January 23, 2009
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Is Romeo and Juliet losing it’s luster?The Daily News
Lady Macbeth1 I have to think that one of the greatest things about teaching is keeping in touch with alumni. I learn more things from former students than all the supposed teaching I do in a year.
2 After having conked out last night really early, I awakened to a new dawn, only it was again 3 a.m. I had to run outside barefoot on the cold concrete and wheel the garbage out to the street, got back in, poured a cup of chicken soup I never got around to eating earlier, and cozyed up to the DN.
3 My usual ritual involves checking my mail and chuckling over all the stuff people send me, writing the DN, and then answering things.
4 So here are a couple of fun things that have rolled down the pike:
Chicken Wing shortage: Can you “wing it”? Or will your
feathers be ruffled? (I stole all that nonsense from CBS News)5 First, if you don’t know, chicken wings are now a rarity, so get your Super Bowl order in now. The company that provides most of the chicken wings has gone bankrupt, which has “ruffled the feathers” of a lot of chicken-wing affectionados.
6 I wasn’t sure of that plural, but I hope I landed it. Too tired to care.
7 Cindy Barrett just wrote me about love stories and Romeo and Juliet as a love story, which is great because just yesterday I told my students that R & J was the greatest love story ever written, if you dismiss all Korean dramas. I looked back upon yesterday’s DN and realized that I had declared Romeo and Juliet the greatest love story ever told, which is clearly not true.
Song Seung Hun and Son Ye Jin in the
immortal Summer Scent.8 The greatest love story of all time to me is unquestionably a Korean drama called Summer Scent, about a girl who is about to get married, gets hit by a car and killed on the way to her wedding, and dies. Her heart goes to a heart patient. Years go by. Her fiance moves on, gets a degree, becomes a hotel designer, meets with a millionaire (maybe a billionaire nowadays) who has arranged for him to design a beautiful resort, and he meets the billionaire’s wife who, you guessed it, is the girl who got the heart. They become soul mates.
9 It’s a slow roll, but a gorgeously painted love story for the ages.
10 If you’ve never seen a Korean drama, find that one and watch it this weekend. It takes about twelve years to watch, but you’ll do nothing else in that time. It’s absolutely as addicting as chicken wings. And it’s gonna rain anyway.
11 It has subtitles, but takes about four seconds to get used to.
12 Ya gotta love it.
13 Cindy brought up this concept, which I thought was great: Macbeth is a greater love story than Romeo and Juliet. Two dumb psycho kids who think they’ve fallen in love and ultimately kill themselves is basically stupid, and I quite agree. Cindy argues that Lady Macbeth’s love and loyalty is much more real than the goofiness of two idiotic teenagers. Great point, and it should hit the classroom sometime soon.
14 It used to be tough to teach about Macbeth because a goodly amount of my teaching took place in the Theatre, where you aren’t to even whisper the name of that play. It’s purportedly cursed, and I’ll never be one to argue.
15 Anyway, interesting stuffs.
16 And Paul Long, one of the key stars of the Heidi Chronz, sent me this poem about how absurd the English language is. The fact that the author wished to remain anonymous is pretty telling, but I loved it Here go:
English Pronounciation
Author unknown
Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language … until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sleeve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.Finally, which rhymes with enough –
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!17 Great stuff on a Friday morning.
18 Big Events: Get your tickets to Fleetwood Mac ASAP. They’re coming to the Tank on May 21 with a tour called The Hits. Looks like the lineup is John McVie, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and Lindsay Buckingham (one of the most underrated guitarists walking around). Noticeably missing is the wonderfully awesome Christine McVie, so that’s a hit that is missing, but otherwise a pretty solid group.
19 If you can’t afford it, then my advice is to buy the DVD Fleetwood Mac, The Dance, which features the USC marching band jamming to Tusk, and Don’t Stop (Thinking about Tomorrow),on of the best live DVD’s ever.
20 And for you older set who realize that the Grateful Dead remains one of the most poetic and influential bands ever, their 2009 tour called Dead ’09 goes up at Shoreline on May 10. Tickets go on sale Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at Livenation.com.
21 So that’s it.
22 Somehow I made it through the most absurd week of my life, and the DN remained unscathed. Go figure.
23 Plenty to do this weekend, so either go do it, or grab Summer Scent and strap in for the rainy weekend.
24 Thank you Paul and Cindy for some great items. I can’t wait to get to class this morning and share both.
25 And thanks to all the DN readers for abiding with this nonsense each and every morning of the school year.
26 Keeps you young, or maybe glad you’re old.
27 Have a great weekend.
28 Peace.
~H~
