What does the past have to do with the present? Everything, I think, because it’s where the present came from. Today’s sensibilities and values and politics and everything can seem like they are a brand new thing, sprung fully-formed from some present-generating void, rendering immediately irrelevant and disappearing…

I was “meh” about “Mr. Mercedes”. I don’t remember the second one at all - did I read it? I’m honestly not sure - but I really liked the third book a lot.

Nope, actually. Well maybe. I don’t know. I’m just lying on my bed, putting off getting up after work and making some dinner.

Well, sorry, but there goes the Pete Puma vote. You seem like a good guy and all, but great big gigantic happy hairy bushes must not perish from the earth! Must not, SHALL NOT!!!

Ah, 2nd biggest then. Even better - Raiders is great, of course, but still a part of the contemporary popular landscape. On Golden Pond, not so much. 

Excellent, I always kind of had my doubts about Betty White being the source. 

Actually I’ve seen that quote attributed to Betty White quite a few times, but you know how that is.

I said something like that above regarding “Pacific Rim” - having a history of extended childhood abuse and trauma* it had a similar effect on me which I was not expecting at all.

Thank you! Rather famously a Danish film!

Yes, I agree. Their individualized appearance gave them all the personality I needed, as did the fact that they were from another dimension beyond our understanding. One of the things I liked (in a movie I freaking loved) was that they WEREN’T in any way anthropomorphised with “motivation”, or with “names”, or with…

Just...”pussy”. 

I love - adore, actually - the scene with him taking a shower in his suit, and camping it up just a teeny bit, just enough. Sixty years old, and he was the cutest thing ever. EVER. 

But “The Apartment”, though. I saw it once over thirty years ago and didn’t really remember it - then it played at a local theater here last year. I went with a friend who “doesn’t like old movies”, and told her beforehand I really had no idea how it would hold up - I was worried that it would seem smutty and dated.…

“My husband, the king, says he’d like to see that.” One of my favorite things from anyone anywhere.

AND it has an entire sequence dedicated to the process of EVOLUTION! As compared to the weak sauce that was “Fantasia 2000", with its “Noah’s Ark”/”Pomp and Circumstance”/heteronormative wet dream sequence. Where they just came out and admitted they didn’t have enough imagination to animate a sequence to Beethoven’s…

Holy cow I loved that movie - as much as anything for the way Tilda Swinton said “baby”. And the closing shot made me laugh out loud.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t calling you Jim Knipfel - I just meant I’d learned that blindo secret from reading him. I love him too, and had the same moment of uncomfortable recognition reading “Leaving the Nairobi Trio” that he described having while watching the Nairobi Trio on television - only there was nobody…

I did too - even though I was completely unaware of “The Hustle’s” existence before I saw the trailer, I immediately recognized the source material. 

I love how Fields is so solicitous of him too - especially how he repeatedly addresses him as “honey”. 

Thank you, Jim Knipfel!