Pericles by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Oh, Pericles, you goofy fuck of a play.

If Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare’s Hellraiser, Pericles is his Hellraiser III: a shitty, canonically insulting pseudo-comedy that likely had no input whatsoever from Clive Barker…er…I mean, William Shakespeare. It was as if its creator(s) started with a solid concept, but then decided it didn’t have enough Hollywood substance and imbued it with elements of tragedy, drama, comedy, and romance, with the understanding that more is always better.

The resulting work is a fucking mess, to say the least. We start Pericles’ adventure off with his quest to find a lady. The lady he chooses is being banged by Antiochus, her father. Pericles realizes this, throws up in his mouth a little, and flees. Daddy pulls up his pants and chases after Pericles, eager to stop him before he can tell the world of his moral degeneracy.

So Pericles runs away, hoping to not die at the hands of Antiochus, the incestuous ne’er-do-well. Whilst avoiding this threat of imminent death, he finds a hot lady and bangs her, resulting in a pregnancy. After Pericles learns of Antiochus’ untimely demise, he takes his moody, fetus-filled wife back home. Or, rather, he tries to. Unfortunately, she gives birth on the boat. And dies. So they dump her in the water and leave the baby in a nearby port to be raised by another family until Pericles can come back to claim her. Many, many years later, Pericles comes back to learn that his daughter has died. Really, though, she’s just been kidnapped by pirates and sold to a brothel. While at the brothel, the daughter, Marina, whips off her disguise and reveals her true self: Super Chastity Girl! She is able to talk the erection off of the most virile and drunken men. The brothel owners determine that she is bad for business and allow a local judge or somesuch to take her away. This somesuch takes her to Pericles, who is happy and surprised to see her, on account of her death. The two of them immediately learn that the mother/wife is still alive, too, and go catch up with her, resulting in a rather happy ending..

Once you add some strange sing-song rhyme, goofy alliteration, a refusal to adhere to any kind of structure, and a virtual lack of theme to that plot, you have Pericles, one of the most successful plays of Shakespeare’s lifetime. Why the success you ask? I’d reckon it has to do with the fact that people are dumb and have been dumb for a very long time. I enjoyed the play, but, for the sake of objectivity, it’s fucking stupid.

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Party Wolves in my Skull by Michael Allen Rose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ll admit it: I’m kind of a sucker for body parts that revolt against their owners. The downside to such tales is that they tend to get repetitive.

Evil, possessed, and sentient hands make sense as monsters. They can crawl along like spiders and do pretty much everything we can do. Because of their utility, there is something extra horrifying about losing our hands. Not only does the loss result in a weird looking, virtually unstoppable mobile appendage, we’re also left with a handicap we cannot overcome. Our hands can open doors, but our stumps cannot.

But what if you lost your eyes? And I’m not asking if it would be scary to go blind. I’m asking you to consider for a moment a scenario in which your eyes decided they no longer wanted to inhabit your head. And what if, once you were blessed with these empty sockets, you were not able to choose what to fill them with. No glass eyes for you. No, not when a pack of wolves moves into your head like it’s a vacant apartment. And not just wolves- party wolves. A bunch of drunken, stoner bastards who howl inside of your skull and smoke so much ganja your head looks like a fucking hooka.

What would you do? Norman, our protagonist, does what any sane person in that situation- he dry swallows a fistful of pills and takes off after the little fuckers. The ensuing narrative is just as fucking nuts as you’d think it might be, complete with shady, by-the-hour motel couplings, a crude and possessive walrus, and some trigger-happy rednecks. It’s less like reading a book and more like…well…dry swallowing a handful of pills.

I was enticed by the concept, but ended up, oddly enough, staying for the romance. Norman’s love interest is so hot that he doesn’t need eyes to recognize it. The two of them spend the duration of the story trying to come to terms with the past and each other’s somewhat uncommon flaws. They’re like Edward and Bella, just less pale and with more stilts.

In sum, fuck hands. Eyeballs are where it’s at.

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Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty by Jody Gehrman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book informed me, against my will, of the sordid details surrounding the ingestion of copious amounts of coffee by teenage girls and the resulting bowel movements. Points for realism? Perhaps. But one of the best things about reading books is the general lack of pooping. I’m still torn on that one.

In spite of some truly atrocious writing in places, this novel navigated the slippery slope of Shakespearean feminism and emerged safely on the other side. I was worried. Early on, there is an established virgin/whore dynamic, one that was entirely too reminiscent of own high school experiences. The problem as I saw it was clear: how is this perhaps less-than-capable author going to turn this shit into the right sort of moral lesson for the story? Instead of offering a spoiler here, I’ll just say that the author proved herself to be a very capable plotter and did, in fact, deliver the goods. By the end of the story, while I didn’t feel the overwhelming sense of girl power, I felt a sense of rightness. The story happened the way it should have. The lessons learned are the ones that should have been. Which is more than I can say for its source material, Much Ado About Nothing.

Shakespeare’s play is great. I thoroughly enjoyed it. While making me think, it made me laugh. It left me feeling unsettled, though. I don’t like that Hero and Claudio live happily ever after when Claudio shames her (nearly to death) for something she didn’t do). That everything is made all right after that seems wrong. Some stories demand unsatisfactory endings. Shakespeare’s, I think, is one of them. Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty (oh, how stupid I feel typing those words) lessens the painful act and makes it more relevant to today’s youth.* The reunion of the two lovers is more reasonable.

Tome, the most interesting part of the original work was the relationship between Beatrice and Benedick. Their snarky back-and-forth banter made the play incredibly fun. While we see that same sort of conversation between Geena and Ben, it doesn’t have the same cutting edge to it. The reader pretty much grasps from their first interaction that they’re into each other. I liked the subversiveness of the trickery in the play. In this book, the trick isn’t so much a trick as it is a reason for them to get together.

In spite of the fact that so much of it was very hard to read, I give this one a pass. The author didn’t shy away from the really important themes in the play.

*This is only partially true. It’s relevant in an abstract sense. So much of what these teenagers said and did was totally out of line with how real teenagers act. This, I think, can be directly linked to the author’s effort to adequately represent the different cliques present in high school culture. Again, an admirable effort, but it always reads like it was written by an outsider adult. Gehrman attempts to accurately portray trailer trash, “wiggers” (her term, not mine), rich kids, jocks, stoners, skaters, etc., etc. Her characters are never believable, which really strips the story of the impact it could’ve otherwise had.

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The Tempest by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Tempest is about some assholes on an island.

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Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This play so totally ripped off, like, a million movies.

It had a good plot, but it wasn’t better than Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone and the great Brittany Murphy. The characters were interesting, but not as interesting as Ashton and Cameron’s characters in What Happens in Vegas. And the romance wasn’t anywhere near as good as the one between Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club.

You’d think someone as supposedly “great” as WIlliam Shakespeare could come up with his own material. Sponging off better movies is just pathetic.

I still give it four stars, though. But that’s just because these kinds of stories are my favorite kinds of stories. It does lose a star, you’ll see. That’s because it’s only, like, maybe, the tenth best one. Even Al and Peg in Married… With Children were a little better.

It’s a Boy Girl Thing was really good, too.

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