140-Beauty

Last week, British thespian Stephen Fry announced a contest to judge the world's most beautiful tweet. The avid twitterer and sorta-incarnation of a certain Irish-aesthete-epigrammarian will judge this contest as part of The Guardian's Hay Festival, a literary 'woodstock of the mind' currently happening somewhere in the middle of Wales. (Guess I missed that bad boy back in aught five, on my way from Bath, England out to the Pembrokeshire Coast). Fry, seen here in a great old sketch (with Dr. House looking even more like Briggs / Luke Hatton), will announce the winner of this competition on June 6th. Therefore, this week at Uptown Problems (as well as on twitter), I will be practicing my hand at beauty and brevity, and submitting my efforts to the contest. This exercise is a nice extension of the six-word Hemingway Challenge that I'm occasionally fond of. So, be warned: For the next three days, I will be putting certain potentially florid / weird / maudlin tweet-length writings out into cyberpace. I'm eager to see what exactly Fry, the kinda'-contemporary-version of that dandy-witticist (or, as Ricky Gervais puts it 'poof'), deems 'beautiful' in the 140-character form.

Speaking of Oscar Wilde, I wonder if I could ever be put on trial for a controversial piece of writing. And then sentenced to a pretty-much-fatal jail term because of it. But, what sort of scandalous subtext could they find in my writing? Maybe that every single character is secretly really, really tall. That'd be it. And then my cross-examination would go something like this:

Lord Davenport (with powdery white wig): "Mr. Hatton, I refer this courtroom to page sixty-three of your short story collection So, Does This Hotel Have a Pool? at which point the 'good buddies' Herbert and Todd are speeding down the freeway after a blue VW Jetta. Mr. Hatton... are these men tall?"
Me: "To be tall in the eyes of man is but to be short in the eyes of God."
Lord Davenport: "But these men ARE being tall together, are they not Mr. Hatton?"
Me: "They are of an appropriate equal height to spot each others' elbows and then high-five."
Lord Davenport (flustered): "Are WOMEN tall in your stories, Mr. Hatton?"
Me: "Decidedly not. Although the character of 'Shannon' in my story "Sh*t or Get Off the Pot" consigns herself to never wearing heels once she becomes engaged."
Lord Davenport: "... yes, engaged to a man who ..." (shuffles manuscript) "you condemn as 'boisterous' and 'overbearing.' Is this the meaning of being 'short' in your eyes, Mr. Hatton??"
Me: "My eyes see as partially as anyone's, Mr. Davenport. For to be tall or short to anyone requires only a trick of the light and a lean of the hips."

In jail, I'd send long letters to Shaq and the Jolly Green Giant.

Go to Oregon so I have someone to talk about this production of Hamlet with, Or: This review is so, so fastidiously detailed and laden with spoilers as to have no audience

Academics like to claim that Hamlet is unperformable. That Shakespeare's tragedy is too copious, too complex, and too long for a production to ever do it justice. The words, words, words will in all likelihood undermine even a very gifted actor or director. The critic Harold Bloom (who can't stop thinking about Hamlet, his secular scripture) derides most attempts to stage this "poem unlimited." Hamlet is smarter than us, maintains Bloom, so most stage productions will invariably get it wrong. We're better off to just keep re-reading it.

To these assertions, I can now reply that I saw a pretty great production of Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last May. Having previously seen three different Hamlet productions in my lifetime, I know that the theatergoing world abounds in mediocre Hamlets. Prior to last night's show, I saw one (lop-sided) production here at OSF ten years ago, a community theater production one time, and a hyper-abridged one-hour high school version.

Picture if you will the cliche hep audience member, enjoying his post-theater cigarette by the stage door. The star emerges, now in plainclothes, and the audience member ducks over to assert his gratitude (as well as book smarts): "Hey man! I just wanna' say, I dug your choices." Well, this production of Hamlet, for the OSF's 75th anniversary season, starring the brilliant Dan Donahue, well, I DUG its choices. That is, for the most part...

