"Middle seat gets both armrests. This way, everybody gets at least one armrest, and it best equalizes everybody's space."

"If you think that the shared armrests are for whoever first claims them — a rule that frequently would leave the middle-seater wedged between two elbowy people — you have entitlement issues."

#8 on a list of 12 rules for airports and airplanes.

And this post is following a rule for blogging that I just noticed: If you find something to blog about via a blog that deserves a "via" (or "hat tip") link, you can better fulfill your obligation by finding something else on the hat-tippable blog and doing a separate post about that. This post represents the something else, and the next post will be the thing I found via this blog, and I'm not going to put a "via" link on the next post.

The idea is that the blog I'm linking to here will get far more click-through readers from this post than from a "via" link that telegraphs its obligatory quality. I'm going to follow this rule in the future — and by the way, I think Instapundit follows it — but I'm not going to keep pointing out that I follow it. And I won't follow it unless I genuinely would have chosen to blog the something else, in accordance with the longstanding Althouse Principles of the Bloggable.

"How about a friendly kiss goodbye"... to Larry Hagman.

A great clip reel, via Throwing Things.

Exactly what it says it is.

"A dramatic interpretation of Sir Mix-A-Lot's 'Baby Got Back' as if it were performed by actor Sir Ian McKellen."

Via Throwing Things.

It will be the final season for "The Office" — and "all questions will be answered."

Including who's been making the documentary. Who are the people on the other side of the fictional camera that the characters have been talking too all these years? And why would any documentary about a relatively dull and unimportant office keep filming and filming for 9 years?

The news has no impact on the possible Dwight-centric spin-off The Farm, which will be introduced in an episode of The Office to air this fall.

Via Throwing Things, which says "Do we care about Schrute Farms, which is apparently going to make its first appearance as a backdoor pilot during this season?" and which also notes:

Starting next January, ABC is flip-flopping Nightline and Jimmy Kimmel Live, with Kimmel going head to head with Letterman and Leno.  I'm not a huge Kimmel fan, but will be interesting to see how folks respond to a younger option in the timeslot.

I think it says something about American politics that the run-up to a presidential election seemed like the right time to make it harder to watch the serious news analysis show. (Cue the comments that Nightline is more comedy that Kimmel could ever hope to be.)

"The film 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' was released 30 years ago today..."

"... and if there's a better line reading in the history of American cinema than Sean Penn's 'You dick' to Mr. Hand, I don't think I know it."

Says Throwing Things.

"For those who insist they've located the least essential, or least sport-y Olympic discipline..."

"... may I present — via Kon Ichikawa's essential 1965 documentary Tokyo Olympiad — 50 kilometer Olympic race-walking?"



Wait! That was grueling. And in the rain? And wearing a straw fedora?

ADDED: Here's the Ichikawa movie. And here's a straw fedora.

"Kill this portmanteau now..."

"... Breastaurant."

ADDED: At the link at the link, there's talk of Tilted Kilt, whose CEO Rod Lynch who complains that the word breastaurant "implies that the company's success is based purely on sex appeal."

Rose Dimov, a 22-year-old waitress at Tilted Kilt, says her job is no different from any other waitressing gig; make guests feel special and ensure they have a good time. As an aspiring ballroom dancer, she also says she's not fazed by the revealing outfit that comes with the job. "Going to a restaurant should be an experience," Dimov says. "We're entertainers."

Tilted Kilt — yes, we were talking about kilts yesterday, but remember when Tilted Kilt popped up in the Wisconsin protest story?  Here's a Business Insider article from February 18, 2011.

"F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury, the greatest sci-fi writer in history..."

F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury - watch more funny videos

Some people really love reading.

Via The Pathetic Earthling.

Spelling time again.

The best blog coverage, year after year, is at Throwing Things.

ADDED: "doo buh TAHN tay: The attitude of the Montana Supreme Court towards Citizens United."

ALSO: Here's some detail about that Montana case, from George Will.

Three Montana corporations sued to bring the state into conformity with Citizens United by overturning a 100-year-old state law, passed when copper and other corporations supposedly held sway, that bans all corporate political spending. The state’s Supreme Court refused to do this, citing Montana’s supposedly unique susceptibility to corporate domination — an idea amusingly discordant with the three corporations’ failure even to persuade the state court to acknowledge the supremacy of the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Irving Berlin said, 'Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it.'"

"That doesn't mean it's good or bad – that's the equivalent of arguing the merits of hot dogs versus hamburgers. What the hell difference does it make?"

(Via Throwing Things.)

"The Free Library of Philadelphia is hosting speed-dating sessions where each potential suitor has to bring a representative book as an icebreaker..."

"... and we couldn't help but wonder: if you were (or are) on the market, which book would you bring to introduce yourself?  And which book, in the hands of the person across the table, would have you wincing and hoping for the next rotation to happen quickly?"

I'd bring "Get Me a Table Without Flies, Harry."

As for the books that would be off-putting in the other person's hands... there are so many things. The first thing that pops into my head is: astrology. But you don't need to go to a special library-sponsored book-in-hand dating event for would-be suitors to disqualify themselves with astrology.

"Possibly the biggest gap between how much I loved it as a kid, and how unwatchable I'd find it now of any show."

From a discussion of "Welcome Back Kotter," on the occasion of the death of actor Robert Hegyes (who played Epstein).

On his website, Hegyes wrote that he modeled the swaggering, skirt-chasing Epstein after Chico Marx, whom he played in a national touring production of "A Night With Groucho." He was a big fan of the Marx Brothers: "They were immigrant Jews, and I was an immigrant Italian. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo, and Zeppo were intellectuals ... They all played the piano and took music lessons, and they were all juvenile delinquents; I could definitely relate."

