Chiquita Brands International is the name United Fruit has gone by since 1984. My avatar was originally designed as a political protest T-shirt in reference to United Fruit's history in Central America:

Mmmmmmmm…

Winnie—that was before she played her hand, when she was asking for cash to take on the trip. It was one last chance for him to come clean, and when he didn't that clinched her taking it to the lawyer. Her statement about him not understanding money came later.

It's worth noting
that a lot of the writers who worked on 'Twilight Zone' also came from Sci Fi and thriller anthology radio series like 'The Whistler', 'The Inner Sanctum', and the excellent 'X Minus One'.

"If eXtenZe didn't do something amazing, could we afford to do this?"

United Fruit had been a major player in Cuba (and all the other so-called "banana republics" in Latin America) and the one who (apart from the Mafia) lost the most in the Cuban revolution. Castro alleged as well that United Fruit was a major financial backer of exile attempts to overthrow his regime. So it's not…

"Do you think when he said 'you weren't (the one)' to Annabel, he meant that Jane was?"

I was expecting Caldecott Farms to get rebranded as "Kal Kan":

I think we've been watching Roger thus far through Don's eyes, or perhaps to a lesser extent, through Joan's, and it was good to see him come into his own. He handled Mathis with honesty and grace, and he showed a genuine tenderness toward his "Joanie" (although I don't think he ever saw her as "The One" either—He had…

Suzanne's a Miss not a Ms.—That matters somehow. The ache she must have had doing that unearned walk of shame back home.

Speaking of "airing dirty laundry"—I am sick of all the commercials that attempt to trade on 'Mad Man's historical air, but I'm especially revolted by that Clorox commercial where the self-satisfied female voice over talks about generation after generation of women doing laundry and then as an afterthought adds "maybe…

Don't mistake her intimacy in this confrontation for a softening of resolve, Betty's got the leverage now, even more than a baby in last season's finale—don't think she's not going to put it to use to bring Don to heel.

The observation that Don doesn't understand money reveals quite a bit about how on the ball Betty has been all along—I think she's been an accomplice in her own deception, insofar as she's always known some things about her husband didn't add up, she's always feared that he could just up and leave some day. It's…

United Fruit
Along with a nod to my avatar, I wanted to give quick notice to the fact that a meeting with United Fruit in October '63 is just another finger pointing toward the upcoming Kennedey assassination. I doubt it means anything larger than that—but, like the wedding date and the possibility of visiting Dallas…

But, fjcoyote, I've turned this over quite a bit—I'm not "dismissing its central story inaccurately and superficially". There's two possibilities—either Jesus did what he did with a full certainty that he would be resurrected or he had no such certainty and did it anyway (and there is no consensus among the faithful…

Funny Guy, But
I've been watching that doc on IFC on and off, and I have to say that John Cleese comes across as a bit of a prick. I think it's fair to say that he was the real break out star of Python, and the one member most people recognize and can name, but almost everything he says leaves a bad taste in my mouth.…

Yeah—but Christianity in general and Catholicism specifically have so fetishized that violence and suffering as to make it a legitimate point of criticism. Reading hagiographies of the early martyred saints was like the snuff films of their day. And I'm sorry, but if Jesus knew his death and torture were temporary and…

Also IFC is playing 'Ginger Snaps' in about ten minutes.

The best thing in 'Suspiria' (apart from the crazy art direction) is ——Spoilers——the blind guy in that open courtyard at night. Through a bit of masterful misdirection, Dario convinces you that something is going to swoop down and attack him, and then bam! his own seeing eye dog jumps up and rips out his throat.…

Ponlop—I almost didn't include 'Timecrimes' since it doesn't exactly meet my definition of Horror either. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it did for me what only the few best Horror films do, and that it fit in with that spectacular wave of Spanish Horror that gave us 'The Orphanage' and such…