Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I really should read my own blog.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

He really is that stupid.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

You are here: Home / Music / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Art Isn’t Easy…

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Art Isn’t Easy…

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If you (or someone in your life) is just a *little* curious about that Sondheim guy we’re mourning — Putting It Together is an hour-long reimagining of some of his songs, done by five gifted performers, at least one or two of whom practically everybody will have heard (Dr. Who fans, represent!). It’s streaming on Amazon Prime, and there are chunks of it all over YouTube.

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62Comments

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    Heh. Perusing the offerings of some rarely visited free streaming channels on the Roku to scope out anything they may be offering which is newly added, found that one of them demonstrates a sense of humor.

    Included in the grid is a category listing disaster flicks. In the spirit of this week’s holiday it’s been titled “Thankful You’re Not There.”

    ;)

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    @raven

    The headline sums it up: Perfectionist. Genius. Icon. That was Stephen Sondheim.

    In 2010, the year he turned 80, Stephen Sondheim had to endure a public fuss when a Broadway theater was being renamed in his honor.

    At a ceremony outside the 1,055-seat auditorium on West 43rd Street, the composer looked sheepish by the time he got to the podium following gushing words from admirers that included Patti LuPone and Nathan Lane. He also offered up a window into his psyche.

    “I’m thrilled, but deeply embarrassed,” he said, tearing up as a mid-September sun fell over the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. “I’ve always hated my last name. It just doesn’t sing.”

  8. 8.

    mali muso

    Good morning everyone!
    The 5 year old is busy writing her first “letter to Santa” and asking for my help in spelling each word. My heart!

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I’s a proud Miserian this morning:

    By mid-afternoon on Saturday, a fundraiser for a man who spent 43 years in prison before a judge in Missouri this week overturned his conviction in a triple murder had raised more than $1.4m. The Midwest Innocence Project set up the GoFundMe page as it fought for the release of Kevin Strickland, 62, noting that he would not receive compensation from the state and would need help paying basic living expenses while struggling with extensive health problems.

    Aha, the real reason they let him go: Healthcare is expensive.

    Missouri only allows wrongful imprisonment payments to people exonerated through DNA evidence. James Welsh, a retired Missouri court of appeals judge, ordered Strickland’s release on Tuesday, finding that evidence used to convict him had been recanted or disproven.

    Well of course we cheapskate Miserians only pay off when DNA is involved. As Strickland’s attorney herself said, “The vast majority of folks who are exonerated are exonerated through non-DNA evidence, and the vast majority of crimes do not involve DNA at all,” Bushnell said. “So what we see in Missouri is [that] folks get home and they are provided nothing.” If we paid off everybody wrongly convicted, we’d have to raise taxes or something. This is just fiscal responsibility!

    Besides, we provided, room, board, clothing, healthcare, educational opportunities, a steady job, etc. for 43 years. What more do they want?

    Strickland has always maintained that he was home watching television and had nothing to do with the killings, which happened in Kansas City in 1978, when he was 18. The key witness, a survivor of the shooting, tried for years to recant her testimony, saying she had been pressured by police. No physical evidence tied Strickland to the crime scene. Prints on the shotgun used were not his. Family members provided alibis, and two men convicted in the killings of Sherrie Black, 22, Larry Ingram, 21, and John Walker, 20, said Strickland was not present.

    That’s his own damn fault for not having a better alibi and better alibi witnesses. A white person knows this!

    Having been imprisoned for his entire adult life, Strickland has no savings or ability to show work history for social security entitlements. As he left the Western Missouri correctional center in Cameron this week, he said he was “thankful for God walking me through this for 43 years”.

    “I’m not necessarily angry,” he told reporters. “It’s a lot. I think I’ve created emotions that you all don’t know about just yet. Joy, sorrow, fear. I am trying to figure out how to put them together.”

    Speaking seriously, I can not imagine his sorrow at all that he has lost, nor the fear he feels as he faces an unimaginable future he is in no way prepared for.

