Culture of various kinds
Aug. 5th, 2011 01:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paxpinnaeYesterday I, in no particular order:
1. saw my TV boyfriend Seth Gilliam (perhaps you know him from this little show he did) do Othello
2. fired a handgun for the first time
3. wrote copious amounts of porn
4. learned the meaning of the word "dramaturg."
Gilliam made an okay Othello - serviceable, but somewhat hampered by the amount of scenery in his mouth at any one point in time. He did a wonderful job in the beginning (the speech on Othello and Desdemona's courtship was very moving), but unfortunately chose to represent Othello's tormented decay into jealousy largely through twitchiness, culminating in Othello's epileptic fit, when he was writhing on the ground so hard I thought he was gonna break something. The audience should not be laughing during that scene. I think he had the problem a lot of screen actors have when they go back to theatre, where they take all the training in subtlety and restraint that they got when they were learning their trade and chuck it out the window, because hey! It's live theatre! Gotta play to the cheap seats! Unfortunately, in the Houston Shakespeare Festival, all the seats are cheap (tickets are free) and this strategy works less well.
I'd probably be more kind towards the production (after all, Othello is a hard role, it was 100 degrees in the shade today, and Mr. Gilliam looked like he was on the verge of melting the entire time) if I hadn't seen this year's Taming of the Shrew first. While Othello was a little hammy, TotS was a big ol' cheeseball sandwich, right down to the set design and costuming that appeared to be taking its cues from Saved By The Bell. Skeetch was Tranio, Zach was Lucentio, and Jessie and Slater played Katherina and Petrucchio with the same wooden lack of characterization typical of the original Saved by the Bell. The acting was terrible, I think largely because they hired a lot more students, rather than the veterans who've filled out the cast in years past. It makes me sad, because HSF is one of Houston's cultural institutions, but given the fact that the entire country almost just went bankrupt, I suppose I can't complain too much.
One of the (few) benefits of being in a weird, post-college, pre-employment state is the ability to run off and do stuff at a moment's notice. So when my good friend N called me up at 11 AM and said he had a coupon good for a session for two at a shooting range, we were able to be in League City kitted out with ear and eye protection, bullets, and two handguns by noon.
Both N and I had received the standard Texan child's firearms education, wherein your parents pack you off to summer camp and a slightly nervous counselor tells you "All guns are loaded, and the safety's always off" about a hundred times before letting you shoot a .22 rifle, but neither of us had shot a handgun before. We started off on a Glock 9mm and a .22 whose maker I forget, then switched over to a .357 Colt Python and a .22 Sig Mosquito. Of the four, the Python was probably the most fun, largely because it shoots bullets the size of my pinky, but the Mosquito was the best for actually hitting what you were aiming at, largely because it had almost no recoil. The worst was the 9mm; I'm pretty sure its sights were crooked. Both N and I consistently shot down and to the left when using it. We did reasonably well with all the other guns, though; all but 3 of our shots hit the colored parts of the target, even at 20 yards. N is totally on my zombie apocalypse team, because his aim is really quite good for a man with coke bottle glasses, and because I could reload both guns in the time it took N to staple a fresh target to the cardboard, he graciously agreed to let me be on his. (It's important to have these things sorted out before the first unconfirmed reports of a mysterious illness start surfacing.)
Overall, the experience confirmed my contradictory position on guns, which is that they are a lot of fun to shoot, but not enough fun to justify the size of the holes that they can put in people. N is a staunch Libertarian, so he and I have had this fight before, but I'm for stricter gun control. Buying a gun should be hard; it should take a long time; it should be something you should have to not only get licensed for, but also get re-licensed for periodically. Guns can be fun, but they are definitely not toys, and I cannot find any reason why someone would need a semiautomatic rifle for "self-defense" unless an actual war is being fought in their country at that very moment.
Also, Porn Battle is on! I was inspired by, uh, a lot of things this go-round, and managed to turn two of them into fic - a Yoo Joo/Eun Chan Coffee Prince dealie, and a Darcy/Hawkeye prompt for Thor. Anyone wanna do a beta read for me on either of those?
So, you know, it was a full day of multicultural experiences, provided that you count "redneck," "fandom," and "dirty liberal commie pinko literature snob" as three separate cultures.
