Dread Pirate Zed

(note: not an usher, but a stagehand. My bad.)

Don't just watch the car in front of you - watch the car in front of them, if possible. The two cardinal laws of driving are "Don't be surprising" and "Don't be surprised."

In most of your interactions as a customer, you're going to be a blip, forgotten in an instant - and that's OK! But if you absolutely must be remembered by the person serving you, let it be as the best thing that happened to them that day.

Freddie Mercury, Robin Williams, and Anthony Bourdain. There have been many others whose loss hurt, but those were the three that rattled me worst.

Cover of Russian edition of "1984" by George Orwell, which (in Russian) is spelled Джордж Оруелл - Dzhordzh Oruell.

One of my favorite examples:

I never read the book (or followed up the background details), so I don't really know - but that was certainly my impression watching the show. That made the actual Dudamel cameo even funnier.

They had SO MANY cameos (and even recurring roles) for major classical music figures; as far as I know, Dudamel was the only one to not appear as himself. All of them had really good senses of humor about themselves, though.

Another bit that still cracks me up: they play a gig at Hollywood Bowl, and Rodrigo talks to an usher in the wings who encourages him to come conduct in LA - because "they hate their current conductor".
The usher was played by Gustavo Dudamel, who was then the VERY popular conductor of the LA Phil.

So many great moments, storylines, punchlines! In the very first episode, the Styx jukebox musical made me do a spit-take, and it still makes me chuckle every time I think of it.
A few years after we watched the show, I started hearing "Lisztomania" at Panera and such; made me smile.

Yes, but have you tried putting the lime in the coconut?

I was going to suggest Aldi - their house-brand corn chips are a pretty decent Fritos substitute - but I just checked their UK website and they don't carry them there.

I had no idea the UK was such a wasteland. My sympathies!

How we made Starship Troopers ‘I borrowed from the films of Leni Riefenstahl to show that these soldiers were like something out of Nazi propaganda. I even put one in an SS uniform. But no one noticed’

The movie subverts the book's premise by making the whole thing a big, shiny propaganda piece while letting you see behind the curtain. It's certainly possible to see it as an endorsement of fascism, but only if you slept through most of it.
Verhoeven certainly minces no words in interviews.

It’s intercontinental ballistic women’s day

Let us never forget that the US uses the "short" billion* (i.e. 1000 million) but much of the rest of the world uses the "long" billion (one million million).

*extends to trillion, quadrillion, etc. - fun for the entire family!

Have you considered that a movie that valorizes a society so fascistic that AH said "let's be more like them" might just be a fascist movie?
Starship Troopers and Fight Club depict fascist ideas while signaling This Is Bad, Actually; 300 makes the fascists the heroes.
But sure, check in with Zizek.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta#Laconophilia A German racist strain of Laconophilia was initiated by Karl Otfried Müller, who linked Spartan ideals to the supposed racial superiority of the Dorians, the ethnic sub-group of the Greeks to which the Spartans belonged. In the 20th century, this developed into Fascist admiration of Spartan ideals. Adolf Hitler praised the Spartans, recommending in 1928 that Germany should imitate them by limiting "the number allowed to live". He added that "The Spartans were once capable of such a wise measure... The subjugation of 350,000 Helots by 6,000 Spartans was only possible because of the racial superiority of the Spartans." The Spartans had created "the first racialist state". Following the invasion of the USSR, Hitler viewed citizens of the USSR as like the helots under the Spartans: "They [the Spartans] came as conquerors, and they took everything", and so should the Germans. A Nazi officer specified that "the Germans would have to assume the position of the Spartiates, while... the Russians were the Helots."

The Spartan elite literally enslaved, terrorized, and routinely murdered the majority populace of their territory (the helots). This is very appealing to some people...

The other Starship Troopers is also the Non-Fascist Starship Trooper, in the sense that if you watched it and came away thinking "wow, fascism is good" then you really need to watch it again

He's been a pimple on the backside of California politics - of either party - for nearly as long as I can remember. I would love to be able to forget his name or his very existence.

🎶tell me more tell me more
is it you who's to blame?

Humble Book Bundle: Best of Humble Bundle: Terry Pratchett's Discworld by HarperCollins Encore 2026 Experience Sir Terry Practchett’s beloved Discworld series! Get 35+ books covering all corners of this comic fantasy universe and help support Room to Read!

I just opened my latest Humble Bundle email and thought "I wonder whether Micah received this one too?":
www.humblebundle.com/books/terry-...

The ebooks are in Kobo format (YMMV), and this bundle's proceeds go to "Hilarity for Charity", Laurel and Seth Rogen's Alzheimer's org.

Grooving with several species of small furry animals in a cave, presumably

It mitigates (to some degree, anyway) the client's tendency to be distracted by details in the content and let them focus on the overall design; I agree that it's not perfect, but it's a huge improvement.

Ingmar Bergman in 1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman

He never really did it for me personally, but that's just me. Great movies though.

Hell - this* is exactly why lorem ipsum exists.

*or a very similar aspect of the same phenomenon

Came here to say this.

In my yout', I had an aversion to black-and-white movies (in my defense, I did sit through some pretty dire examples as a kid). A few high school friends raved about Casablanca, but I held out until... 25, I think? It immediately became one of my faves, and I've made up for lost time ever since.

In my 20s, my eyes would shift noticeably from their usual brown to distinctly green (my then-girlfriend said it happened when I was In The Mood; I dispute that because I was _always_ In The Mood.)
Decades on, they seem to have settled down to a stable brown, except...
bsky.app/profile/drea...

Different ancient grain, but
bsky.app/profile/drea...

These Rinvoq commercials are weird. I mean, I do understand what they mean by "visible intestinal lining repair", but it's an extremely odd image.

Also, he can play the piano with his junk.