yeah… I mean it very much seemed to be a given that he simply wouldn’t be dead in the next film and we’d be okay with that, there wasn’t really an OH MY GOD THEY KILLED OFF BOND THE SERIES IS OVER outcry

Joyce Carol Oates please post about how Musk has never known the joy of tackling a Grizzly Bear Cub

exactly but also, I knew about that incident years before I knowingly heard Fleetwood Mac’s music. A Radio 1 listening ‘90s teenager Britpop fan probably wouldn’t have heard Rumours if their parents weren’t fans!

I just think previous generations experienced them as a good band and later generations experienced them as a nostalgia act (in an era where nostalgia was more acceptable than the early ‘90s), but I’ve some sympathy for music press being down on the Mac in era of bad albums and weird line ups

I can definitely see why living through the reality of the Behind the Mask/Time-era Fleetwood Mac might have been pretty cringe in the era of grunge and antipathy towards classic rock stars of the past

I tend to feel this phenomenon is often from an excess of politeness at the start of a play - wanting to look appreciative - and usually goes away when the mood has been established, although can be hard to tell from press nights

also it has to be said that in having a white director and not really engaging with the racism in the play the way most major recent productions have it feels maybe a bit… old fashioned?

though bottom price remains at £15 and the economics of keep Downstairs top price at £30 elude me (do shows there actually make money?)

Nice! I think I didn’t realise how weird LOTR was when I was young because I probably hadn’t read very many adult books at that stage. Good luck with the Silmarillion, to be fair I think that’s the one I read the most

still, all in all best retcon of a McGuffin ever

also just funny how the writing style completely changes - the first chapters feel like an exact sequel to the hobbit and have some incredibly eccentric bits like the random thoughts of a fox

the Peter Jackson films feel like a solid exercise in turning them into a really well realised ‘normal’ fantasy narrative but I’m not sure you could ever really translate Tolkien’s very ‘singular’ approach into a film that felt like the books

definitely not a bad thing but amazing the stuff Tolkien is vague about (Sauron being the prime example) or only sketches briefly when he spends paragraphs and paragraphs describing valleys, you sort of wonder if it would get published in its current form today for that reason

my main observation is that Tolkien spends remarkably little time describing battles and a remarkably large amount of time describing rock formations

I must have read LOTR at least five times before the age of 14 but quite weird to finally revisit it