This also bears a strong resemblance to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. Zooey Deschanel and Marky Mark are adrift in a world in which pissed off plants make people kill themselves.

“...Trump likes people who remind him of himself...”

Fun fact: Bing Crosby’s 1942 single of White Christmas on the Decca label is recognized as the bestselling single in music history. Some 55 million copies were snapped up by war-weary Americans, Brits and others. 1942 was a very, very bad year for the Allied war effort; we were losing almost everywhere, practically…

Reader’s guide for young people: the lead photo is of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the funniest people who ever lived. This still is from their 1930 short Laughing Gravy. In the film it’s a dog’s name, but during prohibition “laughing gravy” was slang for liquor.

Zuzu’s Petals? Yeah, great band.

“...take the lettuce out of your salad...”

As a father and grandfather I have this advice to offer: disposable diapers. For our first kid in the ‘80s we all environmentally correct and used cloth diapers from a diaper service; they picked up twice a week. I’m here to tell you that there is no diaper pail in all of Christendom that can contain the odor for four…

Alcator C-Mod was shut down in 2016 without achieving break-even, or anything close to it. No further experiments are planned, and the next machine that has any chance at all of making progress won’t even begin experimental operation until 2032. Fusion is a really hard problem.

Fun fact: there is a limit to how large land animals, including humans, can be. Called the “Square-Cube Law”, it describes how the strength of muscles and bones goes up at the square of its size, but the mass of the animal goes up at the cube. These two meet somewhere around the size of an Argentinosaurus, a very…

Gary Larson was all over this in the ‘70s.

Miracle on 34^th Street

“...measure each paper foot on the store’s measuring tool...”

Here’s a handy little nemonic: Stop, Breathe, Notice, Reflect, Respond. Abbreviated as SBN RR, it looks vaguely like “Siberian Railroad”; just remember to ride the railroad.

Yeah, the Chemical Guys gotcha’ covered.

Hmmm... the four horsemen are Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. You’re being a bit tough on Mama Mia, aren’t you?

I guess I’m somewhat relieved to see that everyone now agrees that Art is just a very expensive form of humor. Instead of trying to depict truth, beauty or inspiration, the goal of art is to see who will pay the most for the silliest work.

Fun fact: the camera Jimmy Stewart used in Rear Window is a 1954 Exacta VX. It troubles me that I know this kind of thing.

This exact thing happened to my Mom in Atlantic City NJ in 1954 when I was five. We were visiting relatives there and enjoying a day at the beach. She was paddling around on an ordinary, non-swan air mattress when she kind of disappeared. My dad spotted her well out to sea, nearly out to some Navy ships steaming…