No matter when it gives up the ghost, I'm going to miss this show like crazy. Especially now that the writers and actors have achieved perfect symbiosis with so many wonderful moments in each episode. The whole Fringe team is really on top of their game, has been since the second half of season one. Is there any other…

What a stupid idea for a show. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was able to predict every single boring plot point before it happened. The comparison to Person of Interest is right on the money. Of course POI has a larger story arc going for it, and characters that are already pretty interesting and have the…

My life's the disease
That could always change
With comparative ease
Just given the chance

I just want to say thank you to Noel and all the others commenting for enhancing my experience of the show (which is, in my opinion, the best thing on television at the moment). This is the smartest series around and the fans consistently bear that out.

I don't know. Love the guy but honestly, I think he pretty much lost it decades ago and has not issued a consistently good album since the late seventies or maybe the mid eighties. While I would never count him out, he is just not the artist he used to be.

I think in the long-term Allen's contributions to funny prose may be valued as highly as his films. To me he's the funniest writer since Robert Benchley and James Thurber, as smart as S.J. Perelman but more accessible. For a while there — until Garrison Keillor, George Trow, Ian Frazier and Veronica Geng came along —…

Good review. I always felt that Blue Velvet made much better sense after Twin Peaks. In that context it feels like the real prequel to Twin Peaks (not Fire Walk With Me). All the key elements are there. I'm probably not a true blue David Lynch fan in that I feel he is one of those artists whose sensibilities must be…

Or Otis Criblecoblis.

Spot on with Jellyfish. Yes, they are gone (apparently forever though who can say), but Roger Joseph Manning Jr. has put out two solo albums that are right up there in my opinion, The Land of Pure Imagination and Catnip Dynamite. I agree with many of the other suggestions here such as Michael Penn, Material Issue and…

I see what you're saying now. Yes. Some truth to that. Very interesting to think about how Fields would have fared in an uncensored environment like that of today. Though you could also argue that being forced to get around the censors made him more imaginative, and sometimes he delighted in sneaking big violations…

I couldn't agree more. My two children (now 10 and 15) were raised on Laurel & Hardy and everything else from that era. Now they are of an age where anything not in color or made more than 10 years ago is hopelessly uncool. But they will always gladly watch Laurel & Hardy. The scene in Way Out West where the mule gets…

I went to a couple of double bills at a revival theater in Chicago. One day they showed The Bank Dick and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, the next day Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. I never heard so much laughter in a movie house in my life. And no, there is nothing being done now to compare to it. In a way…

I agree with you about Jack Oakie, but I like Bergen & McCarthy. I think Fields was pretty successful at bringing his persona to the screen, at least in the sound era, but I won't get into an argument with a big Keaton fan because I am one myself. Chaplin too, just not nearly as much.

True story. There was mutual admiration. Van Dyke did deliver Laurel's eulogy. When Van Dyke did his impression of Stan one week on his television show, Stan complimented him and then gave him a list of all the things he did wrong. How's that for a master class?

I would recommend the following Firesign Theatre albums for starters: Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All, Don't Crush that Dwarf Hand Me the Pliers, I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus, Everything You Know Is Wrong, In the Next World…

Well, you do have a point, dgl. The Marxes were better with inferior material than Laurel & Hardy, who didn't have any good scripts after 1940 or so. And they were never able to rise above the material, whereas the Marxes sometimes were.

I haven't seen A Night in Casablanca in many years so now I will have to give it another look based on your passionate defense.

The Marxes were great ad-libbers but that skill was not enough to save their films when there wasn't an S.J. Perelman or a Morrie Ryskind doing the script. When the scripts were bad (as they tended to be after 1937), the Marxes were usually not able to rise above them. You are correct that Harpo often designed his own…

I grew up after the Golden Age of Radio ended but I was raised on it by a father who was an audio comedy fanatic. I think after Jack Benny and Fred Allen the funniest thing on American radio was Edgar Bergen (Charlie McCarthy, etc.). He made Fields a radio star when Fields was suffering from alcoholism and unable to…

Way Out West, Sons of the Desert and Our Relations would be the top three features in my opinion. As for the shorts, there are many more choices, but the pairing of Them Thar Hills and Tit for Tat can't be faulted (the latter is a sequel to the former).