Much Ado About Nothing, Now Where's the Hamburger?

image borrowed from bing

Much Ado About Nothing, Now Where's the Hamburger?


The local college theatre is performing Shakespeare this season, Romeo and Juliet.

Neon rainbow Warhol-like posters cling to light poles, like children begging for the next new piece of plastic peddled for too much hard earned money, and every billboard in four counties their staple gun can blow holes in. Two for one, a drive by shooting and graffiti, all in one.

And I envision broke college kids pleading, We are putting this on, please come.

As much as I love art, it is the fact that I can not stand to see people beg, that motivates my asking of my boys if they might like to see a play sometime.

My six year old son, the daredevil willing to throw his body off perfectly good walls on anything with four wheels, or two, and has to take his shoes off to tally the number of stitches in his body, at present, answers first, his finger out stretched to the entwined, tight jeaned and ringed bodies that represent the true tension within the Montague~Capulet conflict, whose stars are not the only thing crossed, but i digress, and says, "Yeah we already know someone dies."

"Well, yes but the point is," is already on my lips when he adds, "Another gnome gets run over and shatters into a million pieces while racing lawnmowers."

Not to be out done, my more cultured, newly promoted gifted program, crayola wielding, sometimes stage dancing, ever dramatic and willing to break into song in the most awkward of circumstances, eight year old son proudly proclaims, "And Taylor Swift does all the music."

And begins singing, "Romeo save me, I dont even know, I'll be waiting and I've got a race to run, you be the prince and I'll be the princess, It's a love story, baby just say yes."

Which are not even the right words, but I know better than to try correcting him in fear of another verse, which will surely get us excommunicated from the church, especially if he starts shaking his hips. Yes, it gets a little conservative around these parts where the Bible belts buckle pierces wings like push pins pinning butterflies to the corkboard, but I digress again,

Because all I can think about in this moment is all the people in London and fear they are feeling the tremors of old Willie, as I like to affectionately refer to him, is sending out from Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire as he rolls over in his grave and if the curse invoked on his resting place would fall upon us, if he got up and walked among us.

A revenant cloaked in a white linen, hair a bit mussed, I imagine he would fit right in, among the other lost souls scribbling word on page, just waiting for the day they die to become pop-cultures next big thing. Perhaps happy that hundreds of years later that he can still swirl world views at lines penneed by his finger, yet maybe feeling a bit like Lucrece every time a certain song comes on the radio, but I hear two men in Verona readily approve.

I shake it off quick, grab a cart and push on into Walmart, humming a Lou Reed song, I can not seem to remember the name of, and like everyone else search for my pound of hamburger for dinner...and perhaps fava beans.


Brian Miller

Posted over on his site Way Station One
Listed as #36 over on Magpie Tales 82