I thought about sending an update but figured why bother, but the duel-type "satisfaction" seems up certain alleys here.
I am in general by the musical's terms an Aaron Burr and not a Hamilton, I assume like most people here unless Moby's punning counts as non-stop.
Moby can't not hear the Hamilton sound track. I have been punished enough.
2: Do you need someone to show you how to say no to that?
My current mouseover text is I'm not standing still / I am lying in wait, but I'd be okay with that phase of my life ending sooner rather than later. Probably still not satisfied, though.
I like to chant All I've got's my honor, a tolerance for pain/a couple of college credits, and my top-notch brain but it's not actually very descriptive of me.
"I'm still standing after all these years. Looking like a true survivor. Feeling like a little kid."
Does anyone else wonder if the origin of that line is one of those lists of Chuck Norris Facts? I mean, it's a great line, but it sounds a little familiar.
"Satisfied" is the song I always skip. "How do you write/when you're running out of time" is probably the best description of my life, but my favorite tracks are probably the Cabinet Rap Battles or the dueling or the king or Jefferson being an asshole, or basically maybe the whole thing except the ballads.
Maybe you're just like my mother
She's never satisfied
I don't know that I've ever been satisfied, but I'm frequently tired.
7: And how sad is it that people are still using "stand for nothing / fall for anything" even after it's been not only everywhere in the universe but especially a Katy Perry hit?
look me in the eye and tell me
are you satisfied?
or
you are never satisfied
fist too small, eyes too wide
Are we sure these aren't alternate lyrics to "Eye of the Tiger"?
Stand in the place where you live.
11: Oh, I'm all for reusing cliches -- I actively like that kind of thing. I'm just really straight-up curious if LMM was starting from "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits." to get to that line.
I'm not saying "best ever," but certainly top 10 of all time. And I've never even seen Rocky all the way through.
5: Only thing it reminds me of is "All along the watchtower": "All I've got is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth."
My daughter played the album to me yesterday. She knows a lot of the lyrics
I thought "Eye of the Tiger" was from a later Rocky movie. The original just has the Rocky music, not any notable songs, I thought.
But I've only seen Rocky, not any sequels.
18: That's Bono's apocryphal addition to the lyrics.
"Eye of the Tiger" is from Rocky 3. That's ""the one where Rocky fights Mister T", for those of you who haven't seen it.
Mara is going to have to dress up as Alexander Hamilton to talk about him for an upcoming biography day. I should probably start now on how "son of a whore and a Scotsman" is not actually the place to start. But that's her favorite song and she did a very moving interpretive dance to it this weekend.
I should probably start now on how "son of a whore and a Scotsman" is not actually the place to start.
Because it's redundant?
"Satisfied" is the song I always skip. "How do you write/when you're running out of time"
I was just appreciating both "Satisfied" and "Non-stop" recently (and I believe the lyric is "How do you write / like you're running out of time.")
One interesting set of comments that I saw about "Satisfied" first LMM:
The lyrics to "Satisfied" -- in which Angelica Schuyler recounts how Hamilton and her sister Eliza met and married -- are some of the most intricate I've ever written. I can't even rap them, but Renee Elise Goldsberry, who plays Angelica -- that's her conversational speed. That's how fast she thinks. You really get the sense that Angelica's the smartest person in the room, and she reads Hamilton within a moment of meeting him.
Second, some random internet commenter who sound authoritative:
Goldsberry's verse, beginning at 2:09 and ending at 2:33, is the third fastest in Broadway history, fitting 121 words into 24 seconds. What's more impressive is that her verse is 2x faster than any other verse on the top 10 list, which shows she can sustain the fast pace. She averages 5 words per second and LMM himself has said even he can't rap it with the emotion Goldsberry puts into it. It's the second fastest verse in the show, the first being Lafayette's final verse in "Guns and Ships". However, this verse is also the only verse on the list where the character isn't hysterical or trying to incite something (Lafayette in "Guns and Ships", hysterical in all the others). This verse shows that Angelica is just conversationally a fast thinker.
part because I wonder whether "I'm never satisfied" really is as rare as the song implies.
