Wow, so I've carried my surprisingly deep grudge over LA Confidential not winning Best Picture for two full decades? OK, seems about right.

I have always felt sad for her — such a ferocious, luminous talent — as well as for her whole family. Her suffering is so terrible, and so must her children's be, too, especially as her illness has caused her to lash out in pretty awful, public ways at them. It's tragic all around, I think.

"There is something wrong in this country; the judicial nets are so adjusted as to catch the minnows and let the whales slip through." — Eugene V. Debs

…followed by a furious insistence that it was actually Obama who shit in their mouths.

Another Netflixer from the future checking in. I watched the first four seasons over the course of about six weeks. What a terrible, utterly shit season finale this was — a complete waste of the entire season's plotting and characterizations. Bottom line: Sutter simply didn't have the courage of his own convictions to…

I'm mostly kind of freaked out that Brian Henson appears to be Billy Bragg's long-lost brother. LIFE'S A RIOT WITH KERMIT VS KERMIT

Definitely try to catch him on tour this fall — he has a great band and pretty much always puts on a terrific show (and his set lists always include a selection of Jam and Style Council tunes).

What chance have you got against a tie and a crest?

I've seen Paul Weller at least 25 (maybe closer to 30) times as a solo artist, including his first solo performance in the U.S. in 1991. (Alas, the Jam broke up about a year before I was allowed to start going to concerts as a kid, and I don't think the Style Council ever really toured the states.)

Was this before or after Bingo tutored Honoria Glossop's kid brother?

Several years ago I saw Emo Philips do a bit involving young Walt revealing to the rest of the Disney company his exciting new plans for his first animated film, "Steamboat Hitler." To this day I am mad at myself for not having had the foresight to record it.

Please tell me Oui 2 Entertainment also includes at least one executive named Jean-Ralphio.

I dunno, I was into the Jam/the Clash/Elvis Costello/etc. at Paige's age in the same period, and though I think her social consciousness might make those bands appealing to her in general, I don't get any sort of (post-)punk vibe from the way she's presented at all, either in terms of her social arena at school or in…

(Oh, yay, this is exactly my kind of conversation!) I think this hinges on whether they were watching MTV and/or other music video shows of the period (e.g., Night Flight, Video Concert Hall, etc.). Kimmie strikes me as someone whose family had cable (and therefore would have seen MTV by now) and so I don't think…

Exactly! When he had the band several seasons back, I thought, OK, that kind of explains the hair; he's being framed as way too-cool-for-school and will eventually sneak Paige or Henry into a Pylon show or something. Sadly, no. (Though I fully cop to being far too invested in the complex nuances and signifiers of any…

+1 for Burnt by the Sun! I was just thinking after last week's episode that I needed to watch it again.

Plus, having been a teenager in the '80s, I can say with some authority that Matthew's hair is completely out of sync with Matthew the character. The only teenage guys wearing hair like that in the first half of the '80s were either record store clerks who collected albums from Paisley Underground bands and had seen…

I totally agree. I would be really surprised if the show has largely jettisoned Henry (a la Bobby Draper on Mad Men) just because they don't know what to do with him, but it increasingly feels that way. Maybe there's some surprise in store, e.g., Math Whiz Henry Jennings Has Secretly Become a Proto-Computer Hacker in…

Right there with you. Season 4 dispensed with most of the story lines that had been driving the series for so long (most obviously Nina/Stan/Oleg and Poor Martha/Philip, but also Stan/Agent Gaad and Stan/Sandra), so the complex dynamic of plots and interpersonal relationships has been really reduced, and hasn't been…

Yeah, that wallpaper is definitely a hangover from the Super Seventies. (Source: my brother-in-law's house, which hasn't been redecorated since the Ford Administration)