Saturday Q&A

Five categories, five fun questions per category. A nice respite after the not-so-pleasant week that just transpired. We also built up a nice backlog of fun questions we can use when we return to normal order.

If you're still working on the headline theme, we'll say that you might want to think about the Great White Way (although not the same Great White Way that Stephen Miller has in mind).

Film

A.S. in Bedford, MA, asks: I've been thinking about time travel lately for... reasons. What are the best time travel movies, in your opinion?

(V) & (Z) answer: The unquestioned #1 here is Back to the Future, which is also the very best movie to be set in California.

Runners-up include The Terminator and Terminator 2, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Looper, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Midnight in Paris (even if Woody Allen has now been canceled).

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D.G. in Carlsbad, CA, asks: What three Barry Levinson directed movies referenced the 1957 movie Sweet Smell of Success?

(V) & (Z) answer: Levinson's first film, Diner has a character whose lines are all lifted from Sweet Smell of Success, so that's the easy answer. Similarly, the film plays on a TV in Rain Man, so that's a pretty easy answer, too. As to the third, we'd say Tin Man has a lot of the same plot beats as Sweet Smell of Success does, but beyond that, we don't have a great answer.

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M.R. in Santa Rosa, CA, asks: Are either of you fans of Wes Anderson, and if so, which films are your favorites?

(V) & (Z) answer: (Z) has seen nearly all of the Wes Anderson films. In his view, Anderson does a great job of creating very interesting worlds filled with very interesting characters. The problem, quite often, is that there's no real payoff. For example, the first 50 minutes of The Grand Budapest Hotel were great. The rest, with the art heist plot, was forgettable.

The best Wes Anderson films are the ones that do not suffer from this problem, or that suffer less from it than the rest. And so, in our view, the two far-and-away best Anderson films are The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore. It's not full-length, but The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar was also very good, and The Phoenician Scheme, which is out in a couple of weeks, looks promising.

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E.P. In San Diego, CA, asks: What is your favorite shouted movie line? Along the lines of "You can't handle the truth!" Or "You only moved the headstones!"

(V) & (Z) answer: "You can't handle the truth!" is a very good choice.

It somewhat depends on how loud a character has to be before they are considered to be shouting, but the first two answers that occurred to us on reading this question were Jules Winnfield's "I shall strike down upon thee" monologue in Pulp Fiction and Michael Corleone yelling across the room at Fredo, as the Cuban government is falling, in The Godfather, Part II. And speaking of the godfather, Marlon Brando's "Stellaaaaaaaaaa!" in A Streetcar Named Desire is also great, as is "I coulda been a contender" in On the Waterfront (if you consider that to be shouted; it's on the border). Also (and see below) "Soylent Green is people!" from Soylent Green.

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P.E. in Warsaw, Poland, asks: Which is your favorite Stooge, and why? Larry, Curley, Moe, Shemp, Joe, or Curly Joe?

(V) & (Z) answer: Larry. Moe got to drive the action, and the third stooge (Curley, then Shemp, then Joe, then Curly Joe) was usually the target, leaving Larry to stand and react. And Larry Fine was really, really good at that, with his eyes and his facial expressions, and managed to squeeze a lot of humor out of scenes where he was a passive participant.

The Golden Girls and M*A*S*H make appearances below, and they each featured performers who were masters of reacting, even when they weren't saying anything. The latter had Gary Burghoff, while the former actually had two such cast members, Betty White and Bea Arthur.

Television

D.D. in Carversville, PA, asks: What movie or TV show could you watch and re-watch and re-watch whenever it's playing? I have a few, but top of the TV list is Barney Miller, and top of the film list is Clueless ("Everywhere in Los Angeles is 20 minutes.")

(V) & (Z) answer: (V) isn't much of a TV watcher, but (Z) has a few TV shows that often play on an endless loop: M*A*S*H, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Seinfeld, Scrubs, The Goldbergs, Cheers, 30 Rock and The Office, most prominently. Oddly, other than the two Star Trek shows and Seinfeld, he watched none of these when they were originally on the air. Similarly, he has a near-endless appetite for 1960s and 1970s game shows, particularly Match Game, Hollywood Squares and To Tell the Truth. Also, see the next question.