Let's talk about some of them. We'll start off with the weirdest one, the most glaring. The production choice that came from way out of left field, making me go, "What?" and then, "But - but why?" and then finally, "Oh! Cool." Get this: In this production, the King, the Ghost of Hamlet's father ... he's deaf. He uses sign-language to speak all of his lines. When he gets real mad, he yells one of his lines and his speech is realistically impaired. Furthermore, lest you think this was some sort of spectral, purgatorial consequence for the King's being poisoned in his ear, let me stop you. King Hamlet was, apparently, deaf during his lifetime as well. I call this choice the most glaring because it's the one that distracted me from the play itself - its presence made me start to worry, and we don't like worrying during our plays.

My realization of this choice was slow to dawn: Horatio tries to speak to the Ghost in the play's first scene. Me: "Okay, why's he hand gesturing?... Okay, that's over now. Good. It must have just been some sort of military semaphore. Moving on... " Later: Hamlet tries to speak to his dead father. "Why the fuck is Hamlet hand gesturing while he speaks? Are there hearing-impaired people in this audience? Is this one of those sign-interpreted performances -- with the sign-interpretation incorporated into the diegesis of the show? That... would be pretty crazy." Then: Father-Ghost and Son speak to each other. "Oh, man. The dad is actually deaf. They are actually, together, translating out Uncle Claudius' whole treasonous crime with the Father signing it, and the Son speaking it. Wtf." Maybe this play's going off the rails...

I then found myself sitting there, zoning out from the acting in front of me, and scanning the book and volume of my brain for some justification, some textual support, for this very unusual choice. Where in the world did deaf come from? What dramaturgical clue clicked a lightbulb on in the director's head? (*snaps finger* "Of course! He's deaf!" *begins composing mass-email* "That's gold, Jerry, gold.") But, f'oh about my brains, I couldn't come up with a thing. 

Thankfully though, it got better, this potentially-crippling production choice. During young Hamlet’s translation (for the audience’s sake) of his dad’s shocking murder revelation, I was complaining in my head: Look, in real life, deaf people’s loved ones don’t verbalize their speech. They simply comprehend, and respond. So, I came away from that scene feeling like the production lacked the courage for this conceit. If he’s deaf, at least have him be realistically deaf, okay? But then, later, it did just that. In the Ghost’s third scene, when Hamlet speaks daggers to his mother, the Ghost silently signed his entire injunction for Hamlet to go easy on his mom, and also to make with the uncle-revenge business. Hamlet verbalized none of this for the audience's expositional sake, and then simply picked up his next line: “How is’t with you, lady?” I was so pleased.

Then the deaf Father idea did have some late payoff, finally. It arrived at a moment where I thought “okay, that’s actually cool.” This came in the last word of the last line of Hamlet’s dying moment. As the life leaves his body, he begins to both sign and speak his famous final words, perhaps as a sort of fond commemoration of his departed dad, or maybe as an urgent hope that the two of them be reunited soon. And then, Hamlet can't utter the last word. He can only silently sign the “silence.”... Nice right? 

Moving on to some of the production’s other interpretive choices. There was another potentially cringe-inducing device, which actually acquitted itself nicely. The traveling troupe of players was turned into a rhythm-step group. Their "Mousetrap” performance into a hip-hop concert. You can almost see this concept going over well in a table read. In theory, it makes sense. In practice, however, it could have easily been dead in the water. But it goes down smoothly enough, like a glass of champagne that’s gone a little flat. And at the point when Polonious interrupts the players’ impromptu rehearsal, saying, “This is too long,” we at least laugh with a sense of solidarity.

Moving on to the next impactful choice. This one involved some true textual sleuthing. This is probably where the director and the dramaturg reached for the elbow grease, winked playfully and proceeded to arm wrestle. In their production, Hamlet’s first three soliloquies, as well as some of his dying words, are purposefully set off from the rest of the text, distinctly juxtaposed from the mis-en-scene of the play. This is accomplished by positioning these speeches away from their usual placement in the scenes, and initiated by a sharp light change, which haloes Hamlet in his solitary audience address while the other onstage characters freeze in a tableau. To futher section off these speeches, this production has rearranged their placement within the sequence of their scenes, often dropping Hamlet’s later private contemplations into earlier public moments. So, rather than soliloquizing after everyone has left the room, Hamlet opens up his personal thoughts to us while frozen within the interpersonal instant that inspired them. (Or, at any rate, the instant posited as inspiration by this production.)

