for 11 June 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Subject: Shake that
Shakespeare!

Hey Sucksters,

Loved your concept on that
Shakespeare bit! But you're
missing out on a market that
has lately gone almost
completely untapped:
musicals. Here's a thought,
just to get you started:
Something's Rotten in
Denmark, starring the Artist
Formerly Known as Prince as
the Singing Prince o' the
Danes and Joe Pesci as
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
who would not go gently into
that good night. I noticed
you've all been getting into
Salinger lately, so when the
Shakespeare bit hits, you
could follow up with Holden!
Holden! Holden!, starring Leo
DiCaprio as the dysfunctional
yet lovable hipster who's
just tryin' to keep it real.
We can't miss, babe!

Have your people call my
people,

Dan Greenfield
<dannotdan@yahoo.com>

Daniel, my brother,

Dibs on the casting couch.

Keepin' it unreal,

James

Subject: Shakes-me-up-speare

Hello Monsieur Bong,

Much like the fiasco that was
Crystal Pepsi, I suspect
these revisionist versions of
Shakespeare's classics will
prove to be ridiculous and
short-lived. The people most
likely to shell out cash for
this sort of thing are
frustrated English teachers
desperately trying to turn
15-year-old heads away from
the perceived cultural vacuum
of MTV and the Cartoon
Network. I wouldn't call it
desecration, though. It's
just stupid and misguided.
The dumbass in art class who
decided to carve a cross into
his leg with a calligraphy
nib didn't rock the
foundations of Christianity,
and certainly setting
Othello on a basketball court
won't sully Shakespearean
studies for those who live to
love his work. Casting Dennis
Rodman as the title character
might, but only until the
last copies left in the
US$5.99 bin at the local
video store are thrown out
or shoplifted by junkies.

One of the things I find
amusing about the
entertainment industry is its
tendency to take a pretty
great thing (Great
Expectations, for example, or
anything Jane Austen ever
wrote) and attempt to
"improve" it. Herein is the
rub: You can steal the ideas,
you can strip the story to
its bare bones and work new
language around it, you can
cut the scenes you don't like
and add naked women, graphic
sex, and violence, but you'll
lose the essence of the work:
the words. A writer can
develop the most unique and
amazing plot, but without the
language, it's an outline,
not a masterpiece.

I find The Bard's brilliance
rests not in his plots,
anyway. Shakespeare writes
sappy love stories, reuses
the same devices and
characters (for example, the
girl dressed as boy to fool the
love interest thang), and his
story lines are about as
predictable as an episode of
Dawson's Creek. His sonnets
are brilliant, though. His
dialogue is gorgeous, rich,
and occasionally
breathtaking. I can read, or
have read to me, Shakespeare
for hours on end. The Cliffs
Notes, however, are as dull
as Top Ramen without that
special flavoring packet. In
the tenth grade I was
assigned an oral report on
Julius Caesar, and the only
way I could make it
interesting was to sing the
plot summary to the tune of
the Brady Bunch theme song.
Terminator II had just come
out, and nobody was all that
impressed by the violence and
treachery in ancient Rome.
Maybe I should have thrown in
a superfluous cyborg just to
maintain the class'
interest. I got a C, in case
you care.

Updating old Shakesy's
language is just plain dumb,
but I don't like to dis
revisionist settings and
costumes. I once played
Leonato in a version of As
You Like It, which the
director set in a 1950s
diner. OK, so maybe it was
cheesy, and maybe this
particular piece of
information proves exactly
zero points, but I thought
I'd bring it up anyway. My
acting career never went
anywhere, by the way.

Yrs truly, dawn m. gabriel
<dawn@stumpworld.com>

Shall I compare you to a
summer's day?

And what are you wearing?

XO James

You almost had me until this
statement: "Dylan, who on his
only indisputably great LP —
1979's Slow Train Coming...."

If you dispute the greatness
of Blood on the Tracks,
Blonde on Blonde, or Hwy 61,
you are a dingleberry in
Patrick Ewing's sweaty arse.
You lost all credibility
after that, skippy.

Chad

Dear Chaderooski,

Let's lay the cards on the
table: At least the Knicks
are in the playoffs. Better
to dingle in the sweaty arse
of hell than to serve in
heaven, donchaknow.

Back to Slow Train Coming:
Dylan is at his best when
challenging his audience.
When else does he challenge
them more than by releasing a
X-tian rock LP at the end of
the '70s — an LP that
Satan himself would grant is
a damn fine disc. Blood on
the Tracks is marred
irrevocably by "Lily,
Rosemary, and Jack of Tarts"
(that sound is not drillin'
in the wall; it's drillin' on
the listener's brain); Blonde
on Blonde by any number of
rotten tracks (suffice it to
say: "Rainy Day Women"); and
Hwy 61 by (at the very least)
"Desolation Row" (yeah, the
hand's in my pants).

Prof. M.

Dear Sir,

Whatever the merits, or lack
of, existent in your piece, I
find it laughable that one of
your major tenets is the
dismissing of every Dylan
album except Slow Train.

