The Melancholy Dane

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
--Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

Yesterday, my friend J visited, which was very fun. (she is an '08 WSC grad who I haven't seen in over a year). And we went to see Hamlet! I have never been an "oh-my-gosh-Shakespeare" person, but Hamlet is my favorite. The lovely (and talented, I guess) Jude Law was playing the lead. We thought it would be unlikely that we would get the cheap-seat, day of performance student tickets, but we decided to try. When we got to the Broadhurst theater, there was a tiny line, and we got the tickets with no problem (seriously, I can't recommend enough the day of performance tickets--the seats are good, and the price is SO much better!!)

We had a few hours to kill before the matinee, so we walked by Rockefeller Center where they were setting up for the Tree Lighting, window shopped along 5th Ave, and got sandwiches from a deli to eat in Central Park. I dragged her to the Frick, which had a special exhibit on Watteau drawings. After the show we got some ice cream (healthful, yes) and appetizers and drinks, saw a mass exodus of people en route to the tree lighting, and witnessed an anti-war protest in Times Square. There weren't that many people, but megaphones tend to make me skittish (my friends and I were accidentally in an anti-police brutality riot in Montreal while on spring break, long story). Nothing too crazy happened though.

As for the play--well, it was awesome. Jude Law was good, if different. His Hamlet was mad, not in a crazy sense, but in an ANGRY sense. And with good reason--his father dies and his mother marries his father's brother not 2 months later. What I didn't realize from just reading the play is that it is really funny at certain points, especially in the scenes between Hamlet and Polonius. I thought this Polonius, Ron Cook, was very good. Ophelia was beautiful but ho-hum...I wasn't overly sad when she died. (Hamlet, however, died very beautifully.) The sets were cool too, very minimalist, dark, and gulag-like, as were the costumes, and there were occasional pops of color, in a red carpet, glowing purple thrones, or gleaming white of The Players costumes. There was also fake snow during the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, which looked neat.

The audience, which was a lot of high school kids, was generally well behaved, with only a few cell phone buzzes. The guy behind me kept falling asleep, but he left after intermission. I admit to feeling a bit sleepy myself, as the play is 3 1/2 hours long, and towards the end the soliloquies pile up. What was wonderful is that it was enunciated well and I could hear everything; even if it didn't register what the words meant, exactly, they just sounded lush and elegant. And sure, Hamlet is misogynistic and kind of a pill (I wrote some paper in high school on Misogyny in Hamlet, but I don't remember what I said, except I was angry at how he treated Gertrude), but he is also pitiable and sad. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Here we are looking cute, if damp, in the rain:

But we don't look quite as cute as this guy (even if he is anguished):


Here's a story on it all from the NY Times, and an actual review from that same august (read: pretentious?) newspaper here. And here's "What a Piece of Work is Man," from Hair, a gorgeous string of words from ol' Shakespeare himself.

Here Comes the Sun!

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.
--Love Actually aka the Best Movie of All Time (which seemed appropriate because I've spent a lot of time in Penn Station the past few days)

I had a wonderful weekend, as two of my friends visited.* And what did we do? We got treated to brunch by my magnanimous cousin, we hung out in Brooklyn Heights and saw the skyline, we walked from Brighton Beach to Coney Island while the sun got larger and oranger and began to set, we got spicy hot chocolate at Joyce's Bakeshop, they got to see my "hotspots": Prospect Park, the Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, Eastern Parkway, and the apartment, of course. One went back sooner than the other, so two of us went to the wine bar up the street last night and heard some live jazz music and then went to the raver at the Museum's First Saturday party, and then got bagels this morning. There was a lot of people watching to be had.

I miss them already already already and really need to get dressed for work (who goes into work at 5 pm. C'mon now.) But it was a lovely time. I mean this: visitors ALWAYS welcome!

And the title of this post refers to the fact that it is GLORIOUS out. Enjoy it while it lasts!

*HI GUYS!! LR if you send me that pic, I will put it up here...it's not TWIP, but it'll do. ;)

Normalcy, or Something Like It

I fear that the longer I live here the more boring this blog will become, since everything I'm doing is just becoming...normal. Regardless, I had a really nice weekend, even while working both days, and here is why:

Firstly, my friend Anna called me earlier in the week and said she wanted to come to the city this weekend, and could she spend the night with us? (and yes, I clearly only hang out with people who have the same name as me. We've been friends since middle school. It confuses people no end.) So we met up after I got out of work on Saturday and she had done some museum hopping, and the weather was beautiful, and my (magnanimous!) cousin treated us to sushi at a very, very nice Japanese place a few blocks away which has a little outdoor patio, and then we walked around the park at dusk. I pulled my air mattress out to the living room (it's nice to have a mobile bed, eh?) and we had a sleep-over. One of the many reasons I like Anna is that when she called she informed me that all she was bringing was a toothbrush and an extra shirt (being a very inefficient packer, I'm always impressed by those who travel light). Since she is an artist, she always notices interesting doors or the tops of buildings, that I tend to just walk by without paying any attention to. She's also the one who gave me the ride to NYC when I moved out, and I spent the first night in New Paltz with her. So that was all lovely.

Secondly, the weather is glorious, and Sunday Night Football has started, and Fall is in the air, all of which I approve of. And we made pizza for dinner. And I am currently imbibing a Brooklyn Brown Ale. And the Bills won!! (I will enjoy it while it lasts.)

Thirdly, I had an interesting walk home. I left work this evening bit sad: that I had to rush Anna along this morning while we ate bagels so I could make it in on time, and abandoned her to figure out her way back to Manhattan, and the fact that it was so so nice out all day, and that I was inside. Where, incidentally, I watched a child throw a tantrum, which involved crying and blowing his nose on a wad of cash, which his mother then handed to me. Yeurgh. Anyway. I decided to forgo my usual purposeful walking and instead amble along/through Prospect Park on my way home. A lot of times, people will leave books and magazines that they don't want out on their stoops for people to take, and today I found a Dorothy Sayers compilation. Some mysteries I had read, and some I hadn't, but either way--Dorothy Sayers rocks my socks, so I was excited to get that (the irony is that I was just coming off a shift at a bookstore..but I will not pass up free books!). Today was not only the end of Ramadan, it was also the end ofRosh Hashanah, so there were tons of people around. On every street corner were at least two Orthodox Jewish men, playing curved horns. I got asked whether I was Jewish by them, as did most people walking by. I really wanted to say, "no, why?" instead of just "no," but I decided that might appear rude, so I will just have to live in curiosity about what, exactly, the horn call meant.

As I looped over by Grand Army Plaza and the Public Library, there was a a group of men African drumming and clapping. Inside the park were large groups of people playing soccer, lounging, and singing, and close to the entrance was a man playing "Eleanor Rigby" on a clarinet. In front of the library were two men who were break-dancing to hip-hop, while another man filmed them. A man with a shaved head walked by me, and on his head was a tattoo of the world. Like, as if his head were a globe. (I thought it was a gutsy move, style-wise.) There was a Henry Hudson 400th year party at the Brooklyn Museum, and there were the standard museum/trustee crowd milling about in evening gowns and tuxs. All of this, plus the normal street musicians, skateboarders, kids, dogs, and cars.

I kept thinking of the Dr Seuss book And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street and all the stuff that the kid sees on his ride home. Perhaps this is not interesting to anyone who 1) grew up in a city, or 2) is not me, but these things are why living in a city can be so worth it.