Rick Stonell’s idle thoughts

The academic viewpoint on the name Rick Stonell

It’s good to see that my tax dollars are being well-spent.

Acting is simple to define.  It’s what humans do in day-to-day life. The best acting I’ve ever seen involves non-actors - ordinary  people hiding their true emotions or trying to show feelings that they don’t have.

The difference is that actors usually work from a script that they can check and memorize.  People like salesmen have to do improv.

The only points of stage "law" on which we are at all clear are as
follows:

That if a man dies without leaving a will, then all his property goes
to the nearest villain.

But if a man dies and leaves a will, then all his property goes to
whoever can get possession of that will.

That the accidental loss of the three-and-sixpenny copy of a marriage
certificate annuls the marriage.

That the evidence of one prejudiced witness of shady antecedents is
quite sufficient to convict the most stainless and irreproachable
gentleman of crimes for the committal of which he could have had no
possible motive.

But that this evidence may be rebutted years afterward, and the
conviction quashed without further trial by the unsupported statement
of the comic man.

That if A forges B's name to a check, then the law of the land is that
B shall be sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.

That ten minutes' notice is all that is required to foreclose a
mortgage.

That all trials of criminal cases take place in the front parlor of
the victim's house, the villain acting as counsel, judge, and jury
rolled into one, and a couple of policemen being told off to follow
his instructions.

These are a few of the more salient features of stage "law" so far as
we have been able to grasp it up to the present; but as fresh acts and
clauses and modifications appear to be introduced for each new play,
we have abandoned all hope of ever being able to really comprehend the
subject.

“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men in a Boat”, Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) 1889

All affectation, of course.  Jerome was always a hard worker.  He had to be.  Years of poverty and bad luck were only overcome when he became a successful writer and - like everyone but J K Rowling - that took time.

Of course, it’s compulsory to have a website

www.rick-stonell.info 

Rick Stonell (your’s truly) is setting up a blog. Just like everybody else.

The title comes from a book entitled “The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow”. by Jerome K Jerome (published in 1886). One of the greatest 19th century humourists, Jerome is most famous for ‘Three Men on a Boat, published in 1889.

Jerome Klapka Jerome - plus dog (taken from the Jerome K Jerome Society website)