Just finished a rewatch of Westworld's pilot. Spoilers, but I assume most here have seen it.

It's on my list. McEwan is usually a great writer (see Saturday) and this premise sounds intriguing and provocative.

This is cliched bafflement at this point but I still can't wrap my head around Trump supporters. What more do you need, people? Does he have to blow up a mixed orphanage of babies and puppies while saying "Hail Satan!" and running over old ladies in the getaway car? For fuck's sake. (And it's not even the major…

Well, by being a stupid, horny teenager, Billy Bush may have inadvertently saved the Republic.

According to Access Hollywood's own report, that married woman he tried to woo with furniture shopping and a felicity with romantic language was Nancy O'Dell, former anchor of Access Hollywood and currently at Entertainment Tonight.

Nothing new and surprising. Trump is an asshole to women; Hillary is a neoliberal. News at 11. ETA: And again, one is a regular, skilled politician and public servant, who possibly might believe in incorrect govt economic theories but is a liberal, while the other is a loser and creep ranting in a bar who decided to…

We must severely curtail the election season, but I don't know how, since doing so could increase bad picks, where Americans vote for whomever is ahead in the polls at the time, or had a particularly good week, and there'd be less time to study the candidates and do investigative journalism on them. I don't know what…

Bob Dylan—It's Alright Ma, (I'm Only Bleeding) knocked me out when I heard it for the first time in a car. Same with Massive Attack's Teardrop, in the same place. Dylan, again, with Not Dark Yet. Nina Simone's Sinnerman (I'm surprised TV commercials are just now using it.) What, you expected me to say non-cliched…

Why not: These horror movies set in the woods are anxious representations of how people are alienated from nature, when they live their entire lives in societies that make them less and less connected to the world and less self-reliant.

This theory has probably been already posited: since Michael refers to their area of the Good Place as a "neighborhood", how about the Good Place and the Bad Place being parts of just one single city (The City of God), where the latter is the bad part of town, and each neighborhood has a different class of people.…

Yeah, I meant to say with my comment to Chandler that Brand New Day, the album, may be the weakest since the time of Ten Summoner's Tales, which I think is one of his masterworks. For the record.

Brand New Day, the album, may not be as good as his other works, but still has some great songs on it—like "A Thousand Years", "Fill Her Up", "Ghost Story", "After the Rain has Fallen". One of Sting's best songs, "The End of The Game", about two foxes chased by fox hunters, was originally meant to be on that album,…

Brand New Day, the album, might be his weakest since Ten Summoner's Tales, by which I mean from the time of that great album, but everything else is solidly good.

Her closing bit on 90s cable news attacking Alicia Machado startled me. I didn't know the media of twenty years ago did fat-shaming. Jeanne Moos' quirky CNN pieces have always annoyed me for their vapidity. Plus, she's not exactly model-sized herself.

Post-Police Sting is pretty good, too.

This really isn't a children's book, but your mention of Disney made me think when they did Sword in the Stone. I would love a proper, live-action TV miniseries of Once and Future King.

I agree with you, but considering that people are uninformed and partisan, so they won't care about the content, just the surface appearance of a candidate constantly interrupting the other. Or they could use that to dismiss the first debate, by saying that if liberals think Kaine won, why shouldn't people think Trump…

I didn't find it surprising at all. It's common demagogue politics to accuse the other side of what you're actually doing. Flip the script and hope no one is paying attention. Because Kaine interrupted Pence multiple times, I fully expect a Trump future talking point to be something like, "Can we really take a chance…

I was disappointed Kaine mostly brought up Trump's Greatest Gaffes, in lines we've heard so many times already. Though he did nicely dog Pence on when his running mate would release his taxes and why it's a big deal and insult to America that he hasn't. The problem is Trump has so, so many problems that you can't use…

This was a waste of my time. After the debate ended and the NBC political pundits gave their comments, Lester Holt said "Let's go to the Spin Room." First, why the hell does any TV media have a Spin Room? You, the viewer won't learn anything. Just call it the Propaganda Room by the Candidates' Hacks. Of course they're…