And Now for Something Completely . . .

Our friend and publicist Liz Banset recommends the following clips from YouTube --





The Beatles performing Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psATF1mUpUU or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOpEZM6OEvI

Peter Sellers as Laurence Olivier as Richard III reciting the lyrics for "A Hard Day's Night":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLongUBPm5Y

In the first, Paul McCartney plays Pyramus; John Lennon is Thisbe; George Harrison is Moonshine; and Ringo Starr is the Lion. Instead of aristocratic lovers hurling abuse at the performers, fashionable Carnaby Street types demand that the boys "Go back to Liverpool." Delightful . . . I mean, fab and other pimply hyperboles.

In the second, Sellers is absolutely perfect in sending up -- and paying tribute to -- Olivier's deliciously villainous turn in his own film version of Richard III. You'll never see that film or hear that song in quite the same way again.

Now, has anyone run across the MTV parody of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet? That's the one with Mike Myers in full Austin Powers mode romancing Jenny McCarthy. Flaming youth, indeed.