As to movies, again, (V) isn't much of a connoisseur, but (Z) has watched The Shawshank Redemption, the Star Wars movies, the Harry Potter movies, the first two Godfather movies, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Trading Places, The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's Life of Brian, The Princess Bride, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the first two Die Hard movies, the Back to the Future movies, The King's Speech, Pulp Fiction, Tombstone, Glory, and many of the movies John Wayne made between 1955 and the end of his career dozens of times each (usually in the background).

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B.C. in Louisville, KY, asks: What is your go-to comfort TV show? Something you've watched several times but still go back to in times of trouble or just to zone out?

(V) & (Z) answer: Again, only (Z) has a real answer here. And that answer, which could also have appeared in the previous answer, is The Golden Girls. In the years it was being aired, he would spend weekends and his now-deceased grandmother's house, and so watched the entire run of that series with her, in her living room.

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K.K. in Seattle, WA, asks: I watched the updated Lost in Space series on Netflix, and it is a terrific, action-packed adventure series. About all that they kept from the old show are the proper nouns, and my take is that the Robinson women are the action heroes in this new version, and the men are second bananas. I was wondering if you know of any other old series that was revived for the modern era and that is also re-imagined so as to turn the old show on its head.

Fun factoid, the composer John Williams (best known for Star Wars) also wrote the theme music for the OG Lost in Space, when he was known as Johnny Williams. I've won more than one beer for knowing that.

(V) & (Z) answer: Williams also wrote the theme song for Wagon Train.

We don't suggest, in any way, that this is a comprehensive answer, but here are ten shows that did a pretty radical reboot:

1. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: The original show was a light sitcom. The reboot Bel-Air, which is still airing, is a drama about race and racism in America.
   
   
2. The Karate Kid: This is a slight cheat, since the original source was a movie. Still, Cobra Kai certainly turns the movie on its head, raising the questions of whether Daniel LaRusso is really a good guy, and whether Johnny Lawrence is really a bad guy.
   
   
3. The Wonder Years: The 2021 reboot swapped out a white kid living in suburbia in the late 1960s for a Black kid living through the Civil Rights Movement.
   
   
4. One Day at a Time: Similarly, the original version of this show was about white people living in Indianapolis, the reboot was about Cubans living in Los Angeles.
   
   
5. Beverly Hills, 90210: The original was a primetime soap opera. The second reboot, titled BH90210 was a mockumentary about the real-life actors from the original series preparing to star in a reboot.
   
   
6. Battlestar Galactica: The original was a somewhat cheesy show (but a cult favorite) that was made to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars. The reboot was a considerably more sophisticated show, with much more complex scripts and much better production values.
   
   
7. The Office: We should find room for at least one British-to-American show on here, and The Office is the obvious choice. At the outset, most of the characters in the American version had reasonably clear parallels in the British version (although even then, U.K. boss David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais, was quite different from U.S. boss Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell). Over time, as the American version went on far, far longer than its British source (188 episodes vs. just 14), it diverged further and further from the source material.
   
   
8. Matlock: As with your characterization of Lost in Space, the only thing that really survived from the original to the reboot was a character name. The original was a garden-variety legal procedural starring Andy Griffith as crusty old defense attorney Ben Matlock. The 2024 reboot, still on the air, stars Kathy Bates as Madeline Matlock, apparently unrelated to Ben, who is... looking into corruption at a white-shoe law firm (this is deliberately vague, to avoid spoilers).
   
   
9. Roseanne/The Conners: The 2018 reboot pretended that the last season of the original show never happened, and thus resurrected the deceased Dan Conner. A year later, Roseanne Barr got canceled for being a racist, and so the show killer her character off and became The Conners.
   
   
10. The Star Trek Universe: Some of the newer Trek shows are pretty far removed from the original series, or from its 3-4 immediate follow-ups. Discovery leaps to mind, as does Lower Decks. We recognize these are technically spin-offs, rather than reboots.

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E.S. in Providence, RI, asks: Do you have a favorite book that you have been waiting forever to see made into a movie or miniseries? Mine would be John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces which has been in what Hollywood calls "Development Hell" for decades.