It's not a revelatory choice, but the creative team gets good mileage out of it. For Hamlet's first two soliloquies (“O, that this too too solid flesh” and “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I”), the idea makes excellent good sense. The former soliloquy is incited when Gertrude compels Hamlet to stay with them longer in Elsinore. His soliloquy concludes, “but break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue,” light change / break tableau / resume public moment: “I shall, in all my best, obey you, lady,” with a resigned, broken voice. The "peasant slave" soliloquy is provoked when Hamlet watches the Player King perform his monologue about Hecuba. And there's plenty of textual support for that choice: “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her?” Hamlet privately asks us, with the Player King frozen behind him while enacting his "dream of passion." 

The placement of the “To be or not to be” is less about the dichotomy between public and private space, but its resulting interpretive tenor is nonetheless bold, debatable, and compelling. Hamlet first spots Ophelia kneeling in a chapel. “Nymph, in the orisons, be all my sins remembered.” “Good my lord, how does your honor for this many a day?” “I humbly thank you. Well…” He proceeds to exit the chapel, and suddenly finds himself locked in a dark, square, stone room, with Polonious and Claudius listening just on the other side of a barricaded door. “Well, well,” says Hamlet, completing his line with a suspicious tone. His ensuing soliloquy – the most famous lines in Western Literature – therefore assumes a paranoid, defeated quality, as if Hamlet were a penned-in animal under constant surveillance.

This third adaptive choice works tremendously well, and it leads me to this production's chiefest asset: Dan Donahue’s performance itself. This actor's dexterous, buoyant Prince lends the whole production a fluid pacing and a smooth accessibility that single-handedly raises it up from mediocrity. I for one never realized that the character of Hamlet could be so laugh-out-loud funny. Donahue makes this Hamlet instantly relatable; He’s like the prankster-friend you love having around. As a result, you’re all the more heart-broken to see his inevitable fate played out. Sad to see a noble mind here o’erthrown, sadder to see it when the noble mind is also effortlessly hilarious. OSF contracted Donahue years ago specifically to fill the roles of clowns and fools. That apprenticeship has served this production well. Not only did he make this audience member hear a lot of these very familiar lines afresh - no minor accomplishment for any Shakespeare production - but he additionally wrung laughter from unlikely and un-mined places. He managed to turn his every ironic "crazy" interaction with Polonius, or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, into the light, playful tauntings of your favorite puckish class clown.    

With Donahue's precise and vivid portrayal as its centerpiece, this production has dozens of other smaller adaptive choices I'm eager to talk about. I'll try to keep it short. His work as Hamlet shoulders this production with ease, but then unfortunately leaves a few of the other performers looking static by comparison. Jeffrey King's Claudius blusters around unevenly. Greta Oglesby's Gertrude hits all the appropriate notes, which is to say, she's serviceable. Susannah Flood's surprisingly level-headed, almost sardonic Ophelia reads as out of place in this production, but then her restraint pays off during the actress's fully-realized mental melt-down and painfully poignant drowning scene. A pair of gardening shears becomes a key prop throughout the action. After Ophelia first uses them to prune flowers in her first moment, Donahue keeps snatching them up for his mischief from scene to scene. He uses them to snip Polonius's tie, and then promptly discovers its use as a bookmark. He uses them as weapon to insinuate suicide. He also periodically slices holes in his black mourning suit, signaling a psychological deterioration, and eventually comes to look quite like a patched fool. Fittingly, the daughter's garden shears travel their full arch when Hamlet drives them home into the father's stomach, stabbing Polonius through the arras. And, finally, one last thought. My reaction to this production reveals how much I've been of the school that the central character chooses to act crazy, performing his antic disposition to gain an upper hand on his tormentors. The fable (directing-speak for "brief synopsis of a particular production's point-of-view") for this Hamlet may have included a sentence like: "As a result of his encounter with the Ghost, Hamlet's mind is infected and he literally goes insane." The rich copiousness of Donahue's portrayal from scene to scene suggests a person swinging rapidly from strutting prankster, to disillusioned lover, to loyal or disgusted son (the list goes on...) to a man terrified at his own tenuous grasp on reality.

