Delays have Dangerous Ends
~King Henry VI. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 2
(especially if you're Houston)
The past few weeks have seen me attaining some pretty significant accomplishments, if I do say so myself. I returned from Texas a second time. More on this in a moment. Along with a team of impressed labor (aka, The Spouse and friends), I succeeded in painting my dining room green. Frog Pad green, to be exact. The Spouse and I joined Costco, where we bought enough cheap underwear and chocolate chips to clothe and feed an entire flotilla of naked, starving, diabetic waifs. Why the waifs are all on a flotilla, I have no idea. Bad-dum-bum. The Spouse and I also did all the Sunday crosswords together. We taught people contract bridge. We filed our taxes like good, honest, hardworking Americans. I re-re-revised the third chapter in my children's book (still not satisfied). I made a damn fine meatloaf. I fertilized all the rose bushes. I raked things. I added a link on the blog to support my fellow DC Bloggers. (The link is over in the right-hand column. I encourage you to check them out. Obviously they can't all be at the same BardBlog level you, the discerning reader, know and love. But some of them are really good, and you might just find a new DC-based web author to enjoy. I promise they're not ALL politically obsessed, obtuse blowhards.) I lowered my bad-carb in-take. Am I something or what?
And yes, I read Henry VI, Part I.
Believe me, I just can't wait to tell you about it. But here's the deal. I have bad allergies. Now, I know that sounds like a cop-out, but bear with me. Most of the year, it is all about The Spouse's allergies. The Spouse has year-round allergies of truly humongous proportions. The sort of thing ancient men of letters composed vast and timeless epics about. But once a year during a time most people call Spring but I call 'Hell is Other Pollens', my allergies make The Spouse's seem like a tribute to health and vitality. We're talking big time congestion and unprecedented mucus/phlegm production. If I could save up all my springtime allergy phlegm and then climb to the top of the Empire State Building, I'm pretty sure I could hawk a loogie big enough to encase the entirety of Rockefeller Plaza in a sticky, oozy, disgusting mucus wrap. (If only I could spit that far through midtown.) Like that artist Christo, only without the NEA grants*. Sound gross? Welcome to my life.
This is my first summer back in DC since college, and if pollen count has anything to do with Global Warming, consider the case proven. My allergies were slightly better than average during my university days; this year they are the worst ever. It is 80 degrees all the time in April, and everything is blooming at once; things that bloom now, as well as things that normally don't bloom until June or even July (according to the helpful expert at my local gardening center). Yes, Mom, I'm taking all the drugs I'm supposed to. I'm wearing a mask when I'm in the garden. I'm staying indoors as much as possible, which is easy since it is difficult to find the door through my watering eyes. It feels like I'm hosting a pillow factory inside my head. So stuffy! So heavy! Send sympathetic comments to bardblog@writeme.com.
Coupled with my traditional aliment, insomnia, the allergies are making me a total mess. The Spouse and I generally go to bed at the same time. Normally, we talk for about twenty minutes or so, and then I get to listen to The Spouse's slumbering sighs with envy in my heart. About a million hours later, I fall asleep. The Spouse gets up at 8am and leaves for Work. I wake up at 10am and feel rested enough to make myself some tea and bumble through the day. Now in pollen season, I still have the same trouble falling asleep, but I don't wake up before noon unless I set an alarm. When I do wake up it is an effort to pry my eyes open. My performance throughout the day could fairly be termed 'zombie-like', if zombies generally sniffled and sneezed all day, and had bright red noses chafed by chronic tissue use. The best word to describe my quality of sleep is probably 'commodious', in so far as it is absolutely in the toilet.
So basically what I'm saying is that I'm not really conscious enough right now to write coherently on Henry VI, Part I, or any of his other parts, either. This might count as ironic, since coherency isn't exactly the hallmark of Henry VI, Part I. Maybe the Bard was in desperate need of some Benadryl while he was writing it. Anyway, I am shirking my duties, and I am sorry. I hope you will pardon the delay. But I'll post on poor old Hank just as soon as my head clears. I promise.
In the meantime, I do feel an obligation to gratify my clamoring public with some Shakespeare-related entertainment. So I did an extensive online search for Shakespeare jokes. This was a challenging search, because I also wanted the jokes to be funny. There are no jokes about Henry VI, Part I. Surprise, surprise. After many long, sneezy hours of research, here are the best non-play specific Shakespeare jokes I could find:
Joke Number One:
I found a lot of puns of differing sorts but with the same punchline: "There's no holes, Bard!" Feel free to make up your own joke. I'm sure you can do better than the ones I saw. They mostly involved Will and a Tailor.
Joke Number Two:
I found a top-ten list used by David Letterman entitled "Top Ten Things Shakespeare would say if He Were Alive Today". It was probably written in about 1998, judging from the Shakespeare in Love joke. It is a bit dated, but here it is, anyway:
| 10. | "Now that I've had 400 years to think about it, tights are kind of fruity." |
| 9. | "What's Gore talking about? I invented the internet." |
| 8. | "I got ideas for three new plays just by watching Jerry Springer." |
| 7. | "Even I think 'Saving Private Ryan' is a much better movie than 'Shakespeare In Love.'" |
| 6. | "I'm gonna go hang out at Barnes & Noble and pick up chicks in the theater section." |
| 5. | "'Cats'? Good Lord, is that still playing?" |
| 4. | "What's something good that rhymes with 'Hooters'?" |
| 3. | "I just got a 'Welcome Back Kotter' lunch box on e-bay." |
| 2. | "The guys in high school English were right -- I'm gay." |
| 1. | "Dave, wherefore is thy number one never funny?" |
Overall, not Letterman's best effort, I'm afraid.
