Search
Devcat Reports

We had a recent outage due to ongoing problems with the latest WordPress update. We were also forced into some theme changes. Some of these changes are temporary and some are probably not. We apologize for the inconvenience.
TEN SECOND BUZZ
- Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25March 31, 2025171 Comments
- Open Mic for the week of 3/24/25March 24, 2025182 Comments
- Report: Trump to Sign Department of Education Elimination Executive OrderMarch 19, 20253 Comments
- Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25March 17, 2025238 Comments
- From The New York Times Editorial Board: The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher EducationMarch 15, 202550 Comments
Features
Hot Posts
HELP ORDINARY TIMES
Recent Comments
CJColucci in reply to Derek S on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25There was no tariff plan you would have been okay with. Hell, I doubt there is much of anything Pres…
Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/04/el-salvador-deportation-ruling-trump-administration-0027287…
Slade the Leveller in reply to Marchmaine on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25You're telling me 2 months of ciphering isn't enough time to negotiate something that might crater t…
Philip H on About Last Night: Voting Fun in Wisconsin and FloridaThey keep running black men for senate in Mississippi.
Philip H in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25Elon likely does. $277M buys a lot.
Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer for Meta, announces: By Monday afternoon, our fact-checkin…
LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25I was just going to post this. They really don't have much power over President Trump at this point.…
Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25Rats fleeing a sinking ship watch: https://www.rawstory.com/bessent-trump-tariffs/
Chris in reply to Derek S on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25No, the issue is that the way the tariffs were set is very, very stupid. Like, no rational person wi…
Derek S in reply to Chris on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25Finally an actual answer. Took enough to pry the answers out of you. So, the whole issue is it is no…

Comics
-
April 4, 2025
-
April 3, 2025
-
A Would-Be Buyer at an Automobile Show
April 2, 2025
-
April 1, 2025
More Comments
North in reply to Kolohe on When a Maiden Needs a Friend
Jaybird on Weekend Plans Post: Batchin’ It
Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Marchmaine on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Chris in reply to InMD on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
InMD in reply to Chris on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Chris in reply to Chris on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Chris in reply to KenB on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
InMD in reply to Dark Matter on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Dark Matter in reply to InMD on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
Dark Matter in reply to Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
InMD in reply to Slade the Leveller on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
One of the best — on many scales — classes I took in the K-12 grades was the ninth-grade English class where we produced a three-act play.Report
one of my happiest memories from high school was when we acted out scenes from King Lear (we were reading it at the time) and my group got the scene where Cornwall pulls out Gloucester’s eyes, and I was like I KNOW HOW WE CAN DO THIS, I’LL BE CORNWALL and we did it by seating “Gloucester” in a chair with his back to the audience, and I palmed a couple of grapes from my pocket, which I then squashed and threw on the floor.
it was deeply satisfying partly because it shocked the other students (I was known as pretty meek in high school)
(We had time to prepare, that was how I knew to have the grapes. I also borrowed an old fur vest from a friend of my mom’s; it looked kind of like a doublet)Report
Ninth grade was the last year of junior high, and our junior high building had a beautiful full theater built during the Depression. The class did everything: speaking and non-speaking roles, costuming, make-up, scenery flats, lighting, props, eventually the programs and posters. The romantic leads were cast by acclaim. Sandy and I had to audition to get the comic relief role(s).
I remember one afternoon where Sandy and I spent the whole period walking across stage repeating our lines while the lighting guys futzed with getting “moonlight on the cruise ship deck” right. The lighting guys were two jocks that most everyone expected to have as much sensitivity as a rock, but turned out to be perfectionists with a good eye.
There were supposed to be two performances: dress rehearsal for the rest of the junior high and an evening performance for relatives. As I recall, we ended up adding two matinees for the high school students and a second evening show for the more general public.
Someone even popped for a modest party after the final performance.Report
5 pins == 5 cents?Report
My guess is actual pins. My logic goes (1) the kids are playing at production, so admission has to be collected, (2) pins were readily available to kids (ask Mom), and (3) 1912 was well past the time when pins had become cheap to make. The kid on the extreme left “paying” certainly seems to be holding up pins. Think of it as playing poker for matches. You didn’t ever play poker for matches?
Sanity check. The average price of a cinema ticket in 1912 was seven cents. No way is the backyard play production going to be able to charge most of the cinema price for admission.Report
The matches would be a way to keep score. “I won the pot.” It makes sense positionally.
Is this one of those things where 5 pins are, effectively, worthless but 100 pins are, effectively, something you could sell?Report
Possibly. But I tend to believe it’s just a “price” that every kid in the neighborhood not involved in the production can pay. And paying, then going in to sit and chatter and wait for the opening curtain, that’s all part of the game.Report
I got it.Report
Also remember that the ‘days of real sport’ ones are nominally set in the 1880s (i.e. nostalgia callbacks from Briggs’ own youth)Report
Apparently, a regular feature of the vaudeville / theater scene in the 2nd half of the 19th century were “Tom Shows” , based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, some *very* loosely. (the wiki article says that some were just straight up minstrel shows, and in any case most shaved off all the rough edges of Stowe’s moral message”)Report