Ah, Gen-Xers. The only generation that became 30 at age 10, and is still 30 at 50 (and, as you said, soon to be 60).

I saw this movie 3 times in the theater. 15-year-old thought LDP was the handsomest. I got to see Los Lobos a couple years ago and screamed like a teenager when they started “La Bamba.”

Me: (reads this post, then, to my teenaged son) Hey, what's the gigachad meme?
Son: I'm trying to figure out where you heard about that.

I then have to explain to him who Olivia Nuzzi is, he demands to see a photo, and then laughs for two minutes straight and declares you are right.

Oh! Did you ever see the send up French and Saunders did of "I Know Him So Well" back when Chess was in its original run on the West End? (I'm assuming it was during the original run since the audience seemed to recognize the set right away)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCRm...

And because they're great pop songs (and they truly are!) a terribly underwritten character still has several of the best songs in the show. Those songs could be sung by any kind of character (or any tormented teenager in her 1977 Chevy Caprice Classic).

Florence's big numbers, in particular, (all of which, I should note, teenage me WAILED along to in my 1977 Chevy Caprice Classic), are essentially, "Oh my God, I'm in such a bad headspace right now" (again, I LOVE those songs, but they don't advance action or say anything new about Florence.)

A good musical theater song advances the action of the show; the songs from Chess are all, "I feel, I feel, I feel" (as a good pop song should be!). The show is constantly stopping and starting forward motion because the songs are stopping it.

The London show was basically the concept album, though, right? There was very little spoken dialogue? I've seen it done as a concert performance and yeah, it's fine. I think it doesn't work once you try to put a book into it because they're pop songs, not musical theater songs.

And yeah, very glad he is still around and seems pretty comfortably settled into middle age.

By coincidence, just this afternoon I showed my 15-year-old SNL's "Prose and Cons" to see if it still held up (the kid is my humor barometer for determining what has held up and what has not). It holds up. He also laughed through several, "Mr Robinson's Neighborhood"s. Murphy was sooooo good.

Oh my gosh, what wonderful news! Yay Goose!

Yeah, that was awful.

I agree; I think there is a reluctance to fully recognize how much misogyny plays a role in voting because it's makes us uncomfortable. Germaine Greer put it pretty bluntly back in the 1970s: "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."

It was! The greatest sporting event I'll ever witness live. 90,000 people all wanting the same thing to happen, and then it did. I was screaming and hugging the person next to me; we were strangers before the race started. Your piece so eloquently summed up the emotions at Belmont that gorgeous day.

The Tea Party was an astroturf movement. This is the real deal.

I just thought to look myself- I don't know if he posts that often here, but talk about someone whose thoughts are always welcome and appreciated.

It was! For years after 2015, I would go back to reread Charles Pierce's @theshebeen.bsky.social 's beautiful essay on American Pharoah's win in the Belmont Stakes. The last paragraph never failed to make it very dusty in the room. One of the best pieces of sports writing I ever read.

Alinsky said, in "Rules for Radicals" that you need to demonize your opponent. As much as he is (was) a bugaboo for the Right, they took his lessons to heart much more than Dems did, who still try to talk as though everyone is good at heart.