Note: lyrics that are about more than just a general description of the ostensible topic, general aura of professionalism, musical skill.

Easily my favorite Jamiroquai song, and really the only time I can think of where they strived to be epic.

In the post two thousand MGK will thank all his readers for reading, or for looking at the pretty pictures if they cannot read, but the latter category will not be able to read the thanks and therefore feel resentful, except that they will not because they didn’t even know they were being thanked!

In the post two thousand commenters will again discuss their conspiracy theories about Flapjacks, but none of these theories will involve waffles – which is precisely his cunning plan!

In the post two thousand MGK will be all “thanks for reading even though now I work full-time and cannot devote four thousand words to Spider-Man on such a regular basis,” and then half his readership will go read Chris Sims instead!

In the post two thousand MGK will subtly mention that he is looking for new artists to collaborate with for ongoing projects, and then reiterate the fact that these positions are unpaid so as to not have the confusion that went on with some people last time!

In the post two thousand somebody will complain about all the So You Think You Can Dance posts, then somebody else will be all “well you don’t have to read everything,” and a huge flamewar will commence that will become internet genocide!

In the post two thousand MGK will quietly gloss over the fact that, although the vast bulk of the two thousand posts were his, other people wrote some of them when he was busy and stuff!

In the post two thousand people will wonder if we shouldn’t have waited for the 2500-post anniversary instead!

In the post two thousand somebody will say “and here’s to two thousand more,” but then they’ll think “well, that’s only four thousand, and nobody cares about four thousand,” so they will quickly say “no, wait, here’s to reaching five thousand instead” and then they’ll feel uncool!

(But seriously: it has been a blast, and here’s to… a bunch more.)

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS: Endorses an act of murder; not condonable

AFGHAN WHIGS: Potential terrorists

XTC: Promotes drug use

VIOLENT FEMMES: Encourages ladies to engage in unladylike behaviour

GORILLAZ: May actually be gorillas

BAD RELIGION: Religion should not be considered “bad” unless it is Islam maybe, or one of the weird Asian ones where they ring chimes and stuff

ANTHRAX: Potential terrorists

MANIC STREET PREACHERS: Disrespectful to evangelical Christianity. Street preachers are only very rarely manic

INXS: Excess = gluttony = deadly sin

PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Not actually presidents

JESUS JONES: “Jesus” only permittable for personal names when pronounced “Hay-Zeus”

BLACK SABBATH: Actually this one is okay because nobody wants to look racist

CHICAGO: Possible Barack Obama connections

A TRIBE CALLED QUEST: The Bible doesn’t list “Quest” as one of the twelve tribes

NOFX: It seems like they’re trying to get people to say the F-word by accident and that’s not nice

THE FUGEES: Potential illegal immigrants

KANYE WEST: We’re still pissed off about that whole Taylor Swift thing

(context)

“Yes, I’ve been on hold for ten minutes now already. Yellowjacket… Y, E, two Ls, O… look, do you really need me to spell it?… Yes, it’s all one word… Yes, I can hold another minute, but… dammit, they put me on hold again… Morty? Yeah, Yellowjacket here… good to hear you too, Morty… no, no, I’m not calling about the bar mitzvah. It’s about the cover… The cover, Morty… What do you mean, “what about the cover?” Have you seen it? Look at it, Morty! Tell me why I’m supposed to be happy!… Morty, it’s my goddamn comic magazine, okay? The first issue of Yellowjacket Comics. And where am I on the cover? I’m in a small box on the bottom left corner, Morty! Who dominates the cover of the first issue of Yellowjacket Comics? Some schmuck on a trapeze!… I don’t care if he’s a nice guy, Morty!… Because I am supposed to be the star of Yellowjacket Comics!… Because I’m Yellowjacket, for Crissake! …what do you mean, “trying to promote new talent?” I’m new talent! It’s my first issue!… Then put him in the little corner box! I paid my dues! Two years as a backup feature in Pow! Comics! Did Trapeze Guy ever do that, huh? How many sinners has he scourged?… oh, so you’re going to level with me now. Great, Morty… Artistic error. Uh huh… So pulp the run and put him in the corner! New cover!… Yes, I do know how much that would cost… I can always jump to Timely, Morty! They made a hell of an offer!… Come on, Morty, the guy can’t even fly! He’s a friggin’ acrobat! Who’s gonna read Acrobat Comics?… No, but I can glide, Morty, and that’s pretty much the same thing… says me, Morty!… Okay, I’m listening… Uh huh… uh huh… A radio show?… Seriously?… Well, even if it is only a biweekly backup, that’s not nothing. But can we talk serials?… Well, we won’t have to worry about sales if I’m actually featured on the cover of my own comic, Morty… Maybe he would make a good member of the supporting cast, Morty, but you don’t put Lois Lane on the cover of the first issue of Superman, do you?… Yeah… yeah… okay, Morty… Okay. Yeah, we’re not good, but we’re getting there, Morty… yeah, we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? I have to go, you know, fight some crime… best to your wife and kids too, Morty… yes, of course I’m coming to the bar mitzvah… you too. Bye.”

