The Bad Batch, of whom I am getting rather fond. They are fleeing from/on the tail of Fennec Shand, for whom I do not feel the love. Back when Star Wars/A New Hope came out I was hopping up and down that there weren’t any women fighters (I was getting my black belt at the time), and my friend asked if I would want…

The only one I liked, and that was when it came out, was “Alice’s Restaurant”.

It’s exasperating that Hollywood has never, never gotten hippiedom right, not even while it was going on.

It is a delightful read, almost tangentially about food. I don’t recall now whether it was here or in Gertrude Stein’s “autobiographical” account of life during World War II (I think it was II and not I), but I have always remembered her observation that they “threw nothing, but nothing, away.” I was struck by the…

Good point. There is a gym within walking distance of my house. What I really should do is walk to the YMCA (3 miles), have a drink of water and sit down, then walk home (3 miles). There’s just something that bothers me about getting my exercise by driving to a gym and paying money to work out on a machine.

A few months ago I tried to take up running by jogging 60 seconds, walking 60 seconds, every other day for a week. I had such bad tendonitis that I couldn’t go to dance class and had to take my last Tylenol III. I’ll have to stick to long walks up and down hills, and dancing for cardio.

The one and only time I ever saw my uncle was in his coffin at a wake when I was six. As long as the child understands what’s going on and isn’t stramming around it’s fine. Otherwise, small children, like promises, should be carried out.

Not necessarily... but I recall a time when I was six and my father left me in the car, presumably to go to the bar (one of two in our town). I didn’t know where he was, and time passed and I started to get hysterical. I even tried calling out the window to a passing policeman, who didn’t hear me. I’m sure that when…

Tell ‘em to go catch a fish.

Good grief, Franco Nero is still looking pretty good. Didn’t he and Vanessa Redgave meet during “Camelot” about 50 years ago?

I saw two films I’ve been waiting a long time to see — actually three, as I dutifully watched “The Avengers” (not, alas, with Diana Rigg) in preparation for the next Popcorn Champs article. Of “The Avengers”, Robert Downey is always fun, and I guess fine actors like Tom Hiddleston and Mark Ruffalo are there to chew…

Ditto. I watched the first two episodes and then couldn’t get into it. But I’ll watch the finale. There are still things they do very well.

Try “Zoo”: a documentary about a circle of bestialists (zoophiliacs), which came to light when one of their human members died from said activity.

I’m of the opinion that if you can’t touch it, you don’t own it.

My husband nobly came with me to see the final movie and of course slept through the whole thing. By this point they didn’t bother to provide any sort of recap - if you were in the audience, you were supposed to know what was going on.

It’s really a miracle that throughout 8 films every single character continued to be played by the original actor with the exception of Dumbledore, and that was because Richard Harris died, so he had an excuse.

Some fifty years ago a 39-year-old journalist posed as a high school girl;  it was for Life magazine and presumably was with the consent of the school. She wore glasses to hide her crows’ feet, but when she went to the malt shop with her new girlfriends the waitress handed her the check anyway.

Eyeing the dry sherry when I was out of booze.

There is undoubtedly a prenup to end all prenups. Before he was ever married Gates remarked, “I like to date smart women, and they’re smart enough to know they’re not going to get my money.”

I rarely use Amazon. I use Abebooks.com instead, particularly for the not brand-new. It’s like Amazon Marketplace but much larger and worldwide. The books are cheaper, and the dealers include the big ones as well as mom-and-pop.