Kenan is great
"Barkley played the father of Kenan Thompson's Scared Straight bully in a sketch that was far funnier than it really had any right to be."

Don't worry about Mr. T
You kids just focus on believing in yourself, drinking your school, staying in drugs, and not doing milk.

My favorite part of that New Yorker piece was how the PR person hates the movies he cuts the trailers for. His response to the reporter telling him about watching Good Luck Chuck as research for the article was, "I hope you got workman's comp."

The ending to the Sandman plotline was the dumbest ever.

Was Mitch Albom necessary?
Mitch Albom's guest spot was entirely unnecessary. The whole show was a parody of his work, so the only effect of his appearance was to take the teeth (what little there was) out of the whole thing.

I liked it, I just wish they didn't drive it home with the journalist saying, "No, those are real." Trust my intelligence, Simpsons!

Props, Rabbit.

Dropping the R.I.P.
I don't mean to threadjack, but might I suggest that the AVC drop the acronym "R.I.P." in the headline of their obits and instead use the more elegant "name followed by years of birth and death" (e.g., "Dan O'Bannon, 19xx-2009")?

No, I think your seat is safe. I doubt any of the ushers are going to attempt escorting out a man firing into the air.

No one's been afraid of a blitzing Bear for a couple of years now.

Say whaaaa?
Tanking one-liners?! Uh, perhaps you missed Hugh's classic response to SJP asking if he remembered their wedding vows: "There was once a girl from Nantucket…"

By the way, as long as we're talking, does anyone else here think that Rabbi Marshak is God, or at least that he represents God as close as the frustrating ambiguity of the movie will allow?

Sure, I suppose you could argue that, idiotking, but that's my point. Larry's life and trials have enough ambiguity in them that any religious or non-religious persons can find a pattern fits the moral/amoral narrative they want. The movie hits that point over and over — the parable at the beginning, the uncertainty…

Elitist Trash, I think the ending is more ambiguous than the "swift and total" vengeance of God. Remember that Larry got those Xrays at the beginning of the film, meaning that he had cancer long before he accepted the bribe. Same goes with the tornado, which was already heading for the son's school before Larry…

A Serious List, more like it!
I was so stunned and angry when the Golden Globes didn't have A Serious Man as a nominee for the major categories, and for a while I thought that maybe all the critics were going to screw the Coen brothers over this year, after they've produced one of the greatest movies of their entire…

I'll second this and add my blinding rage to it. Its absence is unbelievable.

Blowjob comment
"If your college girlfriend offers to do anything for you sexually shortly before you break up, that doesn't mean that 15 years later, you can storm into her house, race past her husband and children, and angrily demand a blowjob on a merry-go-round."

Yeah, it's best not to think too hard about the timeline thing. Especially since the writers don't, either.

THE GIANTS ARE FALLING APART
AND FUCKING ELI IS SPENDING ALL HIS TIME IN A GODDAMN RECORDING STUDIO

Yeah, wow, the Smothers Brothers — this was a nice change of pace from the Simpsons' recent "who's the hottest young flash-in-the-pan we can get" approach to celebrity guest stars.