So a while back someone asked me to share thoughts on board games I’ve played recently, and I am nothing if not willing to chat about board games every once in a while.

– Battles of Westeros is the Game of Thrones-themed variant on Richard Borg’s “not quite miniatures, not quite a boardgame” set of systems that you see in games like BattleLore, Memoir ’44 and Command and Colors. Each of the games has its own quirks, but so far out of all of them Westeros is my favorite, because for me it works better: the game is very commander-centric, so it makes sense to form your units around a Robb Stark or Jaime Lannister to get most use out of them, but it has some options for you to send a unit afield from your main armies without stranding it in a “can’t command it” zone (as happens in some of the other games). The other major upsides of Westeros compared to its cousins are that it has a system for generating essentially infinite custom scenarios out of the box, which greatly ups its replay value, and that it tends to play more quickly, I find, than the other games.

The downside of Westeros is that the basic units included in the main box are kind of boring; the Stark and Lannister infantry, cavalry and archers are basically identical to one another. Granted, your meat-and-potatoes units by definition have to show up in the main box, but a little more gravy would have been appreciated. Still, the first expansion (more Lannister units, including Tyrion as a commander) fixes this problem to an extent and makes clear that future expansions will definitely shake up the game; presumably when they gradually introduce Baratheon and Greyjoy and Tyrell and the Night’s Watch and wildlings and Martell and Targaryen forces as future expansions, the game will grow ever more diverse. And it’s certainly much cheaper than any standard minis game, and provides a lot of the same flavour that minis games can provide.

– I recently picked up Glory To Rome because it was reprinted and I figured, “heck, if nothing else it’ll eventually go out of print and then increase in value again (as it has every time it’s been printed), so even if I don’t like it I can always trade or sell it off.” However, that won’t happen, because I quite enjoy the game. It’s a complex card game with a lot of elements to it, but anybody who’s played Magic will understand the concept of “zones” (IE, different areas the cards can be, which affects what they can do). The problem for most players is the really terrible graphic design, which… well, let’s look at a card for a second.

Look at that. The title of the card is at the top. What the card does when you play it as a building (and only when you play it as a building) is in the center. What the card does when it’s raw materials is at the bottom. What the card does when it’s a “client” (citizen serving your interests) is on the left hand side. The number of coins (victory points) it’s worth when you sell it is at staggered opposite corners. And then, just because there wasn’t enough information on the card, there’s a quote by a Roman philosopher along the right hand side. That is a lot of information and it’s delivered in a way that’s honestly just terrible.

The upside is that the game is honestly really great. Every new building a player builds changes the game, and new players sometimes complain that a given combination of buildings is broken right up until they realize that the game is literally full of broken combos which all balances one another out. It requires a reasonable amount of familiarity with the cards to know which combos you should start building towards once you see your hand, of course, but this is true for any card game that has disparate elements and a common card pool, like San Juan or Race For The Galaxy. And Glory To Rome, while more complex than either of those, is still a hell of a lot of fun; it’s got more depth than either of the aforementioned card games and much, much more interactivity, which is key for me. (I tend to dislike non-interactive games. I know some people love Agricola, but Christ – it’s just sitting around and baking bread at each other for three hours.)

– Defenders of the Realm is goddamned terrible. I don’t much care for Pandemic, mostly because as a collaborative game it always seems to come down to a mathematical exercise done by the most adept player at the table, and Defenders of the Realm is a fantasy retheme of Pandemic done worse. The diseases are now hordes of monsters, see.

