all the news that print will fit.
|
|
| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
|
|
Wednesday, September 08, 2004 np: the twilight singers - she loves you since we're finishing up training week and i'm not doing my radio show this week, i'm feeding the j's indie/rock blog readers with a handful of new album reviews. so check out the latest for paul westerberg's folker. my presentation to the faculty ended up going rather well. as i was sitting down, my principal noted to the faculty how impressive he thought it was for a first year teacher to give a presentation to the whole faculty in the first four weeks. not to brag, but after speaking in front of 2,000+ people and doing numerous high school theatre productions (not to mention my three-times-a-day performance in front of the toughest crowd of all: bored teenagers), speaking to a group of really tired teachers is a breeze. i'm currently reading nikolai gogol's dead souls which, as far as satire in the style of voltaire goes, is a rather hilarious read. long story short: the main character, in order to appear wealthy enough to marry an heiress he's in love with (we're in czarist russia, by the way), decides to amass ownership of dead serfs. it seems that until an official census is taken, even if a serf is dead, their owners still have to pay taxes on them. so this character purchses these dead serfs from their owners, saving them the taxes and building the appearance of great wealth on his part. the characters he interacts with to gain these serfs (the funniest thus far being an insufferable gambling cheat who even concocts a manner of cheating at checkers) have so far been the main point of interest. books like this, while really amusing, suffer (like any truly great comedy) from their dated nature. anything truly funny is going to be relevant to their audience. shakespeare, while universally and forever funny in parts, still has the dated feel of its copyright. voltaire is the same. so is gogol. they are all truly funny and masterpieces of their craft, but where david sedaris' latest book had me snorting and laughing out loud repeatedly, dead souls has me smirking and chuckling softly on occasion. just not quite the same. -- a totally random find on dvd for $6 yesterday? 13 episodes of the ray bradbury theatre. if anyone else remembers how awesome this show was, you're more than welcome to come over and watch with me. speaking of which... posted by J. Neas | 9/08/2004 10:34:00 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