1. saw my TV boyfriend Seth Gilliam (perhaps you know him from this little show he did) do Othello
2. fired a handgun for the first time
3. wrote copious amounts of porn
4. learned the meaning of the word "dramaturg."
Gilliam made an okay Othello - serviceable, but somewhat hampered by the amount of scenery in his mouth at any one point in time. He did a wonderful job in the beginning (the speech on Othello and Desdemona's courtship was very moving), but unfortunately chose to represent Othello's tormented decay into jealousy largely through twitchiness, culminating in Othello's epileptic fit, when he was writhing on the ground so hard I thought he was gonna break something. The audience should not be laughing during that scene. I think he had the problem a lot of screen actors have when they go back to theatre, where they take all the training in subtlety and restraint that they got when they were learning their trade and chuck it out the window, because hey! It's live theatre! Gotta play to the cheap seats! Unfortunately, in the Houston Shakespeare Festival, all the seats are cheap (tickets are free) and this strategy works less well.
I'd probably be more kind towards the production (after all, Othello is a hard role, it was 100 degrees in the shade today, and Mr. Gilliam looked like he was on the verge of melting the entire time) if I hadn't seen this year's Taming of the Shrew first. While Othello was a little hammy, TotS was a big ol' cheeseball sandwich, right down to the set design and costuming that appeared to be taking its cues from Saved By The Bell. Skeetch was Tranio, Zach was Lucentio, and Jessie and Slater played Katherina and Petrucchio with the same wooden lack of characterization typical of the original Saved by the Bell. The acting was terrible, I think largely because they hired a lot more students, rather than the veterans who've filled out the cast in years past. It makes me sad, because HSF is one of Houston's cultural institutions, but given the fact that the entire country almost just went bankrupt, I suppose I can't complain too much.
One of the (few) benefits of being in a weird, post-college, pre-employment state is the ability to run off and do stuff at a moment's notice. So when my good friend N called me up at 11 AM and said he had a coupon good for a session for two at a shooting range, we were able to be in League City kitted out with ear and eye protection, bullets, and two handguns by noon.
Both N and I had received the standard Texan child's firearms education, wherein your parents pack you off to summer camp and a slightly nervous counselor tells you "All guns are loaded, and the safety's always off" about a hundred times before letting you shoot a .22 rifle, but neither of us had shot a handgun before. We started off on a Glock 9mm and a .22 whose maker I forget, then switched over to a .357 Colt Python and a .22 Sig Mosquito. Of the four, the Python was probably the most fun, largely because it shoots bullets the size of my pinky, but the Mosquito was the best for actually hitting what you were aiming at, largely because it had almost no recoil. The worst was the 9mm; I'm pretty sure its sights were crooked. Both N and I consistently shot down and to the left when using it. We did reasonably well with all the other guns, though; all but 3 of our shots hit the colored parts of the target, even at 20 yards. N is totally on my zombie apocalypse team, because his aim is really quite good for a man with coke bottle glasses, and because I could reload both guns in the time it took N to staple a fresh target to the cardboard, he graciously agreed to let me be on his. (It's important to have these things sorted out before the first unconfirmed reports of a mysterious illness start surfacing.)
Overall, the experience confirmed my contradictory position on guns, which is that they are a lot of fun to shoot, but not enough fun to justify the size of the holes that they can put in people. N is a staunch Libertarian, so he and I have had this fight before, but I'm for stricter gun control. Buying a gun should be hard; it should take a long time; it should be something you should have to not only get licensed for, but also get re-licensed for periodically. Guns can be fun, but they are definitely not toys, and I cannot find any reason why someone would need a semiautomatic rifle for "self-defense" unless an actual war is being fought in their country at that very moment.
Also, Porn Battle is on! I was inspired by, uh, a lot of things this go-round, and managed to turn two of them into fic - a Yoo Joo/Eun Chan Coffee Prince dealie, and a Darcy/Hawkeye prompt for Thor. Anyone wanna do a beta read for me on either of those?
So, you know, it was a full day of multicultural experiences, provided that you count "redneck," "fandom," and "dirty liberal commie pinko literature snob" as three separate cultures.