Now, granted, the retheme will work for some people, and the idea of sending your heroes questing about to get magical items so they can kill the monster generals (or cure the disease, in Pandemic turns) is engaging. The problem is that Defenders, apparently realizing that for some people Pandemic is too easy even at its hardest setting, decided that the way to fix this was to include a random element, which is: you roll dice to kill the monsters, and the generals’ advance towards the capital (which is the game’s clock) is entirely randomized within the deck. This means you can lose the game in seven turns or watch it drag out for seventy. On top of that, not being able to guarantee that you’ll kill monsters (cure diseases!) means that you can commit to the right strategy and still end up wasting your entire turn.

But hey, if you really want to see Larry Elmore art first used in the early 90s for Forgotten Realms products recycled in the most blatant way possible, go wild!

– I really want Zombie State: Diplomacy of the Dead to be more fun than it is. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not an unfun game, because it’s basically World War Z done up as a boardgame. The mechanics are good and the game is difficult, which is as it should be: it’s really, really hard to beat the zombies in this game and players will usually default to holding three or four of their original twelve territories: the Redeker Plan, mentioned in Z, is actually one of the ways to buy yourself time to stay alive, and that’s pretty cool. (It’s not explicitly mentioned as such in the game, but smart players will quickly figure out that baiting zombies with humans you can afford to sacrifice works.)

My problem with the game is twofold; firstly, the “virus goes airborne” clock is a bit too fast (I find the vast majority of games end that way, which doesn’t quite feel right), and secondly the title is all wrong, because for a game called Diplomacy of the Dead there’s barely any diplomacy. The idea of helping other players (or hurting them) is really kind of awesome, but it doesn’t work in this game because your interaction with other players is near-nil; other than occasionally barricading a territory so that zombies attack your neighbors rather than you, there is literally almost nothing you can do to help or hinder other players in this game.1 If the game had had more interactivity, I think it would have been a true classic; as it is, it’s a fun shared experience of watching everybody circle the drain, kind of the opposite of Agricola but with a better theme because you’re not baking bread to win the game.

1. Another quibble: you have to research nukes. What the hell is that? Come on, they’re nukes. Everybody knows how to build nukes. [↩]

Your guest judges are Rex Harrington and Stacey Tookey, who looks like Olivia Newton John circa 1982 tonight. Jean-Marc helpfully explains that the judges eliminate the bottommost dancers in terms of votes, except when they don’t. CLEARED UP. Except that they eliminated Julia and Jera over Kirsten and Jesse, so never mind, it still doesn’t make sense.

Claudia and Edgar: mambo. A very strong opening number by Gustavo MOTHERFUCKING Vargas; Claudia was exactly on point, as you would expect given her background. Edgar was very strong, maybe not as near-perfect as the judges might have one expect (he came across as a bit hyper at a couple of moments, which goes against the suave undercurrent of control a good mambo requires), but certainly a very strong outing from a non-ballroomer in this format. Great start. Jean-Marc puts on oven mitts because they were hot. Shut up, Jean-Marc.

Natalie and McKenzie: contemporary. As contemporary dances go, this was one of them. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing I’ll remember in two months’ time. McKenzie is the most boring human being alive. Technically accomplished like crazy, yes, but still the most boring human being alive.

Amanda and Denys: house. You might think Denys is in fact the most boring human being alive, but he is so naturally boring that he goes right around the tail end again and winds up being interesting. This was… further evidence of the diminishing returns for house on this show? The first with Lisa and Vincent in season 1 is a classic routine, the second with Tara-Jean and Vincent was decent, and this was… okay, I guess. Clearly difficult, with more floorwork than either of Sho-Tyme’s previous house routines, but not as entertaining as either of the previous ones. But Amanda and Denys were perfectly decent in it. Jean-Marc drags out a deed to a “house” because now he is the Carrot Top of SYTYCD judges.

Charmaine and Jeff: jazz. CHEESEMAN~! delivers the goods with a clever routine that I quite liked, and Charmaine and Jeff danced it excellently with one exception, which was that for both their big lifts, the ending was a bit clumsy. Only a bit, though, so this is more of a quibble than a complaint. These two have really recovered quite nicely from a terrible week one.

Janick and Shavar: contemporary. Mandy Moore goes to the table yet again. Get a new schtick, Mandy Moore. Anyway. This was okay and totally forgettable except for Shavar’s lines, which were… not great, really. I thought his performance was a bit stiff as well, but he’s performed better in jazz prior to this so I’m not sure what went wrong here. He wasn’t bad; he was the very lowest end of decent, performing as you would expect him to perform and not surpassing that. Janick was fine.