Relatedly, I recently had cause to wonder whether the young Mick Jagger had just never heard of chicken pot pies or maybe he just couldn't get any good ones? Because those things are pure satisfaction.
We're mostly stuck with the frozen ones here, but the fancy kind in the Whole Foods are great. My son is requesting them all the time now.
28: I don't want to be a pie.
Plus Renee Elise Goldsberry is 45! Go her.
Meh. If I don't die before July, I'll have managed that.
If I were curious about what exactly is this Hamilton thing that it seems like everyone I know online (but no one I know offline) is frequently talking about, where should I look to inform myself?
The entire internet (try searching on the obscure word "Hamilton") and also absolutely anywhere that music is sold. You can buy the Hamilton soundtrack at the checkout counter at my local Whole Foods, even.
Google tells me it's a musical, but I think people are mostly talking about something other than going to the theater to see the musical. Are they talking about listening to the soundtrack?
You can buy very nice pot pies at my local Whole Foods. And hemp seeds, but I didn't bother.
36: So people are listening to a soundtrack to a musical?
Buddhism says it's impossible! Well or anyway always temporary. Some temporary satisfactions are hard to argue with, however.
Wouldn't one need to first see the musical in the theater in order to enjoy listening to the soundtrack?
You should listen to the soundtrack while reading Ron Chernow's doorstopper.
33: I have to make it to August.
And because it's more like an operetta than most musicals (that is, almost all the dialogue is part of a song/track) the soundtrack covers almost everything in the show.
45: That's why I've always seemed more mature than you.
Wouldn't one need to first see the musical in the theater in order to enjoy listening to the soundtrack?
No, one wouldn't.
More specifically I tend to be discontent, as everyone who knows me will be shocked-unto-fainting to hear.
A joke I read in a book on Yiddish and now have googled up another version of:
Back on the train, everybody was settling down in their berths for the night. The lights dimmed in the pulman car, when someone in a upper berth starts in&em;
"Oy! Am I thirsty! I won't be able to sleep, I am so thirsty. I don't know what I am going to do!"
The Man in the lower berth was annoyed. He jumped out of his bed and got the man a glass of water.
"Here! Drink this."
Soon, everything was quiet and the man started again.
"Oy! Was I thirsty! I was so thirsty that I couldn't fall asleep. Oy was I thirsty!..."
The man in the lower birth was Hitler, right?
I told Chani that joke. Only it was about the ladies on the bus. She laughed.
What exactly does it mean to be satisfied? I mean, the best I get to is a clear intellectual understanding that any problems I have are really minimal, and I should count my blessings, and I'm managing just fine if nothing changes. Which is, on some level, being satisfied.
On the other hand, like Smearcase, I'm always cranky about everything.
And, of course, sometimes I do have real problems.
To the question in the OP, can there be any answer other than "Peggy"?
54: the original title was "Satisficing"
The book I read it in was called Born to Kvetch and either the whole book ( I can't remember) or just the first bit was about how dissatisfaction was central to the, what, Jewish mindset or some such notion. I can hardly contest it. Recently someone on my fb feed posted a thing about how complaining isn't always about discontent; it's sometimes just a way of talking about things. I wanted to go back and talk to them more about it but completely can't remember who it was. Because I feel like I am sometimes perceived as horribly negative when I'm actually just relatively negative but I make jokes by complaining and maybe communicate other things that aren't exactly complaining by complaining.
I mean except the last 2.5 years when I just complain nonstop to the extent that I wish I could get a break from me.
I wanted to go back and talk to them more about it but completely can't remember who it was. Because I feel like I am sometimes perceived as horribly negative when I'm actually just relatively negative but I make jokes by complaining and maybe communicate other things that aren't exactly complaining by complaining.
Yes, this exactly.
59: I'd say it's a New York thing but I am a counterfeit New Yorker.