(V) & (Z) answer: (Z)'s favorite books, growing up, were a series of volumes based on the adventures of "The Great Brain," a precocious pre-teen/teen living in end-of-the-Western-frontier-era Utah. Roughly half the time, he used his gifts to help his small hometown, and the other half he used them to swindle his friends out of their money and toys. Think Tom Sawyer, but a little later in time, and a little farther west, and you've got the general idea. The series was actually based on real people, though their lives were heavily fictionalized.

Anyhow, (Z) would very much like to see that made into a series, but it's probably never going to happen.

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R.W. in Bensenville, IL, asks: Cheers was one of my favorite shows growing up. What is your favorite Cheers episode? And do you know the relationship between Coach and Woody?

I wonder if I still have that Cheers trivia board game somewhere.

NORM!!!

(V) & (Z) answer: Coach and Woody were pen pals. And being... shall we say, not the sharpest knives in the drawer, that meant that they exchanged pens with each other via mail.

The best Cheers episode is "Pick a Con... Any Con," in which Coach (Nicholas Colasanto) and Harry the Hat (guest star Harry Anderson) run a scam to re-claim the money that Coach lost to scammer George Wheeler (guest star Reid Shelton). It's absolutely brilliant.

Of course we had to pick this question, in this week of all weeks. R.I.P. George Wendt. And, for that matter, R.I.P. Nicholas Colasanto, Harry Anderson and Reid Shelton.

Sports

A.R. in Los Angeles, CA, asks: Sports films, especially those based on real events, are notoriously hard to do well because the stars are usually not athletes and if they are, they can't act. There are notable exceptions, like Miracle and Hoosiers. But what, in your opinion, is the best sports film based on a true story?

(V) & (Z) answer: There are two levels of "based on a true story." The first might be called something like "inspired by real events," and puts a largely fictionalized story against a real historical backdrop. The best sports film of this sort, we would say, is A League of Their Own. A couple of the characters were loosely based on real people (Tom Hanks' Jimmy Dugan was a mix of Hack Wilson and Jimmie Foxx, Geena Davis' Dottie Hinson was a mix of Dottie Kamenshek and Dolores "Pickles" Lee-Dries, etc.), and the league and teams were real, but the main plot was an invention.

Other very good sports films in this category include Hoosiers, Rocky and Bull Durham.

The second level might be called "based on real events," where the film attempts to present a reasonably close approximation of real people and what happened to them. The best sports film of this sort, we would say, is Raging Bull, which pretty closely follows the real life of Jake LaMotta.

Other very good sports films in this category include Miracle, Brian's Song, Chariots of Fire, The Pride of the Yankees, 42 and The Fighter.

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D.G.H. in Barnegat, NJ, asks: What changes do the Green Bay Packers need to make to win their division in the upcoming NFL season?

(V) & (Z) answer: They really don't need to make any changes, which is good, because the draft is over and they are pretty close to the salary cap. The Packers are the youngest team in the league, so their first hope is that the players, with a year more experience and physical maturity, will take a step forward. Their second hope is that the Packers' players avoid the injury bug, and maybe that the Lions' players do not. It is a somewhat dirty secret of the NFL that the teams that advance deep into the playoffs tend to be ones that had the fewest injuries, particularly on the offensive and defensive lines.

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R.V. in Pittsburgh, PA, asks: Does either (V) or (Z) play in fantasy football leagues? For a long time, I just played in a work league, but for last 5 years, I play in about 12 leagues each season, the others being the Yahoo Public leagues. (Yahoo lets you sign up for up to 50 teams, and I've seen several people at the max.)

And if you had first pick in a league this year, do you take Ja'Marr Chase, Saquon Barkley, CeeDee Lamb, or someone else?

(V) & (Z) answer: (V) is not a sports person, but (Z) has done fantasy football for something like 30 years. However, he only does one league at a time, because he does not like to watch games and to have, say, a Josh Allen TD pass be simultaneously a good thing and a bad thing.

And when (Z) has the #1 overall pick, he usually trades out of that slot. But if he had to pick #1 this year, he would take Saquon Barkley.

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M.L. in Franklin, MA, asks: With the A's out of Oakland and slated to move into Las Vegas in spring of 2028, which will be the next MLB franchise to move, where will they move to, and why?

Also, ignoring the A's current temporary move (or not) which franchise has moved the most? The A's are right up there with 3 (or 4), and their soon-to-be neighbors the Raiders also have 3. Do any franchises have more?

