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• Claudius. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

• Hamlet. At supper.

• Claudius. At supper? Where?

• Hamlet. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain
  convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your
  only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and
  we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar
  is but variable service- two dishes, but to one table. That's the end.

• Claudius. Alas, alas!

• Hamlet. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat
  of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

• Claudius. What dost thou mean by this?

• Hamlet. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through
  the guts of a beggar.

While in Manhattan over the weekend, a mild case of insomnia had me up and watching the telly in the wee wee hours. I ended up switching back and forth between the History Channel’s “102 Minutes That Changed America,” a documentary on 9/11, and “Three Shots That Changed American,” a film on JFK’s assassination.

TWO BUBBLES BURST

1.

What struck me about the historical significance of these events was the paradigm shift they precipitated in the American weltanschauung. Recall it had been 62 years, since the 1901 McKinley assassination, that anything of this nature had been visited on the American public. Over that time an attitude of American exceptionalism had extended itself to the moral sphere to such a degree that the general assumption, a faith that, as it turned out, demonstrated a romantic naivete in the public perception, was that America was somehow beyond, or better, insulated from a kind of lawless violence that existed in the rest of the world. It could happen here, and it did.

2.

9/11, in much the same way, happened at a time when Americans again believed we had somehow achieved a comfort level beyond those who lived outside the U.S. The thought was that no one would dare attack us on our own shores, lest they bear the wrath of a world leviathan beyond their dreams. Our actions hence have proved that wrath to be a myth. Rather than resorting to a saber rattling that asked our enemies to imagine the consequences, we rushed headlong into a conflict that revealed our might to be all too human. In a recent interview, when Larry King asked Muammar Khadafi where we might find al Queda, his response was, “right here, in New York city.” (NOTE: Click and scan right for a "nose hair" close up, Mr. Mcgee)

Included here are some photos from Manhattan taken over last weekend. Not far from “Ground Zero,” which we had no interest in seeing, is Chinatown, which is way cool. Where else can you buy frogs, duck tongues and pig’s blood jello?

We stayed at the Algonqan Hotel, just down the street from the Broadhurst Theatre, where we attended a stunning production of Hamlet, with Jude Law in the lead role. WOW! The last play I saw was “Bye Bye Birdie” in 1964. The venue was Marquette, Michigans’s Graveret High Scool auditorium.

Speaking of Chinatown, the Swiss have finally stepped up to the plate in showing themselves to be something more than a whining bunch of neutrality mongers. It’s about time. Check out the criminal these two Swiss guards picked up loitering at a porn festival.

Until Next Time – Randall the Vandal