u/Charlotte_Braun

There were a handful of scenes, or shots, anyway, that were real-world, but not on the island. One that comes to mind is the opening scene of "It's a Bird, It's a Plane", with scientists talking about the jet pack. And in "You've Been Disconnected", there's the telephone operator, and the kissing couple who pick up without answering. And I *think* in "Smile, You're On Mars Camera" we get a partial shot of the control room. What else?

Like in 1976, the famous $3000 offer from Lorne Michaels ("If you wanna give Ringo less, that's up to you.") and in the '90s, Lisa Simpson telling someone, "You were his lackey...his Ringo to the rest of The Beatles."

I mean, c'mon. I don't have to defend Ringo's talent and charisma in this sub, do I? But I'm thinking of him getting the most fan mail in the Beatlemania era. Seems like a lot of fans were attracted to the Beatle who they saw as the humble, sincere one. And even if it was a letter really meant for all four, or a specific one of the other three, still, it says something about their assumption that Ringo was the one most likely to read the letter.

So when did this start, this presumption that Ringo is a joke, less than? Or was it a thing even in the '60s?

(I'm what one might call a second-wave fan; I was in my early teens when the 20th anniversary stuff started happening, and that got me hooked. And I recall that among my friends, George was always ranked fourth. It was even odds whether Paul, The Cute One or John, The Smart One would be first, but they were always first and second. Then Ringo, The Funny One, and finally George, The Boring/Weird One. For all that, though, I certainly don't think George is the dregs any more than I think Ringo is!)

I was showing the Unseen Pilot to someone who'd never seen it before. "It comes off different," they said. "Like they're trying too hard to be a sitcom." I think so too. What appeals to me, and probably to a lot of people, about canonical GI is that all the characters seem to accept their situation. Yes, they want to get off the island, but meanwhile, they're fairly content to live together and be a community.

I think the main series is really a farce, if I'm right about the meaning of that term. All this crazy stuff happens, and the castaways always deal with it, like there's nothing unusual about Gilligan turning phosphorescent, or a headhunter coming to the island. Whereas in the pilot, the characters came off like the situation was already unbearable, and it would only take a couple more days before they started fighting to the death for the last coconut.

Just my observation. What do y'all think?

Snoopy was hanging out with birds all through the 1960s, but they started out looking relatively like real birds. Over time, they got more "cartoony"; I'm saying "they" because I'm not even sure it was supposed to be the same bird all the time. And in 1970, Snoopy finally found out "that bird's" name. So which strip or sequence can be pinned down as "There! That's Woodstock; he just doesn't have a name yet."?

So I read the first book (I'd Tell You I Love...), and I'm open to reading the rest. But first I want to know something. Is >!Cammie's father really most sincerely dead? Or is it possible he'll show up in a later book, having faked his death/lost his memory/been held prisoner? !<That happened in another series I read, one for adults, and a lot of readers were not pleased, me included. It wouldn't stop me from enjoying this series, but I am curious.

I'm reading a book about American film in the 1970s. Thomas McGuane is mentioned a few times. Warren was friends with him, and with Hunter S. Thompson and Ross MacDonald. Warren seemed to appreciate literature, so I'm mildly surprised he never tried writing stories or a novel. Or did he?

Years ago, I was watching East of Eden with my MIL. There's a scene where Cal and Abra are in a field or somewhere outdoors, talking, maybe eating picnic food. Anyway, a young woman, Latina or Native American I think, walks past them, plunks herself down just a little further on, and continually looks over her shoulder at them. Abra comments to the effect of, "Girls just seem to follow you around, don't they?"

"There's a whole storyline with that girl, in the book, that the movie doesn't cover," said MIL, who had read it. But I forgot to ask for details, and now I'm curious. What was that storyline? Thanks in advance.

Read it in 1989; think it was fairly new then. A collection, about 20 to 24, of genteel horror/mystery stories. One was The Fall of a Coin, by Ruth Rendell. Husband and wife are estranged, but forced to share a hotel room, which has an old-school gas heater. Wife wants to suffocate husband, but wasn't listening when the proprietor explained how the heater worked, so he's fine and she'll never wake up.

Another was about a guy who was going to have snails for dinner, became fascinated by the creatures and kept them as pets. They started breeding, took over an entire room, and in the end, swarmed him.

I think there was one about an elderly woman who spies on her neighbors, then sends anonymous "I know what you did" notes. She also grows prize-winning roses. It ends with *her* getting a note: "Look out at what used to be your roses."

And one about a well-to-do couple who have a new cook. Husband is paranoid that she might be the Mad Poisoner who's still at large. Turns out, the cook is innocent and it's his wife who's been trying to poison him. (Or perhaps she was trying to build up immunity for both of them? She spends most of the story languishing in bed.)

And the one I started out looking for. White couple in otherwise ethnically diverse neighborhood. Wife calls police over a loud argument in the neighbors' yard; they don't appreciate this, and retaliate by dumping garbage on her lawn. She calls the cops again when the neighbors are roasting a pig, and the dispatch has an entirely wrong interpretation of "killing a pig". Cops show up ready to bust heads; neighbor sees wife standing behind them, yells "PIG!" and throws a machete (barbecue fork? Something sharp and lethal) at her. It hits her in the chest, and her husband watches while she falls down and bleeds out.

