…Having to go back to school. Enough said.

…Finding out that people you respect are Lancastrians Republicans. (Not that I'm making an equivalency between the two groups, mind. There's nothing inherently evil about having Lancastrian, or even Tudor sympathies.)

Other things, however, are not depressing. Geeking out on polyrhythms, for example. Pass the salt and pepper.

---

We went to see Hamlet the other night. It was quite good, actually, though I really didn't see why they had to dress Hamlet in yellow and black plaid pants. As my mother pointed out, it made him seem a bit like Malvolio. He was a good actor; he was Henry in Henry V last year, and he was one of the only ones on stage this time who always not only seemed to know what he was saying but who spoke clearly. Overall, it was a very frantic production, a little too histrionic for me, but maybe this was because I had a headache anyway. I know that Hamlet is a pretty excited play, but nearly ever speech doesn't need to end with the actor out of breath and punching the air as (s)he gasps out (her)his lines, does it? Ophelia wasn't too great. She looked (and acted) like a stereotypical brainless blonde cheerleader type. Now granted, Ophelia isn't an intellectual heavy-weight anyway, but I kept expecting her to start speaking in valley-girl. ("They're, like, the owl was, like, a baker's
daughter.") Brilliant review I'm giving here. I probably should go to bed.