(V) & (Z) answer: If the next team to move is any team other than the Rays, it will be a surprise. The Rays don't draw people, and their stadium is literally a disaster area, and won't be usable for 2 years. They've also done battle with the city of Tampa over a new stadium, which did not result in a deal for a new stadium, and did result in a lot of bad feelings.

The biggest city in America without a Major League Baseball team is Cleveland. Ha, ha! Just kidding. It's actually San Antonio, followed by Jacksonville. We can see the Rays moving to San Antonio, in search of the large number of potential fans, plus the corporate sponsorship opportunities. However, we can also see them moving to Jacksonville, since the weather is more amenable, and they might be able to hold on to some of their current fanbase.

We don't believe any team has more than three relocations. In addition to the A's and Raiders, the Hawks (Moline-Milwaukee-St. Louis-Atlanta) and Rams (Cleveland-Los Angeles-St. Louis-Los Angeles) have also moved three times. If you decide to get really nitpicky, the Rams actually went from Cleveland to L.A. to Anaheim to St. Louis and then back to L.A., so you could get up to four relocations for them. However, in general, "same metropolitan area" is considered "same city," and so the move from L.A. to Anaheim doesn't count.

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H.M. in San Dimas, CA, asks: You are named baseball commissioner and have the power to make three changes (to the game, to marketing, wherever you want) that cannot be overruled by the players' union or the owner. What three changes do you make?

(V) & (Z) answer: First, establish a relegation system. Right now, the league is set up such that if you're not a viable contender for a playoff spot, there's no good reason to try to win at all. Better to spend as little on talent as possible, and just bank the TV and revenue-sharing money. Put another way, it costs far more to win 80 games as opposed to 60, but there's not much more profit to be had in winning 80 (it takes 85-95 wins to make the playoffs, generally). So, why bother spending the money for those extra 20 wins? This is why you have so many godawful teams right now—the Rockies, who literally just had the worst first 50 games in MLB history, the White Sox, the Pirates, the Marlins, etc.

If, each year, you had 10 teams in both the National and the American league playing for the playoffs and the World Series, and 5 teams each in the "relegation" division, with the bottom two "main" division teams being demoted each year, and the top two "relegation" division teams being promoted, then everyone would actually have motivation to try to win. This would be extra true if backed with increases/decreases in revenue-sharing money (e.g., if you get relegated, your team gets $50 million less next year).

Second, allow trading of draft picks. In every other league, this is a critical asset class that maximizes both flexibility and the number of strategic paths available. When a team cannot trade (most) draft picks, it has much less ability to remake its roster. If MLB wanted to do what the NBA does, and limit teams from trading too many draft picks at one time, then fine.

Third, fire Commissioner Rob Manfred, who is awful, and abolish the Office of the Commissioner, as it is currently constituted. Replace it with a new position/office (it can carry the same title) where the person in charge of baseball is chosen by both the owners and the players' union, with each getting one vote (in other words, they have to agree on a candidate). Such a person would be much more likely to have the best interests of baseball in mind, as opposed to just the best interests of the 30 billionaire owners.

(Of course, maybe this change is implied by the question, since the question begins with us being named commissioner.)

History

L.E. in Nashville, TN, asks: If you had a time machine and could go back to witness any point in history (as a spectator only, unseen and unheard), what point would you choose, and why?

(V) & (Z) answer: As a Civil War historian, (Z)'s personal choice would be to go back and witness the Gettysburg Address. However, the greater good would probably be served by going back and witnessing some key moment that is the subject of much interest and debate. For example, the death of Jesus of Nazareth and its aftermath would likely be instructive, assuming you could figure out the correct date to set the time machine for.

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F.I. in Philadelphia, PA, asks: Did the Founding Fathers have any opinions on marijuana and alcohol? What did they think of whatever hallucinogenic drugs existed back in the 1700's?

(V) & (Z) answer: This question largely assumes a modern-day cultural context, which does not apply.

In that time, alcohol was more than just recreation. It was also a very important medicine, and it was (incorrectly) regarded as a way to fight cold weather. So, while the Founders would largely have disapproved of public drunkenness, or of overindulgence, they otherwise would have had no more concern about alcohol consumption than they would have had about, say, water consumption. (This excludes the small number of Founders who belonged to religious sects that preached temperance, like the Quakers.)

