Oh, this was Ebert-level good. "I despised every cutesy, gratingly adorable, insufferably life-affirming molecule of Hoffman's performance, from an exaggerated lithsp that makes him sound like Rip Taylor playing Willy Wonka to his caterpillar eyebrows, fluffy upturned hair, and flamboyant wardrobe."

You guys have it bad? We saw Heaven is For Real at the theater! I really, really love my wife. Somehow, I missed out on seeing the other one where the girl falls out of the tree and fixes her cancer.

If you're going to add Caine, I'd add Albert Finney to that list. Even if the movie is bad, he's worth a watch. He almost saved Under the Volcano.

Stephen Chow's Journey to the West was good. I saw the Zhang Yimou's Flowers of War just a few days ago - very sad, but also very good.

One of the installers mentioned exactly that, and was a little embarrassed. I said "oh we've never had unqualified famous people in office here!" I was thinking about Schwarzenegger, but there is another example here these days who might come to mind…To be fair, Manny seems to look out for the poor, came from…

As Ann Richards said about George Bush, "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple".

Will Elder created Poopeye the Sailor for Mad Magazine in the 50s. It's transcendent.

You are a master of understatement. And as bad as Trump is, he has not advocated shooting drug addicts in cold blood, and cheering when it happens. Americans became whiners some time back, and a good number have no idea what it's like elsewhere. My wife is Chinese and busted her butt, and we really are living the…

An aside: I used to have a job where I wrote installation procedures for a huge videoconferencing system. One time I was in there, watching the installers, taking pictures, and documenting the process. This was probably seven years ago. They started talking about boxing, and I mentioned, "who is that one boxer, I…

Those Jackass parodies still make me laugh.

That's why they call it "comfort food".

This is a good point. I live in a city that is heavily Filipino and Fil-Am, we just elected a mayor (Rich Tran) who is the first non-Filipino mayor we've had in 30 years. There is a hot table-style restaurant near my wife's acupuncture clinic, and it's just…not that good. I believe this type of restaurant is called…

Comparing it to Church's was a low blow. It's a few steps above that. And, the gravy is not bad.

There is a Red Ribbon Bakery in Chicago, it looks like. Mostly baked goods, but they have this chicken soup that looks good. It's pretty haole-friendly here in Milpitas. They used to sell Dinuguan. A spicy soup made with pig's offal and blood. I seemed to be the only one who ate it, and it was delicious! A little…

If I was a cop, I'd just hang out at the Jack in the Box parking lot at 3 a.m. and give everybody breathalyzers. DUI quota met in 15 minutes or less. That's the only time the food is remotely edible.

I've also seen spaces just before exclamation points, which seems to look better to me.

His advice has all the effect of a custard cream pie being dropped off a six-foot stepladder, but I still follow it

Is it like when Canadian hockey announcers pronounce Desjardins as "dey jar' dins"? The Don Cherry school.

I think those Unicode typos are there just so people who care about this will have an aneurysm. I saw a fight amongst two editors one time, one said "well that's not what Chicago says" (as every tech writer knows, this is a reference to the Chicago Manual of Style) and the other editor riposted "are you referring to…

I still try to avoid semicolons in my writing based on that advice. it's good advice - just make it two sentences.