You might be reading a little too much into it. Are you British? I’m not, but I work for a British...well, it doesn’t matter what I do, but let’s just say that I’m steeped in 20th-century British history.

I wonder what that house smells like. I’m team dog but as we get older we’re thinking about moving to cat territory, because walking a dog during a blizzard or when the sidewalks are icy is no fun for us now, and will be even less so ten years from now. But everyone I know who has cats, and they’re clean, responsible…

I’ve never read a Harry Potter book or seen a movie but isn’t the whole thing set in contemporary times? If they’re pulling in kids from all over Britain with these special powers some of them must be a little darker than St. Diana, RIP Princess of Wales, or the Middletons.

I think Fellowes threw in the black jazz guy with the preposterous American accent (and bad singing voice, for extra unappeal) to show exactly how modern and transgressive Rose the flapper was. And then she offs and marries a very wealthy and well-born Jewish guy and they move to New York, even though they’re both…

There are non-white characters in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, which is one of the “whitest” novels ever written.

W actually lost the popular vote in 2000 but when he ran for re-election he won by about three million votes.

It’s called the Dead Man’s Switch. I think all trains have them.

I have friends in their 50s and 60s who grew up in Hoboken. They called the train station “Hatpin Dolly” in honor of the Chairman’s mother, and also because there’s a weird curve before you get to that station.

I read that link. There were a few caveats. It was very “damning with faint praise” and “lesser of two evils.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

I did not know that.

I suppose the job of the editorial section of a newspaper, digital or print, is to form public opinion, but why endorse at all if both are so unpalatable to the company and the readers?

“La Macarena”

He’s mostly of Irish descent and was born in Bay Ridge. That “Danny Boy” intercession in “Tubthumpin’” would be catnip to him. However, I hope that in his drunkenness he played “La Macarena” on repeat.

Thanks for your feedback! Like I said, I’m not a fan of the show and I don’t think my husband has ever even seen it, so I’ll cross that off the list.

I didn’t realize that the auditions for the older closeted gay man who is hired by the mid-tier cruise lines to dance with the widows/divorcées were televised nationally.

Is it like a very dense gooey chocolate fudge or something? I love how the recipe allows a substitutional chocolate pie crust.

This would make an excellent pissing contest. What is the strangest thing you ever got through customs/security, or what is the strangest thing overzealous screeners questioned you about? I have a few from the immediate pre- and post-9/11 era.

It wasn’t dozens of firefighters who died, it was 343, with their shitty non-communicative radios. Not too long beforehand six firefighters had died in a blaze in Worcester, MA, which was, as I recall, one of the most horrific loss of firefighter lives up to that point. Six as opposed to 343.

Eww. But Jan got the last laugh. While Marcia is on “Dancing with the Stars,” Jan bought a Malibu house AT AGE 11 and just unloaded it for almost $4 million.

This is so off topic, but it’s still “Miss Universe.” The contestants can’t be married or divorced-and-single. The whole thing is...I’m a gay man, how do I know this?