The Many Adventures of a Thede

This past Wednesday I took part in a New York tradition. I got up early and stood in line for three and a half hours to get free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park. Every summer The Public Theatre puts on classic plays at the outdoor Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, and the generous corporate sponsorship allows these plays (which have in the past has featured the likes of Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Liev Schreiber, Natalie Portman, etc) to be absolutely free. They give out tickets at 1pm on the day of the show. But of course, people begin queuing up at the crack of dawn...sometimes they even spend the night. I got there at about 9:30am, and had no problem getting tickets. Of course, it was a Wednesday, and the weather was a bit damp, so that may have deterred some people from coming out. Bo came to join me about an hour later. Usually line jumping is strictly prohibited by the other angry New Yorkers in line, but you are allowed two tickets per person, and we were only getting one ticket each anyway, so it didn't really matter.

The show we saw was A Midsummer Night's Dream. I haven't seen this play since my high school production, so it was fun to see again. I thought it was really well done. Most of the actors were great, and I thought it was cool that they cast children as the fairies instead of adults. It gave it a more magical feel. Bo has actually played almost every male character in that play, so he's a pretty tough critic, and he loved it too.

Speaking of Bo, we had a healthy debate the other night about modern movies versus classics. He said there was so much crap put out these days, and he thinks movies from the 50s and 60s were much better quality. I argued that there are still great movies put out these days, and that there were crap movies in the 50s and 60s too, but you just don't know about them...because they were crap. So, my question for you, dear readers, is what do you think of movies these days? Are they all crap? Or are there still innovative, good quality movies being made?