Benjamin Dreyer

27 Nov 2024

Greetings, new people here at House of Copyediting. Besides first-rate, IISSM, prose advice, you'll get: • a random theater photo of the day, sometimes more than one • birthday alerts for dead actresses, and occasionally live ones • Sallie updates And it's all free!

11h

I've just learned a new word! CLAGGY. Thank you, @nigella.bsky.social! (This trolley challenge is INSANE.)

12h

Not sure how you get Gazza as a nickname for Gary, but I guess it's cute. 🇬🇧 🫖

12h

More the fool I, but I really didn't imagine the current regime not simply leaning in to racism but braying it from every rooftop. Fuck RFK Jr., fuck his wife, and fuck anyone—anyone—who thinks that the Republican party deserves anything short of oblivion.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

my god i despise that schmackenpüssen

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Kevin Hassett: "The affordability crisis is a myth"

(I could pretty much sing along with the entire thing entirely phonetically.)

12h

This one. It's my favorite, still.

my god i despise that schmackenpüssen

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Kevin Hassett: "The affordability crisis is a myth"

A selberschmackenpüssen, if you will.

(I know as much German as I could infer from listening incessantly to Lenya's 1950s German Threepenny recording when I was in college. Specifically, in this case, "Selber Dreckhaufen!")

@tomasjmurray.bsky.social

❤️

Tomás Murray@tomasjmurray.bsky.social

Benjamin Dreyer reposted

Tomás Murray

It’s Teresa’s birthday tomorrow.

my god i despise that schmackenpüssen

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Kevin Hassett: "The affordability crisis is a myth"

If you'd like to be the second (or third, or fourth, or etc.) person to be blocked for responding "Actually, it's Backpfeifengesicht," knock yourself out. Preferably via a self-induced haymaker.

"I don't know you or even follow you, but you seem ignorant and I'm here to let you know that."

@brokenbottleboy.bsky.social

16h

👇🏻

Benjamin Dreyer@bcdreyer.social

It’s a T-shirt. Don’t call it a t-shirt unless, I dunno, there’s a headless neck sticking out of it.

Benjamin Dreyer reposted

Mic Wright

17h

I would only write this intro if I absolutely hated the person I was profiling.

👇🏻

Benjamin Dreyer@bcdreyer.social

"You've read your last free article" always makes me chortle. Like, it should be concluded with: ...pardner."

benjamindreyer.substack.comI’ve seen the future . . .[some questions, some without answers]

One final post on this baby (at least for now), then back in its box it goes. (It's about words.) (For a change.)

*clears throat loudly enough to be heard in Terre Haute*

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

JD Vance: "Gas prices are too high ... they skyrocket every time some tinpot dictator decides to throw a tantrum"

21h

Speaking of Candide, I see that LA Opera is using the John Caird version of the Hugh Wheeler version. The former, as I recall from attending it in 1999, is notably uncomic, whereas the latter is sort of kind of one very very long rape joke. So: Good luck to everyone.

19h

On that London trip, I saw Oklahoma! (with Hugh) in the afternoon, and Candide at the National in the evening. It was a very long day at the theater.

And a happy Barbara Cook's birthday to you too!

View full thread

(There's a good possibility that it's her husband.)

@kylegriffin1.bsky.social

20h

(Seems to be her husband.)

Benjamin Dreyer reposted

William Shakespeare

@shakespeare.lol

21h

The heavens speed thee in thine enterprise!

Benjamin Dreyer reposted

Kyle Griffin

cleveland.comPlain Dealer/cleveland.com endorses Amy Acton for Ohio governorThe Plain Dealer editorial board endorses Democrat Amy Acton for Ohio governor, citing her preparedness and community engagement, while condemning opponent Vivek Ramaswamy's weaponizing of Acton's chi...

The Ramaswamy ad has pushed the largest newspaper in Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, to reverse its position on endorsements. "A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party."

benjamindreyer.substack.comI’ve seen the future . . .[some questions, some without answers]

22h

Whither English (and all that jazz)...

today's remarkably random theater photos four views of The Light of the World (1920)

It was written by Guy Bolton and George Middleton, who initially passed it off as a translation of a nonexistent French play by the nonexistent Pierre Saisson. Go figure.

Happy birthday to lovely D. W. Moffett!

And a happy Barbara Cook's birthday to you too!

I wonder who this fellow is, so happy to be posing with B.C.

👇🏻

Tomás Murray@tomasjmurray.bsky.social

It’s H. B.’s 150th birthday tomorrow.

And a happy Barbara Cook's birthday to you too!

View full thread

I also recall—I didn't make it up, but that doesn't mean it's true—reading that she once commented that the only reason she was able to sing Cunegonde eight performances a week (at least for the two months the show ran) is that she didn't know that it was impossible.

And for all you Irra Petina fans (though at least one of you will be focused intently on those headdresses)...

And a happy Barbara Cook's birthday to you too!

For a second or two I thought that she was wearing, decades ahead of her time, one of those wee forehead microphones. (It seems to be a dangling gem.)

benjamindreyer.substack.comI’ve seen the future . . .[some questions, some without answers]

In preparation for your looming pedant exam...

(For all you looming pedants.)

Had to chortle at a comment (elsewhere) that accused me of overwriting. Like, you just noticed?