and not bring lunch all week.

Did Jesus Tell Off-Color Jokes With His Bros? Probably Not . . .

One of the primary and profound questions that the play Hamlet explores is the opening line: "Who's there?" and so in class today we were examining how Shakespeare illustrates Hamlet's behavior in Act I Scene ii in quick succession with his family, alone, and with his friends-- and in each situation, Hamlet exhibits different personality traits-- with his family, he is sarcastic, passive-aggressive, and resentful; alone he is depressed, world-weary, and disgusted by the corruption in the world and particularly in his mother; and when he sees his buddy Horatio he is cordial and warm and even makes a couple of jokes . . . so my students were describing their different personalities in different situations-- at work, as captain of the baseball team, in Calculus, etcetera-- and we agreed that it is often the situation that determines our behavior, not our personality-- we don't seize the moment, the moment seizes us . . . but I did acknowledge that there are a very select group of folks that behave the same in every situation-- but the only examples I could think of were Jesus, Buddha, and Godzilla.

This Episode is More Fun Than It Sounds

While the title of the new episode of We Defy Augury sounds a bit bleak-- "Looming Existential Dread: Robotic and Real"-- there is fun to be had with these thoughts (loosely) based on Kate Christensen's novel Welcome Home, Stranger, the first two installments of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and Hamlet . . . and there are a plethora of Special Guests, including but not limited to: Billy Joel, Ween, David Tennant, Kenneth Branagh, Greta Thunberg, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Brother Maynard, William Shatner, Woody Allen, Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Queen, and The Prodigy.

Do It Geno!

While I did not climb, cut, or dispose of the giant dying tree that stood next to our house, menacing our roof (and our neighbor's roof) I did feel like I put in a full day's work watching this thing come down-- it was a very stressful for both me and the dog, the thumping of the logs as they swung down and crashed into the remaining trunk, the destruction in the garden, the denting of our siding, the general mayhem in our neighbor's yard (they had to take apart the chainlink fence so they could get the excavator back there to carry the giant chunks of tree to the truck) and the decision of just how high to leave the stump-- I'm going to sand it down and hit it with a couple coats of polyurethane to preserve it-- but though it was demanding, nerve-wracking, and costly to watch Genie Tree (highly recommended! they did it for $2800 . . . which was much lower than any other estimate . . . except JCR Tree Service) the threat of this tree falling on our house (and our neighbor's house) has been driving me mad for years-- the only thing I can compare it to is how Claudius feels about Hamlet, when he sends him to be executed in England . . . all I could think was "do it Geno, for like the hectic in my blood this tree rages and thou must cure me."

And It Was All Yellow

Canadian wildfires and the yellow haze they produced made for a strange penultimate day of class (and the final "A" day) but despite the glowing hazy apocalypse, we managed to finish ACT V of Hamlet and watch everyone die (except Horatio, of course, because he's a good friend) and then I realized that I forgot to vote for mayor yesterday (because of the haze . . . I blame the haze!) and I really hope this shit clears out tomorrow-- I was supposed to play tennis today but we canned that idea and Friday is the end of the year party (and cornhole tournament) but it won't be much fun in this fug.

Nice Job Stacey!

Stacey made a good-old-fashioned worksheet for Hamlet scenes 4.5 and 4.6 and it was just what the doctor ordered.

Shakespeare Motivates Shakespeare?

This year, I'm really getting to the bottom of Hamlet, the most bottomless piece of literature in existence, but this means we might never finish-- which is perfectly appropriate . . . I probably need a ghost (played by myself) to visit and "whet my almost blunted purpose" so that I actually finish the thing before the last day of school (that's essentially what happens in Act III scene iv . . . Hamlet's dad returns in the form of a specter that only Hamlet can see and tells him to stop calling him mom a slut and get on with his revenge on King Claudius, the same way Mufasa tells Simba to quit it with Timon, Pumba, and Hakuna Matata and live up to fate and responsibility and go kill Scar . . . but of course, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet's lines-- so when the ghost (probably played by Shakespeare, tells Hamlet to get on with it-- because we're nearly three hours into the play and the plot hasn't really gotten going yet) this is very strange-- it's the director telling the writer (who are both the same person) to stop going so deep with his character because people have to eat dinner.