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On the vague topic of satisfaction/dissatisfaction: I was tired, and lacking willpower yesterday and made the bad decision to argue about something in a Crooked Timber thread. Clearly not a good use of time and energy.
However, I'm now glad that I did. I'm sure that I'm not going to convince anybody of anything but I'm fairly happy with the argument that I ended up with.
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57: For lesser provocations, I've threatened to take away a DS to give substance to groundless complaining.
Maybe today I will listen to the Hamilton soundtrack. We listened to some of it but one of its features is reminding me I now go to the theater about twice a year.
To the question in the OP, can there be any answer other than "Peggy"?
I'm confused.
Q: Have you ever been satisfied?
A: Peggy.
(Not trying to be sarcastic, I am missing something and confused).
50: that was one of about 3 family jokes that I heard almost every week growing up. However, our version was more minimalist:
Before: "Oy, am I toisty!" (pause) "Oy, am I toisty!" (pause) ...
After: "Oy, vuzs I toisty! (pause) "Oy, vuzs I toisty! (pause) ...
(The other 2 were (a) about the pessimistic and optimistic twins, the punch line being "I know there's a pony around here somewhere", (b)the punchline of the other is "Abie get off the wagon". I cannot find the 2nd online).
No, never satisfied. Just constant low-level baseline. And I also complain a lot the way Smearcase describes.
The joke in 50 is one of the several my FIL, of blessed memory, told to me during the years Dr. Skull was courting me. I tell it to my daughter these days, both to annoy her and to keep her Jewish.
Another:
An old man goes to visit his doctor.
Old Man: Doctah, I can't pee. I drink and I drink, but I just can't pee. It's terrible!
Dr: How old are you?
Old Man: I'm eighty this year, thank God.
Dr: Eh, you've peed enough.
What exactly does it mean to be satisfied? I mean, the best I get to is a clear intellectual understanding that any problems I have are really minimal, and I should count my blessings, and I'm managing just fine if nothing changes. Which is, on some level, being satisfied.
That's more or less my perspective. On the other hand, I am not perpetually cranky, I do perpetually fret about responsibilities or obligations which I should be acting on, but am putting off.
I occasionally think that, for me, the experience that is closest to "satisfaction" is a feel of having worked myself to exhaustion on some project -- precisely because that quiets the voice in my head which says, "you really should follow up on [x]." I also think this may not be a psychologically healthy dynamic.
Self-help books tell you not to complain.
I've never read one, that seems like the kind of thing they might say.
Incidentally, I didn't like "My Shot" listening to it on the soundtrack, but enjoyed the performance at the White House. That is a case where the video helped me see the way in which the song was introducing the major characters and positioning them relative to each other.
For reasons I can't identify, I've had "The Schuyler Sisters" running through my head like this:
Angelica!
Eliza!
and Nyarlathotep!
The Schuyler sisters!
11: Oh, I'm all for reusing cliches -- I actively like that kind of thing. I'm just really straight-up curious if LMM was starting from "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits." to get to that line.
Speaking of reusing lines, you might enjoy 9 Classic Rap References In Hamilton.
closest to "satisfaction" is a feel of having worked myself to exhaustion on some project
This.
And I can't get pies here. Extra dissatisfaction.
There is a bakery here that I'm pretty sure if run by immigrants from the ROC. It is called "The Pink Box." I find this amusing. I have mentioned this before.
I definitely have to rein in how much I complain so as not to drive people crazy. I use the line, "Complaining is one of my favorite hobbies" a lot. Maybe standards are lower around here. Unless I live with them; then I just drive them crazy.
Always a dress, never a bridesmaid.
Bakers, bakers everywhere
Nor any pies to eat
I think my brother is going to be getting married soon. She's started putting up all kinds of pictures of the two of them and the two of them with her parents on Facebook. I suppose I could ask him, but that would be outside the family ethic.
83: Is the family ethic that you find out when you get the wedding invitation? Or is it that you find out if you live long enough to read his obituary?
