Why it Matters that Everyone Hates the Yankees

I'm composing my thoughts on Lear, but in the meantime I thought I'd pass this along, from Tom Verducci at si.com, about the massive swarm of bugs that hit the second game of the Yankees-Cleveland series.

OK, you've probably heard too much already about those infamous sacrifice flies of Cleveland, the mighty midges that, unlike almost all AL hitters, knocked Yankees phenom Joba Chamberlain off his game. But this is too good not to pass on: When the bugs started swarming Chamberlain, a local insect expert in Cleveland telephoned the Indians with an urgent message -- those bugs are called midges, and whatever you do, do NOT use insect repellent; midges are attracted to the stuff. The Yankees practically bathed in bug spray; the more Chamberlain put on, the more the bugs swarmed him. So there you go. The Yankees can spend $190 million on payroll and still leave a blatant weakness: no, not their middle relief -- their lack of an entymology expert.

Now that's just good stuff.

Lear at the Guthrie

One nice thing about having parents who are members at the Guthrie Theater is that, from time to time, I get free play tickets (and pretty nice seats, too). Another nice thing is that when I hear there's a traveling production of King Lear coming to the Guthrie, and it stars Ian McKellan, is directed by Trevor Nunn and is produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, I can order them to buy tickets I would otherwise be totally unable to get.

We're going to the final production on Sunday. It's listed on the website as 3 hours and 40 minutes, and I'm betting it's going to be a damn sight better than the last 3.5 hour play I saw (sorry, Hanberg).

I'm very excited, of course. I'm going to be in the same room as Gandalf, which will kick ass. Add to that the fact that he's one of the most accomplished and respected stage actors alive, performing one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, and you've got a recipe for an English-major geek-out.

The cool part is I've seen productions by the RSC and Nunn before. When I studied in London my group took a trip (actually the first weekend, I think) to Stratford-upon-Avon, where the RSC is located. We saw productions of Comedy of Errors and The Rivals (unless I'm much mistaken), and both were excellent. Later that term I saw a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with Vanessa Redgrave that Nunn directed at the National Theater (which I believe he was in charge of at the time). It was the one production that we couldn't get enough seats for the entire class to go at one time: we had to go in groups of four, since that was the maximum number of tickets they could get for one show.

I'll post my thoughts Sunday night. Expectations are high, I hope they get met.