We Defy Augury . . . Hamlet Style

Tennis season has really slowed down my podcasting output-- I am becoming downright Hamlet-like in my indecisiveness and aversion to action, but I managed to squeak out a new episode (although you might want to wait a day or two to listen because I forgot to include an audio clip so if I get motivated I'll wedge it in somewhere . . . one of the great things about podcasting is that you can go back and revise your audio for an episode) and one of the reasons I took so long is that this episode tackles some very complicated topics about belief, the morality of whistleblowing, and the existence of Deep State surveillance; it's called "Reality Loser" and it is based on thoughts (loosely) inspired by Kerry Howley's book Bottoms Up and The Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State and Jeff Sharlet's book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Last Period Ideas

The last 82-minute block is brutal to teach-- especially when you're trying to educate fourth-quarter seniors, but we did come up with a few good ideas today:

1. when a student suggested I get a funny Shakespeare t-shirt (we're doing Hamlet) I said, "I don't wear t-shirts with funny stuff on them . . . I'm the funny one, not the t-shirt" and then we decided that "I'm the funny one, not the t-shirt" would make a great novelty t-shirt;

2. we also decided that words that sound opposite to what they mean-- like "restive" which means fidgety and "enervate" which means to drain energy-- should be banned from the English language.

Tennis Etc.

So much tennis . . . and some Hamlet and some persuasive speeches in Public Speaking-- and a trip to the vet for Lola's exotic UTI-- hopefully the special urinalysis culture will give us the specific bacteria in her bladder that is causing the infection . . . but summer is coming.

The End is Nigh

In class today, Hamlet-- who recently returned to Denmark from a near-death adventure with pirates-- confronted Yorick's skull today and the inevitability of decay . . . and my seniors, who returned from their near-death adventures over prom weekend, must now also face their own imminent decay-- they are graduating and growing older by the minute and will never look this way again (also, I'm writing this over the din of professional lawncare equipment-- that shit is so LOUD).

Hamlet is Perfect for Seniors in June

It must be getting near the end of the year, as we finished Act IV of Hamlet today; Ophelia finally met her tragic, but beautiful, flower-strewn, mermaid-like demise . . . and after three hours of planning, procrastinating, and pontificating, you'd think that the play would be near the end-- but Shakespeare really lost his mind with this one: he figured out how to get Hamlet back to Denmark-- oddly friendly pirates!-- but he isn't quite ready to resolve things, Laertes still needs to do the whole jumping in the grave thing, Hamlet needs to do "alas poor Yorick" and "the readiness is all" and we also need the weird interlude with Osric (played by Robin Williams in the Branagh version) before we get the final violence and the endless last words . . . it's a perfect play to do at the end of the year because it seems as if it will never end and the seniors keep asking what we will do in class after Hamlet and the answer is "the rest is silence."

The Horror, the Horror!

The year is winding down but we're still not done with Hamlet . . . or at least I'm not done with Hamlet-- one of my senior students looked like she was attentively following along with the play, holding her book in the classic two-handed meditative literary pose, but then I noticed that she had her cell-phone inside the book-- as we used to do back in the day with comic books (most notably, School is Hell by Matt Groening) and so I made her put the phone into the pocketed phone holder in the front of the room; apparently she was shopping, some prom dress algorithm blocking the text to one of the great works in the canon, which is exactly what those folks at Amazon are trying to do.

Be Prepared and Have a Plan?

This morning the weather report was grim: "High winds, severe thunderstorms, possible large hail, possible tornado" and there was an actual exclamation point next to the three weather slot and the recommendation to "be prepared and have a plan," and when I ran this by my students, none of them were aware of this and none of them had a plan . . . but apparently, it didn't matter-- the big storm never materialized, very disappointing, but the looming threat was probably good because it meant that the GMC Tennis Tourney was postponed until tomorrow-- so I was able to go to school today and spread the word about a nonexistent storm (and I was very successful in my acting endeavor, which related to the start of scene 3.2 in Hamlet, in which I pretended to choke on some water-- it went down the wrong pipe-- and then, in a coughing fit, consequently knocked over the water bottle, spilling water all over the carpet . . . the kids couldn't believe I was acting and decided that I should pursue a film career, though I could only act in movies where I pretend to choke on stuff and then knock things over).