Danielle and Quirky Sebastian: hip-hop. You can see where this was going to be a good Luther routine and you can see how many levels of bad it was instead. Danielle would have been on the low end of tolerable if she was dancing with a partner who could take some of the spotlight off her, but unfortunately she had to be the showcase side of the partnership because Sebastian was just awful in this, like godawful terrible bad. The worst bit (other than the judges falling over themselves to suggest that Danielle and Sebastian brought “their own style” to it) is that they’re so popular that they have good odds to make it through to next week.

Kirsten and Jesse: rumba. Judges severely tonguebathed this, and if the entire thing had been like the first twenty seconds I would probably be there with them, but unfortunately the routine continued after that first twenty seconds and the rest of it was weak sauce; lifts I can only describe as tentative and shaky and visible nerves on the part of the performers as a result. The judges really, really love Jesse, for reasons I don’t understand because he has consistently failed to impress.

Orangina and Jonathan: “new disco.” Oh lord please somebody make this supposedly new genre stop: SYTYCD Australia did it two years ago, except they were honest enough to just call it jazz with some disco moves. Jonathan and Kloe both danced it well enough, I guess: weak transitions into the stunts, but I’m not sure how much that was them and how much that was Melissa Williams’ ever-mediocre choreography.

Probable bottom three: Kirsten and Jesse, Danielle and Sebastian, Kloe and Jonathan.
Should go home: Kloe and Jesse.
Will go home: Kirsten and Jesse.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Frankly, I don’t blame you. It’s the longest running science-fiction series in the history of television, having gone on longer than every single Star Trek series put together. It’s featured the writing of Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and television luminary Steven Moffat (who looked like he was going to corner the market on Hugo awards for a few years there.) It’s smart, witty, fun, inventive, fearlessly silly and gobsmackingly terrifying all at the same time, and generally the best thing since sliced bread. But with a TV show that’s coming close to celebrating its 50th anniversary, where do you start?

Really, the wonderful thing about the series is that there are any number of jumping-on points. The show is not a “Lost”-type experience where you have to pay deep attention to the mythos and every story builds on the story before it. (In fact, it’s almost the opposite; with so many changes to the show’s creative personnel, it was pretty frequent for series writers to have to rely on second- or third-hand descriptions of older stories when they brought back recurring enemies. This is why compiling timelines of Doctor Who is a fan cottage industry.)

But probably the best jumping-on point, right now, is Season One of the new series. The first episode, “Rose”, shows the Doctor from the perspective of someone meeting him for the first time, and gives you a nice initiation into the basic concept of the series (although the best description of the basic concept comes later, in Steven Moffat’s introductory episode “The Eleventh Hour”: “Amy Pond, there’s something you’d better understand about me, because it’s important, and one day your life may depend upon it. I am definitely a madman with a box.”) From there, it’s pretty easy to find yourself moving on to Seasons 2, 3, 4, the 2009 specials, and 5…although honestly, I think that big chunks of 3 and 4 are skippable if you don’t feel like watching everything. (Make sure to watch “Blink”, though. Everyone should watch “Blink”, if for nothing else than to see Carey Mulligan in one of her early TV appearances. She’s gonna be huge.)

But the thing is, as much as I like it, the new series is only the tip of the Doctor Who iceberg. There’s twenty-six seasons and a whopping 286 novels out there, not to mention the comics, audio plays and movies. (The movies are just adaptations of two early TV stories. You can skip them if you want, although it’s neat to see Peter Cushing playing the Doctor.) While you certainly don’t have to see it all…and in fact, you can’t, thanks to the BBC’s short-sighted decision to erase several early stories from their archives…there are a few good places to start in. I’ll list eleven, in honor of the eleven Doctors (although not necessarily featuring them all.) One thing, though. It’s worth noting that the classic series was filmed a long time ago, and usually on a shoestring budget. If you have a low tolerance for terrible special effects, run don’t walk in the other direction.

1. Genesis of the Daleks. The origin of the Daleks (although not their first appearance) and the first appearance of Davros, their mad creator. Also features the most popular (and arguably the best) Doctor, Tom Baker, whose floppy hat and long scarf provide some of the iconic images of the series.

