Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
April 23, 1902: Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique begins erupting. By the 5th of May, the erupting volcano has triggered a mudslide that buries about 150 people who work in a sugar mill. On the 8th of May, the town of Saint-Pierre is destroyed, killing an estimated 28,000 people.
April 23, 1940: More than 200 people perish at the Rhythm Night Club when it catches fire in Natchez, Mississippi. The night club, which was originally built as a blacksmith’s shop, had only one exit and most of its windows were nailed shut.
April 23, 1974: 59-year-old Carl Barnett conducts Bach’s Come, Sweet Death at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and dies of heart attack during the performance.
April 23, 2017: A U.S. Border Patrol agent fires a bullet at a target containing the explosive Tannerite as part of a gender reveal party in Arizona. (The unborn child was a boy.) The explosion sparks a fire, and although the agent immediately calls authorities, firefighters are unable to contain the blaze. It grows to become known as the Sawmill Fire, which burns 46,991 acres of Arizona and costs more than $8 million. The Border Patrol agent is fined $220,000 and sentenced to five years of probation for starting a fire without a permit.
January 8, 1970: Actor George Ostroska, playing the lead role in a St. Paul, Minnesota, production of Macbeth, dies of a heart attack at the beginning of the play’s second act. Ostroska is 32 years old.
January 8, 2020: Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is shot down by the Iranian armed forces. Five days previously, the U.S. had assassinated Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani and Iran had retaliated by launching missiles at U.S. forces stationed in Iraq. The Iranian military apparently believe the Ukrainian civilian airliner is an incoming missile launched by the U.S. military. The missile strike kills 176 people, with no survivors.
It's been 13 years, but I have thoughts. I'll skip the characters I don't know from books I haven't read.
111. Frankenstein’s Monster (Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus). Fair, judging solely by the book. But in Maggie Gyllenhaal's forthcoming The Bride of Frankenstein retelling The Bride (2025), the Monster will be played by Christian Bale. Which bumps him up to #1. I apologize in advance for the feelings I will feel about that movie.
110. Uriah Heep (David Copperfield)
109. Casaubon (Middlemarch). If I remember Middlemarch, the main character's elderly husband looked like the philosopher John Locke, but I pictured him as Lost!John Locke. Not unhot.
108. Bradley Headstone (Our Mutual Friend)
107. Samuel Pickwick (Pickwick Papers)
106. Gussie Fink-Nottle (Right Ho, Jeeves)
105. Keith Talent (London Fields)
104. Jerry Cruncher (Tale of Two Cities). Domestic violence perpetrator; deserves to be at the bottom.
103. Hercule Poirot (The Mysterious Affair at Styles). What's wrong with Poirot? He's smart, he's Belgian, he keeps his moustache neat. In the movies he's Kenneth Branagh. What have we got against Poirot?
102. Ham Peggotty (David Copperfield)
101. Thorin Oakenshield (The Hobbit). This is just anti-dwarfish. In the movies he's Richard Armitage. That gay Brit is pretty hot. Adaptational attractiveness? Sure, but still, I think a lot of Tolkien men are ranked too low on this list.
100. Tracy Tupman (Pickwick Papers)
99. Julian Malory (Excellent Women)
98. C.J. Stryver (A Tale of Two Cities). This one is correct. Sydney Carton is the hot one at this law firm.
97. Charles Arrowby (The Sea, the Sea)
96. Dr. Watson (“A Study In Scarlet”). Wrong. Watson is a catch. He's a Victorian 10.
95. Willy Wonka (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Ma'am, he has unlimited access to chocolate. That should bump him into the Top 50, at least.
94. Jim Dixon (Lucky Jim)
93. Edward Ferrars (Sense and Sensibility). I'm sorry, but in what universe is Edward Ferrars less bangable than George Wickham? Carrie Frye, did you read these books all the way through to the end?
92. Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility). EXCUSE ME?!?
68. Peter Pan (Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up). MA'AM HE IS A LITERAL CHILD. HE SHOULD NOT BE ON THIS LIST.
67. Long John Silver (Treasure Island)
66. King Lear (King Lear)
65. Reginald Jeeves (“Extricating Young Gussie”)
64. Henry Pulling (Travels with My Aunt)
63. Romeo (Romeo and Juliet). Another literal child from the reader's pov, but pretty bangable to his age-appropriate partner, I guess?
62. Tristram Shandy (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman)
61. Winston Smith (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
60. Roland Michell (Possession)
59. Crow (Crow)
58. Brigadier Etienne Gerard (The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard)
57. Tertius Lydgate (Middlemarch). I don't remember who this is.
56. Lord Sebastian Flyte (Brideshead Revisited)
55. Henry Crawford (Mansfield Park)
54. Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
53. Edward Murdstone (David Copperfield)
52. Desmond Ragwort (Thus Was Adonis Murdered)
51. Captain Hook (Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up). I feel like he should be closer to 111. Unless we're talking about that one adaptation with Jason Isaacs. I like Jason Isaacs.
