The Truth Behind Lady Macbeth

I’ve been in a Shakespearean mode of late and I think it’s time I address the issue of the Tragedy of Macbeth or more rightly the Tragedy of Lady Macbeth.

Due to a simple typographical error between the original writing and the issuance of the first folio and no doubt some lost pages and a hasty throwing together of what pages were scattered on the floor we have a real tragedy.

The line we know from Macbeth is “Out damn’d spot.”

But I believe the real line should be thus “Out damn’d Spot” and on that simple miscapitalization hang the whole tawdry spectacle we now know as MacBeth the tragedy.

Ah me.

I believe the original probably went more like this:

“Out damn’d Spot.”

“How many times do I have to tell you dear not to curse at my dog?”

“Yeah, well, your cursed dog pee’d on the rug again.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really. And your buddy Banquo doesn’t seem to be able to come round and take the mutt for a walk – like he’s supposed to.”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Good idea, and while your at it do the king too.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“No that’s it for now.”

“By the way Hon, I don’t think it was Spot who pee’d on the rug but one of your two fur-sluggina cats: Flotsam and Rosencranz.”

“It’s Jetsom and Gildenstern, knucklehead. And don’t go blaming them for what your damned Spot did.”

“They’re friggin’ Persians and everyone knows you can’t trust the Iranians.”

“I told you leave the cats out of it.”

Thanksgiving 2007

November 22, 2007

Dear Hank,

As you can see by the date it is Thanksgiving here and as you know I usually don’t start drinking until after noon but today is an exception. You see I’ve been asked to grill the turkey beast – not beast sorry breast. The beast is in the oven. It’s a little tricky grilling down here because of the wind. Today it’s blowing moderately at 15 to 20 but that’s enough to give too much oxygen to the process unless you know how to compensate. Mainly you seal up every hole in the grill and when you start the grill you keep the cover at right angles to block the wind while you light her up. I’ve got the old Weber hidden on one side of the house, in the lee of the wind, which helps. However, one has to consider that when grilling one must, to be truly grilling, drinking, hence the exception to my rule.

This is not what I came here to talk to you about. (Those of you who don’t understand this reference need to listen to Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Gutherie. Arlo recounts an event that took place on Thanksgiving and half way through the over twenty minute song he mentions that what he’s been telling you about is not what the came here to talk to you about – See? Get it? Clever, huh? Nevermind.

But the purpose of this epistle is to make sure I understand what your most recent phone call to me was about. Mainly, yes Thanksgiving in Costa Rica and kite flying in Guatemala, but you called it ‘Getting High In the Mountains.’ I think it obvious that if you go in the mountains that you get high but I don’t think that was the implication of your meaning.

Am I to understand that after you left Wolfie at a bar in the Yucatan that you scored a motorcycle to escape the country and went overland on back roads and came to this place in Guatemala where they fly these really large kites and there was a famous and very handsome Latino media personality by the name of Francisco Geraldo Mendino Alvarez Oaxaen Jose? And that the two of you drank tequila and smoked cigars given to you by the local brujo that you say would have made Tommy Chong weep? And that after smoking and drinking and flying these massive kites you wove your way down to Costa Rica where you found the nefarious Loger, as you call him?

And that he invited you to his Thanksgiving feast, which they held a day early because they were afraid their bird might go bad if they didn’t cook it a day early and that you and old Loger-Dodger built a cement block barbeque pit and were preparing to roast the bird, a few chickens, a pig, some plantains and sundry other things when you decided it would be a good idea to crack open a few cold ones and have them while you smoked a Guatemalan fatty, which inspired Loger to yank a toad out of the bushes, which he told you supposedly had hallucinogenic properties that could be experienced by licking it, which you promptly did and then he did and then you heard his wife coming and knew she wouldn’t be pleased if she caught you toad-licking so you stuffed the toad in the cavity of the turkey and began to roast it, at which time Loger’s wife wondered why the turkey seemed to be making ribbit noises and you assured her it was just steam escaping from the skin and after she left you removed the toad but it was too late for him however the bird had a slightly odd taste that year and you learned that the combination of the triptophan from the bird and the bufotenin from the toad made you and everyone else both sleepy and prone to having wild dreams: for some exotic and sexy, for others nightmarish; and that Loger’s wife was so pissed at the two of you because you feel asleep at the beautiful out door table she had set that she tied you up, on the floor where you fell, to each other and went to bed crying and in the middle of the night you awoke to dogs pissing on you and a wild pig rutting his nose into you? All this you decided to relate to me at four o’clock this morning and when I e-mailed you back you denied any knowledge of any of this and you were now on your way to The Panama Canal.

