A CRISPY STUDY OF THE ARTS: SHAKESPEARE VS THE MAMBO

The author shakes it to the grooves of 'La Niña Popoff'



Are you a depressed poet? Think of it this way: even Shakespeare, with all his writing finesse, could not write the mambo gyrations of Perez Prado, a man small in stature but large in musical "sabor."

And so the next time that you despair as you write a dumb sonnet, think to yourself how depressed Shakespeare might have been if he had been born in Cuba in 1900 instead of England in 1500-something, and had wanted to play the mambo rather than write sonnets better than the one that you are trying to write now, (which actually isn't half bad, certainly as good as could be expected from Shakespeare, at least in his nascent mambo writing period.)

Now you can be at peace. Stand up and dance! Release the crazy Cuban dancing man within! AY AY AY CHULETA. Beware of spontaneous erections!

Remember, there is more to life than depression, melancholia, despair, ennui, loneliness, being English, writing poetry and sitting down and not dancing all the time. There's all the opposites of all of those things, just for starters. Vamos a bailar!



Tomorrow's lesson: Why it is important not to wish that you were Danny Kaye.


all artwork, except likenesses of Lyndon B. Johnson, by Crispy Flotilla ® 2006