Excitement!!!!!!!!

Oh my god, I have to just be a twittering fangirl for one minute---So I was looking at a London theatre guide online, just idly skimming and fantasizing about a time in the vague future when I can make it down to that lovely town, when to my utter delight I saw that Hamlet is going to be playing next summer. "Ah, perfect!" I thought. "My very favorite Shakespeare play! I wonder if anyone I know is in it?" So I went to the page and *OMG* Kenneth Branagh is directing (which would have been enough by itself) and JUDE LAW is Hamlet!!!!! Squeeeee!!!!!! Ok, done now. Actually, Judi Dench will be doing a show in London next summer too, as well as the opening of "Gone With the Wind: The Musical." Oh yeah, you know you all want to visit.

Absurdities

Ok, I realize it is like 2:30 in the morning and I need to go to bed as I am suffering from a rather nasty cold, but something has come to my attention which I must express my confusion about. Has anyone been tuned in to the hoopla surrounding the "anti-religious" sentiments of the Golden Compass books and movie which seems to have been building for some time now? It is interesting because I have heard nothing but good things about these books, though have not read them, and had always vaguely planned to see the movie after learning that His Shexiness Daniel Craig played a role. But on Facebook lately, TONS of people have been joining "Boycott the Golden Compass" groups--which I see as an overreaction at best and uncomfortably Naziesque close-mindedness at worst. Which prompted me to rather passive aggressively join a "Support the Golden Compass" group, although I have not actually read the books. Can anyone tell me what all the fuss is about? Is this an instance where my genuine lack of religious convictions has rendered me completely incapable of comprehending just WHAT these people's problem is??? Regardless, I think I have some additions to the reading list for Christmas break....

Oh yeah, and I may be attending the Second Annual St Andrews Miltonathon next week, in which all interested parties gather from 9 am till whenever it's finished to read "Paradise Lost" aloud. Jealous?

Sherlock Holmes? Och, Aye!

After spending a gorgeous couple of days in Edinburgh absorbing the cultural atmosphere, one cannot help but notice and be gratified by the respect and attention with which they treat writers of the Scottish persuasion. There's a glorious Writers' Museum that honors Scott, Stevenson, and Burns, a Scottish Storytelling Centre, and a Poetry Library in addition to the lovely National Library of Scotland. A veritable English major's paradise. Now, some of you who know me also know about my interest in (cough*obsessionwith*cough) all things Sherlock Holmes. Ok, so I've pretty much wanted to have his fictional babies since I was about ten. Whatever. I also am enormously proud of my adopted country, Scotland. Which is why this article is so interesting (though is is from a couple of years ago). I most heartily concur.

Another New Favourite

Should I be reading Anne Finch's poetry for class tomorrow? Undoubtedly. Instead I came across something a bit more modern by the fabulous Dorothy Parker:

Theory

Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?

From the Absolute Worst to the Absolute Best, Tudor-Style

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the greatest movie evah!!!!!! Really, it is so, so stunning, loads and loads better than the first one even (and the first one was pretty damn good). Everything about it was completely gorgeous, from the costumes to the scenery to the musical score to Sir Walter "Sex Bomb" Raleigh as played by Clive Owen...not a joke, this definitely makes at least my top five favorite films of all time. It was even better because I spent all day analyzing Elizabeth and Mary Stuart's poetry, so it was kind of like the cherry and whipped cream on top of the academic sundae. Also it was just immensely satisfying, after a day of trying to pretend to be somewhat unbiased when it comes the whole Elizabeth/Mary relationship, to watch Elizabeth open up a giant can of whup-ass on Mary and icky Philip of Spain in glorious technicolor. To paraphrase the lady herself in the first Elizabeth movie, there is ONE mistress in this house and NO master, baby.

He's (Not) 'Enry the Eighth, He's Not.......

