Laugh if you will, but the sight of lower Manhattan and the river under a pale ceramic sky scudded over by loads of Simpsons clouds squishes my heart at least as much as anything I saw on vac. Reminded me of the Mercedes commercial that ran just after 9/11 that made me cry: dramatic shots of various wonderful destinations intercut with descriptive caption cards, followed by a Mercedes coming into New York followed by the cards: "but it's nice to come home. // We understand. We live here too.". Yeah, I cried, big whoop, wanna fight about it?

WHY DON'T I LISTEN?!?!??

Might as well officially put Gosling on the list of people who strongly deter me from seeing a movie. Blech

"you shouldn't have to survive on dry crumbly muffins from...the Gersh Agency"

I love Parker so much. "I think I'm getting better at this. ...I didn't even stab him!"

FINALLY!*

How's that for outta left field (ba-dum tsh). There are no delights like those unexpected. Of course yes, despite the presence of Mr. Not Trying who I hope keeps his distance and his hands to himself.

*One of my all-time favorite Simpsons moments @ 1:40:

Meta stuff on tonight's Simpsons was tasty. So true, how jarring it is to watch really old shows and see now-hugely successful ATLs listed in, like, the crawl.

I know those words but this job description makes no sense

Friend just emailed that this is what she's doing in her new job at the State Dept:

building a medium-scale, dynamic information and management platform that provides State with a transparent, collaborative and controlled planning, implementation and measurement management tool

She is one of the smartest, most accomplished people I've ever known, so I'm not mocking. I'm just marveling at the staggeringly low meaningfulness-R on number-of-words-I. 24 words and I am no nearer having even the haziest picture of what she's doing than before I got her email. What baffles me further is that her background is in hardcore finance (mostly MBS) and she knows like 8 languages (I mean really knows, not knows the way I know other languages, I mean knows as in 'can debate politics and literary criticism in all of them without it ever becoming apparent to native speakers that she isn't one herself'), but this sounds like an IT job. I am getting a kick out of imagining it as a strictly literal physical description.

Everybody knows I'm full of crap and can't resist the McHale. It's like Chuck: I'll just tune out the characters I dislike.

"I say things others won't. That has value!"

What Britta and Slater did: if no one ever calls that catfighting again (or meows), it'll be too soon.

EEEYUUCK and I was feeling all relieved that they had abandoned the Annie/Jeff thing. Isn't he like 20 years older than her? ICK

Whoa Mike Scully is on staff for P&R? The SIMPSONS Mike Scully? {runs to studiosystem}

I find this Ben attractive, Mars-Attacks head or no. He and Leslie have had crackling chemistry from the moment they met. Plus it's such a classic instant-sparks Darcy/Elizabeth setup....

"My resting heart rate is 28 beats per minute."

Loved Ron's growing glee over the course of the episode. "Sell the zoo animals. ...[to] cosmetics labs? Weird restaurants?"

The Concert! "Is it a crime to want nice things? And then to steal them from a public museum, where any gum-chewing monkey in a Tufts University jacket can gawk at them? I think not!"

I'd be willing to tolerate being super-famous (even like Angelina Jolie famous), with all the attendant hassles, if only because it would:
(1) (probably) mean I could be animated into the Simpsons at will; and
(2) enable, or at least facilitate, doing crazy things for my family and friends, like having them be awakened on their birthday by their favorite band doing an acoustic set for them in their bedroom, or giving them a private closed-gallery nighttime visit to a favorite artist's museum exhibit... in Oslo, or having their favorite chef make them a personalized/custom dinner. Or whatever.