Hmm...that doesn't have the same feel as Friday the 13th.  

I have been watching the drama "See" on AppleTV.  I mostly really like it.  It, forgive the word, envisions a world where humans have lost the sense of sight.  It is very interesting how the writers and directors have imagined the ways we would have adapted to living without the ability to see. 

I found out today that McDonald's no longer has any size drink for $1. I had to pay $1.69 for my large Coke, which I guess is still a bargain, but it's 69¢ more than I was expecting to pay. I don't know if small and medium drinks are also $1.69, or if they're less. Oh, well.

I suppose the "Buñuel" and "Square One" threads are somewhat mutually redundant at this point; and if the latter title was in fact extemporized on Colbert's couch, it's kind of hard to know just how (un?)seriously to take it.  But for now I guess I'll go with it.

In case anyone missed this last week -- there's not a whole lot of real news here, but FWIW:

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/cameron-mackintosh-stephen-sondheims-final-musical_94730.html

I went to Home Depot to pick up a bathroom sink this morning. I ordered it online and chose to pick it up because (1) I didn't trust myself to be able to find the right sink when I got to the store and (2) It prevents me from "home improvement store-itis" which is when, wandering through the store, I find at least four more things that I want to buy for every one thing that I originally went in to buy. So now I have a new bathroom sink to replace the one that has developed a bunch of chips in it, and I get to schedule time with my expert handyperson, as soon as I clean up the area around the sink so that it's accessible.

As happens nearly every two weeks, I began teaching a new New Hires class today. It started out with some drama; a student was MIA and his coworkers were worried about him. It all worked okay and he was late for class.   

I can not believe it is already the 9th. It feels like the month just started a couple of days ago. 

I hope your ankle is healing well, Kathy, and your walks can get longer every few days. 

As far as I'm concerned, this ice can't melt fast enough. It got up to about 50°, which was enough to melt a lot of it. We are going for very short walks because of my ankle injury (see daily thread for Thursday, January 5, for more information). I put a pee pad on the living room floor, and it got peed on. While I'm glad she's able to use that during the time I'm partially laid up, I'm hoping she doesn't make it a habit, and start relying on that instead of peeing outside. She stops many times on our walks to go pee.

Meanwhile, my ankle is a lovely shade of purplish-black.

Full cast announced:

https://playbill.com/article/cast-complete-for-broadway-revival-of-sweeney-todd-starring-josh-groban-and-annaleigh-ashford

No change to the principal cast, announced a few weeks ago; the news here is the 21-member ensemble, presumably including swings.

Alas, I no longer pay enough attention to B'way ensembles for any of the new names to ring a bell -- though it could also be said that I just don't see that many shows with big ensembles anymore.  Not that they don't still exist; it's just that not too many big-ensemble-type shows these days interest me enough to go see them, let alone pore over their programs unconsciously committing names to memory, the way I did when I was much younger.

Perhaps Sweeney will be an exception.  I've already purchased two sets of tickets -- one pair in the orchestra and another in the front mezz -- for separate performances, about a week and a half apart, in the latter half of April.  But I might not even be able to wait that long; at some point, if I can afford to, I might try and see it sometime during previews (starting Feb. 26).  This all might sound unduly optimistic on my part -- what if the production sucks?? -- but frankly, even if it does, that might still be worth at least one repeat visit: I mean, heaven forbid, but if this kind of investment of resources and talent in a proven masterpiece were to somehow go seriously askew, that itself would be worth studying.

I hope you feel much better very soon, Kathy. 

As we were coming back from our afternoon walk, I slipped on the ice and fell and twisted my ankle. I've also got a nasty scrape on my knee. Bernadette is fine. She did not slip, nor was she in my path as I fell. She didn't seem to care very much that I fell, or that I didn't immediately get up. Fortunately, there were no other dogs in sight, because she would have been running off toward them. I am taking ibuprofen and it doesn't seem to be working yet.

Last night I watched The Menu on HBO Max, after having been intrigued by what I'd seen and read when it opened in theaters just before Thanksgiving.  (Turns out, it's also actually still running on a handful of screens here, or perhaps it's been brought back for awards season).

If you're in the mood for dark comedy-horror, this will satisfy nicely: it's a tidily constructed, suspenseful, deliciously nasty chamber piece with a fantastic ensemble cast.  In fact, you could watch it alongside Glass Onion for a fun evening of compare-and-contrast: two 2022 holiday releases, both gleefully skewering the 1% -- one lighter in tone, one darker; one big and flashy, the other small and austere (if no less devoted to luxe surfaces); both set on picturesque private islands where an uninvited guest stumbles into a deadly game -- the film-studies papers practically write themselves.

(Both are also that favorite subgenre of mine: movies whose stories unfold largely on a single set.  Such movies might thereby risk being criticized as "stagey" by a certain kind of film snob, but they offer both their creators and their viewers the pleasure of exploring human-scale space, and the way the characters inhabit it, in detail over time -- often, as in this case, an only-relatively-lightly compressed version of real time.  Glass Onion's prologue, and some of its flashbacks, take us off the island for only brief bits of its runtime, while The Menu is confined entirely to a single evening and a straight linear timeline, venturing off-island only as far as a short ferry ride).



Just in case The Menu's gimmick seems predictable, I'll offer one spoiler: