Random Sunday afternoon musings

It is freezing outside. I did make myself go to church, in spite of being tired, and feeling wimpy about the weather. I know I'm going to miss next week, so I decided to go to the effort of dragging myself out of the house. (Dragging myself to church, by the way, is much like dragging myself to the gym. I don't always succeed, but I'm always glad when I do.) On the way back, it started snowing, which made the roads really slippery. So I'm happy to be home.

Earlier this week, I checked the DVD of Othello out of the library--the one with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh. I actually grabbed it by mistake, thinking I was getting the one with Orson Welles (which I was getting for the "camp" value of such a distinguished actor doing blackface.)

After a bit of Googling about adaptations of Othello, I learned that Patrick Stewart actually played the role once, in an example of "photo-negative casting". I thought that was interesting. And then as I continued clicking about on the interwebs, I found this picture of Stewart as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Brave man.

Anyway, I did start to watch a bit of the Fishburne Othello DVD. Not sure I really want to watch the whole thing, but I might at least skip to the end to hear the final speech. At some point in high school I had to memorize it. I can't remember any of the actual words, or even the name of the character who uttered them. All I remember is that the gist, roughly paraphrased was, "Look at all the dead people on this bed--that's just messed up!"

We have discovered once again that Son is way behind in homework that we didn't even know he had. So the challenge of the day will be to actually keep him on task to get some of it done. That kind of rules out spending this cold Sunday making some popcorn and watching a (non-Othello) DVD together.

That boy had better take good care of us when we're old...


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