Cell-phone snooping is fine. You partner shouldn't have access to all your thoughts, but if your relationship is a healthy one, occasional exposure of minor guilty secrets is actually a good way to begin communicating about them. People who complain about cell snooping are inevitably people with something to hide.
A…

Uh, link?

Why can't we just have a series about astronauts doing space stuff in space without some silly supernatural mystery plot grafted on? Space is cool, and space is dangerous, and space is exciting all by itself!

"He" had nothing to do with it. The promoter sets up the show and, functionally, hires the talent to play it. My assumption is that Aiken said "we've got the venue booked for five shows" and Brooks' management said "we'll be there." The promoter then makes arrangements for the crew and equipment, advertises the event,…

Why not?
Look, we've had common carrier laws for centuries. Sometimes a business (more typically an industry) can become such a critical part of the social infrastructure that it's appropriate that their services be regulated because the commonwealth depends on it — and so long as the companies are still making the…

Like I said above, the costs to put these things on are largely fixed. Five dates in one overseas location is essentially a tiny tour, even though he doesn't actually tour. Big tours amortize fixed costs over even dozens of dates, and for some stadium acts, they basically just keep playing for months and months using…

"Throw the dummy from the pram" even moreso.

The costs to mount a show in a big venue are staggering, especially overseas. The economics are completely different with five shows vs. one. Brooks management presumably shopped his availablilty to promoters and made a deal on the basis of a five-show offer, which Aiken presumably represented they could deliver. When…

No Fences and Ropin' the Wind are legit. The rest of his albums from that period, like all country albums, have a few really good songs amongst a bunch of filler, but his filler is more listenable than most.

It's OK for society to regulate the conduct of private businesses to the benefit of the public, you know?

You could have just not done it and shut up about it.

Seinfeld's acting (or "acting") is something you had to ignore in the early episodes, but I think it works fine here because anyone would start laughing at such an absurd situation.

The notepads are supposed to be goofy — what's the point of silence as a tenet of faith if you can communicate just about as well in other media? It's because these dopes are questing, same as everybody, and the rituals of their dumb cult give them something to focus on besides their bewliderment and lonliness.

They also help with one's asthma. (Short term, obv.)

Apropos of nothing, I lucked into a stack of old National Lampoons from the early '80's recently, and man, cigarette ads of the time sure were dopey.

"Smoke to proclaim faith" is stupid, but not any more stupid than anything else anyone does to do it. If one were being charitable, he might say that's the point — one proclaims fealty to god by doing things that have no temporal reason for their existence. If one were being charitable.

I thought the high school party was goofy too, but upon reflection it was meant to be that way. These are people who have been brutally confronted with their own impermanence, and while everyone is dealing with that, *these* people in particular were 13 when it happened, an age at which everything is a trauma but…

This is very late, but for anyone who might read it — this show is helmed by Damon Lindelof. That means that we will almost certainly never learn what happened to those that were taken. If that's going to be a problem for you, stop watching now. You'll only make yourself crazy. More importantly from my perspective,…

Sonia, that's not a replica of the Saturn V, that's an actual booster built for later Apollo missions that were scrubbed when the program was cancelled. (Although Wikipedia says that the big first stage, the S-1C, was the one built to test the rocket thrust, and was not meant for use in an actual mission.)

Not just you.