Eddie Deezen and Maury Chaykin, tearing up the screen!

Mr. Boddy was nipped to death!

I'm reminded of Jeremy Hotz's stand-up but about the game: http://www.cc.com/video-cli…

"I did terrible things during the war!"

Uh oh, don't let Bobby Bacala know!

Heh, this was quite a fun read. Nicely done, Mike! And boy oh boy, next week's top hat piece should be dandy!

"By gum, Grover Cleveland was elected to a second nonconsecutive term!!! I remember it like it was yesterday . . ."

Summers actually addresses this in the book! He always had OCD, but it wasn't a problem when he hosted the show. He'd simply do his job and then go take a long, hot shower. It never interfered with production or anything.

I read in the recent oral history of Nickelodeon that the Double Dare set reeked to high heaven - the combination of funky materials and hot stage lights wasn't a good one - but it doesn't matter to me. I'd still give anything to do that obstacle course.

I laughed so hard reading that one that I teared up.

"Mom's boyfriend Ron . . ."

Specifically, Alec Baldwin's delivery of "Uh, Fat Bitch, sir."

I'm a big Krakauer fan too (his writing, at any rate!). I'd also strongly recommend Under the Banner of Heaven and Where Men Win Glory.

Gosh, Team of Rivals is a joy to read. I remember tearing up by the time I reached the end. And yeah, McClellan really sucked. What a dork.

That in turn reminds me of Taibbi's epic postmortem takedown of Boris Yeltsin: http://www.alternet.org/sto….

Is the Jaws book the one written by Carl Gottlieb?

Gosh, my hat is emphatically tipped to your taste, erudition, and ambition! That's quite an impressive list. Keep me informed as you begin the LBJ Initiative!

After spending last summer utterly absorbed in the magnificence that is Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson, I figured I'd try to recapture the magic by finally starting his first book: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.

THANKS HOWARD JARVIS.

I think his point wasn't that he was any more original about the subject than the jerk, but that he was just as knowledgeable and insightful as the guy who spent $200,000 on a degree.