It was my first thought, if only because I’m pretty sure my 4'11" mother, who is generally friendly to all, loathes Randy Newman to this day because of the song. I’m not even sure if it’s because people taunted her with it back in the day--she just hates it so much that I think she’s planning on living however long…

Certainly true, and the Stanhope comparison is a fair one. I was just thinking about how starstruck you would have to be to move 30 minutes out of town (and Dayton ain’t one of those places where “30 minutes out of town” is more town) because you might see Dave Chappelle at the Kroger.

Maybe, but if you’ve ever been to Yellow Springs, I would think it would take a lot more than a guy from Comedy Central living there to make me want to move out there. When I still lived in Dayton, Yellow Springs was pretty much farmland, some hippies, a tiny college, and an ice cream place that was perfectly fine but…

As a native Daytonian, my first thought was, “Wait, aren’t there, like, 12 people in Yellow Springs?” I seem to remember it being a nice enough little town, but not one ripe for development.

Not only was he usually reliably enjoyable whenever he showed up, he was also one of the best examples I know of someone who was pretty much exactly as famous as he should have been. (See also: Martin Mull)

HITLR is one of the spellings you go through when you’re trying to figure out how to get ‘Heil Hitler’ on your vanity plate.

This is hardly shocking news; anyone who remembers these sites from, say, 5+ years ago knows that everything goes to shit once the shock jocks get involved with a sex scandal.

I mean, until 2003 there were plenty of sex crimes going on that weren’t particularly sleazy (although the better ones were pretty sleazy, if one is honest).

I don’t have access to the court transcript, but thanks to you, I can’t stop thinking about her being questioned by an increasingly belligerent (and almost certainly kind of drunk) Sam Waterston.

It’s easy to score applause in a coastal city by spouting off your liberal bona fides, or, one supposes, in TX by doing the same with the opposite.

Same here. His standup (the stuff I’ve seen of it, anyway) came across as coming from someone who never really got the line between “Here’s something I’ve observed that you probably didn’t notice” and “Everyone else is stupid.” (also known as Gen X’s greatest contribution to discourse). It’s also why I found George…

Back when I watched wrestling (as a kid in the 80s), I always found the promos/story arcs almost as engrossing as the action in the ring itself. The wrestlers and managers really sold it, which is why there are people who can still quote Dusty Rhodes’ “Hard Times” promo or remember specific bits that Bobby “The Brain”…

I wouldn’t say it’s delicious, but it is incredibly sweet (my various mechanic uncles taught me the trick of tasting just a bit on a finger—as in dip your finger in the liquid, then barely touch it to your tongue—to verify that you had a leak in your radiator if it was too dark to see the color); I did a very short…

A worthwhile read, if only for a reference to that hip young upstart, Garrison Keillor.

I will never not laugh at “Where’s the goddamn fire?!”

If I recall correctly, one of them involved sending the teams to a house where they were served cake by a seemingly random woman (one of his other friend’s mother, I think), and they had to figure out that they needed to arrange the cake pieces to spell out the next clue. One team--for some reason, I’m 95% sure that…

“Still Refusing to Break Silence on Ellie Kemper’s Controversial Past, Dame Edna Doubles Down by Calling Reporter ‘Stupid’”

I’ll be forever grateful to my theatre teacher way back when who, after I asked if he had ever heard of this Hal Prince guy they talked about on 60 Minutes...well, after he stopped laughing, he said, “If you want to understand theatre, you have to understand him and Stephen Sondheim,” then brought me the cast…

I read an article not to long ago about an actor...come to think of it, I think it was about Gandolfini...and the toll that playing a character like that took on him, and I know that Mandy Patinkin said something similar about why he left Criminal Minds. It does make me wonder if there are certain actors who are wired…

If you’ve never heard/read David Rakoff’s (RIP) take on Rent, it’s worth seeking out.