50. Charles Darnay (A Tale of Two Cities). That's pretty fair. Sure, he looks exactly, weirdly like Sydney Carton, but Charles Darnay has another golden retriever personality. Pleasant, I suppose, but not sexy. Plus he's probably sad about his dead son.
45. Legolas (The Lord of the Rings). Tolkien elves are hot.
44. Robin Hood (Piers Plowman)
43. Inspector Alan Grant (The Man in the Queue)
42. George Emerson (A Room with a View)
41. Alan Breck Stewart (Kidnapped)
40. Rockingham Napier (Excellent Women)
39. Mr. Neville (Hotel du Lac)
38. St. John Rivers (Jane Eyre). Colonialist. Not sexy.
37. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
36. Lancelot (The Once and Future King)
35. Othello (Othello, The Moor of Venice). He definitely killed his wife. We saw him do it. Therefore, unbangable.
34. Tarzan/Lord Greystoke (Tarzan of the Apes). I know he was on my Disney "would" list, but let's be honest: The real sexiness is Tony Goldwyn's.
33. Severus Snape (Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone)
32. Aslan (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe). Ma'am, he is a literal lion. He shouldn't be on this list. I'm pretty sure he's an asexual untame talking lion.
31. Sydney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities). Should be closer to #1 OBVIOUSLY.
30. John Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility). This much higher than Edward Ferrars? Really?
29. Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall)
28. Maxim de Winter (Rebecca). Um, didn't he kill his wife?
27. Simon Bakerloo (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase)
26. Sirius Black (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Yeah. Or maybe a little higher, even. This is not an endorsement of J.K. Rowling, whose attempt to gaslight the Internet into ignoring Nazi anti-lgbtq+ violence makes me ill. If I were a billionaire writer with a huge platform, I simply would not use my huge platform to target a vulnerable minority.
25. Brian de Bois-Guilbert (Ivanhoe)
24. Adam Dalgliesh (Cover Her Face)
23. James Bond (Casino Royale). James Bond's behavior and personality are offputting. The only thing that ever makes James Bond sexy is when he's played by Daniel Craig.
22. James Steerforth (David Copperfield)
21. Tom Bombadil (The Lord of the Rings). Accurate. Tom Bombadil might not be a permanent keeper, but he does sound fun.
20. Edward Driffield (Cakes And Ale)
19. Sherlock Holmes (“A Study In Scarlet”). I never get very strong sexy vibes from book!Sherlock. Watson does more for me. But the sound of Benedict Cumberbatch's voice is an entirely different story. (Hours spent reading Johnlock fanfic? Who, me?)
18. Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon (These Old Shades)
17. Robert Frobisher (Cloud Atlas). That's about right. Sexy, but sad. Depraved bisexual trope, but sexy.
14. Algernon Moncrieff (The Importance of Being Earnest)
13. Randolph Henry Ash (Possession)
12. Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights). I have normal, proportional feelings about Heathcliff and about Ralph Fiennes playing him. I'm normal about Byronic antiheroes.
11. Maurice Bendrix (The End of the Affair)
10. Beorn (The Hobbit)
9. Orlando (Orlando: A Biography). Strongly agree. Ms. Carrie Frye and I are on the same page here.
8. Oliver Mellors (Lady Chatterley’s Lover). I get it.
7. Lord Peter Wimsey (Strong Poison)
6. Don Juan (Don Juan)
5. The Beast (“The Tiger’s Bride”)
4. Eugene Wrayburn (Our Mutual Friend)
The top three are fine. I feel like there should me more Shakespeare in here somewhere, though. I feel like the unsexy Shakespeare characters are covered better than the actually hot ones. Benedick, anyone? Dom Demetrius, afraid of yet intrigued by Helena's sub tendencies?
My #1 post this year, about the end of Ted Lasso, got 401 notes.
This was my #2 post.
The answer is, Jonathan Crane did earn his degrees at a young age, but he wasn't an M.D. He didn't go to pre-med, medical school, and a psychiatric residency. He was a Ph.D. That's still a lot of years of school, but fewer than the psychiatry track.
...a comparison between this M*A*S*H text post meme and Audra McDonald, Anne Hathaway, and Raul Esparza starring in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Nightthat ran from June-July 2009 in Central Park, part of New York City’s annual Shakespeare in the Park tradition.
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My almanac project is on a brief hiatus while I explore more immediately profitable work than a book, but please enjoy these reminiscences of July 13ths past.
July 13, 1890: Ambrose Bierce’s best-known short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” is published.
July 13, 1999, South Bend: This morning when I read the newspaper I said, “I want to see Shakespeare in Love.”
Kevin responded, “You want him to be in love?”
I said, “Yes, and I know just the English girl to set him up with.”
