Thursday evening roundup and ramble

Hi again! Sorry about the low-key posting week--it's been bananas, but I'll tell you all about it. But first, your roundup:

What is it the all the angry dudebros?

Embrace your inner ambivert:

What holds for actual salespeople holds equally for the quasi-salespeople known as leaders. Extroverts can talk too much and listen too little. They can overwhelm others with the force of their personalities. Sometimes they care too deeply about being liked and not enough about getting tough things done.

I will really miss 30 Rock but I appreciate its legacy.

Does the Les Mis film cheat the audience of irony?

The artist who deploys irony tests the sophistication of his audience and divides it into two parts, those in the know and those who live in a fool’s paradise. Irony creates a privileged vantage point from which you can frame and stand aloof from a world you are too savvy to take at face value. Irony is the essence of the critical attitude, of the observer’s cool gaze; every reviewer who is not just a bourgeois cheerleader (and no reviewer will admit to being that) is an ironist.

and 

“Les Misérables” defeats irony by not allowing the distance it requires. If you’re looking right down the throats of the characters, there is no space between them and you; their perspective is your perspective; their emotions are your emotions; you can’t frame what you are literally inside of.

and

After all, the critic, and especially the critic who perches in high journalistic places, needs to have a space in which he can insert himself and do the explicatory work he offers to a world presumed to be in need of it. “Les Misérables,” taken on its own terms, leaves critics with nothing to do except join the rhythms of rapt silence, crying and applause, and it is understandable that they want nothing to do with it.

I love Jezebel for this inimitable phrase:

...non-calorie-related tasks such as playing the piano and going for a stroll in the magnificent springtime and pleasurably grinding upon one's handsome gentleman caller...

***
So, where have I been? On Tuesday, I went to see Fela!, which was amazing in every way: the music, the dancing, the energy, the power of the story! Also, the Shakespeare Theatre Company is very good to its subscribers, even the broke 35-and-unders, so I got a front-row seat from which I could see everything. Michelle Williams locked eyes with me. It did make some of the dancing asked of the audience more... risque... but it was awesome.

I also saw Stephen Adly Guirgis's "The Motherfucker with the Hat," which was very good and would have been excellent had it been just a bit tighter. Interesting ideas, great lines, lots of humor... just a bit to dragging/repetitive, particularly toward the end. This is not the set of lines in the play, but it's one of my favorites nonetheless, for obvious reasons:

I always thought yoga and fuckin' soy milk an' shit — they're for fuckin' assholes, right? ...Well, guess what? I'm an asshole, bro!

We'll close on that thought.