SPOILERS CONTINUE

Nah, the real story of that movie was Good Tornado Detection Spheres vs. Evil Tornado Detection Cubes.

Perhaps a class-action suit on behalf of all rubber-suit wearers?

Here's some money. Go see a Star War.

It's great, and so is Soderbergh's stripped-down remake. (The novel is also great; it's like The Thin Red Line in that you could make several different adaptations that would barely resemble each other.)

Since I was pitching stuff on the classical/ metal border over on Jason Heller's article:

SHIT. I have a Messiah and a War Requiem that he conducted. Hmm, no one's around, I suppose I can listen to the latter and no one will see me crying like a six-year-old with a dead puppy during "Strange Meeting."

1. Running many many errands and plotting the route first so I can bike to all of them.

Actually there are a lot of moments where Hugh Dancy seems on the verge of waving his arms around and running through the background of the scene.

Made some puttanesca sauce (OK, I made my usual marinara and loaded it with garlic and olives. Sue me) and tossed it with spaghettini and goat cheese. Good for the last of the cold weather.

All true, but could you edit a SPOILER warning in there? We've got some good commenters here who are on their first trip through The Shield.

Good point from both of you. Arto Lindsay's DNA always struck me as the chamber version of thrash metal.

I've noticed (and met) a lot of classical musicians who are heavy metal fans. The reason has always struck me as simple: before amplification (that is, before 1940 or so) the loudest fucking music you could find was a symphony. Works like the Mahler 8th and (especially) the Shostakovich Motherfucking 7th are all about…

That's not wrong, but a better analogy would be the Godfather films. (The most obvious parallel involves a major spoiler.) In both cases, all the moral ambiguity is with a central group (a literal or metaphorical family) of characters who are surrounded by a hostile environment. (It's not just criminals who are…

ZMF: damn right.

Yes, I judge your name. It am silly.

I've been a Californian for over 25 years and the repeated line "at the edge of the continent" at the end is perfect; it's the perfect sound for reading Joan Didion and Nathanael West (edit: throw in the next-to-last chapter of Blood Meridian in there too).

Well, duh.

BECAUSE OF COURSE MORE SPOILERS

It's what makes this show so damn great—you're never invited to judge the characters, you're made to feel what they're feeling.  At the end of that scene, I was thinking I would've taken the kid's eye out.  And I'm still uncomfortable with having felt that.  Our ability to empathize is so primal (and The Shield taps…