I'd say the issue is the plural pumpkins. I mean, no one says "The Pearl Jams" or "The Black Sabbaths", but because such a large number of bands use the term to describe the members, as a plural, it's instinctive to read plural forms as implying a "the". Like I remember Annie Lennox saying it was just "Eurythmics"…

It might work as well if you leave out the horse.

I learned of these things too late - by that time it was being touted as "Seattle II", and the next big thing - which sucks because I was aware enough to know that by the time someone like me would hear of the next big thing it had better be a thing already or it was never going to actually happen. And while it…

So, is the name "Smashing Pumpkins" supposed to mean "pumpkins intended or destined to be smashed"? Or maybe "smashing" like "you look smashing", though that makes even less sense? Because the literal reading is pretty stupid - like "The Digging Ditches" or "The Delivering Mail". Pumpkins who themselves will be (or…

Marge: I found a way to stretch the food budget.
Fried chicken night will now be organ meat night.
Ham night will be Spam night.
And pork chop night…
Homer: [whining, fearing the worst] Oh…
Marge: … will now be chub night.
Homer: Chub!? I don't even know what that is!

Plus, 2/3 of the group (counting the horse) are from deep money, and even if that's no longer the reality, the "current economic catastrophe" is not about rich girls cut off from their trust funds. Everything about this show says "we aren't actually interested in the economy, but would like you to think so". The same…

We just want our share of trainwreck TV reviews, and Todd's insistence that this isn't it (somehow) helps make up for the fact it isn't Heroes, Flash Forward, V, The Event or The Cape. But the "it's good, really" starts to sound like Homer's runaway pig:

So now they're just the Drive By Rs?

The problem is we pretend movie-watching is a social activity, when it isn't. Unless you're there for sexy-time, there's no reason to go with other people since you sit in silence for two hours. But because people are trained to go in groups, people feel the need to attend movies they have no interest in just because…

But when one capitalist dies, he leaves a niche that can only be filled by other capitalists (or possibly his moron children, but give it a few generations and entropy will eventually win out), sort of like Wild Curleys. More opportunity means more competition, and more competition means more capitalism!

Didn't Corman work cheap though by finding young, ambitious people who wanted an in to the business, so they did good (or at least interesting) work for peanuts, using it to build their resumes and eventually make the big bucks elsewhere? Like a kind of internship? I get the impression that that doesn't work anymore,…

Really? It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember that among the people used (and then killed) there was at least one comic artist explicitly mentioned. But by that point maybe I was just seeing what I'd expected to.

Freedom Rock references are always welcome.

Blade Runner and DADOES are very different animals, and ins some ways opposites. In the book, the replicants are utterly, absolutely evil and wrong, and Deckard regains his humanity by finding the strength to resist and destroy them. In the film he learns to be a human (again, or not) by his interactions with people…

There's something better than that to be remembered for?

He seems like a decent chap who had some luck, didn't let it go to his head and is just happy he can do this and not work in a mineshaft or IT or something. Good for him.

No intelligent adult would be capable of genocide? Wow. I think you just broke my brain.

Surely I'm not the only one waiting to hear how the Midnight Runners play into this?

The squid was stupid - it only seemed there as part of a masturbatory "only a comic book artists could be so creative as to design something truly alien" line that was just embarrassing. Framing Doc Manhattan worked much better, as his exit in the comic was "kinda done with this guy, now what" weaksauce.

Tom Cruise?