Episode 1118: Playing Hamlet
Ghosts, Aliens, Babies, and a Heated Rivalry Written Just for Me!
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and Happy Mother’s Day from Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that insists every day is Mother’s Day, so I’m not late, I’m maintaining.
The above cartoon comes from nature cartoonist Rosemary Mosco, who did an interview during the pandemic in which she explained, “Birds are naturally funny,” and also asked the great question, Do yellow warblers know what’s going to happen when they lay eggs? She’s my new favorite person.
It was a big week politically in the UK, which had local elections all over the country that saw Labour turned out, often by a right wing party led by Britain’s least favorite anti-European xenophobe Neil Farage; and in Australia, where a local election to replace the former opposition leader, whose party had turned on her honestly never given her a chance, saw that party routed by another growing right wing party, leading the dudes in charge of it to assume they need to get more right wing rather than consider whether local voters might not like how they treated the woman they elected. Bros gotta bro, amirite?
But here at the Wow we get to take a break from all that and let silliness and hijinx ensue. Let’s dig in.
THE WOWND UP
Gandalf and Obi-Wan is Heated Rivalry for Me
This week Ian McKellen answered questions in the Guardian, including whether he does yoga in a jockstrap before every performance, would he please do a TV travel series with Patrick Stewart in a camper, and whether Gandalf or Dumbledore would win in a fight, to which he responded, “Why on earth would be fighting?”
Perhaps his most interesting story regarded the worst piece of advice he ever got, from Sir Alec “These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For” Guinness.
He took me for an Italian lunch in Pimlico, where we chatted about this and that until he brought up the real reason for his invitation. He had heard about my work to establish Stonewall – a lobby group to present to the government and the world at large the case for treating UK lesbians and gays equally under the law with the rest of the population. He thought it somewhat unseemly for an actor to dabble in public or political affairs and advised me, sort of pleaded with me, to withdraw. Advice from an older generation, which I didn’t follow.
Then McKellen shouted, “Thou Shalt Make a Pass!” and they played hockey.
Well, that’s my head canon.
The Lands of Ghosts and Aliens
Also in the Guardian this week, director Guillermo del Toro talked about what happens when you see a UFO, which is weirdly coincidental, because this week the Pentagon released “new, never-before-seen” photographs of UFOs, which you can see for yourself.
While the DoD photos range from “Dust on the Camera” to above’s“AI Slop Photo Nonsense,” (which the DOD describes as “actual site photo with FBI Lab rendered graphic overlay depicting corroborating eyewitness reports”), del Toro—like Barack Obama—has no doubt that UFOs are real, because, unlike Barack Obama (?), he has seen them, as well as experienced ghosts.
The multi-Oscar-winning director was 11 when he first sensed a spectral presence at his family home in Guadalajara, Mexico. He insists this was his late uncle, who, before his death, had promised the young horror buff that he would pop back and tip him off if there were anything on the other side. Del Toro later heard a persistent sighing in his dead uncle’s room – a detail that inspired Santi, the sighing ghost-boy in The Devil’s Backbone, his 2001 horror set during the Spanish civil war.
Actually, it’s a fantastic interview about art, family, and monsters. And it includes the exquisite statement, “There are experiences that are so outsized they can dislocate your sense of self.” Read this interview.
Speaking of Things that Dislocate Your Sense of Self, this is the homepage for the Department of Defense now.
That’s right, like any government department worldwide, you can access News, Multimedia, Spotlights, About, Resources, and UFO.
We’ll See What Happens
And in maybe the weirdest story of the week, Ryan Cohen, CEO of the retail company GameStop, which made its mark selling video games and now tries desperately to sell anything it can because no one buys video game discs or cartridges anymore, announced that it would be making a play for eBay, saying he thought he could make it Amazon’s equal.
In an interview, CNBC asked Cohen to explain where the $55.5 billion it was offering was going to come from, given that it owns basically a pocket full of change that the bank won’t accept at this point because it’s mostly pennies. It did not go well.
The Best Advice Any of Us Are Going to Get This Week
In the not too distant past I had a stomach bug that involved some very uncomfortable, ahem, oral evacuation. It was quite a shock to learn that dry heaves in an older person feel like your whole body trying to reboot itself, and failing.
Bottom line, Take care of yourself, everybody!
Behind The Scene: America Baby
Last weekend at the office of the Secretary of State. Mr. Secretary, when you’re visiting the Vatican it’s customary to bring a gift. What did Vance bring? His new book about his conversion to Catholicism. Jesus Christ. Indeed. Well let’s give him my book then. I believe you’ve already done that, Mr. Secretary. Dammit, I need to top Vance. What if I brought some migrants from Guantanamo? I’m not sure treating people as gifts is going to create the optics you want. It will in Tennessee, amirite? … I don’t know, he’s the pope. What’s even important to him? The cause of peace is certainly close to his heart, Mr. Secretary. Perhaps we could offer... Nah, that's boring, what about something Chicago that also says Marco Rubio? Like a Cubs jersey with his name on it and the number 28, get it, because that’s the year when I’m going to become president. The Pope actually doesn’t support the Cubs, Mr. Secretary. Bullshit. He’s from Chicago. Yes. He’s a White Sox fan. Brother, no one is a White Sox fan. At a papal audience someone yelled Go Cubs, and he yelled back, “They lost.” [This is a true story.] God, what am I supposed to give this guy when he already has everything? I'm not sure that's an accurate description of a man who has taken perpetual vows of poverty... Wait, I’ve got it: a glass football with the seal of the Secretary of State. You know, because I started college on a football scholarship and now I’m Secretary of State. [I don’t know which part of this statement is less believable at this point, but both parts are indeed true.] Do you think he’ll understand the reference? Who cares? This isn’t for him. This is for America, baby.
Moment of Wow
In the Q&A with McKellen, a fan asked, “To be or not to be?” McKellen responded:
Playing Hamlet in my late 20s, I took “be” to mean “live life to the full”, which suited my youthful ambitions. When I returned to Hamlet a couple of years ago on stage and screen, I realised that he answers his timeless question in the final act of the play, before its bloody outcome, when he confides to his best friend: “Let be.” And so say I.
Coming Later This Week: The Time When, a new feature in which I share silly and/or foolish things that I have somehow gotten myself into, starting with a photo essay of a cross country trip I took with a Muppet.
Have a great week everybody! And continued Happy Mother’s Day!