twiststreet

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Here is a lengthy (and in depth) twitter thread of a "Drama Researcher" investigating this story about a 1949 production of The Tempest from Tom Stoppard.

#shakespeare #drama research by dr headshot #apologies to people who can't view twitter threads #tom stoppard

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#pauline kael #prince

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"Cascade of bodycams beep on." (x)

#civilization is doomed #columbia university

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(!)

#baseball #dudes rock #always read the comments

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Kind of delighted hearing this baseball man (Eric Karros) react to Shohei Ohtani hitting a homerun really far. The way he sounds like he's had a religious experience, and starts just reading the name of the Los Angeles Dodgers off their jersey to try to avoid scaring the people listening about what he's going through. (X)

#shohei ohtani #that guy seems pretty good at baseball though

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This new IP is just what the graphic world needs right now.

Michael Bay promoting an upcoming 2025 Vault comic book based upon an idea from Post Malone, about a 18-wheeler fighting demons in medieval Europe.

#the graphic world #worst hobby or worstest hobby #exciting news from the world of not getting paid on time

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The Fall Guy was one of (many?) shows in the 80's that really excelled in "Having a Theme Song That Kind of Tells You Everything about What the Show's Vibe Is." The Fall Guy, Greatest American Hero, Facts of Life, arguably Growing Pains.

There are some good themes in the 70's-- Taxi and MASH, say-- but the ones in the 80's are just bigger and dumber, but not in some lame ironic way. Nowadays, you might get a Succession theme song (or I guess it's not recent anymore, but I think Portlandia was really smart to use that Washed Out song, but)-- usually it's not the same thing, though.

I couldn't tell you what happens in any episode of the Fall Guy -- except that all those shows basically had the same 10-15 stories that they'd cycle through. (A concert pianist is trying to hide the fact he's secretly a murderer, an ex-girlfriend who runs an art gallery and is too fancy now for the main character got greedy and has gotten mixed up with jewel thieves and doesn't see a way out, an art forger just wants to paint but he's being blackmailed by the ringmaster at a circus-- time to go undercover, an annoying young person likes to use the computer but then he saw something he shouldn't, etc.). (Kelsey Grammar was the homicidal concert pianist once in one of those shows-- he was really good at that role).

But I've had that theme song stuck in my head dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times. I remember that, I remember the main character's name because it's just a great TV name (Colt Seavers), and I remember how they exploited Heather Thomas in the opening credits, to the delight of me / America / me; "we used to make things in this country", etc. It was never as good as the opening credits, but it had a fun premise and I'd rather watch that one than Hunter or BJ & The Bear or Remington Steele. Simon & Simon was probably better, though, even though I was never really 1000% clear who those guys were. I mean, they were brothers, I think, but besides that. (And I remember really liking Scarecrow & Mrs. King).

They all kind of laid the track for the peak era of Moonlighting but then Moonlighting just went out in such a "blaze of glory" immediately after that peak era-- that show just blew up when you were watching it, it was wild...

This was one of those Ted Lasso people, right? I could never buy into that show-- Jason Sudekis is all bad vibes, and this lady's out there cramming domestic violence jokes into blockbusters as soon as she gets near-famous??? People selling Positivity and Kindness are just always so untrustworthy. I guess the suckers ate it up though and here we are...? Good job with all that kindness and positivity, you dopey fucking marks.

I want to see that movie-- I was kinda looking forward to it! I don't like the filmmakers (Bullet Train was a turd), but I like Ryan Gosling, I like Emily Blunt, and I like the fucking Fall Guy. And they pay it back by getting this spineless woman to do edgelord humor in a PG-13 action movie??? What the fuck is that? Irritating! (X)

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This was one of those Ted Lasso people, right? I could never buy into that show-- Jason Sudekis is all bad vibes, and this lady's out there cramming domestic violence jokes into blockbusters as soon as she gets near-famous??? People selling Positivity and Kindness are just always so untrustworthy. I guess the suckers ate it up though and here we are...? Good job with all that kindness and positivity, you dopey fucking marks.

