Barbara Tuchmann's little WWI book is about the telegram.

B-Side of Bing's "White Christmas" is perhaps more despairing than "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I learned just last month that the BBC banned "I'll Be Home for Christmas" for the duration of WW2.

When you've beat down the Great Depression, killed all the Krauts, and your broad is still giving you grief, there's jackshit better than brown liquor and Sinatra.

The wrist-slittin'-est of all singers!

Yeah. Learn some more about Sinatra. For more than fifty years, he's been the guy you dislike intensely because he stands for (and against) so much and then allofasudden you start regretting what a mess you've made of your life and he's The Man.

If you'd made a RDIO playlist, you wouldn't have that problem.

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness.

Your assessment is interesting, because both English Oceans and It's Great To Be Alive! are Cooley-heavy.

Great! Ray starts singing and the magic is enhanced—no, perfected—by several hundred people singing along!

Long as I can slap a dvd into a player and go to the faculty lounge, I'm cool.

Hwæt?

I was in Nashville one day, visiting Vanderbilt, and I walked over to the Borders for some reason. I was distracted, so I wasn't looking where I was going till I suddenly looked up and there, right across the street, was the goddam Parthenon (which, being an Altman fan, I knew was there, but still.)

Upvoted for ellipses.

What if you pronounce it "foilage"?

Foilage!!

Kang spelled judgment with an e. For that, Simon would have called him illiterate.

Simon was loathsome. After the Challenger disaster, many journalists wrote that a "tragedy" had occurred. Simon took that as opportunity to point out how far short the event fell of Aristotle's definition.

Noreen is my secret hero of Season 2. She farts around with existential despair like any smart adolescent but then turns out to be the person who sits up all night with the sick.

Five American dollars for someone who can tell me where to find Comfort and Joy (the Bill Forsyth classic, not the Lifetime movie starring Nancy McKeon, which I am super-sure is just adorable) anywhere on the Internet.

I have taught "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" often enough to know that 18-21 year-olds really do want to be called "perfect." They think that Shakespeare is shitting watery chunky shit on the woman just because he says that she's not a goddess.