Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The First Real Thing by Cat Grant Sorry, but Cat Grant won't be a series regular in Season 3 of Supergirl. Though she played a major role in the two-part season finale, it seems Calista Flockhart’s Cat Grant won’t actually be sticking around in Season 3 of Supergirl . At least, not permanently. TV Line reports that, though Flockhart was initially listed alongside the rest of the Season 3 cast, she's still just a guest star in Season 3. Much as in Season 2, the plan is for her to show up in a few guest appearances next season. It seems Flockhart still isn’t keen to relocate to Canada for the gig, so she won’t be a major presence next season. Which sucks, because Cat Grant is awesome, and her return in these last two episodes was a major creative spark. Though Flockhart won’t be around for most of the season, Supergirl is looking to cast a new player in Season 3. As expected, the main villain in Season 3 will be the DC baddie Reign (that other, mystery baby sent off from Krypton). The studio is casting for the role now, and the character is expected to appear in 12 or more episodes. Sunderland 2-1 Lincoln City (2-3) highlights as Tom Hopper heads Imps to Wembley. Welcome to our coverage on what could be a historic day for Lincoln City. The Imps face Sunderland at the Stadium of Light knowing a defeat by less than two goals will send them into the League One play-off final at Wembley on May 30. The Imps are in the driving seat after winning Wednesday’s first leg 2-0 thanks to goals from Tom Hopper and Brennan Johnson. If Sunderland, who will be backed by 10,000 fans at the Stadium of Light, can bridge that deficit, the tie could be settled by extra-time and penalties. Follow team news, match updates and reaction in the feed below. You can also get involved via our social media channels. And join in with the debate on our Lincoln City Chat Facebook page. Fan reaction. Lee Johnson's reaction. “It’s devastating, there’s no doubt, there’s no other word for it. The boys are devastated in there, the staff are devastated. You could see they put everything into it. “The fans were magnificent. It was my first taste of the Sunderland fans with everybody behind us and if there’s a positive, it’s that is a sign of things to come, the tempo we can create for the 23 home games next season. “We should have had a penalty when Ross Stewart was taken down and I think at that point, if we get to go 3-0 up, it allows us to rest in possession a little bit.” Appleton's reaction. “The only disappointment I had was that I thought we should have won the game with the big chances we had. “A very emotional day, very excitable. I don’t show many emotions, as you know, but I certainly showed it at the final whistle. “I’ve got a smile on my face. We’ve got a game [against Blackpool] to look forward to, but tonight it’s about enjoying the moment and the experience we’ve been through today.” READ MORE. Match report. Tom Hopper headed the crucial goal as Lincoln City reached the League One play-off at the expense of Sunderland amid incredible drama at the Stadium of Light. The Imps were on the back foot after first half goals from Ross Stewart and Charlie Wyke hauled the Black Cats level in the tie. But Hopper’s header, 11 minutes into the second half, proved decisive to set up a showdown with Blackpool next Sunday for a place in the Championship. The early goal Sunderland craved arrived on 13 minutes when Aiden McGeady sent in a dangerous ball from the left and Stewart got in front of TJ Eyoma to stab home. Tim Minchin: 'I don't want to fall foul of public shaming' Anyone who’s ever been to one of his touring shows will already know that this is a man who loves the sound of his own voice, which is actually a good thing. He talks, he sings; we laugh and clap; it’s a good deal for everyone. But on the line from his Sydney home, the esteemed musician/comedian/actor outdoes himself today, the words arriving as if under considerable pressure, pumped from his busy brain out through the fountain that is his mouth. “That was pretty bloody long-winded, wasn’t it?” he says at one point, after offering up an answer the length of a Tolstoy novel to one of my questions. “But that’s pretty typical, you know?” I do now. And I’m not complaining. Minchin is charming and articulate company, and it’s lovely to just get carried along by someone else’s enthusiasm on a cold grey morning, colourful stories tumbling out of them like a clumsy drunk’s pocket change. “When I was a kid in Perth, writing songs with my brother, we were just trying to be the Beatles like everyone else,” Minchin says when asked for a snapshot of his childhood as a surgeon’s son growing up beside the Indian Ocean. I picture him small, hyper and slender as a sapling, getting about in a singlet and shorts, dodging back-yard snakes, sunbaked and carefree, before catching hold of his talent and ascending to his current position as one of the world’s most celebrated musical comedy dons. “There were plenty of heartbroken songs in my late teens, and all that bad poetry that everyone writes, but from really early, like 14, I was also writing these pretty weird and quirky songs. A lot of it came from the fact that every song I heard on the radio felt like those people were nothing like me.” These were the days when every singer/songwriter seemed hell-bent on convincing you how much they’d suffered. “But I couldn’t take my own suffering very seriously, because I was hyper-aware of my suburban, middle class privilege. All these tattooed dope- smoking scenesters​ in Perth would wander about, like (adopts drongo voice) ‘Hey, I’m