Like Stephen F. Austin up there, I gave Mad Men a whirl now that it's on Instant Watch, breezing through the first three or four episodes. So far I'm appreciating it more than enjoying it, if that makes sense. It's really well-made (beyond just the production design, it's extremely well shot), but the actual…

Wait, there are other people who think Dan Savage is a huge asshole most of the time? THANK you. I thought I was the only one. To hear most people talk, everyone thinks of him as the gay Mother Teresa.

@Revisited: The general attitude from the OP and others in this thread seems to be "why are Confederate soldiers always the heroes even though they fought for such an obviously evil cause?" Implicit in that sentiment is the belief that if one fights on the wrong side one approves of everything that side stands for.…

Not that I disagree that the South was wrong — it was, both on slavery and secession. But it's naive to say that all Confederate soldiers were somehow more racist than their Union counterparts, just as it's naive to assume that every single German soldier in WWII would have approved of the Holocaust. They were all…

I imagine the Confederacy is often portrayed sympathetically because 1) the narrative of an overmatched group fighting hard for an ultimately doomed cause makes for good stories and 2) the average Union soldier wasn't much more enlightened when it came to slavery anyway. The Emancipation Proclamation met with some…

Looks like idiotking pissed somebody off enough for them to finally make an imposter account. Silly, really: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that.

One thing I like about these episodes is that Tim never gets the last laugh, either in the confrontation with Gareth or the exchange with the computer guy. Most of the time comedies always end those exchanges with the audience-identification figure having the perfect comeback and coming out ahead, probably because…

More butter on my ham!

@Warren Oates: Now that you mention it, I do remember that one being pretty good, but the dire-to-funny ratio on the skits is still too high for me. YMMV, I guess.

Agreed on Joel's delivery. It was just … boring. He always sounded like he was in the middle of a yawn. I could never tell if the writing was weaker than the Mike era, or if Joel's delivery was killing the jokes.

Ha ha, it's so funny when a woman tries to DO something!

Autobiographical, eh
"Fallon was the entertainment equivalent of the guy who plays Counting Crows songs on an acoustic guitar on the quad during freshman year of college, the guy who gets laid constantly 'cause he thinks he's just so fucking cute with his acoustic guitar and his ankle bracelet and Maori warrior…

I can see why some Marx Brothers would leave you cold (I didn't get much out of the clip above, personally), but "Duck Soup" is easily one of the funniest movies I've seen in my life. In addition to the mirror scene, the whole going-to-war song ("They got guns, we got guns, all God's chillun got guns!") and the…

I thought it was pretty common knowledge that she was in on the jokes. Isn't she often referred to as "the fifth Marx Brother"? Their movies wouldn't be the same without her prim, stuffy straight woman.

Is everyone in the world suddenly watching and loving Breaking Bad, or is it just me? Seems like I'm seeing it pop up everywhere 'round these parts, when before it was only occasionally mentioned. Did the promotional push for S4 pull in a bunch of new viewers for the series as a whole or something? I don't remember…

Yeah, we're rapidly approaching the Felicia Day Event Horizon on these comments. Might be time to use the nuclear option.

Lost in Translation
In 2005 I was newly graduated from college, living alone, and working an awful temp job at a mortgage company. All of my close college friends had moved out of the area after graduation. I had a bachelor's degree in English and no idea where I was going to go from there. Coming into that situation,…

Every time I see one of these my hope dies a little more.

Maybe so, but there's a bit of ground between "being a bullying dickhead" and "being a willing accomplice to murder and terrorism." The Slytherins are never portrayed as anything other than the latter in the last movie. As everyone's been saying, Rowling pays lip service to certain ideals, but it's never actually…

Another hearty cheer for John Henry. "Snail Shell," Destination Moon,"' and "The End of the Tour" are all perfection.