I saw this back in Feb on a China Southern flight from JFK to Guangzhou, China, a pretty insanely long flight (I also watched "Inception," where they tout the Sydney/LA flight as being one of the longest in the world, which made me laugh). I hadn't heard of it at the time, and it's strange that it's appearing here now.

Do the boys think El was actually dead? It's kept vague (obviously a little too vague). In the immediate aftermath in the classroom, El has disappeared and they are hunting and calling out for her, not mourning. In the hospital room when Will wakes up they describe her as "gone," usually a euphemism for dead, but…

If you need help moving, call a good friend. If you need help moving a body, call a great friend.

Damn, I want John Goodman to get a spot in the DNC convention playing Walter Sobchak leading the audience in a call and response "Shut the fuck up, Donnie!" Normally it'd be too crude, but after Giuliani's and Cristie's bits, it's all of a piece.

As straight up gags go, getting the piano out is better than getting it in, because getting it out presumes that it is possible (since at some point someone got it in). Douglas Adams played with that in the first Dirk Gently novel, but with a couch and a flight of stairs (which has the added benefit that many more…

I saw it a few months ago. I liked it, but it sounds like that's a minority opinion.

The movie "Air" from last year sort of does it. The same premise, but there are two engineers awoken on a regular basis to do maintenance while everyone else sleeps instead of just one. The movie mostly focuses on a particular repair session where things, obviously, go wrong. I liked it more than most.

Damn fine movie. I haven't seen all of Reese Witherspoon's movies, but I'll buy that this one is her best performance (though "Freeway" is close to my heart). I think it's Payne's best, too, and I love watching it as a stealth sequel to "Ferris Bueller."

ATTICUS! ATTICUS! From that book, "To Kill a Mockingjay," The Hungry Games.

But would Bernie really take out a guy's eye, even Saul's?

We don't disagree about Bayley. I don't think he should be tried for 2nd degree murder, as MCC seemed to be setting him up for; in a criminal sense, I'm not even sure manslaughter is correct. I don't think he had any malintentions. But he should face consequences for what he did, and losing his job is a bare minimum.…

Caputo's not an anti-hero, he's a situationally moral guy* unable to stand against the systemic forces pushing against him. There's a reason he sympathizes so closely with Bayley. Obviously worse guys could be in their places, and they try to push back, but they both make tragic mistakes. Bayley doesn't get out before…

"Caucasian" is a meaningless term because race itself is a muddled social construct, and is flexible over time. Italians haven't always been "white," and neither have the Irish. The white club continues to grow! All but the hardest-core orthodox Jews are now white in America, and Arabs, Persians and Armenians are…

One of my favorite things about the flashbacks is that we almost never see them get arrested or in court to see exactly what they ended up in prison for. We see them do some illegal stuff, but are left to assume they eventually get caught. It's made explicit when, back in season 1, Fischer speculates on the mistakes…

Minneapolis was originally built on late-19-century industry like the rust belt cities, but the mills were flour mills rather than steel. Those mills died like most of the others, but Minneapolis moved off the rust belt route by successfully transitioning to things like medicine and medical technology, and a good dose…

Minnesota touches one of the Great Lakes; Duluth is the western-most Rust Belt city. The Iron Range in northern MN provided the iron ore that went into the steel mills of Pittsburgh and eventually the automobiles of Detroit.

There are a few things that officially happen on the last day of a presidency. Most are probably taken care of weeks in advance and just post-dated. But in the series' compressed timeline, Selina probably would have spent that last night furiously signing pardons.

I love those scenes in the bomber: the martial music, the can-do American spirit. Nothing is going to stop them from completing their mission, even though literally the entire world needs them to fail.

"Getting to watch Margaery Tyrell's schemes come to fruition" is a pretty sweet euphemism. Where's the HBO CEO of tits when I need him???

It's strange, because the show-Lannister gold mines are spent, they are actually broke and in rapid decline, but nobody else knows it (and the show seems to have forgotten it, at least for now). The Tyrells are by far the wealthiest, and militarily in decent shape. Dorne is really their only potential rival within…