A Knave Travels to Santa Cruz

We jammed up to Coyro’s place in Santa Cruz on Friday, stopping at a few spots here and there around Big Sur on the way. No agenda, other than relaxing, hanging out, and letting shit happen. Coyro was a fabulous host, and was usually much quicker picking up the tab than I, blast her, but that’s OK, it all comes around eventually.

A highlight was seeing King Lear in the beautiful outdoor Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen at UC Santa Cruz on Sunday night. A fantastic production, set in a small clearing amid the redwoods on the campus grounds.

I don’t know if you’ve read King Lear, but it has some of the greatest cursing lines I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. An example follows, where the Earl of Kent (in disguise) berates the hapless Oswald and calls him a few choice names:

KENT
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.


How great is that? Cursing has sunk to a new low in the 21st century, that’s for sure.