I once saw a dead snapping turtle on the side of the road during a traffic jam, and had no idea what it was.  I thought maybe it was some kind of circus or zoo animal that had gotten loose after a train derailment, and that's what was causing the traffic jam.  Some weeks later, someone mentioned snapping turtles, and…

True, but it's no good inviting other people to watch, read, etc.  People need to keep that to themselves.

His hair, glasses, and emphasis on strawberries was clearly meant as a reference to John Lennon.  So, even if he wasn't chronologically or demographically a Baby Boomer (or whatever they call that generation in the UK), he was culturally representative of them.

I watched it completely straight, but couldn't tell you anything about it, except that Seth Rogen drives a shitty car, and there's a shoot-out at the end.

http://www.imdb.com/title/t…

Wonderboys, the movie, is the big exception to my hatred of stories that focus on the struggles of writers.  This is especially annoying in novels, where it seems like nothing more than the author's self-indulgent off-jerking.  I don't know why this bothers me so much in print, but painters' self-portraits don't irk…

It's like everyone heard John Carpenter and Vangelis and thought, "Oh, this is what movie music is going to be from now on."  I think the studios were really enamored with the thought that a bunch of sound could come from just one guy at a sophisticated keyboard in his office, instead of needing an orchestra and a…

I had to read your comment three times before I realized the word "is" does not appear in it before "in."  I thought you were laying out a mind-blowing stoner koan, man.

I haven't heard his defense of The Phantom Menace — could anyone summarize it?  I can think of reasons to defend it (if not like it), not that I subscribe to any of them on an emotional level (and my reasons apply only to that one, not the other two prequels).

This is the Tom Cruise principle.  Around my house, no movie with Tom Cruise gets shown, per Malinger-Her's wishes.  She proclaimed this after relaxing her standards enough to watch War of the Worlds and Minority Report, and finished the second one by saying, "I hate Tom Cruise so much I couldn't even follow the…

The fact that it's not out of the blue is what makes it worse, to me.  It's kind of like Dennis Hopper's stalling tactics against Christopher Walken in True Romance.  Both characters clearly see what's coming, know they can't do anything to stop it, and do what they can to help out their (surrogate) sons.

A friend of mine had a grandfather from the Ukraine who was captured by the Germans during World War II.  For whatever reason, he ended up not in a POW camp, but in a concentration camp, and at one point was taken out beyond the fence with a couple of guards to dig graves.  He figured one of them was meant for him. …

Loretta.  Don't you repress him — I mean her!

I tried some Yiddish translation sites, but didn't come up with anything that looked like it would have appeared in Mad.

"Showing feelings of an almost human nature
This will not do."

@avclub-380d43c0c4a3888641d86c7ab30f989b:disqus , my father was born in 1947, and he has told me many times about encountering fictional characters (e.g., the Lone Ranger) first on radio, and then following them to television when they migrated in the mid-1950s.

@avclub-b9a8f4af85454f7c56c06f0a39e7ec23:disqus , unless she was following me on security cameras or something (which, I suppose, is a possibility), she never saw me put the books back and leave the store without paying for them.  I'm sure you're right, though, that buying the items in that situation is always the…

"Look, Daddy: a whale egg!"

In my experience, the first definition there on Urban Dictionary rings true (though the use of "dope" in general sounds dated and old-fashioned to my ears): people like my mother would call all drugs, including marijuana, "dope"; people who are more experienced with marijuana wouldn't reefer to it as "dope," and would…

If cheap and watery is what you're after, find some Old Style.  That's my high-volume summertime beer (about $13 for a case of 30 cans).  I like cheap, watery beer like that when the weather turns hot and the days call for canoe rides (original Miller and Coors are good; so is Schlitz, if you can find it; I'm not real…