So, if by saying that Hamlet is unperformable one means that the infinite possibilities for interpretation cannot all be on display at once, I would tend to agree. If, however, one means that a lively and on the whole well-thought-out production of Hamlet cannot be found, I would tend to say drop your preconceptions. I would say something is rotten in the state of scholarship. I would say head to Ashland, Oregon. 

Competition: A Personal Essay

            You win. You have the bigger dick. And I mean both genders here – I’m talking about everyone. If you want to compete with me in any sport or game, then you always already possess the phallus and, congratulations, it's huge. I do not care.
            You wanna’ play a sport together? I sure don’t. Volleyball or golf or bocci ball together? Sounds like a time-waster. And all during the 2-to-4 hours that it takes you to kick my ass, I will be bored. Not frustrated, indifferent. I’ll think about movies or books. And I’ll think about how this boring sport we're doing reminds me of a movie or a book. And then I’ll try to resist my ever-present urge to steer the conversation towards those movies and those books, and use them to relate to you rather than through anything actually having to do with this stupid sporting ritual that we’re engaged in for no reason. Hey, everybody! I'm Maverick and he's Iceman!, I'll say. Bump, set, danger zone! Or: I'm Bill Murray, I'm gonna’ get that gopher. But maybe you haven’t seen those movies in a while. So you’ll shrug, or you’ll space out, and then you’ll egg me on to play the game better. But I do not give a shit. I like jogging. By myself.
            This is to say nothing of watching sports, either in person or on t.v., which is so, so boring to me. Equivalent-to-staring-at-a-blank-wall boring. I may as well try to parse Cantonese. I may as well blur my fucking vision and stare at the dead space between me and the sport in front of me. Talk to me about Peyton Manning, or Tony Romo, talk about Derek Jeter, or that white guy who’s doing well for the Arizona Suns (I think). Please talk to me about all of these people – I will tune the fuck out. Talk about Tiger Woods and I’ll ask if you saw that South Park episode. These are the point at which conversation stops between me and the average American male. Your dude-fiancée or your dude-cousin – this is where we give up on our acquaintance. And that's a good thing too: I could give two shits that you remember so-and-so’s stats, or that you traded that guy in your fantasy league, or (worse yet) that you can check all of this real quick on your smart phone. And he could give two shits that I remember so-and-so's IMDB page, or that that actor got his start at that playhouse, or that I have Shakespeare's plays on my iphone. Venn diagram: Circle “Briggs,” Circle “normative masculinity,” and nary the two quite touch. They say men get their aggression out by sublimating it into the sports they watch. Apparently I carry around a pile of rage.
           What about beer, Briggs? What if we play a drinking game? Will that get you to man up, Mr. Wussy-Arts? Probably not. I mean, for a little while, yes, and once in the bluest moon, but ultimately: no. Plus I’m getting too old for flip cup and beer pong. I’ve had exactly four perfect evenings as a result of games like those, but they are now long ago and encased in nostalgia and I’d prefer not to mess with that four-for-four record, thank you. Last summer, someone convinced me to play flip cup again and I joined in for one half-hearted round, and then I bowed out, and then I hated everyone in the room and hated myself for getting sucked into a less-than-perfect drinking game evening. If you are out of college, competitive drinking typically produces one end result: Several pallid faces after a round, all asking: “Why did we think this was a good idea?”
           Briggs, we could just have a quiet evening playing a board game. Come on over. After dinner, we’ll have some wine and … and sit around for four hours rolling dice and moving little plastic figurines. Plus, maybe cards are involved too. You like math, right? Numbers, odds, and logic – those are all things you’ve excelled in, right, Briggs? This’ll be a great way to pass four or maybe five hours of our lives! We need four players for our Bored Game! You could be our fourth, Briggs, come over! ...  And then when I do come over, I half-listen to all the game’s rules, and then I fuck up those rules for three hours, and then once I’ve lost, once a whole evening of bored concentration has dragged on by, then I'm of course super primed and eager to remember all those boring rules! And super excited to try to win that Bored Game the next time I’m bored enough to play it! About a decade ago, I played one game of Monopoly. And I won. And I haven’t played it since. So let’s leave it at that.
           The competitive gene skipped over me. I’ve witnessed each of my brothers at moments when they’ve turned into Game dicks, and started gloating or yelling in the face of successes or losses. But I yell when my medical insurance screws me over. And I gloat when a girl slips me her number at a bar. I don’t get worked up over an imaginary ritual involving cardboard and player spaces. I don’t rile myself up or shit a few bricks if "my" "team” isn’t in the lead this year in their league. What's the point? What. is. the. point? I can find those emotional extremes elsewhere in life. Throughout my childhood, my parents tried to foist various sports on me and none of them took. Instead, they mostly served up opportunities for me to embarrass myself. Swimming, soccer, karate – none of it lasted more than a year or two. I was the one always just waiting for the adults to dole out the Sunkist and orange slices. Full-back, half-back, whatever, I was the kid who, if an airplane flew overhead trailing a white jet stream, then I had to – had to – stop running and hold up a mimed camera and take a mimed picture of that airplane. No matter what kind of game was being played around me. My summers of doing swim team also sucked. Chlorine burned my eyes daily because my parents never got me goggles. During warm-ups, I was perpetually laps and laps behind the other kids because my parents always dropped me off late. One time a bald swim meet judge (who in my memory is Mr. Strickland, the principal from Back to the Future) told me that I have a perfect scissor kick. I smiled for a moment, thinking it was a compliment. But, no, definitely not. I do poor athleticism perfectly.