Later that day I went to the bargain movie theater at Scotsdale Mall, the theater that only costs $1 during the day, and saw Shakespeare in Love. It had Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dame Judy Densch (as Queen Elizabeth), Geoffrey Rush, and Ben Affleck. Rupert Everett appears briefly as Christopher Marlowe; he suggests the plot of Romeo and Juliet (which Shakespeare wanted to call Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter), then gets killed offscreen.
Gwyneth Paltrow was very good at Viola, a lady who loves poetry and the theater. She disguises herself as a man to be an actor and gets the part of Romeo, while at the same time inspiring the role of Juliet. Sadly, their love does not go smoothly, for she has to get married to a local nobleman who wants to make her move to Virginia. (The American colonies were brand spanking new in Shakespeare’s time.)
It’s really a great story. I didn’t know exactly what to expect but was pleased with how the movie unfolded. It’s funny, too.
When I got home I went straight to my bookshelf, pulled down Brush Up Your Poetry (my best source of Brit Lit info), and see what Christopher Marlowe was famous for (other than dying in a bar fight). It seems to be mainly the plays Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta. He coined the phrase “love at first sight:”
“Where both deliberate, the love is slight;
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?”
July 13, 2002, Mishawaka: Tit and I got married at the band shell at Battell Park. After a Polish-style dinner at the reception and hours of dancing and socializing, we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott for the night.
I can describe this event in minute detail, but I’m afraid those details won’t be interesting or meaningful to anyone except Tit Elingtin and me.
July 13, 2003: First wedding anniversary! We drove to Navy Pier and went on a cruise on Lake Michigan. Our cruise on the Odyssey II was nothing at all like The Odyssey of Homer. (No, not that minivan that Homer Simpson rented.) We experienced no storms, no shipwrecks.
We had a warm, slightly breezy day. The worst part of it was when we sat on the metal chairs on the observation deck, I got all hot and sweaty and my armpits started to stink. There were no sea monsters. One lady wore a necklace made out of multicolored plastic beads like rosary beads. Not all of the colors were pretty, and they seemed to have been strung in a random order. The resulting mix of colors reminded me of an afghan made with every yarn in the knitting basket. No sea monsters; that necklace was the only aesthetically non-pleasing thing I saw.
No Circe hung around to turn the men into pigs. We all turned ourselves into pigs when presented with the brunch buffet. And then we had a dessert buffet at the end of the cruise. I ate a coconut brownie, a cream-filled pastry, and a slice of raspberry cheese cake. Tit ate all three kinds of cheesecake. He had 2 plates of desserts, actually, washed down with a big glass of chocolate milk. (Mmm, I wish I had one of those chocolate brownies right now.)
One guy sounded a little bit like a pig when his little son showed up with a balloon animal that the ship's magician gave him. “Look daddy, I have a bunny!” he said of a balloon creature with two loops sticking out of the side. “Or a sword!” said the dad. Do you really want to encourage that little boy to prefer weapons to cute, cuddly little creatures, dad? The boy insisted, though, that it was a bunny, not a sword. (I'm not saying I'm against playing games that involve violence or weapons. What I am against is stereotyping children into strict gender roles. More on that follows.) Another boy had a palm tree made out of balloons, and he was pretending it was a gun that shot coconuts.
We encountered no sirens. Thank gods (as Ulysses would say), because I didn't particularly feel like stuffing beeswax in my ears or being tied to the mast. The only music came from the jazz trio. There were some young women in very short skirts whose butts attracted Tit's attention. (I don't mind. He can't help looking, and it's nothing to feel insecure about.) To me, the most tempting (to look at) creature on the ship was a tall, bleached blonde guy in a beige ribbed t-shirt and a pair of khaki pants, and leather loafers with no socks. He was very stylish, and furthermore he spoke with an English accent. He spent the whole time with a shorter, slightly less well-dressed dark-haired man in a light blue polo shirt. They drank coffee out on the hot observation deck and didn't show any signs of sweating. The bleached blonde wasn't exactly a siren, but I could imagine him singing, “You and me and the devil makes three, don't need no other lovin' baby,” like the sirens in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
We met no Cyclops on this Odyssey. Not even a one-eyed Bible salesman. If we wanted adventure, the most we could have hoped for was a balloon-sword fight. It wasn't the boys this time. It was two girls dressed up in platform shoes and–well, dresses. Both of them had hats made out of twisted-up balloons. It reminded me of the creative headdresses worn by the girls (and later, the women) in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The girl in the bright pink dress had her pink hat pulled down over her face, rather like she was in a fencing match. So maybe it wasn't even a “fight.” It might have been more of a good-natured sport.
Earlier I thought I saw the same girls walking poodles made of balloons. Then I heard a pop. It may have been different little girls. My memory was slightly hazed by the combination of Dramamine and Champagne. I was a little sleepy for most of the cruise. I had about four cups of coffee (some of the best coffee I've ever tasted, by the way) and a Vanilla Coke in Chicago, but it didn't help me stay awake.
Other than the balloon poodles, the strangest creature on the ship was a black butterfly. It passed in front of me, then fluttered toward the shore.
