WEDNESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER, 2000, PHILADELPHIA

It’s weirding me out being home again where the weather is hot and humid and people drive on the right and have funny accents and say things like, “Aw jeez,” and “Yo, muthafuckah!” and “Does this come in beige?” I don’t really want to get into any more travel introspections just at the moment. I’m far too jetlagged. Was up at 5:30 this morning blinking at the darkened ceiling going, “Hum-dee-dumm. Lah-dee-dahh. Guess I am awake now. Tra-lah-lee-loo…” So guess what came out on DVD, finally, a fuckin’ year after it was released in the theatres? A-yup, Titus, from that awful Shakespeare play that no one ever puts on because it’s just nasty and angry and vicious and bloody. One of my faves, of course. American readers: Rush right out and trample the homeless in your mad panic to rent this one starring Anthony Hopkins as Titus and Jessica Lange as the well-wicked Tamora, Queen of the Goths (I’m not making this up.) British and European readers, this film is by far one of the ones that’s taking the longest to finally reach your side of the pond, but I understand it will finally be released in theatres this month or next month. Go see it. But before you do, it always helps to be primed for Shakespeare, especially his obscure plays, and so I will so graciously point you to my meltdown rewrite that I composed a mere few months before I heard it was being turned into a film. This was, let’s see, late 1998? Yah, about that. Anyway, it turns a very long and difficult play into a 7 minute, simplified read. It appears in my “Classics Digest” column wherein I take a piece of literature (novel, play, opera), take each line and extract the bare-bones meaning, giving it a hip, modern cadence and freeing the entire piece from length, pithiness or poetry. Here’s the link. And here’s Lavinia, whose enduring (or endearing?) suffering makes Ophelia’s plight seem like a child who dropped her lolly in the sand. Enjoy.