Joke Number Three:
A woman was out shopping one day with her son. The boy spotted a man who was bowlegged. The boy pulled on Mom's hand and said, "Momma, look at the bowlegged man."
Mom was mortified and told her son that it was not polite to point to a person and make that sort of comment. As a punishment, the boy had to read a play by Shakespeare. He couldn't go shopping again until he finished reading the play.
Finally he finished and his mom took him once again to the mall. Again he spied a bowlegged man, but remembered what happened the last time.
So he pulled on his mother's hand and said, "Lo, what manner of man are these, who wear their balls in parentheses?"
(I thought this one was pretty cute. It's authorship was not attributed.)
Joke Number Four:
The final joke has nothing to do with Shakespeare, but I include it because I found it pretty funny and, more importantly, it makes fun of Houston. If you've read my previous entry, you know I visited Houston and came away with a deeply mixed impression of Houston in particular, and Texas in general. I thought I made it pretty clear in that essay that I thought Texas had an issue in the way it pushed its image; moreover, I did not think Texas had a problem with its substance. Well, let me tell you. Boy did I get an earful when I returned to Texas a few weeks ago. How dare I, I just don't get it, I'm a pigheaded Northeasterner who sees what I want to see, Texas wouldn't worry about its image if it wasn't always being slandered by Hollywood and the Far Left, 'Don't Mess with Texas' is just an anti-litter campaign, yadda yadda yadda. And not a single soul wanted to talk about The Tempest at all. Sigh. I had a nice time anyway. But when I saw this (lengthy) joke posted at LaughZone.com, I thought I would use it to take one last swipe at cranky old Houston. So here it is:
Generic Disaster Movie Script
(The movie opens in a suburban home, where, the heroine is having breakfast with her adorable son.)
| HEROINE : | Well, it's a peaceful day! No sign of any disasters! |
| SON : | Mom, do you have a husband or romance interest? |
| HEROINE : | No, Bobby, although I am a top scientist and very attractive. |
(The phone rings.)
| HEROINE : | Uh-oh! I hope that's not a worker from the lab, calling to tell me about an impending disaster! |
| LAB WORKER : | Trish, a disaster is impending! |
| HEROINE : | I'll be right there! |
| SON : | Mom, will the disaster end up striking this exact house and placing me in grave danger? |
| HEROINE : | Of course! |
(We see an exterior shot of the White House. Inside, the president, looking grim, is holding an emergency Cabinet meeting.)
| PRESIDENT : | Haven't I seen that exterior shot before? |
| VICE PRESIDENT : | It's the same one they use in the Tom Clancy movies. |
| PRESIDENT : | OK, somebody set up the plot. |
| SCIENCE ADVISER : | Mr. President, unless something is done, a disaster is going to strike in 90 minutes, sending miniature cars flying in all directions. |
| PRESIDENT : | Ninety minutes! Why so long? |
| SCIENCE ADVISER : | We need to build up the suspense. |
| GENERAL : | Sir, we must launch a nuclear strike against Houston! |
| PRESIDENT : | Why? |
| GENERAL : | I hate Houston. |
| PRESIDENT (To the hero) : | Jake, you're incredibly good-looking. |
| HERO : | I'll do what I can, sir. |
(The next scene is in the laboratory. The hero and heroine are staring intently at a computer screen.)
| HEROINE : | ... and so by using the mouse pointer, you can drag the three of clubs over onto the four of diamonds. |
(A lab worker rushes up.)
| LAB WORKER : | Trish, the pantograph is giving us a vector plasma reading in the cosine range! |
| HERO : | What does that mean? |
| HEROINE : | Nothing. It's movie science gibberish. But it's time for the disaster! And my son is home alone! |
(The scene shifts to the heroine's neighborhood. People are screaming; miniature cars are flying everywhere.)
| HEROINE : | This is terrible! Thousands of people are being killed! |
| HERO : | It's OK! They're extras! |
| SON : | Help! Help! |
| HEROINE : | My God! It's Billy! |
| SON : | No, it's Bobby! |
| HEROINE : | Oh, right. |
| HERO : | I'll save him! |
| HEROINE : | Watch out for the special effects! |
(The hero, dodging miniature flying cars, saves the son.)
| HEROINE : | Now we can be a family unit! |
| SON : | With Val Kilmer? I thought the hero was going to be Tom Cruise. |
| HERO : | He wasn't available. |
(The final scene takes place back to the White House, where everybody is relieved.)
| PRESIDENT : | Whew! Although we lost 124 million people, all the main characters survived except the minority sidekick! |
(The Cabinet applauds.)
| GENERAL : | So now can we attack Houston? |
| PRESIDENT : | OK by me. |
(THE END)
I couldn't have said it better myself.
*You learn a lot writing a blog. For instance, while searching for a Christo link to use in this essay, I learned that Christo and his artistic collaborator/wife, Jeanne-Claude, actually never accept any outside financing or sponsorship. Hope I didn't offend any Christo fanatics with my NEA crack.
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