As to hallucinogenics, there has been much ink spilled trying to turn George Washington, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, in particular, into marijuana devotees. This is based on the fact that all three experimented with cultivating hemp. However, the hemp they grew was not the type that has hallucinogenic properties, and even if it did, there's no evidence that any of them tried to put some into a pipe and smoke it. These men might have been vaguely aware of hallucinogenics, perhaps by hearing about Native American use of such substances, but the habit, and the option, were really not a part of their world.

Note that these men, particularly Jefferson, probably did use opium, in the form of laudanum (a liquefied opium solution). However, as with much of the alcohol use, this was for medicinal purposes (pain relief) and not for recreation.

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L.B. in Bozeman, MT, asks: What were the most unique or interesting hobbies of U.S. presidents? Did they continue while in office or have to give it up?

(V) & (Z) answer: Largely speaking, the presidential hobbies we know about were adult hobbies, and so continued into the presidency. Here's a list of some presidential hobbies that go beyond the usual stuff for middle-aged men (fishing, hunting, dancing, playing music, swimming, golfing, team sports); you can judge for yourself which ones are interesting or unique:

• George Washington liked to breed dogs, and to give them funny names like "Sweetlips."
• Thomas Jefferson designed buildings.
• John Quincy Adams liked to skinny dip in the Potomac.
• Andrew Jackson was a devotee of cockfighting.
• He didn't get to do it much while president, but Abraham Lincoln liked to wrestle.
• Ulysses S. Grant liked to ride horses at speeds that most considered dangerous.
• Theodore Roosevelt liked to box against professionals, sometimes to the detriment of his health.
• Woodrow Wilson was a collector and teller of offensive (often racist) jokes.
• Calvin Coolidge thought horse riding was good exercise, and so had an electric horse installed in the White House.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt built model ships.
• Harry S. Truman was a very good poker player.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower was a fairly accomplished painter.
• Lyndon B. Johnson liked to go on drives around his ranch.
• Richard Nixon liked to bowl, and had a lane installed in the White House.
• Jimmy Carter liked woodcarving.
• Ronald Reagan enjoyed getting exercise by chopping wood.
• Bill Clinton does crossword puzzles.
• Barack Obama collects comic books.

Some presidents also picked up hobbies after they left office, most obviously George W. Bush's painting.

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S.C. in Mountain View, CA, asks: I tell my visitors that they can take either 280 or 101 to get to San Francisco, and when giving other directions I would never say "take the El Camino Real" as that would be a bilingual redundancy; to get to Oakland it's "take El Camino to 237 to 880 North."

So, why do people in Southern California (or at least in the Los Angeles area) stick "the" in front of highway numbers? At what point does Interstate 5 become "the 5", and does it stay that all the way to San Diego? Similarly, does Interstate 10 stay "the 10" all the way to Blythe, or even into Arizona, or does the obsession with the definite article end at some point?

(V) & (Z) answer: This is a pretty easy question, though maybe a bit tricky to explain.

To start, most adjectives are prepositive, meaning they come in front of the noun, and therefore generally have an article. A minority of adjectives are postpositive, meaning they come after the noun, and the article is not used. For example, you might well describe Charles III as "the reigning king," because "reigning" is a prepositive adjective. But you would not describe him as "king the regnant," because "regnant" is a postpositive adjective.

For most of the country, the first major roadways they had were highways. And in federal government parlance, highway designations had "highway" or "route" first, and then the number second. For example, "Highway 66" or "Route 66." The number is the adjective, and since it is postpositive, there's no article. Nobody called/calls it "Route the 66." However, when people give directions, they usually skip anything that's implied. Since only highways were known by numbers, there was really no need to include "highway" or "route," and people got in the habit of just using the number, e.g. "take 66 to Lakeside Drive."

In the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government constructed the first freeways. And to distinguish freeways from highways, the decision was made to put the number in the prepositive position. So, Highway 66 BUT the 405 Freeway. Most parts of the country kept their existing habit of just using numbers, so "take 15 to Lakeside Drive." But Southern California, because its population did not explode until World War II, basically went from the "road" era to the "freeway" era with no intermediate step. As such, they included the grammatically correct "the" and never developed the habit of excluding it. They DID drop the implied "freeway," such that directions were generally communicated in this form: "take THE 405 to Wilshire Blvd."

