Tim Carvell

The biggest danger to me looks like the whole hoop stand tumbling over and killing someone, and I hope that’s what the case is about. I hope The Lincoln Lawyer walks in and is like “my assistant must’ve written this down wrong because it says ‘reckless hoop manslaughter’ and—wait no got it.”

It’s the perennial question: Was this edited heavily and you have no idea how bad the first draft was? Or not edited at all out of spite?

(I forgot the alt text but it’s just that it was a RICO case.)

Maybe it didn’t show up because you muted a certain term?

Scanning the backgrounds to see if you can spot a pile of Zosia Mamet’s hair.

Every sentence here is even crazier than the last.

I have literally been refreshing since I saw it dropped, knowing someone would take the hit, pay for and read it.

Yup! That sequence aside, it’s genuinely striking how often the team is chopped up and we intercut between multiple rooms, even for basic exposition. It’s like the “Arrested Development” season where the actors were never all available at once.

“It’s dark and hard to follow but at least it’s taking a while.”

(starting the final “Mission: Impossible”)
“I know he’s gotta go and get a thing from a submarine now but I don’t really remember exactly why.”

(30 minutes of dense plot recap later)
“To be clear, I wasn’t complaining.”

(20 more minutes later)
“Oh good, we’re finally going to the submarine.”

Putting up the Christmas lights for 32 days BECAUSE WE CAN.

Yeah, I can see it intellectually, I just think it’s lousy rhetorically, even before you get to the easy comebacks from the other side, from “they think of you as being on the FLOOR” to “you know what we need instead of floors and ceilings? WALLS.”

(It’s not a mistake that Zohran won by pivoting every conversation away from the extremes of wealth and back toward affordability, city services and red tape — stuff everyone deals with. And it says something about Jeffries that he still doesn’t seem to know why that was so compelling to people.)

At the risk of going all Thomas Friedman here, before last year’s election a cab driver complained to me that Democrats only care about the very rich and the very poor, and not about people like him. I’m not saying he was right, but I am saying that’s exactly what “strong floors no ceiling” does.

Its merits as a policy touchstone aside, I feel like the issue with it as a slogan is, it’s making promises about conditions for those at the bottom and those at the top and ignoring those who are struggling in the middle.

The very narrowest New York moment I had like this was seeing “Six Degrees of Separation” at the Waverly Twin in the Village, and at a certain point Will Smith calls Stockard Channing and tells her he’s at a pay phone in front of… the Waverly Twin. Like we could go outside and find him.

This is like if Coach Taylor had gone with “Clear Eyes Full Hearts Cover the Spread”.

Around the time of “Call Me By Your Name” he seemed to be physically becoming Robin Williams in Serious Actor mode. Maybe these are his Pokémon evolutions.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Learning from Stoppard By Mike Fitzgerald, June 13, 2016 Comparing two drafts of a script can be hugely instructive, revealing point-by-point how a writer went about improving the story. When I stumbled upon an earlier draft of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I discovered a dazzling, glittering trove of lessons as nourishing as eternal life itself. Well, nearly so. Last Crusade was written by Jeffrey Boam, from a story by George Lucas and Menno Meyjes. So say the opening credits. Boam’s final draft, dated March 1, 1988 (ten weeks before production) differs drastically from the published script which reflects the released version of the film. Differences come as no shock, but with Last Crusade they aren’t just a few deleted scenes and some line changes. Whole sections of the Boam draft were reimagined, major set pieces were added, and the pacing and tone were markedly transformed. Whoever made these changes possessed a profound grasp of story craft. Screenshot from https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-learning-from-stoppard/

Nine years ago Mike Fitzgerald wrote up an extraordinarily fascinating breakdown of the differences between the Tom Stoppard shooting script and the original Jeffrey Boam draft of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

It's well worth your time: www.creativescreenwriting.com/indiana-jone...

One predicaments Julia touches on here: IDEA remains an unfulfilled promise, the government has never fully funded it. And yet, it is constantly under assault. So advocates are always torn between defending the status quo and wanting to grow it.

Today is the anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Not only did the law literally open doors to countless students with disabilities (myself included), it also had the unintended consequence of creating the moral panic around an autism "epidemic." 🧵 1/

I’m assuming you’ve read Crook Manifesto? It’s also very good!

(I’m realizing you want something likely to be in stock and I’m guessing Carter is less likely to be, inasmuch as it’s now 20+ years old.)

My go-to recommendation in this scenario is Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil but if you want something more recent there’s Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys or (if you want something less emotionally devastating) Harlem Shuffle.

The Curse of the Diaeresis

I regret to inform you it’s a diaeresis and it’s a longstanding affectation at The New Yorker.

It’s by no means the biggest issue with any of this but to save you from clicking through and reading the review, it’s kind of mixed-to-positive on the standup and even less enthusiastic about the book, making it even more of a question of “why did you cover this at all?”

an ad for the new series “welcome to derry” with the tagline “go back to where IT all began“, except somehow, they highlighted the word “to“ instead of “it“

"oh, don't forget to highlight, in bright red, the two-letter word in the tagline! the two letter word that's kind of the whole point of this clever ad campaign! the two letter word that links this show to the horror movie of the same name!"

"no problem boss. i'm on it"

Rian Johnson Is an Agatha Christie for the Netflix Age The director revived the cozy mystery with “Knives Out.” In a new sequel, can he find his way to the end of the maze?

I haven’t seen it yet but I really appreciated the way he talked about his upbringing in the New Yorker profile, which gave me a sense this was going to be smart and thoughtful about faith.

YouTube video by The Free Press Alan Dershowitz vs. Dana Loesch Debate: Gun Control.

The one semi-heartening thing is that, despite her belief that this is programming for the vast, underserved middle, nobody wants this. The full video has just over 8,000 views after four days.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=lwks...

Stoppard always feels clever in a way that so so many writers mimic, but everyone else copies the surface. the Stoppard magic is that the cleverness is impossibly thin, basically transparent, and there’s this unending well of feeling on the other side

My working assumption is that he just couldn’t handle being asked one more time if he’d seen “Hamnet” yet.