Yes, Mr. James' secret fantasy is to throw himself out of the window. Unfortunately the Dow closes just 10 points too high for him to pull the trigger. It's bizarre and touching that he can't end it all because he's too successful and therefore has no excuse.

Ah, the link includes the period — just take the period off the end and you're good.

Actually a miniseries based on one of the very best books on Biblical archaeology ever written, THE BIBLE UNEARTHED by Israel Finkelstein. The book is the pre-eminent expression of "minimalist" Biblical archaeology, the school of thought that assumes that anything the Bible records that can't be justified from the…

The author wrote a few books aimed at younger readers before SHADOW.

The publisher is reusing a whole slew of earlier Pelacanos books with matching cover designs.

Mystical claptrap religion, I'd say. The descriptions of the book that he chooses from the Cemetary, the main inspiration for his work, are liturgical rather than doctrinal.

This suggests a NR Rorschach test. How do you feel when there's a little post-credits bit with improv and laughter from the crew or cast, which breaks the "reality" of the episode?

I totally want a daemon, too, if I can't be a paladin. Mine is a snow leopard named Calanon.

I think you can probably count on having the next selection announced just after the weeklong discussion ends on the previous one, meaning you'll have about a month to find and read it. BM was announced on May 19. This discussion is taking place the second week of the month rather than the third for GEEK LOVE —…

I'd really like to hear more about this, Earl. I'm trying to fit the novel I read into some kind of gnostic framework, but the barrier I keep running up against is the lack of any "rumor of angels" or signposts of transcendence (Peter Berger reference intended) in the text. The gnostic movement historically would…

I think the judge might be speaking for McCarthy, but I don't think he's acting in a way that McCarthy would condone. The portrait seems to be either a warning (but if so, then no alternatives are offered) or a prophecy.

The best writing and the best writers seem to be channeling a truly divine power, don't they? The power to create the world. Which is also the power to reveal it. Which means the power to indicate secrets as well as unlock them.

He doesn't kill the judge, but for the life of me I couldn't decide whether that was a true moral choice, an expression of the kind of randomness of death that we see over and over in the book (people kill for no reason and live for no reason), or a kind of acknowledgment that the judge is a force that can't be…

Perhaps you could arrange for a handy SAG strike so that there will be no new television in the fall to write about!

Yeah, the web guys say it's a site caching problem. Fixed now, I hope.

The way Lisa scrambles to give her a cigarette as quickly as possible — "Oh yes yes, here!" is just explosively, shamefully funny.

His particular cadence in that scene reminds me of Milton Waddams.

That sounds like something Yogi Berra might say. In that I almost kinda understand what you mean.

There's got to be a picture of a Stargate Defender cabinet on the web that would look better at less than 100x100 px. Though I appreciate the authenticity that an actual blurry screenshot of the episode entails.

Aw, thanks, YF.