1. I wore a sleeveless, backless dress, so I had to make up a lot more than just my face and hands.
2. I went to a party and drank enough trashcan punch to make me bump into my host’s freshly painted walls, throw up on the drive home and pass out in my bathtub.
3. I wore a dress I had planned to wear again.

Now, there have been more than one white actor who played Othello in the movies, but let us compare the two big ones — Lawrence Olivier and Orson Welles.  Olivier got all dressed up in dark brown paint like me and my Ella Fitzgerald fiasco, but Welles did it right.

If you’ve never seen this movie, it’s pretty cool from a cinematic perspective.  Orson Welles both starred in it and directed it, and while his acting was always phenomenal, it’s the way he directed the movie that’s so amazing. He had himself filmed in shadow, so he looks darker than he really is. Every scene is set up perfectly, so the white man turns black.

So, this got me thinking about the board game, which I used to play when I was kid, before I even knew what Othello was. The white disks turn black and the black disks turn white, and in the end, you’re just deadlocked. Play now.

• » Jeff Healey, blind guitar player extraordinaire
• » Bobby Fischer who kicked ass at chess and then became a freaky recluse
• » Heath Ledger, his last role presenting some cool possibilities
• » Charlton Heston, though I did the Planet of the Apes when Roddy McDowell died
• » George Carlin, perhaps the old school hippy dippy weather man
• » Isaac Hayes, maybe a little South Park, maybe a little Shaft, maybe some spaceship Scientology stuff, who knows?

I’ve been leaning heavily toward a tribute to Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax, who died in March of this year. He opens up a lot of possibilities for strange and wonderful creatures. I could be a sexy she-elf or a goddess, a warrior, bard or cleric, a sea nymph, fairy or succubus. I can take advantage of the opportunity to be a hot girl, since the last three years I’ve dressed up as nerdy dudes – Bob Denver in ‘05, Don Knotts in ‘06 and Kurt Vonnegut in ‘07.  So, I’m way past due for a costume that shows off my chest.

But I got thrown for a loop yesterday when I learned of Paul Newman’s death. Whenever I look at pictures of old blue eyes, I see my grandfather. I always thought my mom’s dad looked like Paul Newman, both in his younger pictures and later in life, when I knew him. So, to pay tribute to Paul Newman is to pay tribute to my Papa. Oh well, we’ll just wait and see.

Farewell, Mr. Newman. Farewell, all.

People are always speculating about famous syphilitics.  But really, we don’t know for sure that Friedrich Nietzsche had syphilis. And we like to blame Van Gogh’s madness on any number of things, including the infamous spirochete. The syphilis entry on Wikipedia has a great list of “Notable known and suspected syphilis-infected people…” that shows who was known to have it, who was merely suspected to have it and who died of it.

Because of my morbid fascination, I think I will start a “diseased world” tour, starting with this book. Of course, you’ll have to wait for the blog to catch up with the research. In the meantime, there is still Shakespeare, who was genius but never mad. I’m not done with him yet.

Anyway, this was a fun spoof of MacBeth set in a 70s fast food joint in Pennsylvania. Murder, mayhem, drive-through service, what’s not to like?  And of course, there’s Christopher Walken which makes it a must see.

Did you know that Christopher Walken has averaged 3.8 movies per year since 1990?  That’s more than three and almost, but not quite, four.  And during that time, he’s been on seven episodes of Saturday Night Live, and seven episodes of Conan since 2000. I think he’s more of a workaholic than I am, and I need a vacation just thinking about it.

In a Shakespearean or Greek tragedy, the hero is defeated by some personal flaw. He creates his own hell by succombing to  jealousy, greed, paranoia, lust, hubris.

One of the coolest movie versions of MacBeth has to be Men of Respect starring John Turturro. It’s all mobsters and fortune tellers, plotting and back stabbing. Turturro’s own wife plays the Lady MacBeth (aka Ruthie Battaglia), and man is she vicious. Mike Battaglia is a badass. He lies and cheats and murders people to get to the top.

Here’s the question about MacBeth, though. What is our hero’s most serious flaw? Is it that he’s a power hungry murderer? Or is it that he lets his wife tell him what to do? Either way, he’s in Hell long before he goes down.

Each time I tell the story to someone new, they say, “Oooh, that’s pretty cool,” and I say, “I know, right?” They all stroke my ego and reassure me that I think interesting thoughts, and I walk away feeling good about myself. Until last night. 