    His GoFundMe page.

  15. 15.

    Eural Joiner

    Just wanted to jump in and recommend the “Get Back” series on Disney+ – I’m a casual Beatles fan (own a few albums, know their greatest hits, etc.), but, dang, I never really picked up on the personalities. Yes, it is a marathon (each episode is around 2.5 hours) but even the insanely silly segments of them just goofing around are enlightening on so many levels. I was going to post a paragraph of thoughts but I think I’ll say just give it a go…in bits and pieces or as background to dive in and out of. Remarkable.
    (OK – some random surprises: Sir Paul is a beast of a musician way beyond what I gave him credit for, Paul/John chemistry is unbelievable, poor George – the younger brother no one gives enough credit to, the death of Brian Epstein is what did in the band, not Yoko, holy crap…they were in their late 20s in 1969!!!!, holy crap #2…after this amazing creation comes Abbey Road much of which you hear being composed on the riff during these sessions :O

  17. 17.

    oatler

    Holy cow, Tate Reeves is on MTP and Chuck Todd is ABSORBING his shit. Bonus, the”panel” includes a stooge from the AEI.

  18. 18.

    germy

    Went Daytona Beach to see the statue of Mary McLeod Bethune that is heading to Statuary Hall on Capital Hill. It is carved by a Puerto Rican master sculptor from the last piece of marble from the quarry where Michelangelo got the stone to carve his David. It’s stunning. pic.twitter.com/AH1ZUv1NWT

    — noliwe rooks (@nrookie) November 28, 2021

  21. 21.

    germy

    @Eural Joiner:

    Paul McCartney = managing editor who does all the work and annoys everyone

    John Lennon = writer at large who does very little actual writing but goddamnit when he does…

    George Harrison = freshly unionized staff writer

    Ringo Starr = underpaid social media guy

    — Summer Anne Burton (@summeranne) November 27, 2021

    Billy Preston = freelancer whose immaculate first drafts bring tears to your eyes yet for some reason they’re never hired

    — Summer Anne Burton (@summeranne) November 27, 2021

  27. 27.

    zhena gogolia

    @Eural Joiner: Your advice to watch in bits and pieces is wise. We sat down planning to watch Part 1, but we bailed after 33 minutes. Nevertheless, I am going to watch the whole thing bit by bit. It’s just kind of wearing as a sustained experience. Like The Hobbit.

  33. 33.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    In addition to being a musical genius, what truly impresses me about Stephen Sondheim is that, by all accounts, he was a genuinely nice guy.  Given that so many supremely gifted artists have been pricks who treated even their friends like dirt, it’s refreshing to see that someone can be a great artist and a great human being as well.

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy: I don’t dare say that to my barber. She* just might cut off my head.

    *my barber is my wife. mighty brave of me, I know.

  35. 35.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Missouri only allows wrongful imprisonment payments to people exonerated through DNA evidence. James Welsh, a retired Missouri court of appeals judge, ordered Strickland’s release on Tuesday, finding that evidence used to convict him had been recanted or disproven.

    Disgusting BS. That should be unconstitutional

    Besides, we provided, room, board, clothing, healthcare, educational opportunities, a steady job, etc. for 43 years. What more do they want?

    That attitude has always killed me. I always want to say to somebody who actually says that, “If prison is such a great deal, then why don’t you go there?”

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: One Xmas day in Palma Mallorca, I made a morning of it in a nearby graveyard. Some of the marble I saw there rivals that. I almost overloaded the chip in my camera.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Tony Jay bait: Brexit leaves EU-bound Christmas presents out in the cold

    People preparing to send Christmas parcels to family and friends in Europe face being caught out by post-Brexit red tape and charges that threaten to take some of the joy out of gift-giving.

    A warning has also been sounded that some of those who have sent gifts to the EU this year have encountered problems ranging from delays and unexpected charges to items going missing.