It's characteristic of all of Southern California, since all the major population centers (San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, etc.) all exploded at the same time due to World War II, and so experienced the same road-to-freeway jump. We don't know quite how far north or east you have to go before it dies out. Probably Las Vegas, to the east, since most people living in between SoCal and Las Vegas are displaced Southern Californians. Maybe something like San Luis Obispo to the north (about 250 miles north of L.A.).

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G.S. in Beverly, MA, asks: The musical The Drowsy Chaperone has a song "As We Bumble Along" which has this stanza: "Seven overrated wonders. Seven underwhelming seas. Six excruciating continents. Antarctica, oh, please!"

So my question is, what could be the seven modern wonders of the world created, launched, or completed within the last 20 years?

(V) & (Z) answer: The last 20 years is a little constraining, as we'd really like to include the Chunnel. But here's our best shot:

	Statue of Unity (India, completed 2018) Most of the "wonders of the world" lists, including the original one, find room for at least one or two big statues. The Statue of Unity, which honors Indian politician and independence activist Sardar Pate, is currently the world's largest statue, at 597 feet.
	Burj Khalifa (United Arab Emirates, completed 2010) Pretty hard to put a list together to these specifications, and NOT include Burj Khalifa. It's currently the world's tallest building (2,722 feet), and it's already an iconic skyscraper design.
	Disney Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates, expected 2030s) Given its impact on world popular culture, not to mention serving hundreds of millions of customers each year, one of the Disney parks seemed appropriate. We are cheating a bit, because Disney Abu Dhabi won't be complete for several years. Nonetheless, it's under construction, and it's supposed to be the "next generation" of Disney parks, so we included it. If it's disqualified, then Disney Shanghai was completed in 2016, and so makes the "last 20 years" cut.
	Beipanjiang Bridge (China, completed 2025) We are in a golden age of bridges right now, in part because of better engineering, but mostly because of new materials not available 20 or 40 or 60 years ago. The Beipanjiang Bridge, which just opened, is currently the world's tallest, at 883 feet in height. However, what earns it a spot on the list is that it's built on very hostile terrain, over a chasm nearly 2,000 feet deep. Quite an engineering feat.
	The Sphere (United States, completed 2023) We thought an entertainment venue should probably make the list, and while we considered many sports stadiums, they have a pretty short lifespan, in general. So, we went with The Sphere, which is not only a visual spectacle, but is at the heart of the world-famous Las Vegas Strip.
	The Apple Ring (United States, completed 2018) Similarly, we thought something related to technology and the Internet should probably make the list. Apple may be the most important tech company in the world. And its main HQ is certainly more iconic than anything found on the campuses of Microsoft or Google.
	Mother of All Asia - Tower of Peace (Philippines, completed 2021) Again, wonders lists tend to have big statues. This one strikes us as 33% The Statue of Liberty, 67% Christ the Redeemer. And certainly, at least one wonder should be overtly religious.

Gallimaufry

S.S. in Toronto, ON, Canada, asks: You guys love to make friendly little digs at your northern neighbors—which always give me a chuckle. I was born in Philadelphia, but have lived in (or near) Toronto, Ontario for the last 57 years, and I have never looked back. I could tell you many of the best things about living here, but I would like to ask you, since Canada will never, ever, ever, ever become the 51st state of any country, what are some of the really nice things about having Canada as a northern neighbor?

(V) & (Z) answer: First, because Canada is very calm and very polite (and, frankly, very white), Americans have not had to listen to decades of melodramatic carping from xenophobic politicians about how Canadian immigrants are ruining the U.S.

Second, Canada punches well above its weight class when it comes to producing talented entertainers. In film and television, you have Michael J. Fox, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Seth Rogen, Martin Short, Dan and Eugene Levy, Mike Myers, Catherine O'Hara, Leslie Nielsen, William Shatner, etc. In music, you have Neil Young, the Guess Who, Alanis Morrisette, Rush, Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, etc. Lightfoot and Young alone are enough that we're willing to tolerate Justin Bieber, Celine Dion and Bryan Adams.

Third, hockey is a heckuva sport. In terms of low-scoring sports where every goal matters a lot, we tend to prefer it to soccer. Basketball is also a heckuva sport, and while it was developed in the U.S., the inventor, James Naismith, was a 'Nade.

