Today, We Are All Short-Fingered Vulgarians

Huzzah. I still have my originals from 91-97ish.

@ManchuCandidate: My Teri Garr through Pregnant Bruce Willis collection is in a drawer at the Ancestral Home. Next to high-school yearbooks that remain safe from human eyes.

Donald Trump reaches Peak Satire:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/donald-trump-if-i-were-elected-president-i-would-tax-other-countries.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmgcylAxjfY#t=3m45s

Secretly, I’m hoping this whole teabagger business is actually the result of a bunch of conservatives sitting around baked out of their minds watching Monty Python…

@al2o3cr: My favorite line from that?

“The problem with this country,” Trump continued, “is we have too much diplomacy. We have diplomats negotiating trade deals with Japan, with India, with Mexico, with China. And you know what a diplomat is? It’s somebody who is trained to be nice.”

No snark required.

@al2o3cr:
What happened to no taxation without Representation?

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One:
Strange for a guy who was old enough to go to Vietnam and didn’t.

YYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

@ManchuCandidate: The ‘baggers have dropped the “without representation” part.

You know when Cleese turns to Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda and says “You are a true vulgarian, aren’t you?” Thats Trump.

Lets put it this way, anyone who would ever describe something as “classy,” anyone who even has that word in their vocabulary such that they believe it to have a meaning, by definition, isn’t and cannot ever be that thing they believe that they are describing when they use the word “classy” (things like tasteful, elegant, and luxurious, appear to be what they are striving for).

Trump is the kind of guy who would spell Klassy with a K in his ads.

He is the epitome of “craptacular,” a word which I believe has found its highest and best use when describing Trump and anything he has anything to do with.

Excuse me, I ended a sentence with a preposition, a no no, I should have said ” . . .when describing Trump and anything he has anything to do with, bitches.”

@Prommie:
He is an utter arsehole. I saw a local TV ad of him extolling the virtues of success and selling it to rubes as a “seminar” of “success.”

He forgot to mention the 1st part of the plan:

Win the genetic lottery and get $100 million from Daddy.

Someone still has to explain to me what that thing on his head is. I mean, what is it? That’s why he could never be elected preznit right there. You can’t be preznit without a good head of hair. Weird beigey down-blow erections don’t count. No but really. What is it?

I saw Marla Maples once in the flesh (not all of it) and was amazed by how exquisitely beautiful she was. The best coloring since Robert Redford and an extreme elegance of bearing. I mean Audrey Hepburn elegant. Gorgeous. Did not photograph at all. Not unlike Peter Gallagher, a man so handsome paint peeled off the walls as he passed by.

Carry on.

BTW. I have just got what has been my dream job/obsession for 18 months now. I turned it down a year ago because terms were no good and now they’ve come back to me and it is so on.

@Benedick: Congratulations! Can you tell us what it is?

@Benedick: Tell us more about the job thingy.

A commission for a spectacular musical romance about love, sex, music, sex, revenge, regret, sex, adoration, genius, guilt, and really good clothes. This is stage one but I’m so excited. That it means a huge amount of work; reading; research; only adds to the overall awesomeness of it. Though it broke my heart, in a previous negotiation I turned it down over a copyright issue which has now been resolved. Hint: I own my copyrights. Only downside is that I could very well have to spend extended periods of time in Vienna. In cafes. Drinking mélange. Dining on wiener tofu. Going to the opera. The Belvedere. The Prater.

Plus. I fucking LOVE the idea. It wakes me up with the tingles in the middle of the night. I lie in bed talking to myself. Dogs kiss me. The OH complains. I get up and jump about. I post indiscreet messages on Stinque. I worry about noje, about who is doing his laundry and does he get enough exercise. And no, I won’t tell you what it is but one thing I promise now: – there will be no Happy Villagers! (note to Cyn: see the rare colon dash? You’re welcome)

Sidebar: The rest of the world is now producing the kind of theatre we used to have here in NYC. China is a major market for Rogers and Hammerstein. My producers will look east, Korea, China, Japan, etc. (I’ve already been produced in Kuala Lumpur). American artists are pissed on here but the rest of the world loves us.