            So don’t be surprised when I don’t know anything about your home team. Don’t tell me who traded who for who. And don’t invite me over to play Wii golf. I'm fine without it. I promise you we will get through this. We will find another way to pass the time. Maybe we’ll have a conversation together. That could work. I'm like the best at conversation. I'll kick your ass at conversation any day.               

Name Game

            I’m so excited to move to Los Angeles in two weeks! In order to help my career as an aspiring performer-comedian, I’ve been thinking a lot about my name. I’ve noticed how crucial it is for certain actor types to change their name in order to promote a certain image and to connote that image with the sound of their given name and/or surname. OR, they decide to change their name in order to avoid being boxed in and/or type cast if their real name happens to be too ‘ethnic other’ sounding, swarthy, spicy or otherwise ca-raaaaaZAY. 
            Like my friend, Andrew Perez, who has sometimes struggled with casting directors and their expectations upon meeting “Andrew Berez! Latino Actor!” (You see, Andrew looks and sounds about as white as me and presumably anyone reading this blog.) Not long ago, Andrew considered the last name “Crowe” as a desirable alternative. I suggested that he could also add little crow-shaped insignias around the boarder of his headshot, just to help his overall persona/impression/confusion.

            And with the advent of social media sites! It’s easier than ever for actor types to mix and match all hugger-mugger with an array of Branding Pseudonyms / Imaginary Personas – all for the sake of their Career Goals and Show Biz Dreamz! Your birth certificate? Screw it! Your family lineage? In the dust bin! You can opt into your new persona using the facebook RIGHT NOW. Nevermind the legal loopholes – this is entertainment, people. I knew an actress in Chicago who seemingly has added the middle name “Actress” to her name on the facebook. And I thought, “hmmmmmm... Isn’t that con-ven-ient? As well as just, hitting-people-over-the-head DIRECT of you. Good on ya, Actress.” Also, another actress I worked with in the Windy City changed her last name to make it sound less Italian. Just like that, less ethnic other, overnight and easy peasy. Furthermore, this particular actress, aside from being paaaaainfully unfunny in reality, seems to have no acting credentials in the physical world as near as I can tell. But she sure does have an avalanche of credits on twitter, youtube, her blog and her TWO facebook pages. Sha-zam! It is that easy.  