If anyone can help, thank you in advance! I started out looking for one specific story, but now I think I wouldn't mind having the entire collection.

Someone posted yesterday about Catch-22, and it reminded me of something. Remember, Doc Daneeka told Yossarian an anecdote from when he was in private practice.

Young newlyweds came in, wanting to know why the wife wasn't pregnant, despite the husband "puttin' it to her" constantly. Also, the wife was well-endowed, and wore a St. Anthony medal dangling in her cleavage. "It must be a terrible temptation for St. Anthony," Daneeka said, not quite to the wife, but aimed at her. The husband said, "Who's St. Anthony?"

Then Daneeka gathered that the couple weren't having sex in the optimum way to make babies. He had these anatomically-correct dolls, and he used them to show the couple what they should do. They went away happy and eager to practice their new skills. Sometime after that, the husband came back alone. "What are you, a wise guy?!" POW. "Knocked me right on my ass...How should I know why?"

I think I do know why. It wasn't about the dolls; it was that remark about St. Anthony. In the interim, the husband must have found out who St. Anthony was, made the connection, and was grossly offended. What he meant was, "Keep your eyes where they belong, and don't make suggestive comments about my wife."

Make sense? I think it does.

Read it in 1989; think it was fairly new then. A collection, about 20 to 24, of genteel horror/mystery stories. One was The Fall of a Coin, by Ruth Rendell. Husband and wife are estranged, but forced to share a hotel room, which has an old-school gas heater. Wife wants to suffocate husband, but wasn't listening when the proprietor explained how the heater worked, so he's fine and she'll never wake up.

Another was about a guy who was going to have snails for dinner, became fascinated by the creatures and kept them as pets. They started breeding, took over an entire room, and in the end, swarmed him.

I think there was one about an elderly woman who spies on her neighbors, then sends anonymous "I know what you did" notes. She also grows prize-winning roses. It ends with her getting a note: "Look out at what used to be your roses."

And one about a well-to-do couple who have a new cook. Husband is paranoid that she might be the Mad Poisoner who's still at large. Turns out, the cook is innocent and it's his wife who's been trying to poison him. (Or perhaps she was trying to build up immunity for both of them? She spends most of the story languishing in bed.)

And the one I started out looking for. White couple in otherwise ethnically diverse neighborhood. Wife calls police over a loud argument in the neighbors' yard; they don't appreciate this, and retaliate by dumping garbage on her lawn. She calls the cops again when the neighbors are roasting a pig, and the dispatch has an entirely wrong interpretation of "killing a pig". Cops show up ready to bust heads; neighbor sees wife standing behind them, yells "PIG!" and throws a machete (barbecue fork? Something sharp and lethal) at her. It hits her in the chest, and her husband watches while she falls down and bleeds out.

If anyone can help, thank you in advance! I started out looking for one specific story, but now I think I wouldn't mind having the entire collection.

It was in an anthology of genteel horror stories. Another story was by Ruth Rendell, one by Roald Dahl, so that gives you the idea.

Husband and wife (I think in NYC) were living in what was once called a melting-pot neighborhood. I think her name was Gloria, so I'll call her that. The conflict is between these two and one family; I forget what ethnicity/nation of origin, but I think middle-eastern.

Gloria is sunbathing when the neighbor somehow empties his spittoon on her. Accidentally, IIRC, but she goes off the rails. Husband goes upstairs to smooth things over. Later, the neighbors and their guests have a loud argument, maybe physical, and Gloria calls the police. She thinks she may be saving a life, but the neighbors see it as normal, and don't appreciate having cops showing up. And they know who made the call.

Later, the couple go to some yuppie event, like Shakespeare in the Park, and come home to find their yard covered in garbage, mostly food garbage. Gloria is livid; husband tries to laugh it off and she tells him, "Shut up and keep shoveling." When they're done, she's still furious, and declares her intention to "drink this drink and take a shower and go to sleep, sleep, sleep." Husband stays awake, musing, but they never discuss anything.

Last act: the neighbors are roasting a pig. Gloria freaks out, calls police again, shrieks, "They're killing a pig!" Cops race to the scene, because they misinterpret that phrase. Lights and sirens, the neighbor sees Gloria standing in her yard, and he has a cutting tool (machete?) in his hand. "PIG!" Hurls it at her, it hits her in the chest, and husband stands there as she falls to the ground.

Sound familiar to anyone? Presumably from the 1980s. Thanks in advance!

There are at least eight guys in that chorus line, but only five are named. Any official word or educated guesses on who the others are? I’ve checked episode recaps and found nothing (except on the five named Presidents).

Doing a logic puzzle: US Presidents, and one of the hints is that all the Whig presidents are in the same row. Googled for "Who were the Whig Presidents" and was told they were William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore. So everyone in that song except Hayes! Guess that explains why the Whig Party faded away, if they really were mediocre.

