Posted 8:27 PM by Gene

Remember Paint-by-Numbers? Well as the ASSPress demonstrated today it has a verbal equivalent: Write-by-Numbers. And the TWXSTERS being just as good at hooey as any ASSPressian we get a most brilliant equivalent by a Jumana (any relation to Humana?) insisting one of Shakespeare's contemporaries wrote -- well, you know -- that @#$%&* OVERRATED HBO HIT. Obviously "Can Anybody Here Save This Rag?" Stengel and his sidekick in condescension ER believe insulting their readers' intelligence will keep PEOPLE WARNER's putative putative-flagship magazine from getting so skinny you can fold it up in sixteen pieces and stick it in a shirt pocket; still there is a story here, but Jumana following the LUCEAN precept of trying to screw your reader for glory totally obscures it: that Shakespeare did indeed have contemporaries, and in some regards they were his betters (Ben Jonson comes to mind). This infernal TWXSTER does NOT help the cause by making Thomas Middleton sound like another striking Fantasy and Profanity League member. Nor, despite the many charms that Jeff "Alas It Does Not Quite Rhyme With" Bewkes might be led to see in them, do we expect his plays to air on THE WORLD'S GREATEST NETWORK anytime soon.

But with any justice he'll launch his bruited spinoff of PEOPLE INC. soon, and force it to offend us on its own, without synergistic help from HBO, CNN, or PEOPLE WARNER CABLE.

P. S.

Prior to joining HBO, Bewkes was an account officer for Citibank in New York.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!