And then I hated “The Purple Rose of Cairo” which I saw after I was told “Oh, Last Action Hero was just a rip off! You should see the original!”

And now I have found a new level of hate in Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author”, which I have now had the unluck of reading for my English Lit (drama!) class this term.  To make matters worse, I now have to put up with the class discussing the play, so I can’t just say “Damn, that was horrible! Glad I only had to endure that once!”… it will be dragged on for the next week or two.  It puts me in a mood to start throttling.

Fortunately, it’s an online course, so (1) my fellow students are safe from throttling and (2)  I can submit my online discussion posts without them being affected by tone of voice, body language, uncontrollable sneering, that sort of thing.

It is possible that my hatred for this piece of drama might not be so pronounced if I was actually seeing it produced.  I am still befuddled by the idea that you can teach a “drama” class where the students just, well, READ plays, but I am not so counter to this idea that I will not take the four credits and happily get on with my college career.

It is also possible that I might not hate it so much if it hadn’t come after “Othello.”

“Othello” was an enjoyable three weeks of the class, mostly because Iago is one evil son of a bitch.  Seriously.  Anyone who thinks to themselves “I’d like to be an evil bastard.  Where should I start?” should take lessons from this guy.

Going from Othello to “oh look see some of the characters are actors pretending they’re characters and some of the actors are acting like they’re actors who are playing characters and oh look how META I AM” was about as much of a paradigm shift as going from… mmm… a very good thing to a very bad thing.  I’m not much on the metaphor tonight.

I will put it like this:  Were I given the choice to 1) re-read this play or 2) go looking for Harry Potter slashfic… I would be browsing harrylovesdraco.com before you could say “you don’t need to answer right now.”

Disclaimer: If there is really a web site named “harrylovesdraco.com”, do not tell me, because I am already hanging on by a thread.

Thank you, and good night.