Strokes can for sure put you into a coma, or semi-consciousness, or any number of effects, depending on where they occur in the brain. A stroke that hits a vessel near the brainstem will have differing effects from a bleed near Wernicke’s Area or Broca’s area will affect how you process language (honestly damage to…

Ya know, the thing about writing “geniuses” — I think you’re right that a lot of writers aren’t really good at writing really smart folks unless they take real pains to make sure their plans are subtle and make for real twists.

One example: I was recently watching Shogun. And the way the writers (and I supposed James…

And adding to what I wrote earlier, can I say that just about any work by Ursula LeGuin would, IMO, make a great TV series or movie. The Earthsea books haven’t really been done right yet, and some of that is because LeGuin’s magic is very much a writer’s magic, focused on language, but that is not an impossible hill…

I don’t know if it was mentioned in the comments yet but a book that is actually (IMO) easy to adapt (there’s no weird plot structure) and pretty timely is The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I don’t think Haldeman gets the love he deserves from Hollywood at all; even though his writing lends itself to adaptation pretty…

Possibly not; I was thinking that any guy who has connections to the Pinochet regime and was in the intelligence service is no joke. That said, I could certainly see people being a little dismissive of Chileans in that context if they are Mexican cartel guys - they would see people from say, DINA as a bunch of effete…

I never thought of him as some weird illegitimate son, but I did think that he was likely a Chilean military intelligence veteran or a participant in a lot of the old operation Condor, which would explain how his records are so hard to find.

Being a science fiction guy I have to throw out some love for his performance in Rollerball and Alien Nation. The former was really understated in a great way, and the latter he seemed to be having fun in (though it wasn’t really as worthy of his talents as it could have been).

No, but a lot of the stuff that comes out is always that somehow she was uniquely responsible. On top of that — certainly contemporaneously - there was some side-eyeing because, unlike the usual pattern, Yoko was a bit older than John was. (The reaction to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher was not dissimilar in that, so…

Is there a reason for that? I mean, it’s not like Yoko cared one way or the other, by all accounts, and we have a lot of evidence that John and Paul at the very least were on their way out if for no other reason than being sick of each other. One could just as well blame Linda Eastman, no?

Hm. I think a lot of people here — someone correct me if I am wrong — can agree on a few things:

One of Cage’s better roles (and I hope I didn’t miss this in the comments, if I did, apologies) was Matchstick Men. Few people seem to note it and I think that’s too bad, because it’s a great example of Cage capturing the sheer wackiness of living with both a very real disorder (OCD) and the topsy turvy world of con…

Totally with you about Aisha. I also think that the fact that Johnny takes in the only two students of color we see could have been mined for a lot of good laughs/ points about Daniel LaRusso’s unexamined sterotyping, and the fact that Aisha isn’t Hollywood-attractive went a long way with me too, it was  a refreshing…

I was a little more in the demo for MTV at its start — I was going into 7th grade when it debuted, and it was at a time when cable wasn’t anywhere near as ubiquitous as now.

Something that I have wondered; curious what others here think (late as I am to the discussion)

You do bring up something really interesting, and the only parallel I can come up with is Victoria.

My irony meter is off, so forgive the sincere question, but it looks like a Sicilian Defense a few moves in? (I am hardly an expert here, though).

You’re right but the problem remains — Dahj’s BF never said, “Oh, can I meet your parents?” And if she did supposedly 3-ish years of undergrad and met her BF there, or whatever, he never asked to meet her friends? If she had implanted memories you’d have to figure a way for her to simulate contacting old friends from…

I will agree with the folks who found this series disappointing at best. And that’s why those of us who are fans and sort-of-fans (I’d say I liked Trek well enough, but my science fiction consumption is wider and I am not one of those folks who loves it enough to go to conventions or even think that liking it is…

The remark about murder reminds me a bit of an old short story called “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester. An android gets murderous whenever the temperature goes above 90 degrees F.

A bit late here but I think a Howard the Duck film that embraced the adult-themed humor of the magazine (the black and white large format one published after the regular series went under in the late 70s) cold work really well, but you’d need someone with the sensibility that isn’t geared to superhero movies. Because…