Ok, this may be a long rant, and it is so unrelated to my everyday life, but....I've been watching the Showtime series "The Tudors" in installments on Youtube over the last couple of days and can I just ask, WHAT WERE THESE PEOPLE ON WHEN THEY MADE THIS MOVIE?????? God knows I've never been a Henry fan, I think he was a spoiled and neurotic man with a deep-seated inferiority complex, daddy issues, and a touch of homicidal mania to boot, but even he does not deserve the inane stupidity that is this miniseries. Number one, this may be superficial and irrelevant, but we do have some idea of what these people looked like. They belonged to a social class that could afford to have their portraits painted often, not to mention those Early Modern versions of Perez Hilton, the ambassadors from other countries who liked to write home about the various quirks and foibles of those crazy English, so we can at least have a vaguely accurate idea of personal appearance from visual and textual accounts. So what were they thinking when they casted short, dark, slightly weaselly Jonathan Rhys Myers? Henry was (it is a FACT) over 6' tall with the distinctive Plantagenet reddish-blond hair so famously inherited by his vastly superior daughter Elizabeth. Also Thomas More is portrayed as a sincere and holy man who entertains no thoughts of irony whatever whilst writing "Utopia". Did they READ "Utopia"? Who am I kidding, probably not. And then, apparently the filmmakers thought that we, the viewers, are too dumb to handle the fact that there were TWO Tudor sisters, Margaret and Mary, (Margaret who was Queen of Scotland and Mary who was briefly Queen of France before her marriage to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) so instead they give us ONE Tudor sister, named Margaret but based on Mary, and they have her marry the Really Old King of Portugal (Portugal??? Where did this random country come from???) and, unable to bear the thought of just waiting till the old guy is dead, which looks to be soon, she smothers him with a pillow.

WTF???????????????

We will not be watching episodes 5 & 6.

Voyage to Mars and the Pomo Hobos

First of all, today I tried that Scottish delicacy that is second only to haggis in terms of cultural importance...a deep fried Mars bar! I realize that some of you poor misguided souls out there might be saying "Ew!" to this, but let me just tell you, it was a little piece of heaven. The fried outside has an ever-so-slightly doughnutesque taste, and the inside is all gooey and warm and chocolatey. Yum!!!
In other news, the new and stunningly talented singing group that I am now part of, the Pomo Hobos, have our first engagement on the Sporting Trombone on St Andrews 87.7 at 3 this Sunday! We shall be singing a few of our own compositions and the listening audience will call and write in, voting on which jingle they like best. Since I have always cherished singer-songwriter aspirations, this is a particularly proud moment in life.

Et tu, Dumbledore?

Whoa, so, I am undoubtedly the last to pick up on this story, but apparently Dumbledore of HP fame is gay. I guess it's not particularly surprising when you think about it I suppose, but I was just yesterday priding myself on the ability to pick up on nuances like that in pop culture, so it is admittedly a tad embarrassing. Don't get me wrong, it's cool with me and it adds another layer of interest to the stories, but like J.K. herself I shudder to think of the terrible fanfic that is going to be propagated by this revelation. Also it is more than slightly disturbing to think of his relationship with Harry in relation to the classic English boarding school theme that the series is based on. I guess it could kind of be regarded as both a subversion of that and also as an explicification (is this a word? If it wasn't before, it is now. Eat my dust, Jacques Derrida) of the common subplots inherent in the English boarding school system. Anyway, is anyone else a little skeeved by this last point? But then, considering that for years my not-so-secret fondest hope was that Snape and Hermione would ride off into the sunset together, I am undoubtedly being a hypocrite of the first water in regards to the situation.

What Would Jane Do?

Ok all you Janeites out there (and I know you're out there...), I just quite illegally watched the new BBC version of Northanger Abbey and can I just say, WOW!!! As you may know, it is definitely the most difficult of Austen's novels to adapt since THE WHOLE THING IS A SATIRE (of course I know that all my readers know this, but I'm just pointing out the impressiveness of the fact that the filmmakers were, unusually enough, not labouring under the misapprehension that Jane Austen wrote mopey Bronteesque romantic dramas). They managed to catch the ironic tone rather well and the film was entirely a breath of fresh air. I did not, however, enjoy the slightly confusing vampire references they saw fit to throw in the pot, but whatev. Henry Tilney's deadly combination of hotness and humour more than made up for it. If your scruples prevent you from searching for it online, I believe the wonderful people at Masterpiece Theatre are showing it as part of the Jane Austen Season they're doing this year. So watch!

Haggis and Other Adventures

Last night was one of those joyously random St Andrews occasions that pops up on a semi-regular basis. First went to community/university joint chorus to see if it was something that might be fun to participate in (it was). It's basically all these local older town natives along with a few intrepid souls from the University and these people are, I kid you not, VERY GOOD. I mean, even someone who had done music for more than a dozen years (ahem...) would have had trouble keeping up with them. We are, apparently, doing Handel's "Messiah" on November 24. Then went to the Bop, which is basically a lot of sweaty undergrads dancing around, but three of us did manage to get finagled into singing a jingle about sheep (???????) on this guy David's new radio show. Hmmmmm.....