in a band and I’m getting laid and I’m really f…ing deep, man’. But my thing was always, well, I can play piano fast, and I'm a book nerd. I'm a massive f…ing Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard geek. So I embraced my destiny as a nerdy white boy obsessed with words.” Now 45, Minchin was born in England to Australian parents then raised in Perth, playing piano from the age of 8. Most impressive role in a school play? Cinderella’s talking cat. Most prophetic early achievement? Writing an entire musical based on Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost ​at age 17. After studying performing arts at university, Minchin started composing for documentaries and stage shows between hustling for acting work, eventually moving to Melbourne where he performed satirical songs while waiting for a more “serious” career to gain traction. “At first I was calling what I did cabaret and no-one gave a s. then I called it comedy and suddenly I had an audience! I’d never even done a 10- minute stand-up set before the songs started taking off.” In 2005, he won the Best Newcomer comedy award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe​, which led to him being “misdiagnosed” as a comedian. Minchin considers himself a musician whose songs “just happen to be funny”. Early performances immortalised on YouTube find him kohl-eyed and back-combed like a more cheerful version of The Cure’s Robert Smith, flailing away barefoot at the piano, bolting convoluted wordplay to robust melodies, frequently revisiting thematic preoccupations – capitalism, bigotry, religion, moral hypocrisy, the healing power of empathy and love, the wonders of cheese – as if to suggest these aren’t really separate songs at all, just ongoing instalments from the messy rock opera that is his life. One of his favourite tricks back then was to launch into a keyboard solo that rapidly falls apart, as if he has foolishly tried to rise above his meagre abilities, and then, from a wasteland of clanking chords and bung notes, just as it all seems a little too awkward, he pulls out a bunch of virtuoso jazz runs, just to mess with your head. In 2009, Minchin was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to write a musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s​ Matilda , a show that went on to win so many awards, it earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records . Afterwards, all doors opened. There’s since been a steady stream of live albums, TV panel show appearances, other musicals, arena tours. He starred in Californication , the Robin Hood feature film, a Tom Stoppard play, his own comedy-drama series Upright . An enthusiastic atheist, Minchin gleefully played Judas in a stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar . There was a film directing gig. He made his first studio album, Apart Together , last year. “Because of Matilda , I was getting opportunities to do all this other stuff, and it all got pretty big. Between 2010 and 2012, I did a massive tour with an orchestra, playing Wembley Arena and the Royal Albert Hall, and I thought – OK, well, that’s musical comedy done! I didn't really know where the f… I was gonna go from there.” But if you’re not quite sure how to move forward, there’s sometimes wisdom in looking back. Subtitled “Old Songs, New Songs, F. You Songs”,​ Minchin’s Back tour has been rolling around the globe in various forms since early 2019, including a sold-out run in New Zealand that year. An Encore tour was bumped due to the coronavirus pandemic, but a retooled version is now due to whip though Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch next month, with the Auckland show launching the Auckland Live Cabaret Season​. “I put plenty of my old comedy hits in the show alongside a bunch of new stuff, some of which comes off my Apart Together album. There’s plenty of quirky songs, and plenty of commentary. I still talk at a million miles an hour between songs, I guess because that's what makes me stand apart.” The songs are really something. An omnipotent ophthalmologist appears in Thank You God , an atheist’s mock apology for his lack of faith in the Big Guy. A pervy riff on a jazz classic by George and Ira Gershwin, Inflatable You is the last word in sex-toy love ballads. Praise be! There’s a secular hymn with the unlikely singalong chorus-line of “Magic Woody Allen Zombie Superhero Komodo-Dragon Telepathic Vampire Quantum Hovercraft Jesus”. If This Plane Goes Down resonates strongly with my own fears as an anxious flier, with Minchin drinking heavily as he blasts through turbulence at 30,000 feet, trying to forget that his life depends on “a couple of dozen rivets straining between fuselage and wing”. “There’s a lot of fear and sadness in that song; you’re ultimately contemplating your own death, but also thinking, ‘Ah, well, I’ve had a pretty good life; it wouldn’t be the end of the world’,” he says with a slippery little laugh. “It’s got the form of an old jazz standard, but it’s contemporised by those lyrics, and you end up laughing when really, you should cry.” Talked Too Much, Stayed Too Long ​ponders Minchin’s journey from Perth to Melbourne to Edinburgh and beyond, a verbose funny-man who regularly outstays his welcome, anticipating the day when he’ll finally fall exhausted into the grave under a tombstone reading, “Here lies a clown who wrote some songs”. It’s a show where Minchin also talks about his regrets. In 2013, he moved with his wife and two children to California, spending four years directing the US$100 million animated movie Larrikins , which was axed by Dreamworks before completion. The resulting