January 22, 2016 
Lauren 
Lord Byron’s graffiti on the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, near Athens, Greece
Ah, Lord Byron. You were only 36 when you died, but you still managed: to write one of the best Romantic poems, become a hero in Greece for fighting in their revolutionary war, father Ava Lovelace (who was a computer programming badass in the 1840s, and no that isn’t a typo), have a lifetime’s worth of scandalous affairs, and literally leave your mark on some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. That is a lot of life for only 36 years. Happy birthday, you mad, bad, dangerous bastard!
So, as long as we\’re making a weekend of it, you\’ll naturally want to watch GOTHIC, Ken Russell\’s somewhat overboiled tribute to Byron, Shelley, and Polidori on their 1816 Frankenstein weekend, and to read THE MONK, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, which actually SHOCKED Lord Byron and which should\’ve been made into a movie by now, NC-17 or not… By the way, I\’ve never been able to muddle through Ms. Shelley\’s supposed classic, and think high school kids should be forced to read THE MONK instead, so there.