Globe @ MindSay 
Mickey Rourke has just put a half nelson on our hearts. The veteran actor’s portrayal of Randy "The Ram" Robinson is one of the most endearing, soul searching performances that Rusty Bob has seen in ten years. Fourteen years is how long Mickey Rourke says he's been out of work. Wrestling fans, especially those who grew up during the glory days of the WWF in the 1980s, will find Rourke's acting even more poignant since it closely mirrors the lives of many performers.
Mick Foley (aka Mankind) loved this movie and says so in this slash film article. I think he was impressed with how the amateur wrestling lifestyle was depicted.
Over the years, several wrestlers have died from heart failure. Athletes like Ravishing Rick Rude who died of a heart attack caused by steroid use, and Brian Pillman who also died of heart problems, as did Davey Boy Smith, half of the famed tag-team The British Bulldogs.
Randy “The Ram” Robinson was at the top of his game in the eighties, but twenty five years later he finds himself starting over again every night. Typical sports movie, The Wrestler starts with a has been hero looking for a life, and ends with a rematch against The Ayatollah (think Iron Sheik).
Needless to say, i'm very excited about this conference and very much looking forward to meeting many old friends from Colorado, Washington and Oregon as well as making lots of new friends. I'll be in the Portland area from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon.
At the conference we'll be examining our global and regional efforts at holding the global core activities of the Baha'i faith: Devotional meetings, study circles, children's classes, junior youth groups and direct teaching activities.
It's going to be GREAT! You can read and see video footage from the other conferences around the world here:
http://news.bahai.org/community-news/regional-conferences/
This was one of the most interesting, exciting, unexpected seasons of BlogAbroad yet. Maybe it was because of the bloggers themselves—the mix of personalities was astounding, from the philosophical, intellectual Gabrielle to Michal, the bon vivant who seemed to enjoy every moment of her time in France; and from Judd the wry adventurer to Joe, the meticulous, incisive, brave traveler of lands that many Americans would, frankly, be too scared to visit.
Or maybe it had to do with the places the bloggers studied abroad: From India to France to Jordan to Germany, this season’s bloggers seemed to have been spread out across the globe, both in geographic as well as in cultural terms. And such a wide range of cultures and countries absolutely made for a season of excitement.
Perhaps, though, in the end, it was some combination of these factors, coupled with that intangible something that manifests itself when intelligent people do extraordinary things and let the rest of us in on their adventures.
Alchemy. Excitement. Uncertainty. Honesty. All of these added up this season to result in one thing: A heck of a ride.
In today’s world, few places are more misunderstood and feared than the Arab Middle East. Indeed, recent years and events around the world have led to “Middle East” and “frightening” becoming synonymous. But Joe managed to get past those issues, make himself at home in Amman, Jordan, and delve beneath the surface. If there is one quality that defines him, it’s bravery. Whether he was traveling to Egypt or interviewing an administrator at the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, Joe never failed to find a way to understand the nature of the people, the country, and the culture of his home for the semester. And as a result, we all learned a whole lot more than we probably ever expected to about this part of the world whose importance will only continue to increase in the coming years.
Gabrielle followed in the footsteps of so many of history’s most incisive and sponge-like minds and ventured to India. But unlike so many travelers who have found themselves on the sub-continent before, Gabrielle’s journey became just as much an internal one as it was external. She had her share of struggles, to be sure: From trying to find a research project for the end of the semester to learning how to communicate in Hindi, Gabrielle’s time was not always easy in India. But she always managed to pull through it, and usually with a healthy dose of self-realization and a sharing of the kind of wisdom that usually only comes from people much older than she. As this season ends, she is leaving India for other lands—Fiji, Singapore…you name it, chances are that Gabrielle will travel there. She has been an inspiration to every one of us who dreams of distant horizons and of shores in lands not our own. Hers truly looks like it will be a life less ordinary. And lucky for us, she has shared it for a few months.
As far as Michal goes, there is an expression in French that perfectly applies to her: La vie en rose. It means much more than its literal translation, which is to see the world through rose-colored glasses. And through Michal’s eyes, and through her blogs, we have all gotten a little glimpse of how joyous life can be when you allow yourself to experience it deeply. And while she still may not be able to smell all the different aromas in a glass of wine (though she tried mightily, and several times at that!), she’s learned to speak French, she’s seen some of the most beautiful parts of that fabled country, and she’s learned that the key to living a good life is sometimes nothing more than being open to the opportunities that come your way. If only more people had her worldview…
And, finally, there’s Judd, whose time in Germany is probably best summed up in his most recent posting: "Jon and I walked into Switzerland today to visit a Chocolate factory. We stopped at a super-market where we asked for directions and met a man who offered us a ride to the factory, as it was quite far away. Now I wouldn't normally suggest or accept rides from complete strangers, but Jon was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I went along complacently. We arrived at the factory in one piece I'm happy to say. In retrospect I think it is shame that we had to question the motives of someone who was just trying to be kind. In any event, we walked into the factory, but sadly, they were not running tours at this time of year. It's a shame too because I imagined it to be just like Willy Wonka's Factory inside. I suppose I'll have to wait till Spring to find out. We didn't walk away empty handed, however. We bought some cheap chocolate and then rode the train back to Konstanz.” There’s a lesson here: If you keep yourself open to new experiences, and to meeting new people and always remaining hopeful, then you’ll be able to accomplish anything. By the time he returns home, Judd will have been away for a full year. And by following his adventures, all of us are sure to be better, more interesting people for having done so.