Take a week off from quoting
other articles to pad the
length of yours and listen to
Blonde on Blonde and Blood on
the Tracks, then pen an apology
for that absurd statement.
Then, just maybe (though it's
highly unlikely) someone will
remember you as more than an
ignorant clown (while Mr.
Dylan, the man you so
flippantly disparage, is
remembered as THE VOICE of
the second half of the 20th
century at a time when your
great-great-grand kids
probably won't even know your
first name).

Regards, John

I regret having to write this
letter. But there's someone
new. For details, see above.

Mr. M.

Filler

Subject: On How to Be Polly

You'd be surprised! Young
America needs a new young,
hip icon of endless cynicism
about the minutia of everyday
existence. Why, if I were two
years younger, I would invite
you to my high school to give
a point-counterpoint session
with the valedictorians. So,
what do you think? Are you up
to the challenge? If not then
the shadow of banality and
despair will overcome us all,
and the shadow of banality
and despair was last seen
wearing Old Navy pants at a
Backstreet Boys concert.

Oh wait, it already has come.
Well, good luck and good
writings!

Arthur Rimbaud
<vangogh@iav.com>

The shadow of banality and
despair stopped by last week
to slap me about the face and
neck, so believe me when I
tell you he's not to be taken
lightly. He was bitching
about what the humidity was
doing to his hair and
chain-smoking Virginia Slims
Menthols, and he forced me to
read this suck-ass book
called The Way I Found Her.
Word to the wise: When
there's a breast of any kind,
undulating or not, black and
white artsy look or not, on
the cover of a book, you know
immediately the book sucks
ass. Most people know this
intuitively. My only friend
who reads was with me at the
bookstore, and when he looked
at the cover of the book, he
said, "Hmmm. Why are you
buying this?" Spoken like a
true valedictorian.

So, to answer your question,
no, I don't think I'm up to
the challenge.

Banal and despairing,

Polly

Polly,

Hey I know that guy! Urban
Outfitters on the Promenade!
He rang up my Buddha mousepad
with a sneer.

I have been in LA three years
and he has been there every
second. Like a hunter-orange
benchmark.

Isn't he just a fantastic
specimen? The gelled hair,
the glasses, the thermal
underwear under the bowling
shirt.

Why do the coolest people
always have such awful jobs?

Geek with a killer gig,

Bryan Richard
<brichard@usinteractive.com>

Dude, those people aren't
cool. They just play cool in
a retail store. Don't you
know the difference, dude?
Dude.

I was thinking of the one on
Melrose, actually. The Urban
Outfitter toadies in SF are a
lot more authentically
emptily cool, whereas the LA
ones are just lame LA types
painted over with a vaguely
SF-like veneer of cool, like
Gap monkeys dipped in
bittersweet chocolate.

Yes, both cities are
interesting yet suck equally
for very different reasons,
so don't give me any shit
about it. Everyone aches to
about the same degree. I
should know. I am a medical
doctor.

Ouch.

Polly

This will be very quick. Just
want the world of my cyber
friends to know that Eckert
Drug Store sucks because
Eckert Drug Store does not
have a decent return policy
on merchandise. Eckert Drug
Store says that you must buy
other merchandise right then
upon the return. I was forced
to buy from Eckert Drug
Store $18 worth of merchandise
just because I lost my
receipt. I got an apology
from the store manager
but that didn't cut any
ice with me. As far I am
concerned, Eckert Drug Store
sucks. Yes, Eckert Drug Store
really sucks. I sure hope I
have Eckert Drug Store in
this note often enough so all
search engines pick it up.
But just in case, one more
time: Eckert Drug Store.

Marge Howard
<marjos@frontiernet.net>

Ooo, boy. Thanks for the
heads up! And to think, I
spent the better half of my
youth shopping there. Now I
know better! To think, not
being able to return
something without a receipt!
I've never heard of such a
malevolent policy!

That's Eckerd Drugs, by the
way.

Polly

The Shit

Left for Dead in Malaysia, Neil Hamburger, Drag City, 1999 The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Mark Dery, Grove/Atlantic, 1999 Crazy from the Heat, David Lee Roth, Hyperion, 1998 Keep It Like a Secret, Built to Spill, WEA/Warner Brothers, 1999 Abbott's Pizza Company, near the corner of Abbott-Kinney and California, Venice Beach, Los Angeles (delivery hours limited) Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd, CD remaster, EMI 1994 Motorhead, CD remasters, all Det Som Engang Var, Burzum, Misanthropy, 1998 Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, Nashville, Tennessee A History of the Modern Fact, Mary Poovey, University of Chicago Press, 1998 V., Thomas Pynchon, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999 The Coffee Mill, Emeq Refaim, Jerusalem, Israel The Salesman and Bernadette, Vic Chesnutt, Capricorn Records, 1998 Good Morning Spider, Sparklehorse, Cema/Capitol, 1999 Third Floor, Anderson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art