            So with all this nom de plume ease, all this fluidity of public selfhood – what exactly does “Briggs Hatton” have in store for “his” future? When I visited L.A. three weeks ago, I met this girl who claimed she had a friend who’s first name was also “Briggs.” And I should have elbowed her in her short face. That’s only the second time in my life that anyone’s ever told me they know another first-name “Briggs.” And I likes to keep it that way. Since Briggs is normally a last name, people have often misheard or gotten confused while meeting me and then asked, “So what’s your first name?” Maybe I’ll just take that as a sign and pick a normal first name. I’ll become “Mike Briggs,” or “Steve Briggs.” Or, I could flip my middle name to the front: “Joe Briggs Hatton.” That’d avoid my unfortunate first and middle initial combo, the combo slutty girls during high school teased me about, if and when they caught onto its suggestive meaning. The suggestive meaning being blowjobs. OR, maybe my goal is to get more weird/exotic with my name – not more normal/expected. In elementary school, I used to practice my name in cursive on a chalkboard, only I’d write it as “Brigga-Joe Hatton” for some reason. Maybe that could fly. Or “z”s! “Z”s are always solid. Maybe I’ll just tack a “z” on there. “Briggz Hatton.” “Briggz Manhattan, M.A.” “Briggory.”

            (Probably not) coming soon to a social network near youz!  

Poem #1

A Cutie^TM, and me,
and a slow-dying bee.
Orange - the sexiest color they see -
covers my shirt.
And I'm not being curt:
(I am not getting hurt)
Standing and patting 
from where I'd been satting,
shucking and shaking
- the neighbors mistaking - 
Lightly, politely and carefuh-la-lee ...
until we get free.
A low-flying bee,
a Cutie^TM
and moody 
old me.  

Mr. Total Dickhead

                                                                             "Hoe-iest Hoes ...  
     Before Bro-iest Bros."

Birthday:
May 24th, 1984 
Favorite Film:
The Boondock Saints 
runner-up: the independent film I'm currently co-producing. it's called Player Haters (I wanted to call it just The Player but some other dumb movie already had that; or, we might just call it The Rapist) 
Favorite Video Games: 
God of War III, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Grand Theft Auto IV, and the classic Grand Theft Auto III, Resident Evil 5,  and the classic Resident Evil 4, Heavy Rain, Killzone 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Call of Duty: World of Warfare, and the classic Call of Duty: World at War
Favorite non-magazine book / Only novel I've finished: (books be for pussies, yo!) The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen (so f*ckin' funny) (not many people have read this one, but it's from the p.o.v. of this funny dude who really wants to get laid and play video games and he makes fun of like er'body)
runner-up: first 22 pages and a few other random parts of American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis - but that thing is sooooooooo long.
Favorite T.V. Show:
"It's Always Sunny"!
runner-up: "Dexter" (only seen season 3 though)

Aloha, faggots! Mr. Total Dickhead here. So I was chillaxin' sippin' an iced skim latte this afternoon with three of my best guy friends-that-I-will-betray-imminently and we were talking 'bout the clubs where we've heard there's a lotta' hot action lately. Also, what next weekend might be like if we get really, really krunk this time. And then Marcus, my bro-who-I'd-f*ck-over-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, starts talking up his gal Katie. And I was like, "Show me her pic on your Droid right now, bitch!"
And Marcus, was like "Whatever, dude. I know your scheme."
God, f*ck Marcus sometimes, ya' know? I hope he crashes the maserati his dad bought him into a ravine. Anyways, as the caffeine kicked in or whatever, I got to talking about my theory (speaking of my "scheme") about most average dudes and how they are more likely to hit on a chick if that chick has ever dated one of the dude's dude friends. I'm trying to coin this Theory or this Effect, but I haven't settled on a name.
And then Clarke, my other buddy-who-better-watch-his-god-damn-back, chimes in and says, "You could call it the Truffle Effect?"
And I'm like, "Like a sweet chocolate, like that kind of truffle?"
And Marcus goes, "The girl is - what? - like sweet and a bit of a luxury... ?"
And Clarke is like, "No, a truffle like a special fungus a pig has to root around to find... like the girl is hidden from you, but your friend is another pig who's found her first, and now you get to sniff her out too..."
"I'm not buying it!" says Adam, my other friend-who's-faith-in-humanity-I'd-like-to-face-f*ck. "Maybe just call it the Strawberry Effect."
We didn't settle on a name for my theory but, damn, I hope to put it into practice like PRONTO ("soon"). After that I had to split to go look at a rough cut of my indie film. It's sooooo tight, but the violence has to kick it up a notch if we're gonna' get money back on this one. Anyways, until next time! This has been: Mr. Total Dickhead.
Aloha (that means "goodbye" too), faggots!