Just remember that it’s not all over: The new season is beginning in just a few weeks. In the meantime, though, this is a great time to reflect on all that the bloggers have been through, learned, and experienced. It’s also a good chance to give ourselves a breather. Because once you meet next season’s bloggers, you may never want to leave your computer.
Stay tuned!
We did manage to get to the Globe on Saturday, the day before Shakespeare’s birthday, for a guided tour.
I’ve seen pictures of the Globe before. In fact, in ninth grade I did a Geometry project on the building, which involved pointing out all of the different shapes on it’s exterior. I made a to-scale, extremely life like drawing of the theatre, which is a big deal for me because I wasn’t an artist. I spent hours using a grid to copy from a photograph onto the piece of construction paper I was using with a pencil and then went over everything again with marker. Then, when it came time for the grade, I didn’t get full marks because, according to Mrs. Smith, “I didn’t do anything extra, just the assignment.” Grrr. But I digress.
Actually, I feel bad complaining about how long it took me to draw the globe, because the tour guide told us the story of how the current theatre came into being, and it took a long time. What happened was Sam Wanamaker, an American fleeing McCarthyism, came over to London to make a new, red scare free, life for himself. The first thing he wanted to see when he got to London was Shakespeare’s globe, so he hopped in a taxi and spent an entire afternoon driving around the south bank looking for the theatre. But to no avail, all he could find was a plaque on the side of a tavern saying that this used to be the site where the Globe Theatre once stood. He was amazed that such a vital piece of cultural history had been allowed to vanish, and from that day forward he dedicated his life to rebuilding the Globe Theatre, in an exact replica of the original.
And he did. Sort of. He died three years before it was completed, which sort of breaks your heart. The Southwark city council (the neighborhood where the Globe is built,) didn’t want to give the project funding because they felt a theatre dedicated almost exclusively to Shakespeare would be too elitist. So Sam turned to private funders, and spent an uber long time raising money and researching what the Globe would have looked like, and how it might have been built. There are a bunch of flagstones outside the theater with the names of the donors who contributed to the building (I can’t remember if it’s three hundred or six hundred pounds that buys you a stone). Our guide pointed out some of the more interesting ones, including one from Sir Laurence Olivier (or “Larry” as she called him) and a stone that was bought by John Cleese which bears the deliberately misspelled name of his fellow Python Michael Palin (the stone has two L’s).
The theater that stands there now (about a block and a half away from the site of the original theatre) is built as close to the original as possible. One of the things the guide (a little old British lady, who was very knowledgeable and oh so English) pointed out was that the entire building was held together by hundreds of wooden bolts; each of which was hand made, using only technology that would have been available in Shakespeare’s time. There’s also a thatched roof, the thatch of which is so tightly woven together that birds can neither steal the straw nor perch on it. The interior is really amazing. I’ve seen pictures of it before, and from the look of it the stage has two marble pillars, but when I got to take a close up look, I found out that the pillars are actually painted wood. The entire stage is painted wood, and it’s been painted to resemble an Elizabethan idea of the solar system. The ceiling is painted with signs of the zodiac, and the stage in earth tones. There are trap doors in both the ceiling and the floor for Gods to drop from above and ghouls to rise up from below.
The tour guide gave an excellent lecture on Shakespearean theatrical practices, and how those practices are being continued today. The Globe productions are done mostly in original costumes with no stage lighting. No stage lighting means no blackouts. I didn’t really comprehend what a big deal that was until the guide pointed out that a dead character can’t get up in a blackout and walk offstage, so if someone dies (and in many Shakespeare plays practically everyone dies) their body has to stay onstage unless there are enough characters standing to carry them off. I’m excited because the Globe season starts next week, and to be a Groundling (people who stood on the ground—incidentally the name doesn’t come from the fact that they stand on the ground, which would be far too logical, but from the name of a fish that always has its mouth open. The groundlings were famous for never shutting up) costs only five pounds, about ten American dollars. They’re doing Coriolanus as they’re opening play, which I read for Shakespeare class. I can’t wait to see it.
