If you tickle me, do I not laugh?

Brain wired to the nitro-detonator, thoughts fire jittery like a five-year-old waving a sawed-off 12-gauge. It’s the caffeine in my head, coffee in my head that was supposed to go down to my stomach and light a slow fire, and instead I got this incendiary thought-bomb, begging to implode outwards. My mind denies these little impossibilities. My fingers are tingling as I type this. Curse the temptation of a triple-short-caramel-latte. Mmmmmm. Curse th- Mmmmm. I think I need another.

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We drove up to stinky-town last night for to watch The Merchant of Venice at The Grand Cinema. At first I was like, “Oh shit, I have to turn my brain to ’11’.” My brain, at the time, was running at a solid ‘6’ and quite happy to be there. But I managed to turn it up to about ‘8’ or so, despite yawning a lot, and after a short time it was like Shakespeare had actually written the damned play in English. First off, Pacino does a bang-up job. He deserves a nomination for best supporting actor, despite the impossibility of him winning it. You go from hating him, to liking him, to hating him, to feeling sorry for him in the end, and after you’ve left the theater you feel a little angry that he can jerk you around so well. The other performances are equally well-done, if less outstanding.

I have two issues, however, with the story, or with this particular presentation of the story [bearing in mind I have not read the actual play, nor seen it performed elsewise (I made that word up, just now)]. Firstly, the movie does a poor job of showing why exactly Bassanio needs the 3000 ducats to win Portia’s hand. As this money is the crux of the conflict between Antonio and Shylock, the viewer deserves a better exposition of why this money was so important to Bassanio, and how precisely it aids him in winning Portia. Secondly, aside from the fact that she may have been born in the year of the monkey, and thus would be a naturally mischievous devil, I don’t understand Portia’s motivation to fool Bassanio, and torture him so. Granted, she takes the situation lightly and it ends well, but for her being so happy I can’t but feel that her devilry is a bit unwarranted, in testing her new husband so tricksishly. I can understand her masquerade in the first place, as a young civil scholar, as she wants to save the man who her husband holds in such high esteem. And in that, she does a fine job. That scene, the swing from Shylock as the revenging, angry jew who wields a righteous fury, to Shylock as a man with nothing, weeping on the floor as his world and his pride are taken from him, is deftly played and certainly moving. As a climax, however, it seems a bit quick, and as I was swayed into feeling pity for Shylock as his world was stripped bare, my sense of vindication, or that some great battle was won where good triumphed over evil, was lessened. My friend mentioned after the show that in reading the play, she had never felt pity for Shylock, and so I wonder if this was not a blunder in the interpretation of the story, or indeed if it was even intentional. Perhaps the director wanted to maintain this sense of uncertainty. Shylock, certainly, has his reasons to seek revenge, has had a lifetime of prejudice and mistreatment; and so while some of his actions are villainous, he is not in fact a villain, but just a man who is in the end on the losing side of a conflict over money.

The moral of the story: be merciful, for as Portia says, “mercy is “twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” And if you have the chance to show mercy, and you do not, you’re going to get screwdeth over.

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And now for your moment of zen.