    This will be the first time most people have encountered rules that came in this year relating to VAT and customs charges applying to items being posted to the EU.

    The consumer organisation Which? told the Observer that its research indicates the vast majority of people know little or nothing about the new rules. “The changes brought about by Brexit have created a greater burden of customs paperwork for consumers and couriers alike,” said Adam French, Which? consumer rights expert. “You now have to attach customs declaration forms to anything you send, very clearly describing what it is and where it has originated from.”

    Brexiteers hate Christmas. Who’da thunk it?

  40. 40.

    oldster

    Ruthie Henshaw — wow. Why have I not heard of her before?

    I don’t have ways to stream, but I am catching bits of the new Beatles documentary on YouTube, and it is indeed a revelation. John is a bastard to George — so aggressively undermining. But at other times, John is so incredibly upbeat, chipper, and perky. Having fun and being fun for others. My own impression was that by this stage in their careers, he had settled into being a humorless scold. Not even close to true.

    And yes, they are all heart-breakingly young. It’s hard to believe that they were that age and doing those things. At that age, I … wasn’t.

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread: Science:

    ‘Patience is crucial’: Why we won’t know for weeks how dangerous Omicron is
    Lab tests and patterns of spread will show whether the new SARS-CoV-2 variant’s many mutations are a serious threat

    27 NOV 20214:35 PM BY KAI KUPFERSCHMIDT

    Passengers with luggage carts waiting in an airport terminal.
    Passengers wait for an Air France flight to Paris at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 26 November. Many countries have halted air travel from southern Africa to slow the spread of the Omicron variant. AP PHOTO/JEROME DELAY

    At 7.30 a.m. on Wednesday, Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at Scripps Research in San Diego, received a message on Slack: “This variant is completely insane.” Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh was reacting to a new SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence found in three samples collected in Botswana on 11 November and one picked up a week later in a traveler from South Africa to Hong Kong.

    Andersen looked at the data and then replied: “Holy shit—that is quite something. The length of that branch…” A few minutes later he added: “Just had a look at the list of mutations—so nuts.”

    They were talking about what is now called Omicron, a new variant of concern, and the long branch Andersen noticed refers to its distance to every other known virus on SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary tree. The variant seemed to have picked up dozens of mutations, many of them known to be important in evading immunity or increasing transmissibility, with no intermediate sequences in the database of millions of viral genomes. On Tuesday, after spotting the odd sequences in a global database, Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, had already posted his own verdict on GitHub: “This could be of real concern.”

    […]

    A good summary of where we are now, and how we need to know more (which will take time).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    Man, ya’ll REALLY liked this guy.

    Sondheim had a huge impact on musicals and musical theater. And the introductory remarks here are spot on. I am not a huge musical theater person, but over the years I would make a mental note when I heard an actor or actress I knew from something completely unrelated talk about doing some theatrical thing involving Sondheim. They would often talk about this with a sense of reverence or gratitude. No matter how much fame they had achieved, this mattered to them.

    It’s not too often that the life and work of any individual has such an impact.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    This will be the first time most people have encountered rules that came in this year relating to VAT and customs charges applying to items being posted to the EU.

    And of course these are NOT new rules. These are rules that apply to countries that are not in the single market and customs union.

    BREXIT is the anti-gift that keeps on taking. BREXIT supporters bought the lie that leaving the EU would be good for them and that nothing would ever ever change, and if anything did change it would always favor Britain.

    It is astounding to note the degree to which Bexiteers fell for and cling to bullshit.

  47. 47.

    James E Powell

    @Eural Joiner: 

    There’s a moment at the beginning of Part II when Paul, Linda, Ringo, Neil Aspinall, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and a few others are sitting around talking about John & Yoko. The issue isn’t Yoko, it’s John being way more interested in her than in the band. Paul says let the two young lovers be, but notes that they might need a daddy figure to tell all them, at times, to leave the girls at home. (Linda is sitting next to him when he says that.) Paul says that if it was a push between Yoko or the Beatles, John would take Yoko, and then he remarks:

    But it’s gonna be such an incredible sort of comical thing, like, in 50 years time. ‘They broke up ’cause Yoko sat on an amp.’

