1. Tim Rice wanted to write a musical about chess since he was born, but couldn’t figure out a high-stakes plotline. He was really excited when he learned about the Cold War.
2. Tim Rice wanted Andrew Lloyd Webber to help him write a musical about chess, but Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted Tim Rice to help him write a musical about cats. They both called each other fucking morons, and there was an intense stand-off where all the pent-up sexual tension came to a boiling point.
3. Hateful words were exchanged that day, words that were regretted the moment they were said but that could never be taken back, words like “you plagiarized every good bit of music you’ve written,” “you have never written a good lyric,” “your face looks like the word moist.”
4. .Tim Rice next turned to Stephen Sondheim, but Sondheim said he was in the middle of an adaptation of a Kaufman and Hart play with George Furth.
5. As a last resort, Tim Rice met with the Swedish pop group ABBA. Since chess does not exist in Sweden, they thought it was a game of Tim Rice’s own invention.
6. Musicals did not exist in Sweden either. ABBA thought Tim Rice was an eccentric genius inventing a whole new game game and a whole new genre of media just to showcase that game–or vice versa. They were eager to collaborate.
7. There was a legal dispute over some songs and lyrics that were stolen wholesale from March of the Falsettos such as “I’m Breaking Down” (sung by Florence), “This Had Better Come to a Stop” (sung by every character to Freddie) and, of course, “The Chess Game.” Even though March of the Falsettos wouldn’t be written for another 10 years, the ACLU got involved, and William Finn won.
8. Tim Rice and ABBA got along well, but Tim Rice missed Andrew Lloyd Webber. He longed for the days when they would put on top hats and coattails and stroll down the River Thames, tossing street urchins stale crusts of bread for a shoe shine. But neither would apologize for their words on that fateful day.
9. The book for the musical was turning out to be a major problem. It was not shaping up the way anyone wanted it to. Tim Rice refused to turn to Andrew Lloyd Webber to help. Instead, he sought the aid of numerous writers including William Goldman, Carrie Fisher, and Edward Norton, none of whom could help. “Go back to Andrew,” Carrie implored, “he misses you.” But there was too much pride at stake.
10. As of today, there are over 1,760 major rewrites and versions of Chess. None of them work.
Tags:
#unreality cw #Chess: the Musical #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #I don’t go here but ”your face looks like the word moist” is a hell of a line
all goofs aside I do think it would very funny if beloved airhead billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne was like. VERY publicly forklift certified and happily reminds everyone of it every time Wayne Enterprises social media posts a publicity picture of Bruce swinging by one of the factories, wearing a hard hat and hanging with the working folks.
Bruce retweets this to the Official Bruce Wayne social media and it’s always “So great to meet the people who make our work possible! What we do at Wayne Enterprises wouldn’t be possible without these hardworking folks. They seemed so surprised when I told them I’m also forklift certified! Maybe I can drive one next time.”
the man is always reminding people that he theoretically COULD operate a forklift but no one will let him because that’s Bruce Fucking Wayne and it just seems safer to Not.
meanwhile Batman, obviously, can operate a forklift but isn’t technically certified due to the technically impossible nature of getting a certification made out to The Goddamn Batman, which culminated in Batman having to (briefly!!!) drive a forklift in the process of foiling someone’s stupid warehouse-related scheme and briefly becoming a meme when someone gets a picture and starts a furious online debate over whether or not Batman can be operating heavy machinery. “flying a fighter jet down city streets is one thing but I’m drawing the line here, this is an OSHA violation,” that kind of thing. #batsVosha gets trending probably.
Bruce, ever the opportunist, capitalizes on this by tweeting out an open invitation for the Batman to stop by Wayne Enterprises for a course in forklift safety.
Tags:
#Batman #fanfic #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick?
Remember, if it’s been at least 2 months since your last covid vaccine (whatever it was), and you are over 18, you qualify for the new covid bivalent booster. This booster specifically targets Omicron B.A.4 and B.A.5., which are the dominant strains in the US, and account for over 98% of new covid infections.
As of a couple days ago, this was authorized for emergency use in the US. Your local vaccination place should be getting these in stock within a week or two.
Covid is still a threat. Get vaccinated if you can.
Excellent info!
Here is an article in case people want to read more about that sort of thing.
#I got a fourth dose of univalent in July so I’m not eligible until January #I stand by my decision: *I* have a respirator‚ but I get a lot of indirect exposure through my family members and #frankly it’s a miracle Brother hasn’t *already* brought one Omicron or another home from work #in order to worry about the long term you have to make it through the short term first #I’ve made notes on the family calendar for the 5th-dose eligibility dates of me‚ Dad‚ and Mom #and I’ll be keeping an eye out for changes in that date: #Ontario often starts with a long dose interval but then shortens it later as supplies catch up #(Brother hasn’t even had a *third* dose‚ let alone a fourth‚ and could go for the bivalent as soon as they’re rolled out) #(but I don’t know that there’s anything I could say that would make him *more* likely to do it rather than less) #(my best bet might be to stay silent and hope he comes to the conclusion on his own) #PSA #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #reply via reblog
Maggie Silber-Lin knows that eating is a normal part of human life. There’s nothing inherently shameful about it. It’s just hard, sometimes, to make a living writing about food, when it’s such a sensitive topic, even inside her own head. But everyone has to – well. Survive.
(A series of vignettes in a world that looks more different from our own than it is.)
I finally posted my creative writing thesis! A series of vignettes about food. Also about sex. Also about trying to be a real person when you’re kind of a disaster.
Tags:
#I saw (via moral-autism) transgenderer’s post calling this a ”really good bit of sociological specfic” #”presumably they posted it on their blog but i cant find it”‚ she said‚ when linking it herself #either my Tumblr-fu is better or I’m just more stubborn‚ because I found the author’s own crosspost #seemed polite to reblog that one instead #this is interesting stuff and I recommend it #for best effect‚ read it while high off your gourd on hormones‚ having already been contemplating other twists your wiring could have taken #it’s an experience #it’s not‚ I admit‚ an experience available to you‚ dear reader‚ but it’s an experience #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #sexuality and lack thereof #food #storytime #recs #(I do think it carries some of that all-too-common vibe of privacy/sanctity/profundity-as-something-learned-and-something-best-unlearned) #(although you could also interpret it as…not *knowing* how much of it is learned‚ and having no way of knowing‚ and #having to make your peace with that) #((I know I’ve told the yo-yo story a couple of times now)) #((but I also know that most people never had an opportunity to find out if they were the kind of kid who would react that way)) #((and I know that of those who *did* have such opportunities‚ I rarely-to-never hear of any who reacted like I did)) #((so there’s that)) #tag rambles
one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math
to be fair, you’d assume the name means “there’s a lot of spiders here,” not, “there is one spider the size of a draft horse here.” so you go up expecting to have to shoo a lot of skeeter eaters out of your tent, and instead you have to figure out how to rope and shoe godzillarantula.
Hmmm…They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.
On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.
Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.
In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.
Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.
(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)
“The average spider on Middle Earth is the size of a dinner plate” is a statistical error. The average spider on Middle Earth is smaller than a coin. Cirith Ungol (lit: Spiders Gorge), which contains a spider larger than a horse, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
this map, by jonathan hull, shows all the places in the USA named after the devil or hell. assuming big giant awful spiders were a common thing in middle earth, it’s likely that there were a shit ton of Spider Stairways.
you don’t wander into Devil’s Lick assuming that satan himself is gonna give you a rimjob. you presumably also don’t head up Spider Stairs assuming an arachnid the size of a cottage is gonna try and eat your friend.
FUN FACT: A huge portion of the “Devil’s [OBJECT]” names in Wyoming are from a poor bastard called John Coulter, who was probably the first white man to see Yellowstone! He saw it because he got seperated from the Lewis and Clark expidition on their way back east, decided that with winter coming on, he should head south to stay ahead of the weather, rather than east to try to catch up with the party, and instead got lost inside the Yellowstone caldera, the COLDEST fucking part of Wyoming, with its scalding, posionous geysers, earthquakes, massive packs of wolves that weren’t afraid of people yet, and temperatures hitting as low as Negative 40, and naturally assumed that he had somehow taken a wrong turn into the Nnth Circle of Hell.
He lived, managed to get out of the caldera, took extensive notes on the landscape, eventunally met up with some Blackfoot tribesmen who gave him a horse and directions to the nearest european settlement, and he left, naming every single notable feature after hell or the Devil, because Wyoming is clearly His Infernal Country.
So as far as Frodo knows, “Spiders Pass” was just named by a particularly disgruntled and arachnophobic field cartographer.
Tags:
#that one post with the thing #it got better #Middle Earth #language #names #spiders #Spiders Georg #maps #geography #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #hell cw?
recently saw ppl discuss whether they put their medicines in a kitchen cabinet or a bathroom cabinet and i was shocked by the fact that many ppl said kitchen cabinet. so now i need you to reblog this and say where you keep yours
Tags:
#stuff I take routinely is on the lower shelf of my coffee table for easy access from my laptop area #stuff I take occasionally-as-needed is in the cupboard in the hallway outside of the bathroom #the cabinet above the bathroom sink is for grooming supplies‚ not medicine #surveys #domesticity #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #medical cw?
Tumblr users will see a post mentioning a day if the week and just fucking black out and reblog it
Hey op what day did you make this post on
I made it on a Monday and there’s a damn version of this post for every day of the week now
happy every day of the week wednesday
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #(I don’t actually go in for the day-of-the-week thing and it’s not *super* common among people I follow) #(though I have seen *enough* to be aware of the joke context) #((what day even is it)) #((*looks up at clock on laptop’s top bar*)) #((…oh)) #((apparently it is every-day-of-the-week Wednesday)) #((well‚ so be it)) #((today happens to be when I have a chance to clear out my pile of maybe-reblog-these Tumblr tabs)) #amnesia cw?
Brinens and Things 