It's even more of a miracle when you watch the earliest episodes and realize how shitty it was. This was not genius that burst forth from the heads of its creators full-grown; it had to develop and grow over a couple of seasons to become one of the best TV shows ever.

"I don't like this thing —" [grips toupee, opens window] "and here's what I'm doing with it!" [throws it out window]

Wasn't it "prophylactic wrapper"?

It's very similar in tone and delivery to the chimp incident.

I thought about this yesterday, when I saw a really, really old man wearing orthopedic sneakers and carrying an opened fridge-pack of Dr. Pepper into the grocery store with a scowl on his face. I did not want to be the customer service person that he dealt with!

It's kinda lo-mein-y.

I remember "The Contest" as the point at which Americans suddenly, and seemingly all at once, finally shook off their repression about masturbation and admitted that (1) it happens, (2), it happens all the time, and (3) everyone is doing it, every chance they get. Before that episode, people would fervently deny ever…

Everything can be made into an issue to get mad about, if you're creative enough. I recently read an article that said men shouldn't remove their shirts in public, even when it's hotter than hell on a summer day, because it's a rude flaunting of their male privilege — after all, women do not have the same societal…

How many takes do you think it took for Seinfeld to say that right?

"Jewish person." I always thought that was a wonderful nod to the way a good priest would respond to Jerry, emphasizing his person-hood, and removing the stress on his ethnic identity by reducing the word from a noun to an adjective. Also, "Jew" can sound harsh in some contexts, having been hurled at times as an…

I— I gotta sit down!

I can't imagine why the people at Junior Mints or Snapple would complain about the characters on the most popular show on TV raving about how great their product was. Free advertising, right?

The most amazing thing about Seinfeld — and a testament to how genuinely funny it was — was that the types of people depicted on My Name is Earl watched Seinfeld and thought it was hilarious. I know this, because I worked alongside Earl's people during the mid-1990s, and Seinfeld was every bit the water-cooler topic…

I never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense.

What happened? The internets are what happened. Suddenly everyone was too busy i-clicking their links and interfacing with e-commerce to care about quality TV programming, and the networks responded with game shows (e.g., Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The Weakest Link), "reality" shows, and hybrids (e.g., The…

Cinnamon, surely. It should be on the table next to the salt and pepper!

Nope:

Hey, if they armed teachers, like the NRA wants, they wouldn't have anything to worry about, right?

Everyone who argues that arming everyone will make things safer is living in a fantasy world. They all imagine themselves as the hero of their own personal action movie or Western. Every one of them is unshakably convinced that he could win every showdown, shoot-out, or other gunfight he was involved in. They never…

The great companion piece to O'Donnell's witch-denial was Michelle Bachman having to clear the air by stating that, yes, she thought slavery was a bad thing. Any time you have to clarify your anti-slavery position in the early 21st century, or that you are not, in fact, a harlot bride of Satan, you can pretty much…