I think Eternal Sunshine is in the argument for best American movie of the last ten years. And the ending (hell, the whole movie) speaks to the romantic in me. I just wish that the ending acknowledged a little more that these two people are probably just going to fuck their relationship up again. If I were them, I'd…

Solaris got an F? Unsurprising from mainstream moviegoers, but still, what a joke.

Brilliant movie. While I might prefer Eternal Sunshine by a hair (I go back and forth), the ending of BJM is better.

It's been many, many years since I've read King Rat, and while I liked it then, I don't know how it would hold up for me. Especially since I'd say it and Kraken (and Un Lun Dun from what it sounds like) are all different takes on the same basic Neverwhere story idea: there's a whole supernatural society underlying the…

I remember loving Lucky Girls but haven't been able to work up enough interest to read The Dissident. Or, now, this one. I don't know whether it's that I'm leery about Freudenberger making the leap to novels or what. I had the same feeling with Jhumpa Lahiri. Her two short-story collections are fantastic, and I only…

Just go read (or reread) Neverwhere. Then you don't have to bother with Kraken.

So did Bill think it was 1984, watch Purple Rain, and dress accordingly?

Oh, I had the hots for them, too, but they're a different type (or at least they are to me). Lalla Ward and Anne Lockhart could have been sisters. Also, any time I catch an old episode of Buck Rogers that has Ardala, I keep thinking, "MAN that's a lot of makeup."

Between Lalla Ward on Doctor Who and Anne Lockhart as Sheba on Battlestar Galactica, 1970s science fiction television did a lot to set my attraction to a certain physical type of woman.

Yeah. One character paid one of the leads to "hang out" watching The X-Files with the other lead. She was asleep on the couch while the character obsessed with her pretended they were besties.

Sort of a bewildering coincidence that two ABC sitcoms have X-Files references in one evening (assuming, of course, there weren't any further mentions I missed).

Can we get a list of reasonable options going? I don't that you hear much/enough about them anymore, but I'd think The Byrds would have to be considered.

Yeah, "started tiresome" needs to be a saying.

“This could be so much worse” sums up what I was thinking. It was bad but not nearly so dire as last season's finale. On the other hand, what was up with Esposito treating Ryan like shit there at the end? The bad guy beat Esposito up and left Beckett dangling from the rooftop, yet somehow Ryan is the asshole for…

Well, obviously I'd read that.

edmund hilary clinton, I wouldn't put A Son of the Circus at the top, but it's definitely on my list of favorites. From what I recall—I haven't read it in twenty years—it probably falls prey a little too much to exoticizing some of the cultures it explores. Otherwise, it's underappreciated.

But if you enjoy it, who cares what other people think? Just to calibrate here, what's your favorite Irving? I think I'm most partial to The Cider House Rules, probably b/c it was the first thing I read by him. I know a lot of people would cite Owen Meany, and while I loved it the first time, it was not at all kind to…

It seems like Irving's fiction has become the literary version of  Woody Allen's films. Every time a new one comes out, there are people (not everyone, or even necessarily most, but enough) saying it's his best in years. It's almost never the case. I recall thinking the first third or so of A Widow for One Year was…

I never much cared for Ralph and Vanessa, but their behavior during the game show challenge was impressive. Switch them out for Dave and Rachel in those circumstances and you've suddenly got a psychological horror movie.

I wonder if it's not even Dave's ego so much as he's got a particularly military mindset (for very obvious reasons). For one thing, he has to break things down into individual goals. So rather than just win the race, he also has to come in first in each leg. Rather than just win each leg, each task has to be completed…