Dear Hank,
This in response to the TED lecture found at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187

Wow, a man with common sense and a good idea.
Obviously, some kind of extremist or Mulsim radical. I'll tell Glenn Beck so he can be put on Glenn's list of those that should be killed.

Meanwhile, in the real world Dennis Kucinich brought up a motion in the House of Representative to impeach Dick Cheney for misleading the American people about the war in Iraq. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, the Republicans first were opposed to it and then once they learned the Democratic leadership was opposed to it too switched sides and said, "Bring it on." This would embarrass the Democrats somehow. The dems narrowly managed to get it thrown into committee where it will hopefully die. (Kucinich can bring the measure up again and as often as he likes because it was a 'privileged motion.' The real question concerning Kucinich, which he is constantly ducking - and being that short is easy to do - is this, "How did he get such a hot looking wife?")

Also Sicko was released on DVD yesterday. Talk about radical. This guy Moore thinks we should have a health care system that tries to make people well and not funnel tax payer dollars directly into the pockets of the insurance companies where they can deny claims and refuse to insure people who are sick.

But I digress. My deck furniture is standing firm. Right where the American people want it to stand. (Whoops, I'm channeling George Bush there. That's George I, not George II and may I remind you that we need to get to III before he is totally nuts. Oh, it might really be Dana Carvey that I'm impersonating it's so hard to tell...I hear voices.)

Speaking of hearing voices I saw Don Tabor at the AKA convention and we got to talking about his hearing aid. He said it often times buzzes and he hears things. A few sentences later I told him that Pat had sat in on my first lecture. He told me Pat had been dead for nearly two years. I said, "Really? You hear voices. But I see people." [The inference being that I see dead people in case you didn't figure it out...Must I explain everything?] (I couldn't say, "I see dead people." As that would be stealing a copyrighted line from a movie. You know the movie. They make it every other year in between the Saw movies. It features a kid looking beyond the person that is looking at them and the kid sees a watery image of a dead person. Then the trailer flash cuts to the whirling room sequence with a tool of being used in a way not suggested by the manufacturer to spatter blood. And the protagonist is trapped in a small but very real living hell, like a room, a train, a motel, an old house.)

I want to see what I call 'mixed genre' movies with a twist. Why can't the vampires take on the psychopaths or dead people walking the earth? In this way the vampires would be the good guys. And why can't the lead vampire be some guy from a double wide living in Tennessee instead of some rich dead guy of noble birth? This could be "My Name Is Earl" meets "Saw XXVII" meets "Vampires from Planet X" ?

Or, you know what? Why not one of our own in the lead role?
Why not Jose? He could be a vampire like being that survives on blood and tequila. The victims must be killed with an old Aztec stone knife and the blood sucked from the still beating heart and washed down with Patron. Maybe, Dennis Kucinich's hot wife could play the part of the hot vamperess that stands around heaving her chest with big blood covered fangs. And she could be accompanied by Lynn Cheney who would be in a role of a Lady Macbeth type person. Only it would be revealed later on that she and DK's wife were in a hot lesbian relationship (non-exclusive)? We'd have to give Jose a big Hamlet soliloquy, like this:
"To Be or Not to Be,
Is not the question,
I already am not that which I was,
I think I'll have some tequila."

Naturally, the movie would have some really funny parts. Like when Jose goes into the disco scene and orders a tequila Bloody Mary... Ha ha ha

Later,