The Undead Blog. Bwahahahaha.

New blogs coming up soon: Robin and I leave November 6 on the Shakespeare At Sea Cruise 2 (with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival participating again). And, once again, Robin is one of the principal speakers. OK, why be shy? She's the main speaker, the heart and soul of the Shakespeare Cruise, and the most important person in the world (to quote an intellectual, who, on a totally unrelated side note, is a close personal friend).

So, if the Wi-Fi on the cruise ship is decent, I'll be blogging during the 10 day event. You might recall that last year I discovered after the cruise started that it was actually a zombie ship full of very old undead people who stumbled around the ship day and night, but mostly at meal time. Well, this year I have more white hair and I've perfected my stiff-legged, stumble-forward walk (with a vacant look in my eyes, mouth slightly agape) so I can roam freely about the ship. I've also perfected the illusion of looking like I'm asleep while I'm blogging.

Since I haven't blogged in a while, I'll be posting some blogs between now and when we leave for the cruise (Ft. Lauderdale to the Eastern Caribbean).

The latest news from Santa Fe:
The Mermaid Tavern bar (in the kitchen) is finished, except for the etched glass that goes in the doors. The photo below is a mockup of the etched glass design.



The border is made up of Shakespeare quotes about drinking. Under each quote is the character that said it, and the play it comes from (below).




The Mermaid Tavern was a real London tavern on the corner of Friday and Bread Streets in Shakespeare's time, where the elite artists, writers, poets, and intellectuals met on the first Friday of the month (The First Friday Club, the gathering was called).

It should be noted that the man named William Shakespeare was never documented as having been there. But surely he musta, coulda, shoulda, woulda. Maybe he disguised himself because he so loved being an invisible genius who didn't want any credit for the humble scribbles he jotted down in his free time (when he wasn't hanging out in Noblemens' libraries studying English history, or brushing up on his French, Italian, and Greek).

It should also be noted that Robin's house is known as The Mermaid Tavern, and her Shakespeare Reading Group is also called the First Friday Club (and meets on the first Friday of the month). Hmmm. Strange.

There's still a tavern on the corner of Bread and Friday Streets in London. The owners had no clue as to it's history until Robin and pal Amy told them about it. Interestingly, the current name of the tavern is The Seahorse, not that far different from Mermaid Tavern in concept. Hmmm. I say again, strange.

11,000 hits on YouTube

On June 29th, 2008, I blogged about getting 5,000 hits on a YouTube video I posted in January 2008 of my MaltiPoo puppy.

Now, 2 months later, the number of hits is just 8 short of 11,000.

I'd like to thank the cast and crew, my agent, and most of all, Pumpkin the MaltiPoo, for her amazing performance.

If you missed it the first time, here's the movie again.

Experimenting with blog service posterous.com

I've been experimenting with the posterous.com blog service, a really simple solution for blogging that I learned about on Guy Kawasaki's blog . I've set it up so that blogs posted to jtchatter.posterous.com will automatically be posted to my other blog address, jtchatter.blogspot.com. 

You can also set up posterous.com to automatically send its postings to Twitter, Flikr, Tumblr, or almost any other mainstream blog service.

If you choose to have posts relayed to Twitter, the first 130 words are posted on Twitter, and a URL links to the complete blog. 

Posted by email from jtChatter (posterous)

A cool feature of Posterous.com

You can set up posterous.com to automatically send blogs entries to any other blog you've created. For instance, I've set jtchatter@posterous.com to automatically post it's content to jtchatter@blogspot.com.

Now I'll go see if it worked.

Posted by email from jtChatter (posterous)

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

We did Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner today at 1:30 pm. That's the name of the play we went to at The New Theater, not our eating schedule.

It's a story about an obese woman who gets so fat that she spends the entire second half of the play floating near the ceiling (I know, it didn't make sense to us either). Meanwhile her husband is Mr. Nice Guy, and her sister is a sexy babe sex addict who falls in love with a cop. My artistic suggestion would be less floating in mid-air by the blimped-out fat-suit woman, and more lingerie scenes with the sexy younger sister. Or, just let the younger sister float for a while.

There seemed to be a point being made, but I'm not sure what. The happy ending was in the form of the blimp-woman exploding in a poof of flower petals as her spirit happily floated off into the vast expanse of the universe.

Warning: do not attempt to watch this play and Coriolanus (or Othello) within the same 24 hour period. It's sure to have psychotic consequences. I personally ran to Lithia Park and started gulping the water from the river, hoping it really had Lithium in it.

OK, I'm being cruel. It wasn't that bad. The stage settings were great. The lighting was great. The acting was great. And it was amazing to realize that this was the same theater we'd been in the night before to watch Coriolanus. The space was so totally transformed that it was absolutely unrecognizable, including the audience seating area. Ah the magic of stage designers.

Tonight we plan to go to the downtown movie theater a couple of blocks away and see Mama Mia!

Tomorrow we find a ride to Medford and fly home.

Saturday morning stroll

After breakfast we strolled through Lithia Park, which runs along the river.


Robin tosses a couple of coins in a fountain.


A pond in Lithia Park.

Two more plays

Last night's performance of Coriolanus in the New Theater was intense and interesting. The costuming was modern-day soldiers and politicians. Coriolanus, a war hero, is banned from Rome, after defeating the enemy, because the Tribunes (who speak for the rioting merchants) fear his arrogance and think he'll become a tyrant. And they think he should lower the cost of grain for them. Coriolanus thinks they should shut their yaps be grateful that he saved their city. After being banned, Coriolanus joins forces with the recently defeated enemy (the Volcians) to extract revenge on Rome. He's such a great leader that the other Volcian leaders are jealous of his power. When Rome hears he's joined forces with the enemy and is seeking revenge, they're like, freakin' out. They send Coriolanus's mother, wife, and child to him to beg for mercy. It works. He makes peace with Rome. Then the Volcians kill him, Julius Ceasar style (knives and lots of blood). The End.

The stage decoration was sparse, but imaginative, with multiple trap doors in the floor providing entrances and exits, and used a props for foxholes during battles.

The theater itself is an amazing venue. It's a fairly small, round theater and our front row seats kept us within a few feet of the actors most of the time.


A Tribune in the Roman Senate questions war hero Coriolanus about his arrogant attitude towards the common people.

Yesterday afternoon's performance of The Clay Pot was visually stunning. But the classic East Indian drama was a little too boring for me. It's a story of a rich man who loses his fortune and most of his friends, then falls in love with a young courtesan. The brother-in-law of the king is also in love with the young woman and kills her (he thinks), then blames it on the poor man. Blah blah blah, then a happy ending for everyone. You know, the usual 1600 year old East Indian classic theater stuff.


The Clay Cart.


The young courtesan paints a portrait of her lover.