Nathan Alderman

All hail @crenshaw-dev.bsky.social, king of the Crozet-civic-life livetweeters.

When you exit the door at the end of this hallway, you end up briefly piloting John Malkovich.

I feel like choosing who makes your drone motors based on the strict criteria of "will it enrich the President's son" is how you turn our military into the Russian military, effectiveness-wise.

Judy Holliday is tremendous in this movie, and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are hotter for each other than Pitt and Jolie in MR. & MRS. SMITH could ever dream of.

I like everything about my new job except its insistence on not putting spaces on either side of an emdash.

WHAT BARBARISM IS THIS

... They support the Oxford comma, though, so it's not a dealbreaker.

Confederate statues from Charlottesville get a contemporary twist in L.A. - C-VILLE Weekly Confederate statues have roiled Charlottesville since at least 2016, when Charlottesville High School student Zyahna Bryant petitioned City Council to remove them, a request that culminated in 2017’s ...

Charlottesville “was the only municipality that called for RFPs that mandated a ‘transformation, not further veneration,’ of the Lost Cause icons, he points out.

“The statues were toxic after Unite the Right,” says Walker. “The link between Confederate statues and white supremacy was explicit.”

How, pray tell, does one actively continue a drug mission when your ship is destroyed and you're in the water?

Instructions for opting out of political spam texts:

1. Throw your phone into an active volcano.

2. Erase your fingerprints. Fake your death. Live in the woods. You’re a raccoon now. Keep telling yourself that until you believe it.

THE NEVERS was … well, it certainly was a TV show. But she shows up for one part of one episode and just crushes everything in her path.

“Claudia Black—“

Aaaaaand I’m sold.

This sort of thing works pretty well for the stock market, but only in aggregate over the long term. In the short term? Woof. And to essentially tie gambling to the news? Double woof.

“You remember that old show, starred the kid with the gland thing who never grew up?”

“Think so, yeah.”

“Well, she wants to kidnap her old costars.”

“Like a reunion show thing?”

“I guess. I dunno. These guys are all nuts. But it pays time and a half.”

“Ooh, nice.”

I feel like a robust Wayne Industries jobs program would be Batman’s best crimefighting tool, because people in Gotham will do ANYTHING for money, apparently.

“Hey, Frank, what you up to tonight?”

“Eh, reptile man in a trench coat wants to knock over a safe. You?”

When all you have is a pile of money, everything looks like tax cuts.

Good to know I can save on my taxes after I go broke.

Building on the enthusiasm and infrastructure you've developed for a candidate after they win, to help them enact their policies, seems like a pretty smart idea.

I kinda wonder whether the fact that Baby-Doll never really took off in the comics comes from how essential that vocal performance is to her character. Even with that great standout way of speaking, and the nifty high concept, it's the WAY she says what she says that makes her work.

LaPlaca's Baby voice walks that perfect line between being crazy/menacing, and just an absolute snotty little jerk. But she knows when to let the person behind the act leak through, even there. And when the act drops, and she speaks as Mary? Breaks your dang heart.

Most of the show's villains don't have really distinctive speech patterns. (You've got Harley's gun-moll banter, Penguin's faux erudition, Scarface's ego-driven malapropisms.) They get their character from their performers. Paul Dini gives Baby a singular way of speaking, and LaPlaca RUNS with it.

Rewatching BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES with my kids, and I feel like we don't give Alison LaPlaca enough credit for her turn as Baby-Doll. She uses her voice so skillfully -- not just in the gap between Mary Dahl's own voice and Baby's, but in how Baby's performing, and for whom, with every line.

Is that illustrating Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher"?

This seems intriguing, but I need more evidence. The story says Rubio's doing this to please Venezuelan exiles, but doesn't name names or elaborate on any connections between these folks and Rubio.

On the commentary for THUNDERBOLTS -- the best Marvel movie in a long time -- director Jake Schrier talks about trying to make sure as many elements as possible in the frame were real, even if they had to use CGI for parts of it, because our brains can distinguish between the two.

I must have missed the part where American health care has clear, easy to understand, up-front pricing that would allow this kind of shopping around. Different hospitals negotiate different rates with different insurers! And you don't always get to choose your insurer!

You could lose Tom Bombadil, all of him, every word, easy. Also all of the songs. Alllllllll of them.

“Have Yourself A Merriam Little Christmas”

Merriam, a career-oriented lexicographer from the city, returns to her small town for the holidays and meets Webster, a ruggedly handsome librarian, who shows her the true DEFINITION of Christmas.

Charlottesville folks! Noticed bad cell reception on 29, especially south of the bypass? Kindly DM me if you’d like to tell me more. Working on a story for @cvilleweekly.bsky.social.

Not sure why my laptop camera has the "make him look like he just drank from the wrong Holy Grail" filter turned on by default, but I wish I could figure out how to switch it off.

It's been a good while since I visited (in the summer), but I found it a lovely, friendly, walkable place. I especially enjoyed all the beautiful and often whimsical public art. A++, would visit again.