It's sweet to see that connection to the Marx Brothers tradition of ethnic characters played by actors whose own ethnicity is at odds with the character's ethnicity. Heyges came from Hungarian and Italian ancestry and the Epstein character was Jewish and Puerto Rican.

"Welcome Back Kotter" wasn't a show I watched. I was in my 20s in the 1970s, and didn't watch much TV in those years. It's the TV shows of the 50s and 60s that are seared into my memory. Are there shows that I truly loved that I'd find really unwatchable now? Maybe "The Red Skelton Show."

"Cause of death was not..."

"... a lethal mixture of pop rocks and coke."

"Four is the new three."

"Not only did Col. Potter join his predecessor Lt. Col. Henry Blake in the great M*A*S*H tent in the sky today, but in what has to be one of the oddest 'celebrity' death days in recent memory, also passing today were: Dobie Gray, he of 'Drift Away' fame; Pusuke, who at 26 was the world's oldest dog; and Barbara Orbison, the widow of Roy Orbison."

Writes AlexG.

"I felt that women betraying each other was something I was investigating at the time."

Said Tori Amos, explaining the origin of the song "Cornflake Girl":

The idea of that, and how quote-unquote friends can really hurt each other deeply, and the idea that the enemy is out there somewhere, but really, where we get hurt usually comes from people we are close to. So “Cornflake Girl” really was about two women, that one felt that the other had really betrayed her.

The inspiration came from Alice Walker’s book "The Temple Of My Familiar":

In the book, they talked about how young girls would be taken to a place for female circumcision, whether it was out in the desert of Africa or what have you, usually by somebody they trusted. A mother, a grandmother, somebody they loved, and of course the person that was doing this to them, taking them to the whatever you want to call it, the hacker or the mutilator, thought that they were doing the right thing, or else the girl wouldn’t be able to get married. They justify their betrayal, and that was really what prompted the idea of “Cornflake Girl.”

But wait, says Adam (at Throwing Things), what about that story about how "she beat out Sarah Jessica Parker to star in an ad for Kellogg's Just Right cereal?"



Just Right cereal... female genital mutilation... it's hard to imagine a greater disparity in sources for a song. And yet... everything goes into the mix, doesn't it? You read books about all sorts of drastic and dramatic occurrences and your own life ticks on with its miniature but important-to-you events, it all swirls around in your poet-brain, and out pop a song (and, over the years, out pop stories about whether the song came from).

This isn't journalism. It's art, and the only test is: it's a great song.

"Strike a (Heisman) pose, there's nothing to it."

Nice post title.

"Nominees for the 2012 class of inductees into the Rock and Roll Non-Country Popular Music of the 1950s and Beyond Hall of Fame."

"First-time nominees include Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, The Cure, The Spinners, Eric B. & Rakim, Guns N' Roses, the Small Faces/Faces, Rufus with Chaka Khan, and Freddie King. The Beasties and Chilis return to the ballot, as do Donna Summer, Donovan, Laura Nyro, and War. First-time eligibles this year but not nominated include Crowded House, Guided by Voices, the Jayhawks, Lyle Lovett, Salt N Pepa, Soundgarden, They Might Be Giants, and Yo La Tengo."

Says Adam at Throwing Things, pointing to a link to throw in your opinion.

My opinion is just that I love Donovan and Laura Nyro (and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a bit ridiculous, but I always pay attention and I've visited the place more than once).

ADDED: Saffron!

"If one day passes without me writing any more vagina jokes, my career is blown... Vagina jokes paid for my house."

Laughs one network TV writer.

"Each season the competition is so stiff over who you can get to watch," a professor says analytically and probably without intending double entendre. "That’s why you’re getting more explicit, or more explicitly inferential, use of language."

Via Adam at Throwing Things, who says:

YES, THEY DON'T LIKE HEARING IT AND FIND IT DIFFICULT TO SAY, WHEREAS WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE A MAN WILL REFER TO HIS DICK OR HIS ROD OR HIS JOHNSON: Apparently not any more, Maude: the new fall tv season chock full of people saying the word "vagina."

Pop culture reference help. "Maude" is not the old TV character played by Bea Arthur, who may have talked about her vagina. It's Maude Lebowski, of the old movie — yeah, it's old too! — "The Big Lebowski."



(Sorry, YouTube only yielded up the Italian version.)

"Twenty Iconic Male Movie Roles In Which Helen Mirren Would Have Ruled."

Adam points to that list, and that causes Isaac Spaceman to list "five iconic male roles in which Helen Mirren would have been terrible."

Heh. Love that, Isaac. Can I call you Isaac Personal Space Bubbleman?

"[W]atching Steve Whitmire’s Kermit is akin to watching someone imitate a mythic and longed-for mother..."

"... my mother — wearing a my-mother costume in a my-mother dance routine. This person’s heart is in the right place, which only makes it worse. 'You should be happy,' the person pleads with me, 'Look, Biddy! Your mother is not gone! She is still here'” Now, no one would ever do that. No one in her right mind would think it would work. A child knows his mother’s voice like he knows whether it's water or air he's breathing. One chokes you and one gives you life. Strangely, I feel the same about Kermit. Whitmire is an amazing performer — especially as the lovable dog Sprocket on 'Fraggle Rock' — but, when he's on screen as Kermit, I can feel my body reject it on a cellular level."

Elizabeth Stevens, still mourning the loss of Jim Henson (via Throwing Things).

Here's a little clip showing Sprocket (getting Doc to say "Fraggle"):



If you were a fan of "Fraggle Rock," you may remember that the Fraggles called Doc's workroom "outer space," and if you're an incredibly hardcore fan of the Althouse blog, you may remember that that there is a room in my house that we call "outer space." We've been calling it that since the '80s.