Fourth, and finally, poutine is a home run of a snack.

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E.W. (normally in Skaneateles, NY, but currently hanging out in Washington, DC), asks: When I was a kid, I was the only one in my family who did not like so-called "crunchy" peanut butter. As an adult, I started joking with my parents that "crunchy" peanut butter should be called "unfinished" peanut butter. I said that it was probably invented when some peanut butter factory workers decided to leave early on a Friday afternoon, so the company just slapped the word "crunchy" on there and sold it anyway. It took my parents over a decade to develop the best comeback they could think of, which was calling creamy peanut butter "overprocessed" peanut butter. So, which do you prefer, correctly processed peanut butter (aka "creamy") or the unfinished kind (so-called "crunchy")?

(V) & (Z) answer: (Z) is the main "food person" around here, and rarely has strong feelings in these various food debates, like "should there be pineapple on pizza?" He has watched many, many cooking shows and Food Network competition shows, however, and knows that it's a well-established notion that a cook wants to have textural variance in their dishes. That matches his experience with peanut butter. When the surrounding ingredients are largely soft (e.g., a peanut butter and jelly sandwich), he likes the texture of the crunchy peanut butter. When the surrounding ingredients are largely crunchy (e.g., celery and peanut butter), he likes the creamy stuff.

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M.G. in Boulder, CO, asks: For those of us who may visit Los Angeles in the near future (or who live there), what are six budget-friendly-but-interesting restaurants there, with recommendations for each? Feel free to include a bakery and/or a grocery store.

(V) & (Z) answer: We're going to shoot for places where you can reasonably eat for $25 or less:

• Tito's Tacos: It's an L.A. landmark, and though the service tends to be slow, the food is good and very budget-friendly. (Z) prefers the bean burrito ($7), but most people get a couple of the shredded beef tacos with cheese ($6 each).
  
  
• California Chicken Cafe: They have a lot of hearty and reasonably healthy salads and side dishes. They are best-known for their Chinese chicken salad, which will set you back $17. However, (Z) prefers to eat vegetarian when possible, and gets the Chinese side salad, which comes without the rotisserie chicken and costs just $7.
  
  
• The Hat: They specialize in pastrami sandwiches, which are quite good if you like pastrami, and cost about $13.
  
  
• Porto's Bakery: There are several locations, and they combine mostly Cuban entrees with a cosmopolitan-plus-Cuban selection of baked goods. The sweet corn croquette ($1.50) and spinach feta empanada ($1.39) are great, but really the whole menu is delicious. The most popular dish is the Cubano sandwich ($11).
  
  
• Dim Sum: There are a bunch of dim sum restaurants on the edge of Chinatown, most obviously CBS Seafood and ABC Seafood (no NBC Seafood, though, that's out in Monterey Park) that are low-rent enough that they don't have working websites. But they do have great dim sum for very good prices. Get the mango pudding, which usually runs around $5, for dessert.
  
  
• Sunday Gravy: One of the best Italian places in terms of the combination of quality and price. (Z) usually gets the shrimp scampi and grits ($20).
  
  

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M.A.H. in Warren, MI, asks: How many can we put you down for?

(V) & (Z) answer: That will make a good Christmas gift for a few folks, though we might have put the spout elsewhere.

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D.S. in Layton, UT, asks: I think you have discussed this before, but it is especially bad now. I use both an iMac and an iPad. My iPad got your update this morning over three hours ago, and my iMac has yet to update today.

Is there a workaround? My eyes are not good enough to comfortably read on my tablet before my fifth cup of coffee...

(V) & (Z) answer: We have no control over this. Once we're live, we're live on all platforms.

This has something to do with cacheing. On the iMac, you can use the key combination shift-cmd-R, which should force-download the latest version of the page (ctrl-F5 on most Windows browsers). If that doesn't work, you can switch to a different browser (say Chrome, instead of Safari, or Safari, instead of Chrome).

Reader Question of the Week: Hooray for Hollywood, Part I

Here is the question we put before readers last week:

(V) & (Z), et al., ask: We got several suggestions along these lines, including from readers B.C. in Walpole, ME; A.G. in Scranton, PA; and S.L. in Glendora, CA, which we will unify into two questions, one for this week, one for next week. For this week: The scuttlebutt is that Donald Trump got the idea for re-opening Alcatraz due to having seen Escape from Alcatraz on TV. What movie do you REALLY hope does not get broadcast in South Florida while Trump is in residence at Mar-a-Lago, and why?

