This is the spot where you probably want to bring in Gentlemen of the Road, which he meant as high-spirited adventure that actually turned out as entertaining but a little flat.

It looks like Going Clear has actually found a publisher in Canada; I'm thinking of breaking my "wait until softcover" rule just to support it.

@avclub-226badd3f3410155b258766cca6002ea:disqus Well, "rarely". That chapter's the big asterisk to my argument. But! It's a brief interlude in an otherwise fairly traditional, 465 page novel.

I'm currently working through The Passage. I've been enjoying it somewhat, but some of what Genevieve's talking about has also been a drag on me. It feels like every character needs a chapter like the one Snape gets in Deathly Hallows, where background is given and motivations are explained. At a certain point, I just…

I was roughly at that point when I took a break from the book. I'm surprised to hear you're unsure how you feel about it, though. Seems like a "one way or the other" kind of thing.

Loved Train Dreams. It shows that it was published as a serial work, but still great Johnson. I recently lent it to a friend who adored The Sisters Brothers; I'm guessing she'll like it, too.

YPD was a least favorite among favorites, in terms of the big Chabon books. My list goes Wonder Boys, Kavalier, Telegraph. Werewolves in Their Youth if we're including short stories. I really don't know about calling him "flashy"; when I think of his peers, in using genre conventions or being some somewhere on Time's…

I'm pretty incoherent right now. This news kinda makes me feel like hating on stuff that doesn't necessarily deserve, such as Up All Night.

F.Y.I., Women have broken up.

I'm working on some fanfic that bridges the gap between this episode and The Birds. The premise: when they opened up the new time line, all Hitchcock plots became a reality. 

Every now and then, when there's a real good political speech going on –– and I mean real, real good –– I like to turn to the lady next to me and just lay one on her.

Can someone please make a pilot that's just Kate Cameron, Sky Spy? And turn it into Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: The T.V. Series?

They've definitely added a plastic-looking gloss to her face that she doesn't have in real life. Or Curb Your Enthusiasm managed to cover it really well.

The show needed to go all out. Embrace silly costumes and dumb action. Instead, it was almost as boring as goddamn Unforgettable.

I'm paraphrasing, but the line "This is what romance is like now" when Roxanne is talking about her Yelp boyfriend was astounding in the bad way.

I think that would count as a community service, right?

As much as I like Peter as a character, I will admit that in S1 and S2, it occasionally felt like they had to work really hard to make him useful. 

Did Happy Endings get six more episodes or were six more scripts just ordered for the season? I thought I read earlier that it was the latter.