totally agree - that is where it should have ended

i don't know….maybe

He was such a large presence on the show that it is always surprising that he was on so few episodes….

that seems unreal

Something that is amazing about Cheers is that longevity. When Modern Family first aired I thought it was great and I was surprised at how tired it was by its second season. Cheers never felt old or tired and kept growing and changing. It's rare when a tv show can do that. Or any art form. Only a few did that Chaplin…

Agree completely.

A few things… on which is funnier Seinfeld or Cheers it really doesn't matter - these are two of the funniest shows ever made. However they are different types of shows - Seinfeld was -as is well known - groundbreaking - getting rid of growth in its characters (sometimes its characters regress) and making sure they…

how are we not talking about how hilarious grayson was when he was pretending to be an italian guy about to rob tippey's house? i laughed out loud. he was like one of the sweathogs….

and everyone dealth with it so differently - Don was just lost and quiet, Roger blathered on and on, Betty tried to help that girl…and no one noticed one another… total isolation

I also want to add it was bleak in such a realistci way - likw when you hate everything but can't even pin down what that everything is. you want change but can't picture is. and the only thing you can do is the same crap causing you pain in the first place

I don't know if this has been mentioned but although Don was reading the Inferno the feel of the episode was dreamlike which has more in common with the Purgatorio - which is very dreamlike. I am guessing this is intentional - Don is stuck between heaven and hell

Jake - I did like this episode BUT it really dug into me too - all day. I really think it was haunting. it was bleak and death obsessed and the mid-life stuff was spot on. being at mid-life I can say so….

Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint - I really love how free the narrative is - and after watching American Masters I agree with Roth that a writer can have no shame - just go…
Philip Roth - Goodbye Colombus
Andre Debus - Collected Stories
John Salter - Light Years - I did not love this novel (but I loved a short story…

IS that true about Leno's ratings?

This whole thing is weird. Fallon has smaller rating at his time slot than Conan did - so why do they think he will do better than Conan? Granted he's more "mainstream" but he's not a great interviewer. And I will admit Leno has got to feel screwed (and I am no Leno fan) - they push him out (and granted he had a new…

i think you're right. but man the academic world holds no interest to me

exactly. i find i need a day job. for the benefit and my sanity. and the money of course. and since i don't write about vampires or anythng in the romance area i am pretty screwed. how did carver, woolf, cheever etc make any money ever?

I love your points here. I have tried both traditional pubishing and self-publishing. Both were difficult. With traditional publishing my genre (literary fiction) they weren't THAT interested in marketing as literary fiction is almost a loss leader and with self-publishing i found that i hated doing the marketing…

Just saw this last night and it is really great. I downloaded a bunch of his songs and they are wonderful and justly praised. great stuff and worth seeking out.

Just saw this last night and it is really great. I downloaded a bunch of his songs and they are wonderful and justly praised. great stuff and worth seeking out.