I totally agree with that. I actually think DC is a vibrant town with a lot of culture. By focusing on it as the seat of government, though, the show managed to miss all that. Drear, drear, drear.

No, I was talking about DC, the site of the main competition.

Oops, fixed.

I don't really know Mark personally, but many of my students have taken his classes. You're lucky to have had him — a great teacher and writer, by all accounts.

There's a brief description in the book about the rehearsals and training necessary after NASA decided to send an American flag to the moon. It had to be mounted on the outside of the Lunar Module, it had to have a telescoping arm to hold the flag out (no wind on the moon), they had to rehearse with astronauts to be…

I didn't get too much into the poop thing because it's been the subject of so many of the other discussions of the book and author interviews, but it is worth noting that on the Daily Show there was no clear definition of "fecal decapitation" although the term was tossed around a lot. For the record, it's when the…

Legendary Desmond
Gosh, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I felt like a philistine watching that routine and wondering why everyone was in awe of this guy. Somebody who knows this world better than I do please explain.

That's the second time we've seen her on TV, and man — what a great song. I think Noel went to buy the album immediately thereafter, so it's good to hear Genevieve's high opinion of it.

Yes indeedy. 4:30 Eastern, 3:30 Central.

I really appreciate Leonard posting that comment; I was worried that my post here might be unfair to him and so I asked him to read it a few days ago, before it went up on the site. He e-mailed me the above, and I'm grateful for his understanding and clarification, as well as for his willingness to share it.

We're glad you're here, PH. Only one post left in the Season 4 edition, but stay tuned for a bonus extra sometime this month to tide you over until Season 5 next summer.

I'm just a sucker for characters fleeing. It was a rare chance to get a Jimmy version — and a jumpsuited Jimmy, at that.

When I mentioned this theme to Noel, he immediate said "Chuckles The Clown."

Actually, that would be a "Hey! It's 1998!" S.O.

I thought about including a "Hey! It's 1999!" Stray Observation about the veiled reference to Netscape.

That's why I wrote it was *mostly* unrelated.

I'll edit. Thanks.

Unlike SYTYCD, we are on our second big year with an unchanged format.

They've been coy about how many are in the finale, but pre-season interviews indicated they felt like there were too many finalists in Season 6, so I'd bet on a top 3.

The best part of that is the five seconds of loud clomping feet approaching from the newsroom, followed by Bill appearing all out of breath.