Will And I

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Here’s my problem. This guy.

As you know, about a year ago, I launched my new venture, Remote Theater, thinking it would be fun to do something useful besides writing poems during the pandemic. Poems, you ask? Sonnets. More than 230, a bunch about Shakespeare because the more I wrote sonnets the more I realized what a stunt he pulled off centuries ago. He wrote all those sonnets because, like so many things, he wanted the corner the market. The sonnet market. Yes, it’s a thing. Such a greedy little showoff was he, William Shakespeare.

Now that I am a full twelve months into the drama business — with a new name and identity, Remote Studios — Will again is on my mind. Number of plays? We’re far behind, but with the new monthly Web show we’re announcing this week, we’ll catch up real soon. How about a theater company? I’ve got a goddam repertory, have you heard, and so many cool people are in it. So cool, in fact, they let me pretend to be the leader, convincingly (such great actors). As you may have read, I am also a nicer businessman, have never been prosecuting from selling overpriced grain to be neighbors during a famine. And it has been said that I am more handsome and more modest. I look better in tights. But, I’ll admit, he wrote one or two decent plays (assuming he actually wrote them), and he’s a macro target worthy for my micro ambitions: for Remote to become The Globe in the Cloud, a place where great drama, comedy, and even the occasional satyr play gets a piece of the stage. But I’ll not end with that.

He never lived in Silicon Valley

He never dated a girl named Sally

When he wrote no one could understand him

He slept In pajamas made of burlap

Never got to try sake nigiri

He never ate a breakfast burrito

Have I mentioned that he was a weirdo

With a bad haircut and a bad beardo?

He never peed in a modern toilet

When he spoke to girls he’d often spoil it

Barking in iambic pentameter

He ate mutton for breakfast I have heard

He wasted his life writing bad sonnets

I still have more time, and I am on it