That depends on if she shoots him or not.
"Florida man surprises family, but not in the way he planned."
83: I know the perfect song for the toast, but you'll have to practice because the lyrics are really fast.
I'll just go with a speech about how marriage completes people and you can tell this because even Hitler wanted to be married, at the end. You know. The usual stuff.
Never being satisfied has fueled my ambition and, one day, will fuel my regret.
I am imagining 88 to be about "Getting Married Today" but I do not think of Heebie as a Sondheim queen.
I have scant ambition and lots of regret. So way ahead you there.
83: I know the perfect song for the toast, but you'll have to practice because the lyrics are really fast.
Not surprisingly, the story of Lin-Manuel Miranda's performance at his wedding reception is very cute.
For some reason that video repeats itself. Try this link instead (video is only 1:30, there is also video of the performance itself on YT).
Right now my regrets mostly relate to people I never had sex with. But at some point they are going to make a turn toward life goals I have never accomplished, and that's going to hurt.
95 Plausible people or complete fantasies? If the former I'm with you there. Well, not there there, that would be weird and uncomfortable.
Well be proactive, Spike. Have someone hit you in the face with a dictionary and get to it.
The more plausible, the stronger the regret.
89: Surely you should include a a few words about the proportion of married people who are ever satisfied, as well as the proportion who Can't Get No Satisfaction. Not sure whether those 2 proportions add to 1.
This article says you should *not* listen to the Hamilton soundtrack until after you've seen the musical. (Even though it acknowledges that the musical is sold out through 2016.)
Plus Renee Elise Goldsberry is 45! Go her.
And went to CMU! She would have been 1-2 years ahead of me, but I mostly knew the actors 1 year behind me*. I should ask my friend who was a techie 2 years ahead of me if she knew her.
*the sheriff--Ted Danson's son, I guess?--from the last season of Fargo was in that class, and I must have known him, but he doesn't ring a bell. But I hung out with literally every member of his class (BOGF lived with 2 of them, and another lived across the hall).
This article says you should *not* listen to the Hamilton soundtrack until after you've seen the musical.
Adam Savage disagrees (in the podcast linked in 25).
New article on "Why Hamilton Matters," making the case for the value of the arts as a part of society. Its good, but longform, so...
Does "longform" mean something other than "long"?
OP
I think everyone, as a chaser to listening to "Hamilton," should read Gore Vidal's book "Burr." Probably because of the whole "Hamilton" thing I re-read it and now I'm compelled to re-read Vidal's other historical novels. They are better on re-reading than I expected, except "Lincoln" is dragging, probably because today it seems like a light rewriting of "Team of Rivals" as fiction. With whores.
Maybe I'll even re-read "Julian," then the sf ones.
104
"so no one will read it?" Slate has a big long(-form) piece about how NPR is in chaos because its old listeners are dying off and young people aren't replacing them, and so there are a lot of NPR people leaving to do 30 minute podcasts and stuff.
I've actually been planning to read Burr, so thanks for the push, Dave.
"so no one will read it?"
Yeah. Stick to the listicles, BuzzFeed. Leave the long shit to Jacobin.
and as for Hamilton
we may take it (my authority, ego scriptor cantilenae)
that he was the Prime snot in ALL American history
Does "longform" mean something other than "long"?
No:
When Stout launched SB Nation Longform in the fall of 2012, the idea was very much that Stout could bring prestige to the site by regularly running long stories--not stories aspiring to a certain complexity, note, but long ones. One freelancer said that per the terms of his contract, the story had to be at least 4,000 words long.
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Dammit, the landfill is on fire again.
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Is it one of those things they do every week?
106.Creation is Vidal's best historical, I think. I found Lincoln dragged the first time I read it, which the rest of his rewrite of American history did not.
Its more of an annual thing. I'm wondering if I can skip going to work on account of the city being filled with toxic smoke.
Until about 1987, filling the city with toxic smoke was work here.