I want to see that movie-- I was kinda looking forward to it! I don't like the filmmakers (Bullet Train was a turd), but I like Ryan Gosling, I like Emily Blunt, and I like the fucking Fall Guy. And they pay it back by getting this spineless woman to do edgelord humor in a PG-13 action movie??? What the fuck is that? Irritating! (X)

#hannah waddingham #the fall guy

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I think it's fun and cute to sometimes have opinions about politics, even though (or maybe because) I'm a huge Dumb Guy. I like the "no one can stop me from thinking this stupid-ass shit! America #1!!!" of it all. But right wing people (eg David Mamet) yelling about DEI's really a tough one for me because I can't remember what any of those letters stand for. I had an alcoholic beverage one time (jealous??), and I think that killed whatever brain cell could've possibly retained that information.

Diversity Entangled Integrity. Diverse Educational Initiatives. Doggone Economic Immigration.

I'm trying to remember what SHIELD stands for, and the Green Lantern oath, because those are real load-bearing walls for my "personality". But there's a limit-- some of us have aging brains that are loosing their grip on the past, and which we do not control, and that sometimes wake us up at 4:30am to "remember" the part in the Rocky Horror Picture Show where Susan Sarandon goes "Creature of the niiiiiight" 5000 times before we fall back asleep. I don't need David Mamet taxing me! Always be closing with a younger crowd, Mamet!

#our times are at their darkest

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History books didn't bring the kids shot at Kent State back to life, though. Those kids stayed dead. It's just a history book, not the Necronomicon. A history book maybe being written 20 years from now doesn't pause the bulldozer that the Biden White House and Jake Tapper and the Mayor and the complicit faculty are all driving over those kids' lives-- a history book doesn't result in a compensation fund. I don't know why the nerds think history is some kind of balm or ultimate reckoning. The power doesn't shift; the money stays the money; the house continues to win. Something's going in a history book? They let you write a book about anything anymore-- it doesn't matter; nobody reads.

People who tweet this kind of shit are all going to line up to vote for Joe Biden in November while babbling about the "lesser evil"-- I imagine that might go in those precious history books, too, somewhere in Chapter Two, after whatever ointment for their guilty conscience they think is going in Chapter One.

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Paul Scheer told a story on the Light the Fuse podcast once, about two parties he went to where Tom Cruise showed up. At the first party, Tom Cruise just stood in the center of the room and a line of people formed to talk to him, and Tom Cruise talked to each one at length, giving detailed career advice, one after another. At the second party, Tom Cruise was there to see one of his kids play music with their band, and Tom Cruise stood watching the band by himself, and no one went near him because it'd be futile, he was so locked in to watch the band.

Now: a third party. (X)

#tom cruise

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#naoki urasawa #i want to remember this for later #manga

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Oh hey: I watched that Fallout TV show-- a nice cast (except for the Michael Rappaport of it all), but besides that, it seemed extremely faithful to what I understand to be the #1 rule of the modern era of that game: "only Fallout New Vegas is any good, skip the rest".

I haven't played every game, but I've played a couple of the later ones. And this had all the stuff I recognize from the games i've played-- the kinds of characters, missions, etc., so I get why critics for whom that stuff is new have responded to it so kindly. It's a neat collection of stuff when you see it all pulled together into a TV show-- it's a fun "universe" aesthetically.

But since none of that is "new" to me, I don't have that feeling of novelty that the critics are getting. And I don't know if it's true to the earlier games, but I didn't like how in the show, they explain everything that you see on screen. They all but show you the Pipboy Bobbleheads getting manufactured, pre-war, to be like "see, this is where they came from." Walton Goggins might as well have talked about midichlorians. And then the whole show ends on an incredibly clumsily set-up cliffhanger which is like "let's go find some more exposition!!!"

It's fine when it's a show actually happening in front of you, Fallout people fighting monsters or creepy dudes, negotiating with factions, that part of those games-- they at least get the style of humor that the show needs to have about right and I like how episodes are kind of structured the way a Fallout mission is structured. But I think it's a loooot of Loredump: The Show the rest of the time. There are all these flashbacks to the pre-apocalypse which I especially don't dig, not what I signed up for, just to "explain things" that don't need explaining. And every single thing it explains is stuff I think is better being left to the audience's imagination.