disappointment, exhaustion and rage gave rise to the song, Leaving LA . Minchin sees comedy as a way of exploring deeper truths, with music an added sweetener. You open up when you laugh, and new ways of thinking sometimes jump right in. And if your comedy is brainy as well as funny, well, maybe it can help fight the dispiriting bigotry, science denial and anti-intellectualism that’s on the rise these days. “I care deeply about rationality, clarity of thought and non-binary thinking, and that runs through everything I do. It’s even deeply embedded in Matilda , where Mrs Wormwood says that ‘what you know matters less than the volume at which what you don’t know is expressed’. In Back , I talk about how the internet functions to take what you already think and confirm your biases. A lot of people think they’re being progressive while they merely shout at one another on social media. Sadly, the Left is as bad as the Right, endlessly policing one another’s beliefs and the language with which they talk about things.” Minchin has lost none of his own passion for critical thinking over the years, he says, but he has misplaced some courage. “I've got a lovely career now, and I don't want to fall foul of some public shaming campaign because I say the wrong thing. Also, people misunderstand my intentions. As I say in the show, it’s not about whether or not you're on the right side of history, or whether your beliefs are basically correct. It’s about how we talk to people with whom we disagree, with a view to changing world for the better.” Minchin’s shows have changed the world for the better, too, it seems. Online, across multiple platforms, fans testify to the pleasure they get from his work, and the way his songs help them feel seen and cared for and understood. People find strength and comfort and hard-won wisdom in what he does, not just a passing laugh. “Ah, well, I love that idea. I have the right toolkit, I think, to help people laugh and cry and think with the songs I make. The feedback I get after shows is that, yes, people laughed, but they were also surprised by how emotionally moved they were. My main goal is simple, though. I hope that the two hours flies past and people are deeply entertained. My greatest nightmare is that someone has looked at their watch. And a lot of people don’t realise the musicianship will be as good as any gig they’ve seen all year. I want them to come out saying, ‘Holy s. Those cats had chops! They could really play!’” Sorry Sunderland Suffer More League One Heartache As Lincoln Head To Wembley. Sunderland’s League One torture will extend into a fourth season after they failed to overturn a 2-0 first-leg deficit against Lincoln City on Saturday to exit the play-offs at the semi-final stage. Lee Johnson’s side pulled back the two goals they needed at the Stadium of Light only to see a Tom Hopper goal send Lincoln to next Sunday’s Wembley final against Blackpool. The 3-2 aggregate defeats marks a second play-off failure in three years at this level for the Black Cats, who welcomed back 10,000 to their Wearside home on Saturday and had looked well on course to reward their loyal faithful with a trip to the national stadium next weekend when they scored twice in a truly dominant first-half performance. Aiden McGeady’s cross from the left teed up Ross Stewart for an early first goal, and it should have been two when Lincoln gave away the ball at the back and handed Charlie Wyke a one-on-one with the keeper but the Sunderland top scorer took too long to get a shot away and was denied by a late block. He made up for it soon after though when McGeady whipped in another ball, and this time Wyke poked home to level the tie. At that point it looked like the Black Cats would go on and strangle the life out of Lincoln but having failed to bag a third before the break they saw the visitors come out with a far greater attitude in the second half. And, after Regan Poole had headed against the bar with one great chance, Tom Hopper was left in acres of space to score his second goal of the tie and put the Imps back in front on aggregate. Lincoln could have put the tie beyond doubt when Josh Scowen brought down Conor McGrandles, but Lee Burge’s subsequent penalty save from Jorge Grant gave Sunderland hope of still rescuing the tie. Yet the home side’s best opening was when McGeady hit the post and Wyke slid the rebound wide as Lincoln held on on the strength of their excellent first-leg performance. A fourth season in League One marks a true nadir for Sunderland, who had experienced only a single campaign of third-tier football in the long history of the club until their back-to-back relegations in 2017 and 2018 resulted in their current spell outside the top two divisions. With Lee Johnson having taken over as manager in December in place of Phil Parkinson, the expectation is that the former Bristol City boss will be given the opportunity to have a full season in the role in 2021-22. But the longer Sunderland stay in this division, the shorter patience will be among supporters who have now seen their club fall short at both stages of the play-offs as well as missing out on the end-of-season deciders on the strength of points per game in the curtailed 2019-20 campaign. For Lincoln, meanwhile, it feels like the possibilities are endless following a run which has seen them rise out of the National League, then League Two and to the League One play-off final in a four-year spell. Not since 1960 have they played in the second tier, but now only Blackpool stand in the way of Michael Appleton’s bid to take the club back into the upper reaches of English football for the first time in 61 years.