I'll have to thank my parents for the cruise. The weather was pleasant, the view was nice, and the food was awesome. The jazz trio wasn't bad, either. I liked their take on the Marvin Gaye song “What's Going On.”
After the cruise (and despite drowsiness), we walked around downtown (we paid $18 to park in that Navy Pier garage, and we wanted our money's worth) and found the free newspaper New City. I love the clip art in this paper, and I sometimes enjoy reading the descriptions of out-of-the-way theater productions, independent films and art exhibits. Not much good in the July 10 issue, though. I think I should read The Effects of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits, reviewed in the newspaper. [But I never did.]
Okay, now a word on the Ya-Yas. The movie stars Sandra Bullock as a NY-based writer with a very dysfunctional relationship with her Louisiana mother. The mother has three best friends, and the four of them make up the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. They have their own rituals, including drinking “blood” made of chocolate syrup, as well as a fierce loyalty to each other from childhood. They know all of each other's secrets, like the tragic death of Teensy's brother in the war. They know why the mother, Vivian, disappeared when her children were small, only to reappear months later with no explanation. It seems she had a terrible problem with alcoholism, which her doctors mistakenly thought they could cure with pills.
I wish I could have seen the whole thing and paid it more attention, but I had to go take a shower and get ready for a family wedding.
July 13, 2005: Third wedding anniversary! We took the South Shore to Chicago and visited Shedd Aquarium. We saw a giant Amazonian python, a tank with various species of shark, bioluminescent jellyfish, enormous crabs, white belugas, swimming penguins, and dolphins who understood sign language. Animals! Who understood a human language! That’s astounding!
Later we walked through the art gallery district, where we visited:
From there we hopped on the El, got off at the Berwyn stop, and went to Early to Bed, a sex-positive shop on N. Clark St. I’d seen advertised in Venus magazine. [Wikipedia: “Venus Zine was a quarterly internationally circulated magazine covering women in music, film, art, entertainment, literature, fashion, indie culture, and DIY culture. It was published from 1995 through 2010.”]
In the evening, we took a bicycle taxi to the Hancock Building, where there was no wait to ride the elevator to the 96th floor, the observation deck. We looked to the southwest and saw fireworks being launched from a boat off Navy Pier. Chicago has a large enough contingent of French citizens that it has a Bastille Day celebration, and Bastille Day is July 14th.
July 13, 2010, Mishawaka: For our 8th anniversary, Tit and I ate breakfast at Carol’s, had lunch at Granite City, shopped at the mall, visited my parents, then had dinner at Bonefish Grill.
July 13, 2014, South Bend: For our 12th anniversary, Tit and I went rafting on the East Race. We took two trips down the whitewater race in a rubber raft. I fell in once. Later we went for a tandem bike ride and stopped at Smith’s for a beer.
Monday, July 13, 2020, Indianapolis: We didn’t go anywhere for our anniversary due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, but we did order Chinese food for delivery. The masked delivery driver left the bag of food on our front steps and insisted on getting back in his car before we opened our storm door to get the food. These are the kinds of precautions we have to take when a highly contagious, potentially deadly virus is going around.
Tuesday, July 13, 2021, Indianapolis: On a recommendation from our friend Hadya, Tit and I went to Union 50 on Mass Ave. for our anniversary dinner. It’s literally an old union hall converted into a fancy restaurant. We sat outside on the patio and ordered such things as a meat and cheese board with pimiento cheese, beet salad, and a braised lamb shank. We got carrot cake to go.
Thursday, July 13, 2023: This is what we're doing today:
Defn: A black, granular, explosive substance, consisting of an intimate mechanical mixture of niter, charcoal, and sulphur. It is used in gunnery and blasting.
Note: Gunpowder consists of from 70 to 80 per cent of niter, with 10 to 15 per cent of each of the other ingredients. Its explosive energy is due to the fact that it contains the necessary amount of oxygen for its own combustion, and liberates gases (chiefly nitrogen and carbon dioxide), which occupy a thousand or fifteen hundred times more space than the powder which generated them. Gunpowder pile driver, a pile driver, the hammer of which is thrown up by the explosion of gunpowder.
-- Gunpowder plot (Eng. Hist.), a plot to destroy the King, Lords, and Commons, in revenge for the penal laws against Catholics. As Guy Fawkes, the agent of the conspirators, was about to fire the mine, which was placed under the House of Lords, he was seized, Nov. 5, 1605. Hence, Nov. 5 is known in England as Guy Fawkes Day.
-- Gunpowder tea, a species of fine green tea, each leaf of which is rolled into a small ball or pellet.
Should ever be forgot.” - traditional nursery rhyme
November 5, 1664: Samuel Pepys sees Macbeth: “Up and to the office, where all the morning, at noon to the ‘Change, and thence home to dinner, and so with my wife to the Duke’s house to a play, Macbeth, a pretty good play, but admirably acted. Thence home; the coach being forced to go round by London Wall home, because of the bonefires [for Guy Fawkes Day]; the day being mightily observed in the City. To my office late at business, and then home to supper, and to bed.”
