I wondered about that.  Since some of the books deal with historical periods before 1945, I assume that the answer must be that those who asked for the list set a limitation rather than that Bowie himself is blinkered.  His lifetime makes sense.

There's a remarkable passage in the Sesame Street history Street Gang in which Joan Ganz Cooney literally rants about Jane Henson and how she and Jim were separated and she only gets to claim to be his widow because he asked to speak to her when he was sick and why would he have done such a strange thing etc. etc. …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

As someone noted above, it was more aspirational goodness than actual goodness.  I doubt I learned anything from Modern Marvels or Mysteries of the Bible that I couldn't have learned in more detail and with more accuracy from a book, but at least A & E was making an effort.

It does seem as if the sitcoms of the eighties did not live on in the public mind the way earlier sitcoms did.  Family Ties, Night Court, Perfect Strangers, The Facts of Life, etc. never had much syndication or cable-rerun success, whereas the equally mediocre (at best) sixties and seventies sitcoms such as The…

I only caught part of the end of this (hope to see the whole thing later) and was quite confused for a bit.  Was I misremembering the play?  Was I confusing two similar-looking actors?  Thanks for confirming that Aumerle is NOT the killer in the original.

That cover is ludicrously fake.  The book could, I suppose, be published by some branch or other of Penguin, but Penguin Classics is for great works of literature that have stood the test of time - mostly public domain works by dead people.

It doesn't look as if anyone has mentioned For Want of a Nail, Robert Sobel's alternate history written in the form of a textbook complete with fake bibliography.  Only the title and the subtitle "a novel" (both insisted upon by publishers if I recall correctly) break the completely deadpan style.

I have a feeling Mr. Adams is very, very young.  All the comparisons to Kermit  and Gonzo are completely off - this is a parody of a lousy local show, not a slick national production.  In fact, you don't have to dig very deeply on the Internet to find claims that Fundle Bundle was inspired by a real show in Scranton…

I don't think Taylor Swift has a "dumb blonde schtick" at all.  Quite the contrary - I think she desperately wants to be perceived as intelligent and as the intellectually and morally superior partner in all her relationships.  (Whether she is or not, who knows?)

What about Buddy Roemer?

"They, of course, believe the hand of God was involved in evolution, and that he guided and gave human beings their soul."

How the heck is Pam "a man with soft skin and lady parts?"  If anything, just the opposite - I could understand the argument that Pam's shyness and mousiness and seeming lack of ambition are too stereotypically feminine in an old-fashioned pre-feminist way, but claiming that she's manlike?  Huh?

I wish Phipps were still around so he could plug The Canterbury Tales again.  Actually, that might make an interesting anthology series.

I also think many people mistakenly believe the show was in blackface.  (And not only were they played by white actors on radio, but someone above mentioned that was a blackface movie version in the thirties.)

You might be surprised to learn that I think most Americans would not know who Robert Falcon Scott is either.  Is he still revered in Britain the way I understand he once was?

I actually owned (and I guess technically still own, but it's at my parents' house) a copy of Henry Beard's Latin for All Occasions.  The author bio on the flap did bill him as "co-founder of the National Lampoon."  "Light humor" is the right word - a typical section was "Rock Bands in Latin."  (Beach Boys = Pueri…

The trouble with creating a fictional world of national politics and world news is that you either create a names-are-changed version of our world or a world that deviates drastically from our world, and both have potential problems. (As, of course, does a setting in the real world - basically we have three options…

I actually remember that episode.  No, really, I do.  I was mystified by it for years.

The documentary does refer briefly to the Van Doren vs. Stempel ties but mentions only it was done for dramatic effect.  In retrospect, that should have been the biggest clue that the games were not honest - especially if you are right (as I assume you are) that this happened with several other contestants as well!  I…