I like the avatar. It's a really good picture of toad.

You gotta aim just right, so your bullet goes up the barrel of the other gun and plugs it.

Still not comparable. I have a nice iPhone, and I also have a very inexpensive, high deductible health plan that I get even cheaper because it's through my employer. My monthly insurance payments are still more than my monthly phone payments— and I pay about as little for health insurance as you can pay and still…

Thanks for bringing numbers to the table. I didn't really know how to respond to a paragraph of beatnik fantasia.

I think a lot of people would disagree with you on ol' Ronnie there. Specifically, a lot of Iranian, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, black, and gay people. What with, you know, Reagan being a fucking monster and all who ignored the AIDS crisis and supported narcoterrorism via illegal arms deals while gutting welfare and…

I don't think "disease-ridden" and "squeaky clean" can coexist.

Oh shit, Takashi Miike gets to vote on Oscars now. I know one man will have a negligible input, but I like knowing that the man who made Yakuza Apocalypse and Sukiyaki Western Django* gets a say in the awards.

Oh, prog rock. My teenage love for you made me the only kid in history who got cooler by getting into goth.

I know it's only tangential to the article, but this seems the best place to ask: what would people recommend as an entry point into Fassbinder's work? My relative ignorance of him is becoming an embarrassment.

Huh— I hadn't seen the '32 version, so I didn't get that there was a relationship there. Lorre is really, really gay-coded in the Bogart version, though.

Oh, absolutely. David Hyde Pierce too— while I respect the reason behind him not coming back, I thought he and Jones were basically a perfect duo for that character.

That scene gets a lot of love, but my heart will always be with "All I want is to create the world's perfect genetic soldier. Not for evil, but for good!"

It makes vastly more sense than Doggie Tales, Troma's attempt at kid-friendly entertainment where they filmed dogs playing at the park while he, James Gunn, and some other people did voice over. It is a thing I unaccountably love despite being awful even by Troma standards, maybe just because of the movie's attempt to…

RONALD 6
WILSON 6
REAGAN

He's like some opposite version of Morla the Wise Turtle from the Neverending Story, in that he loves living in a swamp of despair, gives terrible advice, and actively encourages us to all get eaten by a swarm of hornets.

I think it's just that we have to put up with it because the people that love him do so irrationally and exuberantly. I guarantee that half the Democrats who talk about respecting Reagan and how he'd be disappointed in modern Republicans hate his guts and everything he did, but Republicans worship the guy so devoutly…

Thanks for the book recommendation— it sounds fascinating, albeit maybe too infuriating for me to make it through.

They're both show business veterans who ran on "restore America" Republican platforms combining economic populism with an appeal to law and order. Even beyond substantive criticism of them or any kind of partisan issue, Reagan is Trump's closest analogue in the post-Nixon GOP.

That descriptor is not wrong. Lost City is very, very classical in all the best ways.

John Wick 2 is also a perfect case of sequelization: expand the world without over-explaining it, put the money into making more interesting set pieces rather than bloat, and increase the amount of Ian McShane.