2. An Unearthly Child. The very first episode; it actually holds up pretty well as a piece of drama, although you’ll find yourself wondering exactly who Susan’s grandmother was and why we never hear about the Doctor’s family ever again. This is normal, and part of your initiation into the world of Doctor Who fandom.

3. Spearhead From Space. This story doesn’t actually introduce UNIT, the military organization that helps the Doctor frequently over the course of his travels, but it does introduce the era of the series where they were most prominent (and the era where the Doctor was trapped on Earth.) It also introduces the Autons, occasional recurring enemies of the Doctor.

4. The Deadly Assassin. Likewise, this story doesn’t actually introduce the Master, the Doctor’s arch-nemesis and fellow renegade Time Lord, but it’s easily the best story with the character and introduces his rationale for most of the later era of the series (he’s used up all his regenerations and is trying to find a way to prolong his existence.)

5. The War Games. Basically, it’s the origin story for the Doctor, but it’s also a clever story in its own right. The Doctor seems to materialize in World War One, but at every twist, the story grows in scope until he has no choice but to reveal his past and go to his own people, the Time Lords, for help in restoring order. (Pack a lunch…it’s a ten-parter.)

6. The Chimes of Midnight. This is one of the better stories in the audio spin-off line from Big Finish, and also one of the stories that’s emblematic of the Eighth Doctor’s run in the audios. His impulsive decision to rescue “Edwardian adventuress” Charley from certain death aboard the R-101 has catastrophic consequences to history, and this story is a perfect example. Plus, it’s chillingly clever and a mix of humor and horror that sticks with you for a long time after the story ends. “Edward Grove is alive.”

7. Human Nature. At last, a chance to use links! This classic Doctor Who novel is also available as a free ebook at the BBC’s website, and it’s one of the best things Paul Cornell (who you might have heard of from the Pete Wisdom or Captain Britain comics) has ever written. It was later adapted for TV, but the book is better. Also features one of the stronger appearances of Cornell-created companions Bernice Summerfield, who wound up with her own spin-off series of some thirty novels and a similar number of audio plays. (River Song, from the new series, is basically a slightly-less awesome version of Bernice.)

8. Spare Parts. Another audio play, this one featuring TV’s Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. It’s also the origin of the Cybermen, who comprise, alongside the Daleks and the Master, the Doctor’s main Rogue’s Gallery. (In general, the Doctor’s Rogue’s Gallery consists of entire species, not individuals. Individual bad guys who fight the Doctor have a tendency to wind up dead.)

9. The Two Doctors. This is one of the more watchable adventures of the Sixth Doctor, but it gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of excesses and problems that were afflicting the series around then. Colin Baker tries hard, but script editor Eric Saward undercuts everything with his vision of the series, and producer John Nathan-Turner viewed his job more as drumming up publicity for the series than actually making it watchable. Oh, and it’s got the Sontarans in it. See one Sontaran, you’ve seen ’em all (literally, they’re a race of clones.)

10. City of Death. The Doctor Who episode every Doctor Who fan shows to non-Doctor Who fans, this is the one written by Douglas Adams, with Julian Glover as the villain (you know Julian Glover, even if you don’t remember the name; he’s been a villain for James Bond, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter) and the cameo by John Cleese. If you can only watch one of the stories on this list, this is probably the one.

11. Remembrance of the Daleks. The last Dalek appearance in the classic series, and probably the best; this features three of the all-time classic headfucks of Doctor Who. The first is the Dalek chasing the Doctor up the flight of stairs for the first time in series history, the second is the appearance of the “Special Weapons Dalek” (which must be seen to be believed), and the third…but that would be telling. 🙂

So there you go, a potted guide to Doctor Who! It’s by no means complete, but I hope I’ve given you a good place to start. That’s all for this week…but I did want to beg everyone’s indulgence for a moment, and mention that I’ve started my own T-shirt store on CafePress. Feel free to stop by and see if there’s anything you like!

Rosie DiManno thought today was a great day to write an anti-mosque column. That made it a great day for me to mock her.

So in lieu of actual original content, here is Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ waltz from Swing Time, one of the finest dances on film ever:

I have always held that this is an excellent test to see if a person has a soul or not. If you do not like this, strongly consider the possibility that you are an emotionless android, secretly tasked to destroy all humans.

Including liveblogging municipal debates for Torontoist.

