Your dog is adorable, and may be the reincarnation of Marty Feldman.

Now I'm going to retract what I said about the dark-haired cross-eyed woman being Cora because after rewatching I see that a blonde woman takes Lord Grantham's arm in a "wifely way" so she must be Cora? Have any of these writers watched this show or are they relying on script synopses?

Elizabeth McGovern (Cora) also squints a lot, or opens them really wide while spouting the inanities that Julian Fellowes has given her to say. Here eyes are actually distracting, to me at least.

Great minds thinking alike.

Did you see the number of people listed in the credits? More poeple are working on this parody series than work on the real thing.

I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be Cora.

I can't find it on IMDB and can't remember the title or the names of any of the actors. Maybe someone else will see this comment and know what I'm talking about. And no, I'm not writing this from a locked ward in a psychiatric hospital; this thing does exist somewhere.

Off topic but I was watching some straight-to-video mess of a movie on some high-400s channel on my cable dial and the Underground Railroad was depicted as a Civil War-era train that actually traveled underground. It was kind of incidental to the plot but I held on until the credits and yes, it was made in America and…

Was that mural painted by George W. Bush?

That Camembert combo is really interesting. I thought cheese wasn't widely consumed in Asia.

But that "DMV" is fairly recent (last ten or fifteen years, I think), and wasn't used when I lived there during what seems like it must have been the Taft administration, but was not.

Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives. He was acquitted by the Senate.

I admire Mormon simplicity and restraint. I've been to (Catholic) wedding services that have gone on for THREE HOURS. I know nothing about Mormon ceremonies but I bet there is no version of a sung Mass and readings and 300 people lining up to take Communion. On the other hand, the receptions always had an open bar and…

One of my stranger hobbies is I like to replicate fast food and serve it at parties (and not tell people what it's based on.) I'll have to try faux-McRib. If you buy store-brand hamburger buns, frozen battered fish filets, low-sodium generic "cheese product" slices, and cheap tartar sauce you can replicate a…

And I want to be invited to your wedding! Tell me how much each guest is costing you and I'll give you the same amount in Crate & Barrel merch.

And yet so many of the 20somethings in publishing who went to $70,000-a-year colleges can afford 1-bedroom apartments. They should all write their own books: "I make $28,000 a year and live alone and have a summer share and am very familiar with London and the Galápogos Islands AND YOU CAN TOO!"

I am like a member of the British Royal Family in that I have a proscribed schedule that never varies. I never go to a restaurant on Mother's Day, I never leave the house on St. Patrick's Day (I work for myself, at home), and I never travel on summer holiday weekends. I live in Manhattan, and if you did and you could…

I think I've posted this before but I'll just drop it in here again. I once went to an evening wedding and some of the guests were having such a good (alcohol-free) time that they decided that when they drove back to the town where they all lived (at least two hours away, probably more like three) they should meet for…

Before smartphones people were still able to take photos, via cameras, and in that dark age I worked at several large retail places and in all of them photos were forbidden. Why taking a photo of your spouse or your teenager standing in front of a display of sweaters or cookware or whatever was considered such a piece…

There was never a Golden Age of publishing. Every so often I pick a random day in history and try to find out what the NY Times bestsellers were for that week. Now The Times has so many lists that they're nonsense (yes, everyone should be reading the short-listed Booker Prize volumes, but few people do, so they've…