Hamlet and toy camera mode

Don't those look like toy cars on a toy bridge? My camera has a built-in tilt-shift mode (which they call "toy") so I can make pretend toy bridges out of real bridges simply by turning a dial. I feel like this earns me an evil laugh, so MWAHAHAHA.  BEWARE, or I shall turn my toy-ray on your metropolis.

THINGS ARE AFOOT. That's all I can say about that right now, but I will tell you aaaallll about it later. (it's not an actual toy ray, alas.)

Stuff I can talk about: I'm reading Hamlet! Which I think I mentioned last time, which was last week. It took me longer than anticipated to finally finish the Lhasa book, so Hamlet got pushed down the line. It's so good! I mean, I know it's "good" because it's Shakespeare, etc. Also because I've read it before (a long time ago), but it's also the kind of good where I'm thinking about it (and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) all the time.  ALL THE TIME.

My friend Patty is reading it along with me, and we got to talking about the play within the play (you know - Hamlet's "the play's the thing/ wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King" where he plans to trick Claudius into revealing his murdering ways and wife/crown stealing propensity) and I remembered that I quite liked the version of the play they did in RaGaD. AND THEN I found it on youtube, so here it is. I love Richard Dreyfus as The Player. In the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet (about which I liked many things) The Player was Charleton Heston -- a major letdown. All I could think of whenever he was on screen was him and his soylent green, his damn dirty apes and his cold dead hands. Whereas R. Dreyfus is just perfectly, appropriately rooster-crowing over the top. (Can one be appropriately over the top? If it's appropriate, then surely it's just at the top and not over? I don't know and I don't care.  I love him in this part.) (Plus it has Tim Roth AND Gary Oldman being awesome.)




I love how The Player describes tragedy: "We're tragedians, you see. We follow directions--there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means." (This is from RaGaD - I will find some amazing Hamlet-itself quotes for next time.) There is something to be said for interacting with a piece of art where you know it's bad endings for everyone, as opposed to say a fancy PBS soap opera that MUMBLESHOUT SHAKE MY FIST TO THE HEAVENS.


sigh.


Oh! There's this coming up, too!! The Kickstarter's over, but the book will be available to purchase at some point in the future!