I still find it incredibly charming and cute that "Pepys" is pronounced "Peeps," like the marshmallow candy.
November 5, 1946: Disco, Gospel, and soul singer Loleatta Holloway is born in Chicago. I become aware of her when I check out the Madonna tribute album Virgin Voices from the South Bend public library; Holloway covered “Like a Prayer” (and in my opinion, it’s the best track on that album).
She also provided vocals for the 1991 hit single “Good Vibrations” for Mark Wahlberg’s group Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. I knew that song in 1991, and although Holloway appears in the music video, I wasn’t aware of her at the time.
Sunday, November 5, 2006, Mishawaka: On my way to Meijer to buy some groceries, I heard a story on NPR. Samuel Menashe had won the Poetry Foundation’s Neglected Masters Award. I heard his poem “The Shrine Whose Shape I Am.” It reads in part:
“There is no Jerusalem but this
Breathed in flesh by shameless love
Built high upon tides of blood
I believe the Prophets and Blake
And like David I bless myself
With all my might”
Later we visited my parents, and in the evening I was privileged to watch a new Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode. The first segment parodied The Blob, the second was based on the Jewish folktale of the golem, and the third parodied War of the Worlds.
November 3, 2000, Mishawaka: Tit and I went out to dinner at Applebee’s. I had an Oriental chicken salad and a couple of strawberry daiquiris. They weren’t very strong.
I really enjoyed this performance, too; it was full of laughs. My favorite was Puck, played by Michelle Host. Puck is traditionally played as a male character, but in this play she was played with joyful mischief by a women. The costumes for Puck, Titania, and Oberon were great.
The other fairies were a bit of a disappointment [wardrobe-wise]. They had on masks such as one might wear to a costume party. I much preferred the faces of Puck and Titania, painted with makeup and glitter but still looking human.
Another actor who was very enjoyable was Christopher Ference, who played Bottom. Bottom is a great role, what with the ass-head-wearing and the role-within-a-role of Pyramus. It’s hard work, and a good Bottom takes talent. This guy had talent and he got the biggest laughs.
From the program: “The Bethel Theatre Arts Department welcomes you to our fall production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since it was first presented in 1594 this magical comedy of lovers and fairies and ‘rude mechanicals’ has delighted audiences worldwide. We trust you will enjoy the play, our eleventh production on the Everest-Rohrer Stage.”
Drawing of Shakespeare's character Puck, from A Midsummer Night's Dream, made by J. E. H. MacDonald for Roy Mitchell's book Shakespeare for Community Players (1919)
July 31, 1994, South Bend. After a visit to Target at which I ordered a Frozen Coke in the café, I saw Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Julietfor the first time. I wrote, “It really is a good story. The actor who played Romeo was seventeen when it was filmed.” I noticed Leonardo DiCaprio but I didn’t know his name yet.
According to Shakespeare, July 31st or Lammas Eve is Juliet Capulet’s birthday:
Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!—
Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: but, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
Saturday, July 31, 2010, Mishawaka: Tit and I went to Battell Park for a free, open-air performance of The Taming of the Shrewby Notre Dame’s The Young Company. It was positively delightful. It had been too long since Tit and I had seen live Shakespeare.
Haw"thorn`, n. Etym: [AS. hagaborn, hæg. See Haw a hedge, and Thorn.]
(Bot.)
Defn: A thorny shrub or tree (the Cratægus oxyacantha), having deeply lobed, shining leaves, small, roselike, fragrant flowers, and a fruit called haw. It is much used in Europe for hedges, and for standards in gardens. The American hawthorn is Cratægus cordata, which has the leaves but little lobed.
“Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds” - Shak.
Find the sticker on Redbubble (not an affiliate link)
July 4, 1845: “I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms.”
July 4, 1862: Lewis Carroll writes in his diary, “July 4 (F) Atkinson brought over to my rooms some friends of his, a Mrs. & Miss Peters, of whom I took photographs, & who afterwards looked over my albums & staid to lunch. They then went off to the Museum, & Duckworth & I made an expedition up the river to Godstow with the 3 Liddells: we had tea on the bank there, & did not reach Ch. Ch. Again till ¼ past 8, when we took them on to my rooms to see my collection of micro-photographs, & restored them to the Deanery just before 9.”
The little expedition rowing on the Thames with Alice Liddell and her two sisters near Christ Church (Ch. Ch.), Oxford, was the beginning of the author’s inspiration for writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare, Act 4, Scene 1), print, after Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, Samuel Cousins (MET, 47.30.46). This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy
I celebrated Adrienne Rich's Day by eating breakfast at my local poet house. A poet house, you’ll find, is like a pancake house, but with better coffee.
