Well, here's one that schools will just LOVE us for. Adam, the boss of the staff, has launched a blog in which he makes all the strange drinks that appear in the works of Charles Dickens - egg hot, purl, dog's nose, sherry flip, and various punches that are set on fire before they're served. The blog isn't just about the drinks, though - he takes great care to introduce the characters who drink the drinks and the books in which they appear, and is fielding a lot of emails from people who decided to read some Dickens after reading the blog. And that's the whole point! Adam is a Dickens fan, and currently hard at work on a middle grade novel about beating him up. Here's the blog: Drink Like the Dickens.
In other staff news, we're thrilled to say that SPARKS, a novel by staff member SJ Adams, has been given a STONEWALL HONOR by the American Library Association, in addition to being a part of their "Rainbow List." This is a HUGE honor for SJ, and we hope it will bring more readers to his book.
As for the rest of us, we're still hoping to get the Hamlet guide out soon, as well as perhaps an "omnibus" edition of our four Shakespeare guides, and perhaps we'll rework that Dickens blog into a guide one of these days, as well.
Illinois Reads!
Just received the following note at HQ:
Congratulations! Under the auspices of the Illinois Reading Council, a brand new literacy program, ILLINOIS READS , a yearly state-wide project to promote reading for all Illinois citizens, will be instituted next year, and your book "Smart-Aleck's Guide to American History", has been chosen as one of the books for the inaugural program. The thirty-six titles chosen, from birth to adult, will be introduced into classrooms, public health facilities, public and school libraries, and bookstores. The website, www.illinoisreads.org, will allow adults and students (above age 13) to post book reviews, book trailers, art work, and discussions about the books. We hope we can link to your website, as well as offering additional activities to accompany your book.
The program will be formally launched on March 13, 2013 at the Illinois Reading Conference in Springfield, Illinois.
We here at the Smart Aleck Staff are thrilled! Thanks for all the support we've had in recent years - and keep watching for our new Hamlet guide soon!
What else should we do? We've had to put guides on the backburner lately, since the boss has been so busy with Chicago history books - this fall alone he's under contract for one about the mobsters, one about general Chicago history, one about the silent film business here, and one about Chicago ghosts. Maybe a Smart Aleck's Guide to Al Capone? A Smart Aleck's Guide to Ghost Stories?
Coming Soon from the Smart Aleck Staff!
Lots of things are happening with the staff. The long-promised Hamlet guide should materialize before the end of 2012, and September will see the release of the new Smart Aleck's Guide to Halloween Specials. This will be a special low-priced ebook with reviews of practically every Halloween TV special ever produced, taken from Adam's long-running halloweenspecials.net , which is being revamped as a Smart Aleck's Guide site this year! That book will be up as soon as the cover is ready.
Adam will also have three new "e-singles" out from Llewellyn Press on October 1st, each dealing with his own long-running night job as a historian and ghost hunter in Chicago. Of particular note will be Inside the Murder Castle, which will detail his investigation of the basement below the post office that was built over the infamous "murder castle" of serial killer H.H. Holmes. It looks as thought his may be the only investigation that ever takes place there! Adam is sort of setting himself up as the smart aleck of the ghost biz these days; over the course of the book he spends a great deal of time cracking wise and debunking myths.
Come November, Adam will have another book out that isn't exactly a Smart Aleck's Guide, but almost might as well be: Globe Press will be publishing a Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks from Chicago History, in which Adam courageously bad-mouths Al Capone, John Dillinger, Marshall Field, Big Bill Thompson, "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, and several other people who are too dead to fight back.
Adam will also have three new "e-singles" out from Llewellyn Press on October 1st, each dealing with his own long-running night job as a historian and ghost hunter in Chicago. Of particular note will be Inside the Murder Castle, which will detail his investigation of the basement below the post office that was built over the infamous "murder castle" of serial killer H.H. Holmes. It looks as thought his may be the only investigation that ever takes place there! Adam is sort of setting himself up as the smart aleck of the ghost biz these days; over the course of the book he spends a great deal of time cracking wise and debunking myths.
Come November, Adam will have another book out that isn't exactly a Smart Aleck's Guide, but almost might as well be: Globe Press will be publishing a Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks from Chicago History, in which Adam courageously bad-mouths Al Capone, John Dillinger, Marshall Field, Big Bill Thompson, "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, and several other people who are too dead to fight back.
Fun With Stats
The other day I read an article that opened with a line that shocked me: "As Obama seeks to become only the second Democratic president since FDR to be re-elected..."
I had to do some quick thinking. Could that be right? Has only one Democratic president been re-elected in the last 65+ years? Is Obama trying to pull off a truly rare feat?
Well, it is true - from a certain point of view. In the last 60+ years, only Bill Clinton has won two elections on the Democratic ticket.
