Last night I caught the tail end (ha ha – you’ll see why this pun is so funny in a sec so keep reading) of some made-for-t.v. series based on the book\u00a0Moby Dick by Herman Melville.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure how I missed the series\u00a0when it originally came out because it had\u00a0some\u00a0pretty\u00a0big-name actors in it: William Hurt played the role of Captain Ahab, Ethan Hawke\u00a0was\u00a0Ishmael (or was he Starbuck?), and I think\u00a0Daniel Day-Lewis may have been playing Queequeg.<\/p>\n
Anyway…did you ever have to read\u00a0Moby Dick?\u00a0 I say “have to” because no one on God’s green earth would read this book voluntarily.\u00a0 You would only read it if you were\u00a0forced to in English class as a Junior\u00a0in highschool.<\/p>\n
It is such an endless, droning story about\u00a0Captain Ahab who slowly descends into madness (and brings everyone down with him, literally) while he hunts for a\u00a0white whale named Moby Dick who bit off his leg last time they\u00a0met.\u00a0\u00a0As part of carrying out his personal vendetta against Moby (Mr. Dick?), Ahab stands endlessly at the bow of his ship (two points if you can name\u00a0the ship.\u00a0 Anyone?\u00a0 Anyone??\u00a0 It’s the Pequod<\/em>, you literary fools!)\u00a0and asks every blessed vessel\u00a0they meet on the high seas, “Hast though seen the White Whale?”<\/p>\n [Uh…no.\u00a0 But we hast seen a freaky dude with a pegleg shouting from the bow of his ship.]<\/p>\n Every sentence of the book contains\u00a0way, WAY too much excruciating* detail.\u00a0 And was\u00a0written in such\u00a0archaic language that there’s\u00a0a footnote required to explain\u00a0every fourth word or so.\u00a0 Honestly, it’s\u00a0like reading some stranger’s PhD math thesis in a foreign language.\u00a0 It’s enough to drive anyone insane.\u00a0 In fact, after I read the book\u00a0I felt like I <\/strong><\/em>had descended into madness.\u00a0 I was willing to sign on with\u00a0Captain Ahab just\u00a0so we could finally kill\u00a0that white freak-of-a-whale already and be done with the whole mess.<\/p>\n Ok.\u00a0 So where are we going here?\u00a0 All\u00a0of this\u00a0reminds me of a funny story about Moby Dick from that same highschool English class.\u00a0 It was held first period.\u00a0 And I took it with a bunch of kids who…uh…frequently\u00a0cut the actual class\u00a0and\u00a0only came in for attendance and announcements at the end of the period.\u00a0 One guy, named Gray Whaley, sometimes\u00a0didn’t even bother to do that.<\/p>\n One day, as Mr. Farrell (Junior English class teacher – why?\u00a0 Don’t YOU\u00a0remember the name of YOURS?!) called out Gray’s name.\u00a0 No response.\u00a0 Gray Whaley?\u00a0 Again no response.\u00a0 Then he\u00a0says, “Hast thou seen the Gray Whaley?”\u00a0\u00a0The class burst\u00a0out laughing, the\u00a0bell rang and we all left.<\/p>\n That’s it.\u00a0 There’s only one\u00a0funny story about Moby Dick from highschool English class in the whole world.\u00a0 And I just told it to you.\u00a0 Now move on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *Ok.\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Herman (Mr. Melville?) had WAY too much free time on his hands.\u00a0 He took every circuitous (ooh –\u00a0good word!) route possible to describe the most\u00a0mundane stuff.\u00a0 For example, instead of saying, “Captain Ahab was a skinny meth addict\u00a0with an unsightly white scar running down the side of his face.”\u00a0 He says, “He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness… Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.”\u00a0\u00a0Ch. 28.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0GOOD LORD!\u00a0 GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!!!\u00a0 I’M GONNA FIND MOBY DICK MY OWN SELF AND MURTALIZE HIM SO WE CAN BE DONE WITH THIS AGONY!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night I caught the tail end (ha ha – you’ll see why this pun is so funny in a sec so keep reading) of some made-for-t.v. series based on the book\u00a0Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I’m not sure how I missed the series\u00a0when it originally came out because it had\u00a0some\u00a0pretty\u00a0big-name actors in it: William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}