Dang it, I’d gone MONTHS without thinking about BD-3000s. They were Episode III’s way of saying, “This is a galaxy with Twi’leks, Zeltrons and cloning technology, yet there’s still so few females that we had to build some out of chrome.”

Good call on "want to use the impressions in weirder ways." For years I've thought Ross Perot was his most successful attempt at a character based on complete nonsense ("You can't sit on a bulldog and expect to get rhubarb pie, you see what I'm sayin'?").

Wasn't that Denny O'Neill? I think Peter David was still Marvel's direct sales editor when Hasbro got Marvel to do the naming.

…I can't believe you would accuse the creator of Sir Apropos of Nothing and crimefighting duos Fite 'n' Madd and Sachs and Violens of indulging in groan-worthy wordplay

No, it's really just Q, and Trelane, but (mild spoiler) at the end it's established that Trelane's name comes from "three lanes", for the three different "Star Trek" realities he starts mixing and matching. There's regular Next Generation Trek, there's "Yesterday's Enterprise" Trek, and there's a reality where Dr.…

For a few months last year while I was moving and waiting on my house to sell, I had an apartment with a CRT television and my old Nintendo, which I hadn't played in years. Monopoly, Super Mario 3, North & South, all entertaining. Then I plugged in Silver Surfer.

"We will date in here! Our kind is dying!"

One of the things I loved about "Wings" is that it was one of the last really successful sitcoms with a leisurely pace, where people could hang around the ticket counter or the lunch counter and just gradually work their way into a joke. Like the time Antonio read Scarlett:

The ones I cited are from that book. The only two Nancy strips that I recall from my childhood are remembered for different reasons: One was clever to me, and the other felt so ludicrously contrived that it made elementary-school-aged-me a little angry.

One of the Superman comics in the '90s had what I think was a send-up of the death and rebirth of Superman, only with Mr. Mxyzptlk. All I really remember is that at one point he meets "God" (Superman group editor Mike Carlin):

"You can only write about what you know…I'm Jon Arbuckle."
—Jim Davis, from the "Garfield Minus Garfield" collection

Someone online years ago made the case that, at least once a decade, Marvel creates a teen hero who's pretty obviously an attempt to re-catch the lightning in a bottle that was Spider-Man:

Along the same lines, Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy had an installment in which Nancy and Sluggo create The Secret Club, where their code names are their names spelled backwards: Ycnan and Ogguls.

I need a Ghost of Mr. Tickles emoji, as it’s the fastest way to say “What happened to the plan? You blew it, man!”

Yep: They figure out that the monoliths are going to write off humanity as a loss and turn Jupiter into a second sun to help the critters on Europa, so they upload a virus into the monolith, and the world is saved!

SPOILER ALERT FOR "3001":

“Fun” might be pushing it. “Portentous” is better.

I would pay actual, honest-to-God money to contribute to a totally reverse-gender reboot of the Filmation Ghostbusters cartoon — female Ghostbusters, female car, male sidekick from the future, female Prime Evil, female ghosts including Fangstress and Lady Guine-Fear, male ghosts including Apparition and Mysterion —…

Heck, Westworld even has a park recording saying something like "Our teams of engineers have spared no expense."

“The best things in life are free. The worst things in life are those Halloween candies.”
“But…Halloween candies are free…they must be best…but they are worst…error…error…”