TL;DR: SNAFU is an acronym, not a word. It's not a noun, it's a descriptor.

Just finished reading someone's professional (U.S. politics) memoirs. Today, we would say his job was to put out fires. And he seems to have done it well, but in telling about it, he makes me want to throw a copy of Strunk and White at his nose.

The author's job was to spot problems before they arose, and deal with them if they happened anyway/unexpectedly. And every time a problem occurred, no matter how soon and skillfully it was resolved, he always called it a "snafu". "Except for that snafu..." "Then came a snafu..." Bloody hell, no!

SNAFU is an acronym, not a word. The term was coined during WWII, and it means Situation Normal: All F'd Up. (Some people are delicate and say Fouled Up, but YKWIM.) There really is no such thing as a snafu*. Again, it's an acronym, not a word, and it refers to a state of affairs, not a singular incident. Like if at work, the two co-owners can never agree on who's in charge of what, and the one employee who knows how to do the complicated thing is usually late, and a road crew keeps blocking the door/shutting off the water/ditto the electricity, that workplace is SNAFU. But if the co-owners normally work in harmony, and there's no outside interference, and everything usually goes smoothly, and then there's that one day when the crucial employee can't come to work, that is a snag in an otherwise uneventful workflow. Not a snafu.

So this guy was aggravating, but he's far from the first person I've seen misuse the term. And I'm wondering if maybe the original term has been lost? Perhaps I should stop caring, the way I've had to stop caring when people say they could care less.

*In lowercase, doesn't it look like the name for a Dr. Seuss creature? Or maybe Roald Dahl. The Fearsome Snafu!

Where would Dennis be "put away" if people thought he was mad?

Of course Laura went into a lot of detail about food, after all the food insecurity of her youth. Farmer Boy is the real extravaganza. What was it, the Fourth of July or the county fair, where Father and Almanzo got unlimited food for fifty cents? "Then he drew a long breath and ate pie. When he began to eat pie, he wished he had eaten nothing else." Mr. Braun and I sometimes go to an AYCE place for Thanksgiving/Christmas. With Almanzo as an example, I try to pace myself, so I'll have room for dessert! And even when I was a kid, I never had to wait for twenty other people to be served before I could start on a holiday meal. Usually someone would say "Dig in!" and a half-dozen or so people did just that.

Then there's Big Woods, with the sugaring-off, and Christmas in July at the end of Long Winter, and the "wasn't a sociable. It was a New England Supper." What are your favorite food-porn scenes?

It was 1987, and People Magazine was doing an issue about 100 years of Hollywood. (Not 100 years of movies, just 100 years since Hollywood, the town, was incorporated.) One of the features, among many, was supposed to be a joint interview with Lillian Gish and Molly Ringwald.

"Oh, I heard about that!" you say. "Yeah, Ringwald totally blew off the interview and didn't even care." NO. Molly very much wanted to be at that interview. It was a cascading disaster that prevented her from being there, not arrogance, laziness or any other negative attitude.

According to MR, (in Premiere magazine and elsewhere), it went down like this. First, this was happening in New York City, a place MR was not familiar with. She was staying in one place, and was supposed to find her own way to Gish's apartment, in the UWS or wherever. (Seriously?!) Well, MR was all ready to go when she got her hand caught in one of those heavy security doors. Sounds funny, but not if it happened to you and your hand is swollen and bleeding. Then she tried to get to the interview from the emergency room, not from her original spot, and that pretty much doomed the whole endeavor.

It’s the kind of thing you usually hear about happening in reverse, with a native New Yorker going to L.A. and being stranded because they can’t drive. In this case, it was an L.A. native, used to driving herself everywhere, and now being at the mercy of a no-speak-English NYC cabbie. He just couldn’t find the address. And there were no cell phones in those days. And Gish didn’t have unlimited amounts of time to wait. So there was nothing MR could do except send flowers and a well-meant apology. And meanwhile, the crew from People Magazine was in Gish's apartment, watching her eagerness turn gradually to disappointment and then hurt. She put away the plate of cookies she'd brought out, and sighed, "I guess she doesn't care because I'm old."

They did not have to print that quote! Of course Molly cared! Shoot, I remember seeing her on Letterman, promoting Sixteen Candles. Dave complimented her outfit, and she said, "Thank you; it's twenties-style -- I looooove the twenties!" She very much knew who Lilian Gish was, and very much wanted to meet her. Things went wrong, that's all, but not because she "didn't care". I blame People Magazine the most in this. If the interview was so bloody important, why didn't they send someone to meet MR, and bring her to the interview? Did they really not take into account how hard it is for someone not from NYC to find their way around? Did they give her directions -- good directions, not just scribbled on a napkin? Did she not have a publicist they could double-check with? (Okay, maybe not, in 1986.) It galls me to this day how the magazine unilaterally decided that MR didn't appreciate this opportunity to be judged.

Anyway, just wanted to get that out there, because apparently there are still people who think MR was sitting in a suite at the Plaza, filing her nails and saying, "I don't wanna meet some OLD LADY!". Not. Even. Close. To what happened.