Kaplan
I wonder how Kotter did. He nearly won the World Series of Poker back in the seventies. And he writes cookbooks. That guy is the shit.

Endings
I can't even watch Spike Lee movies anymore, because I'm always with him until he uses the last scene or two to pound home whatever thesis he doesn't think his audience is smart enough to glean on their own. Like, the quotes at the end of "Do the Right Thing," that whole "we're all Malcolm X"/Nelson Mandela…

Sadly
If this was a cheap novelization that added a little background to the Mad Men canon, I'd probably buy it. Also, if that stupid slip with the photo on it slid off like a dust jacket.

pronounced like…
"Bob tops for tips" or "Hobo taco crisp"?

I am the Eggman
Seven or eight years ago I saw Badly Drawn Boy at the Grog Shop in Cleveland. He stopped playing halfway through one of his songs and said everyone at the bar should shut the hell up and listen, because he could die like John Lennon, and then wouldn't they be sorry they didn't pay attention at his…

"Logan's Run" Jenny Agutter is nice. "Walkabout" Jenny Agutter is nicer. Don't judge me.

1955's The Fast and The Furious?
Is that starring the embryo that would beget the zygote that would someday be Paul Walker

Try Court & Spark…
which I find myself listening too even more than "Blue" (except for the wretched final track, "Twisted," which sounds like something by the Maria Muldauer impersonator in "Lost in Translation"). "People's Parties" is heartbreaking in the same way as "The Last Time I Saw Richard." See also: the…

Jerry's routine
Jerry's routine also plays a part in the episode where he bombs on purpose so Bania won't have a warmed-up audience. "What's the deal with cancer?"

Cleveland
As a college student in Cleveland who was dying to go east, seeing Pekar and Joyce eating dinner at Tommy's or browsing books at Mac's Backs gave me a little hope that a person living a normal life there could still produce something great. Of course, I went east anyway, and have produced nothing, but still…

Vanessa Carlton
Every time I hear that stupid song I get pissed off that she uses the word "homebound" when she means "homeward bound," and then I wish she was homebound so she never could have recorded that stupid song.

Escape from New York and L.A.
I know they're not, strictly speaking, part of this genre, but I feel like they're it's natural conclusion. Our urban centers have finally been ceded to the cartoonish scum who inhabit them in the movies on this list.