    Well, Paul, here we are.

    Another thing. I was in bar bands. Minor leagues, I know. But everything I’ve seen in this that is presented as evidence of deep divisions and irreconcilable conflicts is familiar. People telling others how they should play something, frustration with band hierarchy, people wasting time, showing up late, girlfriends, caustic remarks, nasty looks, eye-rolling, constantly asking ourselves, “Is this worth it?” and tedium of trying to get a song right. We had a bass player who walked out of practice and quit because the other guitar player & I were “always using big words to make him feel stupid.” All that bullshit was present at the bar band level and may just be a normal part of being in a band. The Beatles, of course, had the added tension of business relations with each other and with outsiders.

    Dick James also appears in the film and he is bright & happy and there is no sign that two months later he is going to completely fuck over John & Paul by selling his shares in Northern Songs without telling them or giving them a chance to buy him out.

    “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

    ― Hunter S. Thompson

  49. 49.

    Eural Joiner

    @James E Powell: yes, great scene!

    Again, as a casual fan I always thought of John as deeply serious and artsy (turns out he’s a silly goofball most of the time), Yoko as this witch manipulating things (turns out she just hangs around kinda lost most of the time), and Paul as the shallow pop celebrity (turns out he’s working damn hard and is shockingly talented).

  50. 50.

    Brachiator

    @James E Powell:

    All that bullshit was present at the bar band level and may just be a normal part of being in a band. The Beatles, of course, had the added tension of business relations with each other and with outsiders.

    Very insightful comments. I have only watched some YouTube clips. These have been fascinating. I get the sense that a lot of what happens in the studio would appear to be very boring and tedious to outsiders and casual observers. But I also catch moments where John and Paul look at each other with a look that says “that’s it!” even though not much seems to be happening.

    And I suppose other musicians might have a different perspective on this. I recall anecdotes of other famous, talented rock artists talking about sneaking by or visiting the studios when the Beatles were working on an album and being dazzled by the creativity. And yet some of this seems almost workaday and humdrum.

    And yet we know the good music that came out of this.

    ETA. Just love that Hunter S Thompson bit.

  51. 51.

    Yutsano

    Umm…I may have missed it but I didn’t see much discussion of Pat Leahy retiring. I mean it’s Vermont so I’m not too worried but their popular Republican governor is also not running. Am I slightly worried over nothing?

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @Yutsano

    Presuming Ds continue in the majority, that would put Feinstein in line as president pro tem come the next Congress in ’23.

  53. 53.

    Yutsano

    @NotMax: I don’t know why, probably because of gerrymandering, but I feel like our chances are better in the Senate than they are in the House. Nothing is written in stone of course, just a feeling that state elections are going to go better than the district ones. Especially Pennsylvania.

  59. 59.

    Miss Bianca

    @James E Powell: I’ve long come round to the belief that Yoko-bashing in general, and “Yoko broke up the Beatles!” in particular, has always had its roots in a creamy and delicious blend of racism and misogyny. Kind of nice (?) to hear that belief being validated by the ones who were, y’know, *there*.

    I’d love to watch this documentary, being a true Beatles fanatic, but am likely going to have to wait till it comes out on DVD.

  61. 61.

    Fancycwabs

    Replacing the proper names in “Unworthy of Your Love” with “darling” really does a disservice to that song—a viewer unfamiliar with the source material thinks these two people are singing a (pretty rote) love song to each other, rather than John Hinkley and Squeaky Fromme singing their obsession to Jodie Foster and Charles Manson, respectively. A big part of Sondheim’s genius was taking standard forms of musical theatre and subverting them.

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