I’ll be making my six plus hour trek home today. If anything it will mean a rest for me. I’ve been cleaning up my brother’s house and helping my parents out all week. I’ve been somewhat off the grid, but thanks to Butcher for keeping us all up to date!
Kinda wish I was still in the dark…
Biden and Harris briefed as US braces for arrival of Omicron Covid variant
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/27/new-york-governor-covid-coronavirus-omicron-variant
‘merica!
Six injured after shooting at North Carolina mall sends Black Friday shoppers running in panic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/26/mall-shooting-black-friday/
Sprots!
LeBron James: Los Angeles Lakers forward fined $15,000 for ‘obscene gesture’ celebration
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/27/sport/lebron-james-fined-nba-la-lakers-spt-intl-duplicate/index.html
Stonks!
Black Friday shopping in stores drops 28% from pre-pandemic levels as shoppers spread spending throughout the season
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/27/black-friday-shopping-in-stores-drops-28percent-from-pre-pandemic-levels.html
Did anyone talk about this yet?!? #RIP
Stephen Sondheim: master craftsman who reinvented the musical dies aged 91
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/26/stephen-sondheim-composer-lyricist-musical-west-side-story-follies-company
Have a great day!
ohmygod there was a mass shooting in murica!
*checks news*
oh nobody died
nothing happened,,,really
thats what my news says…just another day ending in y
here…join me in my bouncathon!
Stephen Sondheim! A great loss. Some of my fellow Gothamites took the news of his death very hard:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/theater/stephen-sondheim-piano-bars-wakes.html
It may surprise you to learn that I have been to a few Sondheim productions on Broadway. Bernadette Peters in a revival of “Follies.” Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Lansbury in a revival of “A Little Night Music.” Others that I can’t remember. I’ve also been to the two piano bars mentioned in the “Times” article many, many times, and have friends who have given one-person performances at the Duplex, long may it reign.
Did you know that Stephen Sondheim was a next-door neighbor to Katharine Hepburn?
They lived in a little one-block-long townhouse (mostly) village bordered to the north by E. 49th Street, to the east bySecond Avenue (that’s the area where Kate and Stevie lived), to the south by East 48th Street, and to the west by Third Avenue. On East 48th Street lived Kurt Vonnegut and E. B. White. The backs of these East 49th St. and East 48th St. townhouses face a communal garden space in the interior of the block, so it’s possible, though not probable, given their prickly personalities, that all four might have been in the space at the same time.
Oh God, sorry, I didn’t realize what I thought would be a link would reproduce the whole post.
I enjoyed reading it, and had thought “wow, he went to a lot of trouble to post all this.” Ha!
Bit of coincidence: We watched Tick … Tick … BOOM! the night Sondheim died. There’s a voicemail (actually answering machine) message from him at the end that he actually recorded. An actor played him in the movie, of course — can’t expect a 91-year-old to play himself in the 1990s.
We watched Tick, Tick… BOOM! the evening before the news of his death broke, which was a weird feeling, especially as I wondered to myself briefly whether Sondheim was still alive or if he’d died in the last few years. I swear I’m not responsible, but my heart sank when I received the Times alert on my phone the next afternoon…
Bradley Whitford portrayed Sondheim well and subtly. Richard Kind as the other workshop panelist, Walter Bloom, was great as the sort of yes man foil to Sondheim’s eminence grise. And the cameo explosion during the “Sunday” diner number of living Broadway legends– including Joel Grey, André De Shields, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Bernadette Peters, Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera, and Rent original cast members Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia, amongst many more–was just the sort of thing that warms this musical theatre kid’s grinchy heart.
Fun historical context: Sondheim was a supporter of Larson’s work and talent, often writing him letters of recommendation along the way. He also was one of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s influences (along with Larson), who also saw the early cuts of this film and offered his thoughts. While largely supportive of his portrayal in the film, apparently Sondheim made an edit to his answer phone cameo: he told Miranda that he would never say something like “you have a bright future”, as appeared in the original dialogue, and asked, “May I rewrite it?”
Four way cage fight with tire irons between Katherine Hepburn, Stephen Sondheim, E.B. White and Kurt Vonnegut — who ya got?
Vonnegut was a WW II vet. White spent a lot of time working on his farm. Hepburn was feisty as hell, very athletic growing up. Sondheim… maybe the first to go?
Oh, if you ever heard any stories about Sondheim’s personal, especially romantic, life, I wouldn’t count him out.
I bet Vonnegut would triumph though. I used to work very close to that little village and Second Avenue had all the good, cheap lunch options. E. B. White was dead by the time I showed up but while walking east on E. 48th St. I ran into Vonnegut maybe half a dozen times. Resting bitch face doesn’t begin to describe it. I never saw Hepburn or Sondheim out wandering around, they probably had cars and drivers. Why Vonnegut, with his compete contempt for everyone and everything around him, spent so much time in public is anyone’s guess.
I say Sondheim, simply by happenstance of being youngest. Then Vonnegut, who would win otherwise, then Hepburn, then White (again, age factors heavily into this). And yet I am somewhat creating this scenario in which White, minus Strunk, critiques everyone’s use of grammar and style throughout the verbal spats.
Looks like LeBron got caught in his own hypocrisy.
here…have my patriotic bounce :!
(tbh…im not even a little bit patriotic….i am exceptionally bouncy tho…and generally difficult)
@keitelblacksmith
Is Meg ramping up for the Deadsplinter Xmas party?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/27/us/dulles-cbp-seize-bongs-trnd/index.html
Hey, we had a mall shooting too, can’t we get some Merica love?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/27/us/washington-state-tacoma-mall-shooting/index.html
Ahhh, I wish we could scandal like our neighbors to the north…
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7nnbm/wiarton-willie-canada-famous-groundhog-death-coverup
Speaking of Canada scandaling: while we had penny-ante Rachel Dolezal Canada has Carrie Bourassa:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/carrie-bourassa-indigenous-university-of-saskatchewan-academic-accused-of-faking-metis-heritage
This seems to be commonplace enough in Canada that it has spawned a slang term–“Pretendian“–to describe it. [Yes, I know the term “Indian” is not appropriate for Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous North American peoples, but this is the coinage going around, imperfect though it may be.]
I hear about it for writers claiming stronger First Nations ties than they can substantiate (Joseph Boyden, for example) and often in academia (in Bourassa’s case) and movement-centered spaces. Whether it’s a cynical ploy based on which route they perceive to be “easiest” in terms of funding and niche, or the result of genuinely living a life based on incomplete information, well…let’s not go there.
Not enough carnage and death to make the big leagues with that mall shooting.
Sounds like someone targeting a person they already knew or some hotheaded assholes who shouldn’t have pew-pew! fake penis toys who got mad at each other and it escalated. That’s typically what happens here with low-victim count mall shootings.
That mall has lots of gang issues. The fact they haven’t caught the shooter yet means nobody is talking for a reason,
Shhhh, it’s a surprise!
@megmegmcgee, please check in with us once you’re home from your 6 hour drive so we know you made it safely home!
I arrived, only took about 7 hours due to traffic. The cat cried the first two hours, and snoozed on and off the rest of the way. Happy to be home!