What if we made the characters pigeons?

Oh you're a comedian? Do a lot of those…observations?

When you think about it, urban planning is really just a shared universe.

Prescient.

Trump's handlers assume Marc Maron supports him because he opens each show with "Lock the gates!"

I read a large portion of The Plot Against America around this time last year for the same reasons before I had to return it to the library. The rhetoric in it was quite tame compared to what's going on, but it was getting more intense.

The Dirty Dust or Cre Na Cille by Mairtin o Cadhain. A nasty, great Irish novel set in a cemetery in rural Ireland. A new, hateful woman passes and stirs shit up with the old, deceased neighbors. The writing, even in translation, has a tremendous rhythm to it.

I'm pretty sure early in production he'd have a method actor breakdown not unlike RDJ in Tropic Thunder.

Burr/Vidal's depiction of Washington sticks in my head now more than any previous one. I'm not sure I'm grateful.

Your last paragraph is what kept me away from Vidal for so long actually. Not the crotchety old bastard part. I just couldn't reconcile the fact that an author who spent so much time jawing with celebrities on talk shows could be a writer worth reading. Turns out I'm the crotchety old bastard.

I recently read his Burr and really enjoyed the life he gave to the title character. 1876 was the next in that series I thought of reading!

Yeah, I was curious how much would be mapped out since he died so soon after the end of the war. Like so many presidents, Andrew Johnson doesn't get much of a narrative in American history. But he seems really important, based on how he became president and what he had to deal with. Did you go into his life at all?

What were his plans for Reconstruction?

I've been starting and stopping a lot this month. I started The Malazan Book of the Fallen, based on recommendations here, and it's fine. The dialogue's a little creaky, considering the author is steadfast in not hand-feeding the reader exposition.

I got stuck on that book this month too! I feel like I'm missing so much, which is often the case with Pynchon for me. But this time, it bugged me more than previous times (V. and Vineland).

D'oh! I sometimes confuse the two!

This new(?) theater in New York, the Metrograph, is doing a series of Stewart/Hitchcock films now. I'm going to see Notorious on Wednesday. I haven't seen Rear Window or Vertigo in many years, I should revisit them.

Take to the Wall!

I really wish she'd said, "Well, Breitbart for one."

Why?