I’ve always admired the structure of this, which is perfect for the idealized reputation of the subject (not unlike the famous Premiere Magazine piece on Lynch by David Foster Wallace, which uses an exploded form to try and capture something about the filmmaker):
www.vulture.com/2012/09/bill...
To be fair, Perseus should have the end of his name pronounced to rhyme with that of his father, Zeus. It’s why that suffix is there, but we never say “Per-soos”, and haven’t, as far as I can tell, for a century at minimum. See also: Heracles (“Hera’s bane”).
This post seeeems to be implying that Connor Ratliff seems harmful and should be weaponised… 🤔 Which oscilates between rude and complimentary.
A photograph of a highway sign in New Jersey indicating that a service station named after Jon Bon Jovi is but a mere mile away!
Sad to learn that yesterday’s New Yorker newsletter lead story, “Why Everyone Has a Doodle Now”, is about *dogs*, and not about how I, too, will soon get featured on the daily Google homepage with a personalized image based on my accomplishments. I got a Time Person of the Year cover; why not this?
Hell yeah, supporting Muppet performer Amanda Maddock. Love to see it.
Well, if you can’t get someone to give you a Peace Prize, make your own!
If you see this, post a spider man.
My Taskmaster Contestants I’ve Seen Live standings:
s1 = 0
s2 = 0
s3 = 0
s4 = 1
s5 = 1
s6 = 1
s7 = 1
s8 = 0
s9 = 0
s10= 0
s11 = 0
s12 = 1
s13 = 0
s14 = 3
s15 = 0 (But will be 1 in Apr.)
s16 = 0
s17 = 0
s18 = 1
s19 = 1
s20 = 0
10 out of 100 contestants. Not bad for an American.
Quote with your favorite film and album from the year you were born.
All y’all could have gotten me to watch The Residence much sooner if you’d told me the creators referenced Charade in it.
I mean, sure, it’s just a remix of the Mancini soundtrack, and it’s in episode seven, but it’s still an homage to one of The Greats, and one must respect a showing of respect.
Drowning Pool is interesting (just turned 50 in July!). It misses Goldman’s touch and is perhaps more convoluted than it needs to be, but it has an astonishing final sequence. I maintain it’s a companion piece, oddly, with Fletch Lives, as together they help establish a set of Cajun Cinema Clichés.
Article from Sept. 16, 2025, where after Robert Redford's death, Vulture leads with a celebrity reminiscence by Jane Fonda. Which, y'know, makes sense since they were both in Barefoot In The Park. But...
Article from Oct. 11, 2025, where after Diane Keaton's death, Vulture once again leads with a celebrity reminiscence by Jane Fonda, her co-star in The Book Club. Sure, but it's starting to make poor Jane seem like the angel of death... Not a harbinger, but a coroner.
Alan Alda and Michael Caine should slap an injunction on Jane to make sure no one interviews her about any fond recollections of making California Suite. Or they could try it and see what happens to Bill Cosby.
This stayed with me, not because it’s a useful quote, but because it combined a pretty great comic escalation with the spirit of how my family played backyard badminton: steadfastly refusing to admit when the shuttlecock was way, way out of bounds.
“Lara clicks through, completing the task again and again, growing increasingly frustrated. Finally, she calls for technical support, and a voice on the line asks her to consider an unimaginable possibility: maybe she is actually a bot.”
Won the short film Oscar this year, and I really enjoyed it.
Someone could refute this, but I don’t think that Elliott Gould’s portrayal of Marlowe in Altman’s The Long Goodbye has anything much to do with the character as he appears on the page, but the radical departure is the absolute key charm of that film.
I assumed this was going to be a Stan’s Soapbox-pastiche cavalcade of nonsense until I got to It’s The Nineties, and then my heart skipped at the chance to find out what was going on with poor aphasic, time-traveling Jack.
To then be told you DID just make all of them up. I… don’t know how to feel.
Ohmigoodness, only an hour left of Wallace Shawn Wednesday!
After so much love for “Your Name” the other week, I’d love to see an equivalent amount for the (in my opinion) superior “Weathering With You”. As a strict non-crier, the emotional climax of this movie absolutely had me welling up — quite the statement about the power of animation and voice acting.
I’m sorry now I didn’t tag you when I participated in Record Store Day loot pride posting in 2023! I did the whole stand-in-line thing just to get it, AND it turned out a friend of mine did the same to get one for me because she knew I was a fan of both Aimee and the podcast.
As a Silver Age fan, you may already be familiar with Streaky’s origin story, but I found this scan of the eight-page short from Action Comics #261 on Comic Books and Cats, and it’s a wild ride that the Palmiotti/Conner segment is clearly homaging.
comicbooksandcats.com/2015/10/29/s...
A page from Wednesday Comics, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and drawn by Amanda Conner (and signed by both of them in 2015 — goodness, already a decade ago!) depicting Streaky the Supercat deciding to tear the tail-fin off of a commercial jetliner because it features a legally-different major cartoon mouse as the logo. Hidden in the middle of the page, the cabin crew are a not-at-all-legally-different homage to the flight deck of Airplane! just because it clearly amused the creative team to do so. The paper of the page is a little rippled by moisture and by being stored in a frame whilst being newsprint.
After having read an umpteenth article about how great Krypto is in Superman because he’s both a good boy AND a little stinker and that dogs aren’t portrayed enough in movies as precious little jerks, I was finally moved to remind everyone that Streaky the Supercat is already best at doing all that.
A still from Howl’s Moving Castle, with the fire-based character Calcifer staring directly into camera, looking shocked and bewildered.
We definitely had this in the communal pile of family comics. I can’t swear it was purchased in April 1978, but it was certainly beaten up enough that it could have been when we filed it alongside Adventures of Superman #432 and 433 in a gifted comp box of all of DC’s output from Sept/Oct of 1987.
Tell her that Babu Frick is included in this year’s Star Wars Lego advent calendar! What greater indication of respect is there than that?
Someone forgot the prominent suprasternal notch fetishism inspired by The English Patient. Lots of thimbles sold as necklaces to highlight swoop-necked bone structure.
I listened to Mal Blum introduce Springsteen as the musical avatar for being trans before singing “Dancing in the Dark”, and the simple truth of it has stayed with me. I hope this story and the Boss’ music continue to help other people, other eggs, as much as a shared musical cri de coeur ever can.
A cropped screenshot of an Instagram live chat between series 19 Taskmaster contestants Stevie Martin and Jason Mantzoukas. Stevie is grinning at something Jason is saying on a video call. Notably, the video has 1,776 likes.
Happy July 4th to the US drop of the final episode of s̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ — ahem! — season 19 of Taskmaster featuring the first American contestant. A well-deserved 1776 likes to the “original colonizer”. Hashtag Blinkered Jingoism, baybeeee!
I watched Sea of Love recently, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a “cop becomes romantically obsessed with his suspect” movie where I believed the set-up. Pacino really sells the compulsive attraction to Barkin — and the guilt. It’s a performance standard that other genre films fail to meet.