But that IS a fairly selective way of looking at the facts. Two other sitting Democratic presidents won the election as an incumbent - Truman and Johnson were vice presidents who took the office on the death of their successor, so they weren't technically RE-elected. But voters HAD voted for a ticket that they were on in both cases. Johnston didn't try for re-election in '68.
With another way of looking at things, you could actually say that Obama is trying to be something that ought to be easy: seeking to avoid becoming only the second Democratic incumbent to lose a general election since Grover Cleveland. Of all Democratic presidents in the last 120-odd years, the only one who has run for another term and lost was Jimmy Carter. Wilson was re-election, so was Roosevelt (three times). Truman won a full term after taking over upon Roosevelt's death, Kennedy didn't live to run for a second term (if Goldwater had been the GOP nominee, he probably would have won, though, although perhaps not by as big a margin as Johnson did), and Clinton won twice.
Another fun statistical thing: assuming Mitt Romney doesn't ask Jeb Bush to be vice president, he'll be seeking to be the first Republican since Herbert Hoover to win a presidential election without the name Bush or Nixon on the ticket.
I had to do some quick thinking. Could that be right? Has only one Democratic president been re-elected in the last 65+ years? Is Obama trying to pull off a truly rare feat?
Well, it is true - from a certain point of view. In the last 60+ years, only Bill Clinton has won two elections on the Democratic ticket.
But that IS a fairly selective way of looking at the facts. Two other sitting Democratic presidents won the election as an incumbent - Truman and Johnson were vice presidents who took the office on the death of their successor, so they weren't technically RE-elected. But voters HAD voted for a ticket that they were on in both cases. Johnston didn't try for re-election in '68.
With another way of looking at things, you could actually say that Obama is trying to be something that ought to be easy: seeking to avoid becoming only the second Democratic incumbent to lose a general election since Grover Cleveland. Of all Democratic presidents in the last 120-odd years, the only one who has run for another term and lost was Jimmy Carter. Wilson was re-election, so was Roosevelt (three times). Truman won a full term after taking over upon Roosevelt's death, Kennedy didn't live to run for a second term (if Goldwater had been the GOP nominee, he probably would have won, though, although perhaps not by as big a margin as Johnson did), and Clinton won twice.
Another fun statistical thing: assuming Mitt Romney doesn't ask Jeb Bush to be vice president, he'll be seeking to be the first Republican since Herbert Hoover to win a presidential election without the name Bush or Nixon on the ticket.
Smart Aleck's Guide to Shakespeare: Macbeth
 The Smart Aleck's Guide to Shakespeare: Macbeth | Finally - a study guide that doesn't assume you're an idiot! The team that brought you the acclaimed SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY is back with a fantastic new series of "study guides for the smart kids" about Shakespeare - including all the stuff your school board would probably rather you didn't find out about. There's something here for everyone, from middle schoolers trying to get through English class to grad students who've read every play a million times, all WITHOUT resorting to re-writing the plays to include the word "dude." Each illustrated Shakespeare guide contains:
- Complete text of the play, plus detailed summaries and analysis of every scene, with an active Table of Contents and internal links for easy navigation.
- All the info you need about Shakespeare's life, times and language (30k words!), including sections on Elizabethan slang, cheat sheets on how money and nobility worked, the history Shakespeare expected his audience to know, tips on how to survive if you get beamed back to 1593, and a useful essay on the roles of sex, violence, and poop in Elizabethan life and literature - like an Elizabethan version of of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.
- Guides to movie versions of the play, the sources Shakespeare used in creating the works, a history of the individual play, guides to controversies about each play that make scholars throw folding chairs at one another, and more.
- Numerous illustrations, many of which contain hilarious mustaches and stupid hats.
- Tangents about the Muppets, Star Wars, or whatever else the staff feels like (we don't let the Texas School Board tell US what to do!)
- A general lack of worksheets, vocabulary words, sentence diagrams, and other stuff that would suck all the life out of the plays.
- A section on Shakespeare's "Lost" plays (with several chances to earn $5).
And a whole lot more. Twice as informative, and ten times as entertaining, as the next leading brand of study guides - Smart Aleck's Guides have the courtesy to assume that their readers are not complete morons to start with. The Smart Aleck Staff is confident that they can help you understand and enjoy Shakespeare without resorting to any cheap tricks to "bring him down to your level." They don't really care if you get a good grade or not, but with one guide, you could end up knowing more about Shakespeare than your teacher!
The MACBETH guide contains:
- The full play, with analysis of each scene
- Character List
-"Whose Macbeth Is It, Anyway?" (or, is the text we have really just Thomas Middleton's attempt to punch up an older Shakespeare play?)
