Whatcha reading?

[Silent Majority]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

[Silent Majority]

50) War of the Worlds - HG Wells. Audiobook Read by Kelsey Grammer. Frasier! Sideshow Bob! Except the dude's actually a pretty sound actor and I couldn't force myself to imagine either of those characters narrating the heat death of the planet earth no matter how hard I tried. The novel's really well written and it's thrilling to see the special effects that continue to define time travel on screen to this day spring wholesale from one imagination. The morlocks coming for the time traveller in the dark are genuinely creepy and proto-Lovecraftian.

There were Morlocks in WotW? I don't remember (from the movie, obv.) but I do from Time Machine, of course.

Boy, what a brain fart. The above is actually my notes for the Time Machine. I must have been thinking of Orson Welles.

War of the Time Machines!

I read a sequel to the Time Machine that I thought was pretty good. The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter. "The Authorized Sequel" According to the front cover.

I like the Baxter that I've read, might add it to the longlist

[tepista]

50) War of the Worlds - HG Wells. Audiobook Read by Kelsey Grammer. Frasier! Sideshow Bob! Except the dude's actually a pretty sound actor and I couldn't force myself to imagine either of those characters narrating the heat death of the planet earth no matter how hard I tried. The novel's really well written and it's thrilling to see the special effects that continue to define time travel on screen to this day spring wholesale from one imagination. The morlocks coming for the time traveller in the dark are genuinely creepy and proto-Lovecraftian.

There were Morlocks in WotW? I don't remember (from the movie, obv.) but I do from Time Machine, of course.

Boy, what a brain fart. The above is actually my notes for the Time Machine. I must have been thinking of Orson Welles.

War of the Time Machines!

I read a sequel to the Time Machine that I thought was pretty good. The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter. "The Authorized Sequel" According to the front cover.

I think he may have used a Time Machine to get the authorization.

[Wolter]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

[Silent Majority]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

[Dr. Medulla]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

Hugh Laurie weirds me the fuck out when he speaks with his natural accent. His voice for House was so seamless to North American ears that his normal speaking voice is so jarring.

[Silent Majority]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

Hugh Laurie weirds me the fuck out when he speaks with his natural accent. His voice for House was so seamless to North American ears that his normal speaking voice is so jarring.

See, I never quite copped to that. He'll always have Bertie Wooster's face to me, or asking permission to shout hurrah loudly.

[Dr. Medulla]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

Hugh Laurie weirds me the fuck out when he speaks with his natural accent. His voice for House was so seamless to North American ears that his normal speaking voice is so jarring.

See, I never quite copped to that. He'll always have Bertie Wooster's face to me, or asking permission to shout hurrah loudly.

Even tho I knew him first from Blackadder, his work on House ended up completely transforming him to me. Undoubtedly that's because of our respective cultural locations.

[Wolter]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

The Reverse Madonna.

[Dr. Medulla]

The Reverse Madonna.

I was halfway thinking about her last week, wondering about her legacy. More to the point, in the 80s she was acknowledged as significant musical and cultural force, as some kind of subversive feminist icon and/or postmodern self-promoter, and as a Bowie-esque musical chameleon. But she's been fairly irrelevant for around twenty years now. Does that require downgrading her significance historically, that she was a creature of her time rather than one who bent the world to her whims? Her bag of tricks was a lot more finite than assumed back even in the early 90s, but how much does that mean to her legacy?

[Silent Majority]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

The Reverse Madonna.

I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I remember liking him in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights.

[Wolter]

56) As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Audiobook Read by the author and a good chunk of the surviving cast. Love this film, one of my favourites of all time, and this is a cheery throwaway cash in about how much fun it was to make. The best part of the book is the prolonged section on training for and practising the fencing scenes with Mandy Patinkin. Elwes is a likable posh guy who is actually British, despite having one of the fakest sounding English accent I've ever heard.

I just watched a documentary on André the Giant last night and Elwes’ interview accent was baffling to me. Posh Brit but he hit his r’s super hard.

Too much time in the US, I guess.

The Reverse Madonna.

I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I remember liking him in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights.

He’s fairly charming. The movie sucks.

[Silent Majority]

57) Common Sense - Thomas Paine. Audiobook. I found myself smiling through this, as uncompromising prose rang down the centuries. I can easily picture myself reading this over the shoulder of a landowner in Philadelphia as he is radicalised in 1776. Paine is an internationalist and, based on his predictions in here, pretty much a prophet.

[Dr. Medulla]

Finished American Carnage this evening. Yup, it's centrist wanking. Poor Paul Ryan. And, watch out, America, for those crazy Tea Partiers on the left, AOC and Tlaib, who are going to destroy the Democrats. It's got the intellectual depth of Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, tsk tsking for not letting serious wealthy men do the nation's business because they know America and what's best for it. Zero consideration that the centrism that he so venerates generated the dissatisfaction because it serves the elite. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, it's not exactly a revelation that the postwar consensus generated its own destruction from the left and right. That's how this shit goes. But, no, the failure here is not respecting and deferring to the Ryans and Boehners and Bidens.

Starting this tomorrow:

Surely this will improve my mood!

[Kory]

The Reverse Madonna.

I was halfway thinking about her last week, wondering about her legacy. More to the point, in the 80s she was acknowledged as significant musical and cultural force, as some kind of subversive feminist icon and/or postmodern self-promoter, and as a Bowie-esque musical chameleon. But she's been fairly irrelevant for around twenty years now. Does that require downgrading her significance historically, that she was a creature of her time rather than one who bent the world to her whims? Her bag of tricks was a lot more finite than assumed back even in the early 90s, but how much does that mean to her legacy?

She falls well below Kylie at this point.