For one reason or another I cut way back on my pop-culture and media consumption a few months ago and didn't really realize how much of the osmosis about stuff like this I was relying on previously until this: I'd been assuming the whole time that La La Land was set in like the 1950s.

Anybody else go for anteaters on DD3?

“rises…from the ashes of a major national tragedy to pop superstardom.”

I read it for the first time recently and enjoyed the hell out of it. Turns out 15-year-old me, who would've told you to go fuck yourself if you asked me to read that, was actually not smarter than the accumulated wisdom of all Western civilization. Who knew?

That worked out but who the fuck decided to hold gymnastics for eight hours after I'd learned the outcome from the magical space computer that lives in my pocket

Wasn't that a notoriously terrible deal for NBC? I thought I remember that they lose shitloads of money on the Olympics but were obsessed with the "prestige".

Reading that biography of Napoleon continues to pay off (in that I get to brag to myself about answering trivia questions in a contest in which I am not actually participating or rewarded in any way).

Stop calling things "American ______"

Oi, this daft bloke might be a bit of a proper nutter.

Why did Alex insist that was a "great" FJ question?

I think it's in Charles Mann's 1491 I read how Chinese plow blades were curved to more easily drag through the earth while Europeans used straight blades for their entire history until they saw China. It's weird — wasn't some great feat of mathematics or engineering, just one of those obvious in retrospect "oh yeah,…

I think it's crazy to start the '90s any later than Nevermind. Agree 9/11 is the stopping point.

I can only hear the title of this show in the voice of Bobby Bacala when Tony Soprano tells him Janice spent her youth "blowing roadies."

Yesterday's "Abortion is my jam" strip successfully recaptured the feel of the old Phillipe for President with "Homosexuals the Gorilla".

It's so great cause he's doing nothing more than sticking the bat out in front of this softball fate has thrown him, and it's still flying out of the park.

Norm McDonald, instigator of another infamous talk show appearance, an episode of Conan where he completely derailed succeeding guest Courtney Thorne Smith's plugs for her co-starring role in the upcoming Carrot Top vehicle "Chairman of the Board." Simultaneously zero-effort ("Chairman of the B-O-R-E-D") and pretty…

Settled on Duke of Normandy but considered something of Hanover.
Recently read a biography of Napoleon, and I think it might've been one of the single most Jeopardy-useful things I've ever done (despite not getting this one even though it was probably mentioned somewhere in those 900 pages). Got me thinking that…

Even more dinosaurs when that song got a second life twenty years ago in the incessant ad campaign for Windows 95. I remember watching baseball games where the ad breaks would end on one of those commercials and coming back to the broadcast where you'd hear the song playing in the ballpark between innings.

I thought Kaczynski would've been a good choice for the next installment of ACS. They can never top OJ for courtroom drama so I thought a decade-spanning manhunt might be the way to go. Another option in that vein would be Eric Robert Rudolph. Themes of right-wing extremism could resonate pretty well the same way the…

Rereading that now, I'm less concerned with Ignatius (I'd go Galifinakis, and I'm not even really a fan) than I am with Jones and the Night of Joy stuff — hard time picturing how that would come across on film.