I may even be able to scathe, though I haven't tried.

It's a total fallacy that his plays are "boring" or "pointless" or that they don't "translate well" to the screen.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I prefer him to Beckett- I think he's more attuned to, or perhaps just more interested in, actual human psychology and the terrible things that people do to themselves and others with their "minds."

In fact, I'd go so far to say that some of his plays should properly be considered horror. I'm thinking of <The Caretaker> here, and I'm hard pressed to think of a starker portrayal of total human dessication.

The performances by Alan Bates and Robert Shaw are so perfect that one thinks the play was written specifically for them.

Which one did you see last night?

But it's not at all like Beckett's metaphysical clowning, once you get past the 'absurdist' surface. Pinter has a superb ear for speech, especially the way not-very-bright people repeat themselves. And the character of Davies is superb - a failed chameleon, fawning, whiny, petulant, and passive-aggressive, and not very good at any of them.

And yet ... I think the play has dated in a way that Godot hasn't. It's of a particular time and place, squalid 1950s London. Pinter's political edge shows, but its roots are in kitchen sink realism.

In hindsight, there were a few films and plays around that time -- such as Losey's The Servant, and Polanski's Cul-de-sac -- where a 'stranger' takes over somebody's life, or tries to. I thought maybe it reflected the collapsing British class system, but (a) Polanski also did it in Poland, with Knife in the Water, and (b) it hasn't gone away, you know. To use a phrase made famous by that expert on Britishness and class struggle, Gerry Adams.

Nothing much happened, ominously. I had two seats in the 5th row. This two-seat thing is not a perk for reviewers - it just means I'm too much of a loser to ask anyone to accompany me. My regular date was away, so I went alone.

I sat in one of my seats. I found a big studenty guy with a woolly top - a head or a hat or a hairstyle - blocking my view. So I shifted sideways into my other seat. This placed me next to a woman who then got up and left, about ten minutes in.

So I had a no-fly zone on both sides. Maybe it's the body odour.

1.6180339887... is correct to 10 digits. But no rational fraction is exactly equal to phi.

I'd go on and on -- phi is the square root of 5, plus 1, over 2 -- and phi squared equals phi + 1 --- and on ... but I promised to stay off numbers for a while ...

lol

Hey <Dan> good news~!

I just "found" a biography about <Marcel Duchamp> on the internets.

It was just lying there...

Anyways best part is that it's a chess biography that tries to answer the question WHY DID HE BECOME A CHESS PLAYER.

So I'll be making a "film" about him now that I have this source of actual information.

I had a conceptual breakthrough last week, but I may have to invent a new form of theatre to actualize it. It's like Pinter crossed with those wonders-of-nature DVDs that newspapers give away.

<The Memory Boys: Sneak Preview>

- That penguin ... is taking a bleeding liberty. A bleeding liberty, I say.

- Like Marcel Duchamp?

- Yeah, poor old Marcel. First the art mob worked him over, then the memory boys done him.

- Frog, wasn't he?

He's an art critic out of the University of Lancashire.

He absolutely adores chess, and he absolutely adores Duchamp.

He's rather clever too.

I'm just part way through so far but there's more than enough to make a good film on his information alone.

I've already collected a healthy dossier of photos of Marcel playing chess and appearing in those tournament "group photos".

A Pinter play crossed with a National Geographic special sounds ideal.

Possibly Greenaway would be the man to direct such a project, but you'd have to conceal any chess references until after he signed the contract.

Your idea reminds me of it, and yes, predictably, this was written by Peter Gabriel and yes it's secretly about bloody 17th century English Land Reform:

Speaking of Humble, did you know that 'humble pie' was an actual dish in olden times? Poached sheep's gizzards with a soupcon of the King's venison. Maid Marion adored it.

She got done by the history mob too. I mean, Robin Hood's your boyfriend and yet you get called 'Maid' Marion? What was wrong with 'Lady'?

Or maybe it's a discreet English way of telling us that Robin - rather an androgynous name - preferred the company of his gay troupe of merry men.

This is how wikipedia explains it: <In narrative terms, Maid Marion was first attached to Robin Hood in the late sixteenth century as Robin was gentrified and given a virginal maid to pine after. >

"The Judge said,
You are a Robbing Hood..."

Oh, not me,
I'm a man of repute,
The Devil caught hold of my soul
And a voice cried out
Shoot!"

lol Humble Pie

<Cry for the stiffness of the earlobe. The turtles are fallen and the rain stands still. How long must I suffer with your undergarments?>

Oh! my existential angst overflows my shower cubicle:

<You breathe as delicately as vapors of methane flowing towards an attractive flame.>