They said it

Other blogs. I love 'em.
Bond Girl links to a great piece by Wilton Barnhardt on the worst piece of garbage masquerading as theatre he ever saw, over at Return of the Reluctant:
"A teetering Prospero summons forth a banquet... and a slide, a picture cut out from Good Housekeeping and blurrily photographed (this is all pre-digital), miraculously appears on the ceiling (in a defined slide-rectangle) to hoots of derision from the audience, particulary as the cast goes on to praise such magic, such wonder! It was horrendous from start to finish and NO ONE left at intermission; everyone stayed to see how they would mess up the second half--it was that good!"
(He'd have fun in India. I once caught a production of South Pacific (it was the only entertainment in town) where a guy in white shirt and white pants floated back and forth across the stage waving a white napkin while the lead romantic pair sang Some Enchanted Evening. We thought he was a waiter gone astray; turned out he was supposed to represent the Spirit of Romance.
Then there was the Merchant of Venice production where Shylock rendered his big speech as "Hath not a Juice ice? Hath not a Juice hads, morgans"--then there was a long pause while he sized up "dimensions" and decided to omit it--"sexes, affections, passives?" (He got affections right. The audience gave him points for trying.)
And there was the college production of Blood Wedding which had the male leads galloping around on horses, the only problem being that the director used actual actors dressed in humorous horse costumes for the horses, and one of them rebelled on the first night, unhorsed his rider and forced him to carry the "horse" around for a change.)

The Mumpsimus is sick of reviewers dumping on the fantasy genre. "As storytellers from the dawn of human history have known, fantasy is a powerful way to make an audience think about their own world and lives while at the same time being entertained. Some people might even suggest that that is the primary accomplishment of most great literature that has survived through the ages. (Other people might accuse such people of reductionary thinking, but so it goes. [Some people might say "reductionary" is a high-falutin', nasty bit o' jargon that belongs only in dumpsters and academies. So there.])"

Michael Bérubé has a great post:
"But then along come the Bush twins, and ooh la la, surrealism is born anew! 'My Dad already had a chief of staff– and his name is Andy!' said Jenna. It is beyond humor, it is beyond your petty-ironic Democrat understanding. 'Our parents' favorite term of endearment for each other is Bushy,' they said, following this with 'we had a hamster too, but our hamster didn't make it.' What does this mean? you ask. Foolish liberal Democrats, fretting about 'what does this mean, this strange talk of bushes and lost hamsters.' It is not about meaning. It is about the irruption of the unconscious into the very fabric of everyday life, where the eye becomes an egg and the hamster disappears into the bushy undergrowth, there to be transformed into the heart and soul of America. Hah!"
He's also celebrating; his blog just crossed 250,000 readers for the year. That makes two things the Babu wants from Bérubé: his talent and his numbers. I'd ask for his film star looks, too, if I wasn't blessed in that department--Michael might look like he's auditioning for the next Bond movie, but I have a horrendous cold and I just got stung by a wasp, which means that the boys who're making Shrek III are queuing outside my door, baby.