- A section on witches in Shakespeare's day - and ours.
- A piece on the "curse" of Macbeth
- A whole section about the play's connection to Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to go with our usual speculation about what a Muppet version of MACBETH would be like
- "Who is the Third Murderer?"
- A review of Macbeth from 1610.
- A bit on the debate about whether the "weird sisters" are "witches" or "Fates"
- A "Macbeth Scorecard."
- A section of stupid hats from various productions of the play.
- "The Shakespeare Capers Vol. 1: Foul is Fair" (a hard-boiled detective story starring "Duke" Stratford, private eye, which has nothing to do with the play).
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100 Years Ago This Month...
Women's suffrage activists spent the Spring of 1912 trying to get their "plank" onto the platform of a national party in advance of the coming election. And they got it, in a roundabout way: Roosevelt lost the nomination of the GOP, but became the nominee of the Progressive (Bull Moose) party - and took the women with him. Women's suffrage was a plank in the platform (which is fascinating to read today) and Jane Addams, Chicago's own secular saint, seconded his nomination at a riotous convention.
The platform said:
This support was not what lost the election for Roosevelt - more likely, it's simply the fact that he was a third party candidate (though he DID come in second, beating out the Republicans). And women voting was in the constitution eight years later, after continuing as a "state-by-state" issue for a few years. It's very interesting to think of all this in context of the President's announcement today that he's in favor of same sex marriage.
We wave our Bull Moose party banner high at Smart Aleck HQ, right above our "Nixon Resigns" newspaper that you can see in some of Adam's dust jacket photos. And our "Hipster Bert" Muppet.
The platform said:
Equal Suffrage
The Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.This support was not what lost the election for Roosevelt - more likely, it's simply the fact that he was a third party candidate (though he DID come in second, beating out the Republicans). And women voting was in the constitution eight years later, after continuing as a "state-by-state" issue for a few years. It's very interesting to think of all this in context of the President's announcement today that he's in favor of same sex marriage.
We wave our Bull Moose party banner high at Smart Aleck HQ, right above our "Nixon Resigns" newspaper that you can see in some of Adam's dust jacket photos. And our "Hipster Bert" Muppet.
Lord Buckley's Hipster Edition of Marc Antony's Funeral Oration
We here at the Smart Aleck's Guide normally try to refrain from re-writing Shakespeare into modern slang - it's usually a cheap trick to "bring The Bard down to your level" and demeans us both. And, anyway, our attempts at "modern" slang usually just make things sound like you're reading the instructional manual to a skateboard-themed video game from 1990 (we were very gnarly in 1990).
But sometimes someone DOES rewrite Shakespeare just for laughs, and the results are fantastic. Case in point: Lord Buckley, his royal hipness, rewriting Marc Antony's speech from Caesar. "Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies: knock me your lobes. I come to lay Caesar out, not to hip you to him..."
But sometimes someone DOES rewrite Shakespeare just for laughs, and the results are fantastic. Case in point: Lord Buckley, his royal hipness, rewriting Marc Antony's speech from Caesar. "Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies: knock me your lobes. I come to lay Caesar out, not to hip you to him..."
A Muppet Julius Caesar
In each of our Shakespeare guides, we take a break midway through analyzing each scene to speculate about what a Muppet version of the play would be like. Here's an excerpt from Julius Caesar guide:
This is a question that comes up every time we work on a new play: who would play which role in a Muppet version?
This is especially tricky for this play - it doesn’t have much comic relief (except for right at the beginning, with the cobbler, which, being right at the start, isn’t really comic relief so much as a comic intro). Also, nearly every character is a dignified Roman statesman. Sam the Eagle is the only logical choice for pretty much every character except for the soothsayer (Gonzo, Fozzie and Bunsen Honeydew could all work here). Maybe they could have Wade and Wanda, the old-school singers from season one of The Muppet Show, as Caesar and Calpurnia. Piggy as Portia seems obvious, but it would sure work - she has the same mix of strength and apparent mental instability as Portia.
If we were hired to write the script for A Muppet Julius Caesar, we wouldn’t have much of the actual play in it. We’d do a big backstage story in which Sam the Eagle is trying to mount a very serious production of this immortal play, and, for some reason, thought that Fozzie could be trusted to play the role of Brutus with all due gravity (he’ll try his hardest, but fail). Kermit will work hard to be a good Mark Antony, but Gonzo, who is to be Caesar (Romans thought a big, hooked nose was a sign of esteem), feels that the play is missing something and rewrites it to include a lot more special effects, dancing chickens, spectacular stunts.
As Caeser, he’ll miraculously survive being stabbed twenty-three times (while whistling a medley of hits from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) (ta-da!), and the play would go downhill from there, presumably ending with a big song and dance number (we suggest Billy Joel’s “When in Rome”) that includes enough pyrotechnics to blow up the theatre. Hail Caesar!
