While playing Netflix Stream of Consciousness over the weekend, we landed on the PBS broadcast of the 2006 revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. If, like us, you’re totally unfamiliar with it, the premise is simple: all the married friends of a 35-year-old bachelor are badgering him to tie the knot.

The revival staging is very sophisticated — the actors all double as musicians — which befits the intended sophistication of the show itself. But right from the start, there is, for us at least, a curious disconnect:

What’s so unusual about a 35-year-old bachelor?

We suspect this was not a question anybody asked in 1970, when Company debuted. That same year would see the premiere of another culturally groundbreaking sophisticated comedy, featuring a career-minded 30-year-old woman who was neither married, a widow, nor even in a steady relationship, with a spunky habit of tossing her hat in a busy Minneapolis intersection. Times were changing.

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Title: “Reading Mastery – Level 2 Storybook 1”

Authors: Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner

Rank: 63,614

Blurb: “The book is part of the 31 volume Reading Mastery series published by the SRA Macmillan early-childhood education division of McGraw-Hill. It uses the Direct Instruction (DI) teaching method, which was originally developed by Engelmann and Wesley C. Becker.”

Review: “This is the stuff that makes great men so great. Should be required reading for leaders of men. Presidential material. I found it so rich and powerful that I had to take seven minutes to reflect and decide what to do next.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion”, by Matt Taibbi

Footnote: It’s the only 9/11 book you’ll ever need.

Reading Mastery [Fuck Amazon]

Oscar-winning actor Cliff Robertson dies at 88 [LAT]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHCh_bARGo

[via Comics Alliance]

“No Ponzi scheme in the history of the world has ever lasted 75 years. Ponzi schemes depend on garnering an ever-increasing pool of new investors to pay out returns to prior investors. When the potential pool of new investors runs dry, they collapse. This will occur when the scheme runs up against the natural limits of its recruitment strategy; in the ultimate case, it can’t keep going past the point where the entire population is already subscribed.” [The Economist, via Daring Fireball]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1v9uZuaed4

Jon Huntsman uses a Visual Sport Metaphor in his new attack ad against Mitt Romney. Can you identify the Rookie Error?

[via Baseball Researcher]

“U.S. authorities are scrambling to sort through information that the CIA developed in the past 24 hours indicating that at least three individuals entered the U.S. in August by air with the intent to launch a vehicle-borne attack against Washington, D.C. or New York around the anniversary of 9/11, according to intelligence officials.” [ABC]