113
I think of Creation as sf/fantasy, but then I read it a long time ago and may be misremembering. Lincoln was Vidal's biggest seller, and my suspicion is he crafted it to be that, so it lacks most of the enthusiastic picking off of sacred cows that (e.g.) Burr has.
Until about 1987, filling the city with toxic smoke was work here.
Here's a question - what did that do to the soil? Like, is the top inch a layer of soot? Is it safe to garden?
When did they get rid of the lead in the gasoline?
I think of Creation as sf/fantasy
It's arguably both that and a historical. The "plot", such as it is, comprises the fictional memoir of a fictional Persian functionary of the generation of Xerxes, who is lying abroad for his country in 5th century Athens and dictating his version of events to refute Herodotus. It includes various machinations at the Persian court, as well as a long journey undertaken to the Gangetic republics, where he encounters Gautama Siddartha, and Spring and Autumn period China, where he meets Confucius. The story line is pretty far fetched, but most of the significant characters did exist at about the right time, and the political backgrounds are largely accurate.
That probably varies by neighborhood. Some gardens use raised beds with, I assume, trucked in dirt, but some are in the ground. I don't know if they tested first or not. I do know that they used to use slag instead of sand to provide traction on icy sidewalks in my neighborhood.
Anyway, soot probably becomes safe relatively quickly. I'd worry about heavy metals if I were to each much garden produce from a site near the mills or something.
119 That sounds like my kind of book.
Did it make the soil alkaline, I wonder? Are the hydrangea's there blue or pink?
Unless I don't know what they are. My daffodils just died because of the cold snap. They always look a little out of place because I just put the bulbs where my son was digging a hole anyway.
Or maybe they were tulips. Anyway, they grow from little things that look like onions but don't (probably) taste as good.
White would imply either neutral pH or a different species of hydrangea.
Or that looking at the Wikipedia page while trying to remember what my neighbors' flowers looked like last year isn't very reliable.
I'd say that blue is generally more common for hydrangea 'round here.
Official community gardens do a ton of soil testing, and will sometimes do a couple years of remediation. In fact, one of the local firms involved will plant sunflowers for phytoremediation, then process the sunflowers as (IIRC) biofuel.
Official community gardens do a ton of soil testing, and will sometimes do a couple years of remediation.
Common Core. Even dirt isn't exempt now.
Vidal's old listicle recommending Five Postwar Novels, including his own Creation, is a real pomposity bonanza. "My recommendation here is entirely disinterested: One writes this sort of book to pass on knowledge of worlds we are encouraged to know nothing of... Worst of all, curiosity is carefully switched off in our schools."
I just watched the Hamilton West Wing tribute. Fabulous, well done.
106 .. 131 : Hey, I actually like Burr quite a bit! It led me to look up a bunch of stuff I would not have done otherwise, and I liked the depiction of colonial and later New York a lot. It's overwrought taken strictly as a novel, and some of the history I thought was contrarian, but basically a book I liked reading quite a lot and am definitely glad to have read.
Yes Vidal is pompous, but he included Dawn Powell, who is great and unjustly forgotten.
Between comment 134 and 135 she was revived and forgotten yet again.
131
Pomposity was one of Vidal's chief weapons ("along with..."). A lot of his lead characters would probably have been pretty insufferable in real life.
133
If you liked the bringing-the-famous-down-to-earth aspect of Burr, you might try looking up Joyleg, probably long out of print, about the last veteran of the American Revolution (still around and drawing a pension in 1960 or thereabouts). Written by Ward Moore (who also wrote Bring the Jubilee), and Avram Davidson, who wrote ... well, much and more about anything and everything.
Confirmed: Angelica was 2 years ahead of me, and two close friends of mine knew her fairly well. She was reportedly sweet, and of course talented. I wonder if I saw her in Antigone; I may actually have the program from 1990.
I read Myra Breckinridge when I was in highschool. Are the others like that only with historical figures thrown into the mix?