Well, to be fair, given the nutrition available to poor carpenters in Nazareth 2,000 years ago, you could expect the guy to grow very large. I mean, he was probably like a scrawny 5'5" or something, right?

If I were a lawyer for Bilbo—as I so often am in my dreams—I think I could make a pretty convincing case that he won the ring fair and square.

Yes, I'm disappointed that a son of Earendil would countenance such outright thievery. It's that kind of lack of respect for other people's property that led to all that Silmaril unpleasantness.

Say what you will about Ryan' O'Neal's parenting (or acting) skills . . .
. . . but "Barry Lyndon" rules.

Well, the environmental conditions have to be right to catalyze the reaction: did you go 'round the back?

No need for a warrant when we're in hot pursuit of fun, smart guy. Fuckin' long-hair fun-haver. What's that? You're resisting fun arrest?

At first I thought you meant the title was "Fuck Me!" No matter your talent, that's gonna be a tough sell on NBC—even after 9pm.

Vamp Cop: Well, my partner's more of the brawn, whereas I like to think of myself as the—

As long as it's a realistic, down-to-earth show, that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots.

With dry cool wit like this, we could all be action heroes!

May you grow up to have a very personal acquaintaince with the fact that "Sir Osis" wasn't a knight after all . . . .

Yeah, I'll pile on here. Miller's exactly right: IJ takes lots and lots and lots of time to read (it took me three months of pretty heavy reading), but for the most part it's not actually very hard. There were lots of words I didn't know, but that didn't really interfere with my understanding. And the strands of…

@Orderic—you know, I've got a white paper with a long list of suggestions for how Mr. Jean might most productively use that particular cabinet office . . . .

I'm Pretty Sure. . .
Jeeves got Bertie to get rid of his banjolele?

You're right on the money, Pontifex: what a great episode. As I mentioned in a thread below, it was the first episode I saw (entirely by accident), so I had no background, knew nothing about the show, and was still absolutely blown away (and nearly brought to tears) by the Tale of Iroh. Throughout most of the…

Oops, the blurb says the new avatar is a teenager. So Aang died before 70. This makes more sense, though, since apparently the rule was that you're not supposed to let the new avatar know they're the avatar until they're a teenager. (They made an exception for Aang, IIRC.)

Yeah, the death of Mako (the voice of Uncle Iroh) was really a shame. He was probably the show's best voice actor, and they were doing great things with his character. Still, I thought they handled the Iroh story very well in the third season.

I first watched Avatar almost by accident when flipping through channels, desperate for something to watch. I ended up seeing "Tales of Ba Sing Se" and "Appa's Lost Days" (from late season two) back to back. Between the Tale of Iroh, and the scene where Appa's in the abandoned air temple, remembering how the honey…

It is sad to think that Aang will be dead. It means he lead a very short life! (Apart from the 100 years in ice.) If the new avatar is 10, it means he died only 60 years after the last series ended—at age 72. That's youngish for ordinary humans! And if I remember my obscure "Avatar" details correctly, the avatars…

Actually, partdavid, in this case it's "the sports team from my area is superior to the other sports team from my area." Moreover, Warren is 100% correct.