@Benedick: Can we invest?

@Dodgerblue: Darling. It’s Vienna. They have state money. Plus box-office. No one invests. In NYC there would be 49 producers, aka trutafarians who need something to give them a reason to get out of bed before they slit their wrists for the 9th time to make the fucking attorney take them seriously. And such as.

@Benedick:
Congrats.

@Benedick: Well, OK then. Advance ticket sales? When I saw Sweeny Todd in NYC, my seats were so good that Michael Ceveris was spitting over my head.

@Dodgerblue: You did not see the original. It wasn’t very good. The production was so pompous it swamped the show. The set designer, Eugene Lee (SNL), aka Prince of Darkness, bought a factory in CT and had it shipped to the Minskoff even though it reduced to nonsense the world of the story: pre industrial revolution. The road show with George Hearne is much better. Lansbury, cunt of ages, is very good in both.

@Benedick: Indeed I did not. I have read reviews saying that the remake was much darker than the original, which was fine with me.

@Dodgerblue: We’ll talk.

@nojo: @ManchuCandidate: This is great news, as my originals went out with the moving van rubbish along with my collection of Mad when the ancestral home was shuttered.

Funny story: during my first extended overseas job, I got Spy through the diplomatic pouch. That raised some eyebrows among the already suspicious centromericanos.

@Benedick: My favorite production of Sweeney Todd was the one they did at the San Francisco Symphony in 2001, the “staged reading” with George Hearn, Patti Lupone and Neil Patrick Harris (before I had to content myself with the filmed PBS version, from a D.C. production, I think, with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury). Seeing it stripped down- no set, no costumes to speak of, minimal blocking- made me realize how grafted on the set and costuming was. Completely unnecessary, and a distraction. They used red scarves for blood in this version and the result was direct and relentless. Patti Lupone was fun, too- played the Loveitt part for sex appeal, which works startlingly well, even for someone used to Lansbury’s creepy grandma version.

@Nabisco: NojoBro, passing through his Fundie Phase, threatened to ditch my collection of Mad. Over my Dead Heathen Body, I informed the Parental Units.

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One:
Am I too old to bone
Patti Lupone.

@Dodgerblue:

Perhaps you are, as you bemoan,
But can this fact be shown,
‘Till you get her alone?

Ah! THERE is the touchstone.
For boning Ms. Lupone.
That is, getting her, alone-
The rest is all hormones,
In boning La Lupone.

@Dodgerblue: @Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: Or we can all get stone(d).

@SanFranLefty: Chainsaw report?

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: Lansbury was wonderful. The Broadway set, infamous in its day for its complexity, really got in the way. Plus it was the wrong period.

Re-reading Naked City and the Letters column from December 1988 is a frightening journey into just how much I’ve internalized.

@nojo:
i credit/blame MAD/SPY for corrupting my innocence.

@Benedick:
oooh, you thrill me when you talk broadway….mazel on the gig!
also, that thing on his head? i just want to know if it’s combed forward or backward. and if you put a peanut near it, will it sit up and beg?

@baked: Exactly. Does it descend or rise? How is it attached and to what? Does he keep it on a nightstand? Does it have a lace front? Does it fetch? Has he bred it?

BTW. Pug doom has been averted. I can breathe a sigh of relief.

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: I always hated it when that bunch of assholes kept coming forward to sing Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd… . It always makes me want to shout Fuck off! at the stage. I have a similar reaction at Cyrano, a play I detest with every fibre of my being, when they do the hateful We are the Gascony cadets… routine. Ugh! Fech! Blech! The Sweeney movie scored major points with me because they cut all that crap.

@nojo: Dude, you totally repurposed the Spy ethos on this “silly little blog”. There are days when I check in thinking “wonder what’s going on in the virtual Puck Building?”

@baked: That kind of “literature” cannot corrupt. I thought about getting Jr. the entire Mad collection (which is out on DVD) for Xmas, and still might do so for his birthday. He latched on to “Spy Vs. Spy” at the tender age of 8.