And the various Jazz sub-genres each deserve a Gateway if not a Primer of their own (in no particular order):

"Use an allmusic or something when looking for actual album"

"The funniest pre-1965 television you will find is…"

Among others
I had a roommate in college (the legendary Shecky) whose brother (the somewhat less legendary Shecky Sr.) had all kinds of cult and art films and rare documentaries on VHS which we were privileged to be responsible for storing (and watching) while he was off doing God Knows What All. One of the tapes he…

Absolutely Miller—But I think it also has to do with how much more "composed" his music is. Unlike Parker or Miles, Mingus was often not using the standard "head / chorus / head" arrangements that were the standard with Bop and Hard Bop for decades. So while there was still ample room for improvisation built in (and…

I also didn't think 'Lethal Weapon' was all that great when it came out—and I think 'Superman' suffers from the same problem a lot of Hollywood adaptations of superheros do—it tries to split the difference between playing camp (for the benefit of the mainstream audience) and serious (for the die-hard fans) and you…

But too also
I recommend his autobiography.'Beneath the Underdog' is anything but a standard musician's memoir—it's very literary, experimental in places spiritual in others and in still others just plain raunchy (forget Hip Hop pretenders—Mingus was literally a pimp intermitantly and a player always). But there was…

'Ah Um' is a good place to start—
but my own introduction was the slapdash Columbia release called 'The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife' which I later came to learn was the bulk of 'Mingus Dynasty' and a couple of spare tracks. Nevertheless it hit me like a shot. Up until that point I had been a dilettante where Jazz…

Sorry—a more up to date link for 'Vic and Sade':

Let's call the whole thing off.

So is nobody going to take up the question about comedy expiration dates?
Or did I miss that post?

Petrie Dish
You know I likes me some Mary Tyler Moore.

My experience of 'True Grit' was that the audience at first were sheepish about laughing. I guess it took them a while to realize how deliciously witty the dialogue was—I was in my seat howling and then I'd realize I was the only one. I was like c'mon—she just called him a rodeo clown! That's funny!

I don't know if the book goes into this
But he was on 'Fresh Air' talking about how sick CGI stunts make him—apparently he gets into all these free screenings as an academy member and walks out of half of them because he's disgusted by the way people in the movies nowadays don't even try to work out the stunts they…

Miller's right about the Napster connection—but AMG goes back a little further than that for me. Still, as soon as I heard about Napster (and Mp3's) it was over.

AMG was never perfect—and they haven't been as thorough in recent years—some of the links don't work right, some of the discographies are a little jumbled. But for years it was the only game in town.

WHAT!?!
Way back in the mists of history, when I first started going on the "internet" and connecting made a grating, decidedly untechnological racket when you "dialed up" and you couldn't use the "landline" telephone at the same time, and "porn" was mostly pictures you'd seen before that took a long time to download…

Heroes aside
Has any serious, successful series ever been made about a superhero that didn't have its roots in an established comic book property? I can think of one—'The Six Million Dollar Man' (two if you count the spin off). But every so often Networks try this—'Misfits of Science', 'Greatest American Hero', etc.…

Can't act? I dunno. She's never gotten the chance to show range but she sure gives good quizzical (and is a master with a mace can).

'The Big Lebowski' is far less lazy and aimless than it appears at first, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily better.