Adrienne Rich's Day (May 16) is a made-up holiday. It doesn’t exist, although Rich was born on the 16th of May. But that doesn’t stop me from celebrating Adrienne Rich's Day to the fullest. I’d already written out my Poets’ Day cards, trimmed the Poets’ Day tree and opened each one of my Poets’ Day gifts. All that was left to do was brunch at the Poet House.
There I heard Lewis Carroll as he ordered the seafood omelet with extra oysters.
"We cannot do with more than four," his server responded. "To give a hand to each."
Carroll frowned, and when his omelet came, he complained that the lobster was baked too brown. "I must sugar my hair," he said in frustration. He had the server take away the omelet and bring the soup of the evening, beautiful soup, instead.
George Gordon, Lord Byron said that he wasn’t hungry, but I caught him staring at Emily Dickinson’s waffles. Dickinson led the poets in saying grace in the name of the butterfly, and of the birds, and of the breeze, amen. She washed down her waffles with the sherry which the guest leaves.
Allen Ginsberg let me have a bite of his kosher Zen New Jersey nowhere, howling as he sipped his hot matzo ball soup. Meanwhile, Lawrence Ferlinghetti ate a good deal of spaghetti.
Along came Adrienne Rich, who ordered strong black coffee. It came nestled sensuously between the waitress’s breasts.
Langston Hughes had the raisin toast in the sun, but said that it was dried up. Edgar Allan Poe had the toast as well. His came with cognac and three red roses. When asked if he wanted a side of bacon with that, Poe said, "Nevermore." When the check came, Poe was nowhere to be found.
Oscar Wilde went wild when served his Oscar Meyer wiener. Robert Frost stopped by to watch the powdered sugar fall on my french toast, but he couldn’t stay. "I have promises to keep," he said. "And miles to go before I sleep."
William Shakespeare ordered the turkey dinner, and made much ado about stuffing. But all was as he liked it in the end. He washed down his meal with a winter’s ale.
It was impossible to tell what Robert Pinsky wanted for an entree, so we put him in charge of ordering dessert. He chose Basho, banana pudding. It was the perfect ending to the perfect Adrienne Rich's Day celebration.
***Author's Note: An earlier version of this poetic fantasy appeared in Wild Violet literary magazine. ***
Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman by Harrison Cheung
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Harrison Cheung, a Canadian who loves movies, was Christian Bale's unpaid personal assistant for many years. He does not have a very high opinion of Mr. Bale, whom he characterizes as incredibly self-centered. Disdainful of publicity to an extreme, Bale didn't even attend Heath Ledger's funeral because he didn't want to face the public, even though Bale and Ledger had become friends. (Some people get along with Christian Bale. Heath Ledger was one, and Russell Crowe is another.)
This book is full of short, interesting tidbits, but it also contains some strange errors and omissions. When mentioning Christian's interest in playing Mercutio in the Baz Luhrmann 'Romeo + Juliet' film of the '90s, Cheung and co-author Nicola Pittam mention that Bale lost the role to "an African-American." What an odd, vague way to describe Harold Perrineau, the actor who not only steals the movie with his impassioned portrayal of Romeo's volatile friend but is also well-known to American audiences through the TV shows 'Lost' and, now, 'Claws.' Do the authors really not know who Harold Perrineau is?
Another section refers to Colin Farrell as a British actor. Colin. Farrell. Is. Irish. Irish people are NOT British, and since Cheung lived with a British family (Christian, Louise, and David Bale - brother, sister, and father) for years, shouldn't he know this?
Cheung also has a low opinion of Winona Ryder, a former friend of Bale, his co-star in 'Little Women,' and the one who introduced Bale to his wife, Sandra (Sibi) Blazic. He describes the petite star as foul-mouthed and rude.
The whole narration has to be taken with a small grain of salt because Cheung obviously has a bone to pick with the Bale clan. They owe him thousands of dollars, if he genuinely never received a paycheck for working as Bale's personal and social media assistant from the earliest days of the Internet. Maybe he's exaggerating, or maybe he has cherry-picked the incidents that paint Christian Bale and his semi-con-artist father in the worst possible light. I don't know. It was still an interesting, relatively quick read.
I purchased this book at Barnes and Noble with my own funds as was not obligated in any way to review it.
Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard by Laura Bates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dr. Laura Bates writes about her work with the prisoners of Central Indiana, close to where I currently call home. In particular, she recounts her teacher-pupil relationship with inmate Larry Newton. With little formal education, convicted murderer Newton had a keen, insightful mind and a particular gift for relating Shakespeare to the circumstances of his fellow inmates. He might have become the first inmate to earn his Ph.D. in prison -- if the state of Indiana hadn't ended all funding for education in prison.
It's really stupid to end prison education and Shakespeare programs, by the way. They've been shown time and time again to reduce the amount of violence between inmates. America is horrible to its incarcerated persons anyway, but it's especially boneheaded to make the workplace more dangerous for prison employees as well as more dangerous for inmates themselves.
