Stalking the Antichrist in the final days

1. I have a copy of Monica Hughes' Devil on My Back (1984)! It is a small ex-library hardback from Liverpool Polytechnic. It arrived in the mail this afternoon: desperance sent it. I have never received a birthday present from the internet before. Thank you so much!

2. Cinderella Jump-Rope Rhymes. I am part of this upcoming chapbook, which evolved out of a livejournal post of cucumberseed's. Watch this space. The illustrations are going to be amazing. The words aren't bad, either.

3. In honor of the first season of Millennium (1996–1999), which lesser_celery and I finished last night, have a brief pre-apocalyptic mix. ( Turn and run, the angel's calling. )

4. Has anyone ever set a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Depression-era America? I was reminded last Friday when fleurdelis28 and I went to the opening night of Opera Boston's Béatrice et Bénédict—the original play is so much a screwball comedy, not just in its verbal fireworks or its double-blind plot, but in the way it presents love as a high-wire act over the very real possibility of getting hurt (and sooner or later, everyone who takes the risk must take a spill), that it seems the obvious choice to stage it like Hollywood in the 1930's, but I've never seen anyone try. Some of the business with the eavesdropping and the hedges and the folding chair in Kenneth Branagh's film is close, but it's sort of nineteenth-century Italy in any case.

5. Are there any other artists who attract the same kind of conspiracy theories as Shakespeare? kenjari asked what it was about him; I had no idea, but I had to agree he seems to be the only one. At least, I've never heard of a Mozart authorship controversy.

Tonight: the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Big Broadcast of 1954. Given the last two years and music by sen_no_ongaku, I'm looking forward.