Justin Sherin

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this is well said

My newest niece was born several weeks early for health reasons & has looked pissed the fuck off about it ever since

The second time I met him I made clear I knew his plays & his decent-if-guarded manner changed immediately

Wally realised at an early age his plays would never be palatable to people. He’s glad of this in a way - it set him free - but in my experience he assumes just about everybody wants to talk Princess Bride until proven otherwise, & he can sometimes be impatient with this..

Wally may disagree 🙄🤪

My first experience with Relaxium was during the War, about 1944 or 1945. I had made the acquaintance of man named O'Reilly, who was working in a shipyard at the time. O'Reilly was the kind of Irish to beat his wife to death then sob over the body. He looked like Leslie Nielsen, but taller.

Voted for Mamdani. No clue if he'll succeed. 20% of what he promises would improve on standing still, though. Two things strike me - I've never voted for anybody where I feel like they'd give me a fair hearing if I ran into them at the deli, & New Yorkers of all sorts seem glad to see him.

Biffo gets absolutely ROASTED by his own pet budgie right in front of Buster. BUDGIE: The reason I won't talk is that my name is Fred, and that bear-faced buffoon keeps calling me "Pretty Joey"! Chirp! BIFFO: Gasp!

Beano #1489, Jan 30, 1971

you, sir, win the internet for t--wait

The "Beano" Artist propositions Biffo about his Auntie, and Biffo instantly agrees. THE "BEANO" ARTIST: Biffo, do you think your Auntie... Whisper, whisper... BIFFO: Sure!

Beano #2288, May 24, 1986

this is an excellent point

Fred Schneider just came up - god I love him - & I remembered how he came out to his mother.

He agonised then finally did it while she was vacuuming.

She said, 'Oh, I know, Freddie,' & continued vacuuming.

Fred, nonplussed, thought, 'Well, I guess I'll go smoke some pot.'

At work I spoke to Malkovich on the phone once. Just for a minute. He had perfect old-world manners & was quite nice to me. I felt unnerved anyway & not because he's famous.

Biffo gets a new job working at the Lost Property Office. The Lost Property on display includes a cactus, a taxidermied deer head, a small, depressed child, and an elephant. BIFFO: I've got a new job.

Beano #2129, May 7, 1983

right, exactly

There's no sense in his work of an artist obsessed with something or trying to work things out. That doesn't have to mean dark or esoteric, either. Ayckbourn is obsessed with a lot of things.

Privilege is no barrier to good art. Sondheim went to George School. But LMM seems to be the picture of what's everywhere now - well-off people who work in the theatre merely because they like it. His default mode is to celebrate things. In the Heights works because that was his neighborhood.

Whenever Jackie Robinson spoke about the early days, Carl Erskine's goodness to him always came up. As I recall Robinson lent a hand to Erskine's disabled advocacy. bsky.app/profile/asin...

Its creator is a talented fellow who seemingly has little to say, & now that he's world-famous has become a sort of cheerful, nonsectarian cheerleader for the theatre - which is fair enough, but different than Sondheim, who used his power (not a drop on LMM's) to champion the new, different, & weird

It attempts & often succeeds with interesting techniques. It's daring within its limited commercial realm. It hopefully inspires people that wouldn't go to, work in, or see themselves in the theatre. Like many musicals it's limited & trite. It bores me to death & has no application to real life.

I remember going to get Agent Running in the Field & opening it on the subway. I read the first page & one writer to another sat dumbfounded. Because it's all there, the really specific world, the character, a sense of dread, spare, musical, lucid without ever calling attention to itself.

Oh, yeah. The film is a remarkable synthesis - it shows that brutal, deadening world with remarkable economy - but TV lets you live in it, you end up feeling to an extent how they must feel.

No no I didn't assume you did, just nattering on

- that part of Guinness's appeal, great as he is, is that he's avuncular. And in a story about how loyalty the necessary-yet-destructive nature of loyalty even a drop of warmth can upset the balance. In Oldman I think you see that guy used to exist.

I get it - I love the BBC version, and as you say it really IS the book - but Oldman being buttoned-down hard is what does it for me. You see within that he's hollowed-out, he's done terrible things. As the review says some of this is context, it's more correct for '11. But you can't lose the fact -

- mistake. Ducking the hit has the Firm under its worst threat in 30 years.

The late Queen’s weakness was conflict. She didn’t like it, & being Queen it’s not like she had practice. The work she did w abuse victims meant something to her, & she understood Andrew was a liability. But she tried to sideline & insulate him at once. For a great politician it was a terrible -

Please my spelling and typos are getting worse 🤪

That’s a good way to put it