It feels like a game for people who really loved reading the computer diaries in the Fallout games; that was their favorite part. There's seriously even a part in the season finale where Walton Goggins is like "I read this letter I found on a dead body that told me to come here and hit the square button to talk"-- who wanted them to adapt that kind of videogame logic??? Why are they adapting THAT?

#fallout

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Not me. I’m not stumped. I solved the mystery, using the elegant power of deduction.

#taylor swift #get on my level listeners

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Brain went down a rabbit-hole until I ended up googling "Sal Buscema inked by Bill Sienkiewicz."

Buscema was a traditional comic artist at the end of his career-- end of career can be a rough place to see a comic artist work (Simonson great still, but I think that's rare; it's not the era of Kirby's career I'd recommend, say, that final spate). And i wouldn't say I'm a big Sal Buscema fan, generally-- I mean, the opposite: I think he's usually uninspired, even in his prime (which are, what, Sin Eater and Secret Empire in Captain America?? I mean. Maybe I'm forgetting the "Good Stuff" but). I just don't think he's the good part of those stories; he's just sort of a guy who was around, for me.

But they paired him with Bill Sienkiewicz on Spectacular Spiderman in 1995--ish-- I think this after Big Numbers had fallen apart, maybe even after the Hendrix book was finished; basically, maybe not peak but near-peak Sienkiewicz.

1995 was at a time where comics were especially unforgiving to its veterans-- it's never great for the veterans, but I want to say this was around the same time Herb Trimpe couldn't find work and tried to reinvent as a Liefeld clone, to pretty ... I mean, not-celebrated results; Trimpe famously had a rough enough exit they wrote about it in the New York Times. So whoever was the editor really did something, finding a way to keep Sal Buscema in the mix, at a minimum.

Sienkiewicz brought the kineticism and nonsensical chaos to the linework the market demanded in 1995, and that Buscema couldn't do on his own-- Buscema kept Sienkiewicz on a set of rails and tethered to the Planet Earth and not spiraling out of control, that it sure seems like Sienkiewicz maybe still needs; his Wikipedia bio just sort of stops being interesting sometimes in the 90's. Just a real collission of styles, context, careers, biographies going on over in a mostly-forgotten Spectacular Spiderman run.

Sometimes wildly unsuccessfully! But sometimes you see bits that could be in any later/ "modern" comic-- the rendering on Doc Ock's face on this page feels very "current" to me; or there are other pages that almost look like early Jock. But the interesting thing is: I don't think of it as a "marriage of styles" at all, though. You can still see Sal Buscema's boring-ness on the page (and I'm sure people disagree but I think he's just a very boring artist), but then there's this emotionality to it that Sienkiewiciz is bringing that somehow makes it strange and memorable, more than successful.

This double page splash of Spiderman facing off villains-- it's basically boring! The composition is so perfunctory; the poses are all, you know, Great American Songbook superhero comic poses. It's just a boring splash. But then Sienkiewiciz is trying to wild out on it anyways-- I mean, what are even half of these lines?? Look at those lines at the bottom, where he's cutting into the silhouette of the edge of the subway platform! Look at those lines on the right and how they cut into the shadow of the girl's jacket. What the hell are those lines supposed to be doing?? They're crazy-- it's great.

Is it a great splash page? FUCK NO! I don't think it shakes off how rote it is-- it's just not cool. But it's at the same time... I think it's fun to look at?? I think this boring splash of Peter Parker is another good example. It's totally uninspired and totally alive, at the same time, on the same page. (Compare it to Sienkiewiciz and John Buscema and I mean... it's a very different thing!). Comic people talk about collaboration and the power of collaboration, but here, I don't think this is that. I don't think this is a "great collaboration" so much as like... When that album Night Ripper came out with all the mashup songs, Girl Talk or whatever, and it'd be fun to be like "Ahhhh, I know this song"...even when it was songs I didn't like. Because it was just presented in a way that I did like.

(Comic Art Fans has color guides for some of the pages from John Kalisz-- I can't imagine this page printed how it was intended, but).

Anyways, I had a whole thing I wanted to do today but instead I wrote this garbage for some dumb reason. I gotta rally, fuck. Anyways.

#worst hobby or worstest hobby

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#always read the comments #civilization is doomed