I showed the dresser to my friend D, and she said, “It’s a beautiful piece of furniture.” Then I proceeded to tell her the story, but instead of praising me for my insights, she said, “Well, when I walked in here, it was a beautiful piece of furniture, but now it’s just depressing.”

What? You mean you’re not going to tell me how awesome and interesting I am? Oh my god, should I file my dresser interpretations under cringe therapy and just get over myself?

Okay, so my dresser tells the story of eternal damnation, and hell takes up a whole lot more real estate than heaven. But at least my panty drawer is in the top part of the dresser, which, to me, means that despite what the Pope says, there is still sex in heaven. Or maybe it means that sex IS heaven. Aw yeah, that’s it.

I’m time tripping again now, going back a little further in time to see the mighty Buffy in action.  At the same time, I am making my way through the archives of Greg Howard, Buffy fan and blogger extraordinaire. It’s September 2003, and California is going through its governor recall election.  I don’t have the heart to tell him the Terminator is going to win and that TO will soon be moving to Philadelphia.

Greg jokes about himself and how he was slow in jumping on the blogger bandwagon, but I was a whole four years behind him. He talks of things as blogging cliches, things like making fun of the search terms people use to get to your blog, when I thought that was an original idea I came up with all on my own (don’t you worry, I’ll do it anyway).

Anyway, back in 2003, River Phoenix had already been dead for ten years but was still missed.  And before he died, River starred in one of the coolest versions of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I ever — My Own Private Idaho. If you’ve never seen it, don’t you worry about young Keanu — he was always good at playing young stoner types. Back in the day.

By the time I met my man, I had dated plenty of bad boys, who introduced me to adventures and trials, drama and trauma.  I spun out of control and lost my mind for a time.  When I came back to my senses, he was there, and he was a little bit bad, but not any more so than I had already become.  And now we’re having discussions about Shakespeare and how his stories relate, not only to real life, but our life.

Me: Which Shakespeare character do you relate to most?
Him: The guy from Henry IV .
Me:  Falstaff?
Him: No, the prince.
Me: You mean you’re not the bad influence, luring people into the dark side?
Him: Nope, I’m just a dude who likes to party.

But it’s more than that.  Prince Hal escaped from his father’s rule to go hang out with his friends. He got really wasted for a long time until he finally came back to his senses and put himself to the task of becoming king.

And now, we rule.

(forgive me, that was lame)

I worked for Bruce during some pretty formative years in my life. Straight out of college, I didn’t know what I was going to be when I grew up.  So I worked for Bruce six years until I figured it out. He just laughed at me, this young idealistic hippy chick, watching me figure stuff out, while he listened to Rush Limbaugh, knowing I’d eventually become the capitalist he expected me to be. He watched me go through phases where I wanted to be an air traffic controller, a librarian, a teacher, a novelist, until I figured out I just wanted people to pay me to write, anything.

Bruce was a mighty good man. He loved his wife and his kids so much. I loved hearing him talk about Patty as an East Texas princess, and how he met her at the Byron Nelson.  His kids were so beautiful.  They would come to the office, and we’d make art and play with the copy machine. Now the oldest is going off to college, and she never expected she’d be starting this new life without her daddy to fall back on. And Patty and Bruce should be comforting each other as their nest starts to empty, but that won’t work out as expected either.

Ten years have passed since I worked for Bruce. He just turned 60 a few weeks after I turned 40. I keep thinking I’m going to call and have lunch with him, but it’s too late now. God bless you, Bruce, in your heaven. You will be missed.

I love working in cube city in corporate Dallas. I’m a kick-ass project manager, climbing the ladder, trying not to kiss anybody’s ass while keeping my CLTs in check. And despite its abuse in corporate USA, I’ve loved the word “synergy,” ever since the first time I heard it from a high school substitute teacher who was a recovering drug and alcohol addict trying to keep us kids off drugs, but that’s another story altogether.

But even though I love folk music and I don’t wear make-up, even though I fancy myself a writer, and even though I’ve been collecting drums and percussion instruments for over ten years, I had never been to a drum circle before yesterday. Yes, that’s right, I was a drum circle virgin until August 2, 2008.

I know going to one drum circle doesn’t make me an expert or anything, but I thought it was a pretty good circle, high energy, very well attended, belly dancing, children, chanting, the works.  That’s right folks, the hippies are alive and well in Texas suburbia.

And you thought we all lived on ranches and wore cowboy boots.