Then today I took a highly entertaining day tour run by everyone's favourite company, Haggis Adventures! Our guide, David (not the same one as last night), could not, of course, hold a candle to the original Kilty Snoggerino after whom this blog is named, but he did a lovely job all the same. I am, most of all, delighted to report that Hamish the coo is well and thriving as ever! But do you suppose it's always the same Hamish the coo, or do you think they change coos every so often when the first one dies, like parents do with goldfish when they don't want to upset their children? The world may never know.

Also, GO SCOTLAND!!!!! We beat the Ukraine at football today! (Waves flag enthusiastically)

Hugh's Scottish Holiday!

Apparently I was just in the wrong place. Behold, my lovelies, the shenanigans we get up to at good old St Andy's.

Good Times

Celebrity Sightings?

Ok, so I didn't see Hugh Grant. Turns out he played our course yesterday, when I was in class anyway. I did, however, see Dougray Scott and Aidan Quinn, even though I didn't know that's who I was seeing at the time. That still counts, right? Oh, and P.S., who knew it took that long to walk around the perimeter of a golf course? In the name of God's knickers, by the time I got back I thought my legs would fall off.

Four Weddings and a Golf Tournament

So, the prospect of heading over to the golf course at 8:45 in the morning is not filling me with delight at the moment. However, I will just have to keep thinking of the Hugh Grant of "Sense and Sensibility" and "Four Weddings". I'm doing this for you, Hugh. Because I love you. I'll be just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking herself why she wanted to watch celebrities hack their way across golf's sacred ground. But, you know. Hugh Grant makes a person do crazy things.

Seriously?

"I'M Bambi, George! I'm all alone in the forest and my mother has been shot by a hunter..." Ok, seriously....

So, yesterday I went to see the Famous Golf Course for the first time. I must say, I was a little starstruck, as this is generally regarded as the Greatest Golf Course Evah. However, as I walked along th 18th hole for awhile I realized that the teensy pile of rocks in the middle of the fairway was, in fact, the bridge that Famous Old Golfers habitually hobble across accompanied by deafening cheers. "This is it??? This is the legendary hallmark of golf?" I wondered (though not aloud for fear of being torn limb from limb by packs of rabid golfaholics). It looks pretty insignificant in real life though, to tell you the truth. Then as I stopped to watch a group of middle aged American men in sweater vests play through, I realized that the emotional value of a place cannot be calculated by its flashiness, as this group stopped for at least five or so minutes on said bridge, taking pictures in every pose conceivable, their jocular laughter ringing like that of a gang of schoolboys. They loves it, I thought. They really loves it. And that, I guess, is what matters.

Hi Loves!

This is my new blog! Taa daa! It remains to be seen, however, whether or not I will actually write in it, but let's err on the side of optimism, shall we? Anyway, this first story is too good not to share, as it involves some drama in my bathroom with a genuine Scottish man. (Ooh, I have your attention now, don't I? Heh, heh.) Anyway, the trip here went more smoothly than I had dared hope...all connections were made, no luggage was lost, no hard time was given about my reasons for entering the country. As you can imagine, though, I was more than ready for a shower and sleep after arriving at my new apt. Think of my extreme chagrin, then, when about five minutes into my much-anticipated shower, I realized that the bathroom floor was under at least an inch of water and there were no signs of the drain doing its draining thang. The bathroom was flooded, the carpet was flooded, and the water had seeped out under my door like in a scene from "Titanic." Naturally, I was displeased. So I reported it and today the drain guy came. The drain guy (aka "My New BFF") was charming, Scottish, and at least a hundred and twenty years old. I was rather concerned about his ability to get up from my bathroom floor where he knelt eyeing the drain professionally, but he was a spry old gent and soon put me at ease with his frequent "Jesus Christs!" and "Bloody Hells!" (the second expression was a particular favourite, I gathered). He then informed me that not only did my drain have the worst clog he had ever seen in my apartment complex (which, ps, is only two years old) but one of the worst he had seen anywhere. Let's take a moment to remember here that some of the buildings at this University are over 500 years old. Keeping in mind that this man has probably been around for about ninety of those years himself, that, my friends, is a lot of drains. Already I have gained distinction in this, my adopted homeland.