Minute for minute, John Oliver might be the greatest standup act I’ve seen. I haven’t seen a ton of standup, of course, but I have seen George Carlin.
It was during his “List of Synonyms” phase of the late ’80s early ’90s, but still.
An unpopular opinion.
Waiting to see John Oliver.
Things you can no longer buy from a food truck in Nashville, because the truck owner set up a brick and mortar store within walking distance of my apartment. I am in so much trouble.
Next door neighbor cat came over for skritches.
I may have embarrassed myself over the spaghetti carbonara.
Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing, via The Trad
I like these rules. I hate detailed descriptions of places and things!!!
Seconded.
Please stop describing the characters’ nose hairs, authors. Because I’m going to ignore all of that detail and come to my own conclusions about what things look like, anyway.
I love you.
“Daisy’s nose hairs were like wire grill brushes, arcing gracefully out of each nostril until forcibly terminated by her beaveresque incisors. Gatsby couldn’t stop staring at them, even though everyone at the party thought it was rude of him.”
太平洋序曲 (I hope Google Translate got that right)
Last night I caught opening night of a rare staging of Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, the musical hipsters love because you’ve probably never heard of it.
Any maybe rightly so. The story of the introduction of Western culture to Japan (written in 1976) was originally staged as Kabuki theatre with an all Japanese-American (and all-male) cast, a demographic that that many communities in the US are incapable of producing, so the group putting it on discarded the ethnicity requirements (and made the cast co-ed), and restaged the show without as many Kabuki elements, simultaneously making the show much more accessible and bringing it perilously close to being (unintentionally, I’m certain) offensive—the Japanese version of minstrelsy.
I’ve read at least one gushing semi-review, and the critics I was sitting near all seemed very congratulatory, but it left me appreciative, but largely unmoved, in spite of some really great individual moments.
Still, there are precious few opportunities to see the musical staged, especially here in the hinterlands, so the handful of Nashville theatre-types who read this should definitely check it out.
Robot school: Day 4
My company is hiring several hundred new workers, and today they came in for a pre-employment basic skills class, designed to show them what a day of putting screws in metal is like. It helps them see if they really want to work for us, and if they’re the sort of person who says “Fuck this, I’m outta here” after a couple of hours of manual labor.
They’re set up RIGHT ACROSS THE SHOP from where we’re teaching the robot to do robot tricks, and you KNOW some of them are all “I bet TOMORROW we get to play with the ROBOTS!”
And I’m smiling at their inevitable disappointment, because I’m a terrible person.
Fla. man adopts his 42-year-old girlfriend - CBS News
John Goodman is apparently adopting his girlfriend in order to protect his fortune from a wrongful-death drunk driving case.
The obvious solution would be to prosecute him for incest, but this is Florida.
This seems like a nice enough place to have lunch. (taken with Photosynth)
