Penn was on the ground in New Orleans after Katrina, and apparently the work he is doing in Haiti is worthwhile enough that the Haitian government has appointed him an ambassador at large.

@bakana42:disqus I've only seen it a handful of times. It was Charlie Sheen's show. Plenty o' penis jokes, I think.

I just want to know why a third-grader is watching 2 1/2 Men!

Be respectful! It's his idiosyncratic spelling of the French version of his name (Wouter/Walter/Gautier). It's not affected at all!

I had the opportunity to see them before they really broke, but I hadn't actually heard the music yet. So, I passed.

@avclub-e329caccd50119a7e020cb5532f30569:disqus The difference between "talentocracy" and "meritocracy"? Talent implies something (like potential) that you are born with and is independent of your actions. Merit implies something you deserve based on your conduct.

I don't know about the ad world, but college degrees weren't nearly as important then as they are now, partly because the Supreme Court forbade employers from administering IQ tests due to racial bias. Companies decided to start requiring degrees, pushing off the "intelligence" testing on others.

It all seems to depend on the circumstances. I've heard people rave about psychedelics (heh heh, "rave"), but I knew a guy who had an LSD experience like you describe: terrifying and with people who didn't give a shit. People who promote LSD tend to say that if you go into it with the idea of "getting high", you're…

My family had a 1972 Pontiac (I'm a 1969 model myself). That was one of the first years to have mandatory shoulder belts and seat buzzers if the belt wasn't fastened. However, the shoulder belts were sort of "accessories" to the lap belts that had to be connected.. They were stored in some sort of pouch above the…

Her?

@avclub-e6990f5a3eb5738fbb28fd8a53506f6f:disqus The Beach Boys and Dick Dale (the era-appropriate surf-rocker) aren't supposed to even be the same thing. They got lumped as "surf" by accident, I guess because the Beach Boys sang about surfing and Dick Dale wanted to recreate the experience of surfing. The Beach Boys…

@avclub-e6990f5a3eb5738fbb28fd8a53506f6f:disqus I don't think they were revolutionary; they were ubiquitous. They still had them on the Kansas Turnpike in the 70s, but I don't really remember anything about them. I'm sure the HoJo was in 2001 for the same reason as PanAm and AT&T. They were there to emphasize that the…

… and already taken by the Cherokee.

@avclub-976e5a7c9f5586745269c99891652285:disqus Yup, that's how I've heard it. There were also cigarette cards.

Who's playing Jackie Jormp-Jormp?

Mission: Impossible: 1966
"Take Five": 1959

I think you win that point, Pancakes. Maybe there is narration that overemphasizes the cute factor, but that's not said explicitly.

I just finished a sometimes-good book called Almost Chimpanzee that looks at the flip side of "chimps are almost people". Almost, maybe, but not quite. They are certainly remarkable animals, but the line leading to them and to bonobos diverged from humans several million years ago. There are significant differences…

@itisdancing:disqus @avclub-b0dae075785888267fc19871f3e7dab7:disqus  I'd say that a man using the word "whore" in a joke about a woman is courting danger, particularly when the joke is in a piece about a "war on women". As a man, I wouldn't feel right calling myself a feminist. That doesn't mean I can't be thoughtful…

A musical response to the rural purge: The Lawrence Welk - Hee Haw Counter-revolutionary Polka, a real song by Roy Clark that apparently went to #9 on the Billboard Country charts.