• Station To Station (10:14)
• Blackstar (9:58)
• Cygnet Committee (9:36)
• Sweet Thing suite (yes I'm counting it as one long song) (8:51)
• The Width Of A Circle (8:09)

Or something else?

Lots of weird/abstract/symbolic/poetic lyrics from Bowie, but what left you scratching your head?

• I'm an alligator
• I'm Robin Hood and I puff on my cigarette
• I'm chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature
• I'm a mama-papa coming for you
• I'm the cream of the great utopia dream
• I'm a phallus in pigtails
• I'm deranged
• I'm floating in a most peculiar way
• I'm a blackstar
• I'm a space invader
• I'm afraid of Americans
• I'm raving mad and somewhat slightly dazed
• I'm home, lost my job, and incurably ill
• I am a D.J.
• I am barred from the event
• I'm a laughing gnome and you can't catch me
• I'm looking for water

Dude sure gets around. Let me know what else you can come up with

Bowie was a very creative lyricist, was just wondering what kind of stuff you guys can come up with? Slither down the greasy pipe.

It's a standard part of the show that the smartypants killer underestimates the disheveled detective, but I just watched Columbo Goes To College — in which the killers are constantly laughing at him behind his back, thinking that he's such a dolt while handing him false leads, and the snobbish, condescending parents are openly complaining about his ineptitude (while he happily plays along) — and it got me wondering:

What's the worst case of someone underestimating Columbo, mocking him, or thinking he's really stupid?

This little moment gets overshadowed by the slapstick falling-down-stairs after he's hit by the boom mic and the comedic way she describes how he fell — but it always makes me laugh how obviously he fancies her after seeing her on TV and immediately wants to turn on his charm when he hears her name.

Great character detail for Junior, although he should remember Pearl Harbor.

When Tony reads this quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne on the wall at the end of College (s1e5), the meaning seems straightforward: it refers to his attempts to balance life as a normal family man and a mafioso, which is the main subject of his storyline with Meadow in this episode.

But the reference goes a level deeper, referring to the episode's second storyline: Carmela's almost-romance with Father Intintola.

The quotation is taken from Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850) which is about a woman who commits adultery with the local minister while her husband is away. In the book, the quote is referring to the minister and how he is the one getting confused as to which is his true face, as he has to keep up the facade as a religious leader while hiding the fact that he is guilty of adultery.

Anyway, $4 a sin.

This isn't mentioned on-screen, but in the credits one of the nurses is named Leontine Overall in Mayham (s6e3). It's likely the grumpy nurse who tells Carmela not to sleep on Tony's bed because it disturbed the equipment.

"Overall" is such an unusual family name that it probably isn't a coincidence it was used twice in season 6.

It suggests an ironic link between life and death and the interconnectedness of everything — Willie was Tony's first kill (in a way his "birth" as a professional gangster), and then Willie's daughter is helping keep Tony alive.

You telling me you never pondered that?

Chase's best known cameo is in Commendatori, as the guy who ignores Paulie at the café. I've always interpreted this as Chase deliberately casting himself as a "real" Italian, and turning his nose up at the classless piece of shit Italian-American goombah trash.

But he gives himself another cameo at the end of Luxury Lounge, as a passenger on the plane when the Italian hitmen are flying back home and looking at their gift purchases. I don't get the impression it's meant to be the same character as he was in Commendatori.

He could have been any background character in any scene of any episode he liked, so why this one? There must be some reason. Anyone have any ideas of how to interpret this?

Let me tell ya a coupla-tree things:

1. Everyone involved says he did not climb the tree.

David Chase, director Steve Buscemi, and director of photography Phil Abraham (who set up and filmed that shot) have all stated on record in no uncertain terms that the shot looking down from the tree is NOT intended as a PoV shot from Valery. What’s more, Buscemi and Abraham have both stated in interviews that Chase was actually pissed off when the episode came out and berated them when he realised that people thought it was suggesting Valery climbed the tree. As Chase said to Abraham: “You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Why the fuck did you shoot that shot? That makes me think the Russian’s in the tree.”

2. He is meant to just disappear because it’s a fairy tale

One thing Chase has repeatedly said is that Pine Barrens is a “fairy tale”. After the episode first aired in 2001, this is the first thing Chase said about it when interviewed:

>“[…]the Russian guy was like something out of a fairy tale*. Well, not a* fairy tale exactly. He's more like a spirit.” — 2001, New York Times

And he is consistently saying the same thing years later:

>“I felt that was more in keeping with a Russian folktale or something, that the guy just disappears. Now, we didn’t do folktales every week, but it seemed appropriate for this.” — 2017, Split Screen TV Festival talk

>“I don’t know what happened to the Russian. I should have known why there was such a big hue and cry about it, but I just kept saying, it’s just a fairy tale.” — 2021 retrospective of PB

>“I’ve always said that the episode was a fairy tale*. It's like a Grimm story – two guys are lost in the woods in the snow. It sounds like Hansel and Gretel or something to me.” and “I did keep telling people it was a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale. That's all I ever said.” — 2021, GQ

So from the very first airing (before the mystery had a chance to become notorious) he has been saying it’s a fairy tale, and is saying the same thing decades later, as well as stating that Valery disappearing is consistent with something from a Russian folktale.

Now add to this that the official published script explicitly states three times that Valery disappears in a clearing, by definition an area without tress. The intention from Chase is that he runs out into a clearing and then disappears like a spirit in a fairy tale. This is why he was pissed off after the episode was released and he realised that people thought it was a PoV shot from Valery up a tree, because it ruined Chase's fairy tale in which he just disappears mysteriously. Abraham is quoted as saying that he just used the tree for convenience to get a high shot when filming in the wild (as they didn’t have drones in those days), and this chance occurrence has meant legions of viewers ever since insisting that he "obviously" climbed the tree.

3. Climbing a tree is the stupidest possible thing to do and makes no sense as an “escape plan”

Whenever this comes up, someone will confidently state that Valery was planning to climb a tree from the beginning, as you see him briefly look upwards when they enter the forest. Nobody ever stops to think about how little sense this makes. It increases your visibility to your pursuers, and radically reduces your mobility as you are completely cornering yourself once up the tree with nowhere to go when they spot you. It wouldn’t make sense if he were uninjured, but it makes less sense when he’s severely injured. Any possibility to stop and hide is done much more effectively at ground level where the tree trunks are thicker and there's generally more stuff to hide behind (such as foliage and uneven terrain), and retains the possibility of running if spotted. Climbing a tree is a death sentence. It means you are completely exposed, cannot rest, cannot tend to your wound, and have zero possibility of escape when the guys with guns who are twenty seconds behind you follow your footprints and blood trail and find you are a sitting duck up a tree. It’s not a genius Special Forces tactic.