Birmingham:City Without Risers

This morning I shivered my way to Sloss Furnace so I could be Horatio in an excerpt from our excerpt from Hamlet. I was there so that when Hamlet said "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio" he would have a Horatio next to him. It was cold, but good company kept it light.

Anyway, it turns out we can't do the scene in the awesome cooling tower ruin after all! The plan was to have risers so the audience could see over the big wall of our playing field, but apparently there are no sturdy yet portable outdoor risers available in B'ham. So in the tradition of old Doctor Who episodes we'll do the whole thing in a gravel pit. Actually we'll be on the lip of the pit, elevated over the audience with Sloss's magnificent towers as our backdrop, so our second-best plans are pretty good. Still, one can't help lamenting what might have been. Alas, poor industrial ruin.

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The long-awaited happy ending to the gripping saga of the electric blanket: I tried it out last night, and it was like being swaddled in amniotic fluid. Yay electric blanket! I think feeling like a happy baby all night made it easier to be a grown-up about getting up so early today. I have to let the baby and the man work in alternating shifts.

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My new bloglink is to Noah Berlatsky, an iconoclastic art-comics critic. I often disagree with him, but he often gives me food for thought. Since I know my readers are such hardcore art-comics nerds I figured you'd be pleased.

Between electric blankets and art-comics weblinks, you can't say I don't give the good stuff. But most of my non-regulars are still looking for "navel s--b." They totally snub my plea for someone to give us the scoop on the navel s--b phenom that's apparently sweeping the globe. They show up, realize Google lead them down another blind alley, and scurry out, holding newspapers over their faces. Or so I imagine it.