Previously, we discussed how time travel works, or doesn’t work. Most time travel in comics follows the “create an alternate parallel universe in which you are then trapped” motif. There are reasons for this. If you are creating a time travel machine, you don’t want it killing you, and traveling to the past is the sort of thing which makes it effortlessly simple for you to accidentally not exist all of a sudden: you accidentally convince an Irishman in 1843 that he should travel to London to find work rather than emigrate to America, and then all of a sudden you don’t exist because your parents met at a Ted Kennedy rally which never happened because that Irishman emigrating led to there being Kennedys (or at least that specific branch of Kennedys) in the first place. Sure, there might be someone present who’s kind of occupying your general space, but it’s not you, because you’ve ceased to exist. This is why smart people time travel in a way that generally keeps them detached from the effects of causality.

That having been said: it’s quite easy to muck around with the timeline you’re currently on. It’s mostly suicidal – if you’re worried about the effects on you. But what if you’re really, really powerful? And not really part of Earth’s timeline generally, say? In that case, mucking around with Earth’s timeline is kind of like playing with a four-dimensional ant farm. And if you’ve got goals beyond simply messing about, then you can be really, really dangerous.

It manifests itself when Dr. Strange notices that suddenly, people don’t recognize the word “obscene” any more. Or “road.” Or “unreal.” Or “dwindle.” He recognizes timeline alteration when he sees it; he’s made certain that changes to the timeline lag in their affecting of him. (It gives him time to notice changes and then figure out what to do. It wasn’t easy and he needed a lot of tutoring from the Vishanti to learn how to do it, but you don’t get to be Sorcerer Supreme by slacking.) In this case, after a day or so, he knows what’s wrong: every word invented by Shakespeare has disappeared from the English language. Along with all of his plays. Along with most knowledge of Shakespeare. So it’s pretty obvious what somebody’s done.

But it’s more than just a few plays. This isn’t a story about the power of stories. Neil Gaiman already wrote that.1 It doesn’t change history that much if Romeo and Juliet never gets written; it just means that A Tale of Two Cities or Jane Eyre takes its place in the Great Works canon. History dauntlessly2 marches on.

But this is the Marvel Universe, and that means history marches on, but there are key moments. In the history of the Sorcerer Supremes, there are countless magical standoffs. Most of them involved magic words. “But wait,” you say, “most of them didn’t speak English, or at least didn’t do magic in it.” And this is true and this is not true. See, magic words are sometimes a genuine pick in the lock of the universe, and sometimes they’re just a vehicle to sound impressive and gather confidence while your willpower and mojo do the heavy magical lifting and then they become that pick. And English differs from most languages in that it is completely and utterly an expressive language. There’s a reason it’s become so dominant: it’s easier to invent words in English, as well as steal them, repurpose them, mix their use. Really, plain old English is downright magical in many varied3 ways before you cast so much as a cantrip. Most of Earth’s premier sorcerers might talk about how they used the Incantation of Irix in the original pre-Sumerian, and it’s always good to have a little razzle-dazzle, that’s true. But for their everyday stuff – and when they don’t have time to think about how to pronounce pre-Sumerian, which is usually the most important moments – they use English.

Something wants to hobble the English language, one of the greatest weapons of its mystic defenders. Something wants to throttle it. And if you want to hurt modern English, you start by getting rid of Shakespeare, who invented nearly two thousand words and phrases, some of which are so mundane and common (“moonbeam,” bandit,” “scuffle”…) it’s shocking to think that a man sat down and literally thought them from nothing.

Which means that Dr. Strange has to go back in time himself and stop this assassination4 from ever happening. Luckily, he knows a spell that will set aside Ferdinando Stanley, who was not only the patron of William Shakespeare before Shakespeare hit it big, but also Lord Strange of the Barony of Strange.5 Can Strange – over the course of a decade in Elizabethan England – effectively mimic6 his namesake, prevent the actions of those who would interfere with Shakespeare’s most vital work, and not arouse7 the troublesome suspicion of John Dee, Queen Bess’ court magician?

1. About a dozen times. [↩]
2. Shakespeare invented this word. “King Henry VI.” [↩]
3. And this one. “Titus Andronicus.” [↩]
4. This one too. “Macbeth.” [↩]
5. Okay, he pronounced it “strang.” But it counts. [↩]
6. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” [↩]
7. “King Henry VI” again. [↩]