Ryan O'Neal in a King Arthur movie, either as Arthur or one of the principal knights.

Nick Wanserski, I'll draw your katakana next time. ;)

Well it's time for a moratorium!

Is there a new Hawkeye that isn't either the Last of the Mohicans or Hawkeye Pierce? Is it something I should know about? Shouldn't that name be retired?

I loved TTSS, perhaps because of the "dull" things - I didn't expect it to be such a quaint, pastoral ode to England, but I loved that. I was disappointed by The Honourable Schoolboy and felt that Smiley's People was just a retread of TTSS. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through SWCiFtC, too early to pass judgment, but at…

Having just finished the Smiley vs Karla trilogy, I am backing up this month and reading The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

Most people seem to have found him endearing in this interview. I think he shows why we lefties are often disliked. Saying he's learned not to trust politicians, then immediately making an exception for the current fad candidate. Being rude about the original Star Wars cast, as though Hamill, Ford, and Fisher didn't…

I thought it was less about the theater and more about the collection of vintage child nudes.

I am a completist for the Harvest Moon series. There are some good ones, some bad ones, and I don't care about the difference.

I just don't think that Trump has the interest or the inclination to follow through on any of the threats and promises he's made for the sake of appealing to poor white people's base impulses. The danger of a Trump presidency, I think, in the domestic context, comes not from Trump himself but from emboldened,…

I think Bates was to Downton what Rob Lowe was to The West Wing: initially supposed to be a major focus, but never got any traction, so largely dropped in favor of a more complicated figure (Thomas for the downstairs half of Downton, Josh for The West Wing.)

They're going out on a high note, with a good penultimate episode and what I expect will be a nice, feel-good finale. That's all one could ask for after years of frustration.

Seems like a long shot… but have there been any updates since this story appeared?

Right, that's what I mean by "political orientation."

"All she had to do was come on, remind everyone she's a conservative black woman"

The idea, I THINK (because really, I don't think anybody is sure), is that if the Academy were to hire a black person to do outreach, they would hire the whitest black person possible, not just in skin tone but in political orientation. If that was the intent, it failed for two reasons: 1) most people don't know who…

Jim Anchower?

That was a good one.

Could be - I lived in Japan but not until 2006, and that's the way it was explained to me, but memories are short so it could have been a previously popular song. In Sendai, the largest town near where I lived, the local J-League team uses Country Roads as its theme song, so it was a natural subject of discussion.

What feels really right about that performance to me is that he has that can-do, DIY, dad-joke attitude that real astronauts so often have. I'd believe he was a real astrobiologist if he didn't have actor good looks.