Bates writes that she is not a prison reformer, but maybe she should be. American prisons are a human rights nightmare, as Orange Is the New Black has recently shown many of us. And we should all care, because not every prisoner is incarcerated for the rest of his or her life. They'll become our neighbors, and it's always better to have an educated neighbor with insight into his or her own character and actions.
I checked this audiobook out of my local library using the Libby app. I was not obligated in any way to review it.
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Most Excellent Comedie and Tragical Romance by Adam Bertocci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There's not too terribly much to say about this fairly quick, enjoyable read. It's The Big Lebowski as if written by William Shakespeare, with dozens of references to the Bard's plays woven in. I love Shakespeare and I love the Coen Brothers - I consider O Brother, Where Art Thou? my all-time favorite movie - so I had no reason to dislike this clever mash-up. It wasn't quite five-star spectacular along the lines of Shakespeare-inspired The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet, but it was a plainly enjoyable effort.
I saw this book on the blog http://bookandbeer.tumblr.com/, where people post pictures of their books next to their beers. I immediately went and purchased a copy from an indie bookseller with my own funds, and I was not obligated in any way to review it.
Matthew Goode, who appeared in The Imitation Game* with Benedict Cumberbatch, will play my fictional boyfriend, vampire-scientist Matthew Clairmont.
Badass witch heroine and mother of dragon (technically, firedrake) Diana Bishop is to be played by Teresa Palmer, the Australian actress I thought was very good in Warm Bodies.
Quite nice. Another favorite getting a TV adaptation is Robert Galbraith's (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling's) The Cuckoo's Calling.
It looks like Cormoran Strike - another of my fictional boyfriends, although I truly want him and Robin to get together - got a bit of an adaptational attractiveness upgrade, but no matter. Holliday Grainger looks like she'll be an absolutely perfect Robin Ellacot.
Elarica Johnson, who made a brief but notable appearance in the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is playing Lula Landry. I still like to imagine that Lula is dating Fred Weasley in the afterlife.
Grainger is also set to play the lover of Anna Paquin's character in Tell It to the Bees, a novel written by Fiona Shaw. Shaw did a stint on True Blood with Paquin, playing the lead witch of a coven, but is perhaps more famous for playing Harry Potter's witchcraft-phobic Aunt Petunia.
Also adapted for TV was Charlaine Harris's Midnight, Texas series. I'm missing it because I don't have cable, but my parents are watching it. Maybe some day they'll put it on Netflix.
*Which I never finished watching because sad LGBT+ history makes me sad.
Recently Watched: Much Ado About Nothing at Notre Dame on Sunday, then my second viewing of Twelfth Night, with my niece this time, also at Notre Dame but on Monday.
Currently Listening To: Wil Wheaton reading the audio book of Ready Player One.
This is the first Margaret Atwood book I've ever read; I know she's enjoying a bit of a resurgence in popularity because her novel The Handmaid's Talewas made into a miniseries. I need to get around to reading that soon, too.
But in the meantime, it happens that I read Shakespeare's The Tempest last summer in anticipation of seeing the play performed at the University of Notre Dame. I was thus familiar enough with the play to make reading this a worthwhile experience. (I'm a big Shakespeare nerd anyway, and I love retellings.)
The novel itself is briskly paced and humorous with a lovable protagonist. Felix has suffered the tragic early death of his own little Miranda, but he imagines her so clearly she appears as a spirit-like character, a combination Miranda/Ariel in his own personal tempest.
Much of the novel is set in a prison. In her acknowledgments, Atwood mentions Orange Is the New Blackas part of the long tradition of prison literature. I've been watching the series based on Piper Kerman's book (I just finished Season 5), and I appreciate how the Kerman, the book, and subsequently the series have brought attention to the abuse of prison inmates and the good work it's done in helping to humanize non-violent convicted persons. With that background, it's easy to get inside the heads of the prison characters in the novel. Some of the products of their imaginations are very rough around the edges, but Atwood is careful to root the grittiness in their experiences.
Atwood includes a summary of The Tempest in the book, so even if you haven't seen the play staged you can brush up before diving into the novel. But all the allusions - including the chapter headings - will make more sense if you've at least seen a movie version. (The acknowledgments also mention Julie Taymor's movie, which I highly recommend seeing. I still consider Russell Brand the ultimate Trinculo.)
I received this book from BloggingForBooks.com in exchange for a fair and honest review.
My husband and I were in Chicago on October 27th-29th. Before we left, I wanted to pay another visit to Selected Works, the used bookstore in The Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue. You may remember Selected Works from this 2012 blog post: That Time I Tried Out for Jeopardy!
In 2012, I lugged the ponderous tome The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy on the train, and was stuck carrying it for the rest of the trip. This time, I brought two books which, even taken together, were still smaller: Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, and The Last Days of Magic, the Doctor Strange graphic novel. And we shipped our dirty laundry et al, home in a U.P.S. box so we didn't have to schlep it everywhere.
