Henry IV, Part One--2

Now that I'm home all day, you might think that I'd be reading more Shakespeare, blogging more, also getting the stuff done that everyone always thinks they'd get done if they only had the time. Instead, I've mostly been watching Saved by the Bell, five episodes of which TBS plays every morning.

As a kid, my favorite character of course was Zack. Now, however, it's Mr. Belding. This change happened when I was in college near Chattanooga. You see, Dennis Haskins lives, or at least lived, near Chattanooga. At least, I heard that once. There's also a slight chance that I am the one who told myself that. So, I had this brilliant idea that I would meet Mr. Belding, impress him with my knowledge of his acting career (this assumed that he had no career outside of Saved by the Bell), and eventually convince him to hold a cast reunion barbecue, where I would chow down on burgers and hot dogs with Mark Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Mario Lopez (this was well before Dancing with the Stars, back in the days of that bicycle cop show), Lark Voorhies, Tiffani Amber Thiessen, and Elizabeth Berkeley. It was a brilliant plan.

Three distinct societies in Henry IV. You have the court, centered around the usurper Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV. This group is pretty boring. Henry IV is contemplating a Crusade at the beginning of the play. First, he supplants the rightful tyrant of England, then decides in God's name to go supplant whoever the hell was in charge of Palestine (I assume it was the Moslem hordes, but I think it's important to state my ignorance upfront). Then you have the rebel camp, which is centered around Hotspur and is, appropriately enough, characterized by betrayal and so forth. And then the good group, centered on Falstaff and containing Prince Hal. Here you have drinking, cursing, highway robbery, light-hearted treason, a bunch of jokes I don't get because I neither live in the late sixteenth century nor read the footnotes, and some jokes that I do get.

When I'm not watching Saved by the Bell, I walk around Chicago, sometimes trying to squeeze people into this Henry IV schema, based on how they're dressed or what they're yelling on the street (either just yelling because they're crazy, or yelling into their cell phone head piece things). Along those lines, here are some thoughts about the class struggle in Chicago:

What's that Jackie? You need some cheese shredded? Alright. Sorry, folks, I'll have to hook you up with an in-depth study of the class system in Chicago some other time.