Just keep the TV off; I too have tried getting my oldest into comics since enjoying them involves learning how to read, at some level. But to him, super heroes are more exciting when they are TV shows. It's kind of a shame, because I don't think he's ever going to get into comics the same way I did.

Interesting comments—I know absolutely nothing about stage farce, though as I said before Fawlty Towers was different that anything else on television. And maybe I should have been more careful about comparing Towers to Seinfeld, since they are indeed totally different shows—but Seinfeld was the first show I saw after…

Yes, Hamilton is in the right and Basil screws everything up, earning everybody's wrath, but you almost wish Basil had the strength to push his nastiness up to another level and yell at Hamilton to fuck off. Right or wrong, Hamilton's being an obnoxious bully, making Basil, who would otherwise look 100% in the wrong,…

I remember an interview in which Cleese talked about Amanda's, and said that the show's writers mysteriously removed Basil and gave Sybil (Amanda) some of his worst qualities, thereby turning Sybil from a kind of justifiable annoyance to an awful monster, worse than Basil ever was.

*Ahem* I know NAWWW-ting.

@google-4b8a1b26ad279646006587430f7cb610:disqus I'm surprised that, given all the things you do like, you don't like Fawlty Towers, but there are some legitimate reasons for not being in love with this show.
1. Even when it came out, it had a lot of critics. The usual complaint was, What's so funny about an unpleasant…

The American is in the right (in some ways), but who cares? Even Americans who see this episode are partly hoping that Basil puts him in his place. Of course, Basil utterly fails to do so.

I used the think Fawlty Towers was the all time greatest sitcom in history. I've since revised that a little bit, because I think some of the episodes haven't dated well, but for at least a decade and a half after it aired there was nothing else even remotely like it. Basil is so mean and awful, but as Todd points out…

@Juan_Carlo:disqus  I think he was licking Nutella off her chest. Yes, that was a pretty memorable scene, a kind of shocker in the midst of all the humdrum stuff. If I remember, every character has a strange relationship with food, with Horrocks' character's being by far the strangest.

Thanks, I was wondering if Kirk and Michael Douglas ever did a film together. A shame that this was it. What about Walter and John Houston?

This movie didn't work for me at all; the characters seemed just a little too cartoonish and grotesque, and the redemption seemed… common. (The mother and daughter have it out. And then they stop shouting and we get closeups of them wiping away tears.) I just never saw what the point to the whole film was. Because of…

I was in Disneyland in L.A. this past December with my older kid and we didn't see anything. And sugar daddy had his wallet out, too, but nada.

Yeah, I think Lux's dad and I need to hang out.
I kinda suspect Lux may be the child from my own dad's secret other family or something, based on this description.

Wreck-It Ralph is a wonderful movie. Among the great things about it: the sound, the surprisingly carefully-constructed story (you can see the Turbo game alongside the Ralph game in one of the opening scenes), great performances (compare Jane Lynch in this to her unenthusiastic job in Escape from Earth) and lotsa…

You are on to something, @eric827:disqus . Paul Lynde was a ubiquitous TV presence when I was a kid (he did a lot of children's stuff as well as the game shows); so in some part of my formed-in-the-Seventies brain, I thought that someone as 'normal' as him couldn't be 'gay.' A prejudice I was raised with, and which…

I just watched Return of the Pink Panther; loads of gunplay including people getting shot to death, some mild sexual innuendo, and everybody smoking. Rated G. Never happen today.

I'm embarrassed as shit to admit this, but I was stunned when I learned Paul Lynde was gay. Really, really shocked. Looking back, I can't imagine why it never occurred to me. I mean, the dude was even queeny when he was playing an animated rat, for Chrissake.

And then!

…and then?

They only do if you're a real man.