Today I learned the bookstore cat's name. It is Hodge. This is Hodge examining one of the books I intended to purchase.
I said in 2012 that I thought he was a Russian blue, but now I don't think he is. I think he's just gray, like my dad's cat Bucky.
In 2012, I found a neat old paperback about the film adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's short stories. I tried to find more Hemingway nonfiction, but I didn't see anything that interested me. Instead, I found these four things.
I'm already familiar with "The Wasp in a Wig" thanks to Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice books (I own two different editions). I still like to own as many Lewis Carroll volumes as possible.
(Also, I may have ordered myself a pair of Alice in Wonderland socks while I was buying my mother's birthday present from Out of Print Clothing today.)
As we learned from the Willie Lynch Speech incident, there are a good deal of quotes out there in circulation that were never actually uttered. Often, the authors contend, these false quotes have polemic purposes. Some of these false quotes drive the conspiracy culture of today. This book was published in 1989, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) many of these fake quotes are still being quoted today by people who have no idea they were wrongly attributed, taken far out of context, or made up of pure bullshittery. It's rather fascinating.
I apologize for the low-res picture. It's from Goodreads.
I may have caught Pericles: Prince of Tyre, The Tempest, and Richard III this year, but there is still Shakespeare out there for me to conquer. I'll never reach Jillian Keenan's level, but this should be a good basic reference book.
It may seem that I indulged myself quite a bit in the bookshop. I did. We did a lot of indulging when we weren't visiting the organ transplant team at Northwestern University hospital, though. We saw Blue Man Group and went to the AMC Dine-In Theatre, where we got to eat a full meal, including cocktails, while watching the film version of Dan Brown's Inferno. We didn't get to see the ending of Inferno, unfortunately, because of a very rude lady, but that will have to be a story for another day.
Sex With Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do With Pain, But More With Love
I knew from the moment I laid eyes on the title of this book that I had to know more. When I spotted it on the autobiographies shelf at my local Barnes and Noble, I knew I had to buy a copy.
The author, Jillian Keenan, is a spanking fetishist. I am not. Despite the fact that I myself am not a part of the spanking sub-subculture of the BDSM subculture, I found that I felt a tremendous amount of sympathy with the author as she told her story.
This is, after all, a love story. All love stories are relatable, to some extent, to anyone who's ever been in love.
Each chapter is themed around a particular Shakespearean work. The first chapter centers on my favorite of the Bard's comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here Keenan addresses a topic also brought up by E.T. Malinowski in her romance novel A Midsummer Dream: Are Demetrius and Helena ever really in love?
Keenan thinks they are, as I do. But she adds an interesting new spin. She contends that when Helena says:
"I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love,--
And yet a place of high respect with me,--
Than to be used as you use your dog?"
...she is being literal. She wants Demetrius to treat her like his dog. In Helena, Keenan sees a kindred soul, a woman whose sexuality is incomplete, virtually nonexistent, without her submissive, masochistic side being expressed. Keenan sees Helena as a woman embracing her emerging kink, while Demetrius is still coming to terms with his Dominant/sadist tendencies. Genuinely afraid he will hurt Helena, Demetrius turns his attentions to the woman he perceives as the safe, vanilla choice: Hermia.
Kinky headcanon accepted. Since I can't seem to stop crushing on Christian Bale as Demetrius, I want the interpretation that puts Demetrius in the most sympathetic light.
The second chapter deals with a character I find much less likeable: Caliban from The Tempest. Keenan has a special relationship with Caliban, but I can't get over the fact that he admits he tried to rape Miranda. Keenan doesn't excuse that, but she does remind us that Shakespeare was a humanist and even he, in the authorial voice, allows mercy for Caliban in the end.
There are a few plays mentioned in this memoir that I haven't seen or read yet: Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Antony and Cleopatra, and As You Like It. By and large, though, all the characters with whom Keenan has a series of imagination conversations that help her find her way are all familiar, beloved characters to me.
Now, Keenan has a master's degree in literature that focused on Shakespeare and is recognized as an expert. Productions call her in when they have questions about interpretation of the text. I'm an amateur fan who fell in love with my fifth grade teacher cast me as Peter Quince. I don't know nearly as much about Shakespeare as Keenan does, but as a fellow fangirl, I can certainly appreciate her enthusiasm for the subject.
She writes with remarkable honesty and openness about matters both deeply personal and professional, and I felt privileged to accompany her on this inward journey. I may not share the specifics of her sexual orientation (and she does call spanking fetishism her orientation - in the more conventional sense of the term, she is bisexual, like me - and like Shakespeare, probably), but through this book, I have new insight into the experience.
One quibble: Keenan mentions that in Shakespeare's time, the liver and not the heart was considered to be the seat of love. However, it seems to me that I have seen references within Shakespeare's plays to the heart as the seat of love. Did she mean that the liver was considered to be the seat of lust?
Either way, I really, really enjoyed reading this memoir.
I purchased this book with my own funds and was not obligated in any way to review it.
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