This is a question that comes up every time we work on a new play: who would play which role in a Muppet version?
This is especially tricky for this play - it doesn’t have much comic relief (except for right at the beginning, with the cobbler, which, being right at the start, isn’t really comic relief so much as a comic intro). Also, nearly every character is a dignified Roman statesman. Sam the Eagle is the only logical choice for pretty much every character except for the soothsayer (Gonzo, Fozzie and Bunsen Honeydew could all work here). Maybe they could have Wade and Wanda, the old-school singers from season one of The Muppet Show, as Caesar and Calpurnia. Piggy as Portia seems obvious, but it would sure work - she has the same mix of strength and apparent mental instability as Portia.
If we were hired to write the script for A Muppet Julius Caesar, we wouldn’t have much of the actual play in it. We’d do a big backstage story in which Sam the Eagle is trying to mount a very serious production of this immortal play, and, for some reason, thought that Fozzie could be trusted to play the role of Brutus with all due gravity (he’ll try his hardest, but fail). Kermit will work hard to be a good Mark Antony, but Gonzo, who is to be Caesar (Romans thought a big, hooked nose was a sign of esteem), feels that the play is missing something and rewrites it to include a lot more special effects, dancing chickens, spectacular stunts.
As Caeser, he’ll miraculously survive being stabbed twenty-three times (while whistling a medley of hits from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) (ta-da!), and the play would go downhill from there, presumably ending with a big song and dance number (we suggest Billy Joel’s “When in Rome”) that includes enough pyrotechnics to blow up the theatre. Hail Caesar!
Smart Aleck's Guide to Shakespeare: Julius Caesar
 The Smart Aleck's Guide to Shakespeare: Julius Caesar | Finally - a study guide that doesn't assume you're an idiot! The team that brought you the acclaimed SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY is back with a fantastic new series of "study guides for the smart kids" about Shakespeare - including all the stuff your school board would probably rather you didn't find out about. There's something here for everyone, from middle schoolers trying to get through English class to grad students who've read every play a million times, all WITHOUT resorting to re-writing the plays to include the word "dude." Each illustrated Shakespeare guide contains:
- Complete text of the play, plus detailed summaries and analysis of every scene, with an active Table of Contents and internal links for easy navigation.
- All the info you need about Shakespeare's life, times and language (30k words!), including sections on Elizabethan slang, cheat sheets on how money and nobility worked, the history Shakespeare expected his audience to know, tips on how to survive if you get beamed back to 1593, and a useful essay on the roles of sex, violence, and poop in Elizabethan life and literature - like an Elizabethan version of of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.
- Guides to movie versions of the play, the sources Shakespeare used in creating the works, a history of the individual play, guides to controversies about each play that make scholars throw folding chairs at one another, and more.
- Numerous illustrations, many of which contain hilarious mustaches and stupid hats.
- Tangents about the Muppets, Star Wars, or whatever else the staff feels like (we don't let the Texas School Board tell US what to do!)
- A general lack of worksheets, vocabulary words, sentence diagrams, and other stuff that would suck all the life out of the plays.
- A section on Shakespeare's "Lost" plays (with several chances to earn $5).
And a whole lot more. Twice as informative, and ten times as entertaining, as the next leading brand of study guides - Smart Aleck's Guides have the courtesy to assume that their readers are not complete morons to start with. The Smart Aleck Staff is confident that they can help you understand and enjoy Shakespeare without resorting to any cheap tricks to "bring him down to your level." They don't really care if you get a good grade or not, but with one guide, you could end up knowing more about Shakespeare than your teacher!
The CAESAR guide contains all of this, plus sections on Rome 101, Latin Words to Know, a script for a peer pressure skit starring Brutus (you could talk that guy into anything if you used the word "noble" enough), Lupercalia (party naked!), ancient Roman graffiti, and more!
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Romeo's Stupid Hats
When one goes combing through historical photos and paintings, one runs into a lot of stupid hats. We found enough while researching the history book to make it a running gag - and we found just about as many in depictions of Romeo and Juliet. Here are a couple:
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A fez tops this illustration of Romeo in which he looks like a goth Ronald McDonald. We'd LOVE to see a version of this play with Ronald as Romeo and Birdy the Early Bird as Juliet. Mayor McCheese can be the prince. Mack Tonight can be brought back to be Mercutio, and that "professor" guy could be the friar.
German painter Karl Becker showed Romeo in a feathered hat - most stupid Romeo hats involve feathers. Romeo here is a dead ringer for a young "Weird Al" Yankovic. Al can pull off a poodle hat - but can he handle this one?
Get the full guide for more Stupid Romeo Hats!
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