And here some of the answers we got in response (you will see that some of the same films kept coming up, over and over):

J.L. in Los Angeles, CA: The Purge because... well... it's only a half-step away from where we are now.

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C.S. in Newport, Wales, UK: Godzilla, followed by Jurassic Park.

Trump wants to stick it to those Asian trade enemies that rip off America. Godzilla may give him an idea of devastating their cities with a monster. Jurassic Park may make him believe it is possible.

Having said that, Trump probably hasn't got the energy to watch two movies in one night, or if they are shown on consecutive days, to remember yesterday's movie.

Also, if you point out to Trump that a movie was actually made in Hollywood, I wonder if that would stop him from watching it, just to own the libs...

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J.B. in Bozeman, MT: Judge Dredd would please both the budget hawks (think of the savings by eliminating courthouses and those pesky judges and defense attorneys) as well as the fascists.

TCF would also love to say "I am the Law!" and may even adopt the Dredd uniform. Heck he may even start selling Dredd themed merch to the rubes.

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U.C. in Durham, NC: Oh, my gosh. As soon as I read the question, Gabriel Over the White House flashed through my mind.

It is a curious movie, set in 1930 or so. The President of the United States is a real rascal, doing awfully dangerous stuff (e.g., he is to appear in Baltimore, and he manages to get into the presidential limousine by himself, and he races across Maryland at well over 100 miles per hour, with his staff and entourage trying desperately to catch up with him to slow him down). And he doesn't give a Pizza Rat for all the starving people in the Great Depression.

Then that car chase ends in a crash, and it looks like the POTUS is going to die. But the Angel Gabriel intervenes, and the President wakes up a totally changed man. He puts in place jobs programs and other stuff for the country, and everyone is amazed. Also, he suspends Congress and puts the country under martial law. He decides to save the world, by trading off the huge debts other countries owe the USA, in return for them destroying their weapons. That is, he brings about world peace.

Not only does this seem like a movie about two different presidents (although it wasn't), but it was released around 1932, and the movie executives were afraid that: (1) the "bad guy" president would be seen as a criticism of Herbert Hoover, and (2) the "good guy" president would be seen in support of Franklin Roosevelt. They decided to bury it in the archives, perhaps forever. (A good thing, because the Congress suspension and martial law were shown as good things, while all that Adolf Hitler stuff was still a couple of years in the future.) I got to see it 50 years later, in the 1980s.

Holy cow, I hope that Trump NEVER sees this thing. He already tried to grab the steering wheel of his car from the driver; can you imagine him seeing the car chase? "Gee, I always knew presidents could get away with stuff like that. But I wouldn't crash the car. Gee, that looks like fun." Seeing the "bad guy" president playing with his grandson while ignoring a radio broadcast description of the country's economic troubles wouldn't faze him.

But the "savior of the world" president would immediately hit him hard. "That's all I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make things better. Why don't people see that?"

I hope he never sees it.

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L.C. in Boston, MA: Anything like Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will which would whet his appetite for what these movies stand for.

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S.T. in Worcestershire, England, UK: Triumph of the Will (OK, it's not Hollywood, and he probably has seen it already—numerous times).

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S.K. in Sunnyvale, CA: Triumph of the Will. The last thing we need is for Trump to get a dose of overt celebration of fascism.

Not that it would ever be broadcast commercially, but couldn't you just see Stephen Miller staging a private screening for his führer?

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J.S. in Germantown, OH: I certainly hope he doesn't see Will Smith's Enemy of the State (although it's pretty clear that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel already have, and see it as a blueprint for running the Justice Department, and not the cautionary tale it is intended to be).

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R.A.G. in Seattle, WA: Dr. Strangelove (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). It is not a documentary. We will know when it airs, as the very next day, TCF would promulgate an executive order of the selection criteria (including names) for the mineshaft population.

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D.H. in Boston, MA: I really hope they don't show Dr. Strangelove at any time when Trump is in Mar-a-Lago. I'm not sure his brain can process satire.

I originally thought of Dr. Strangelove because of nuclear war, but then I realized there are other relevant parallels in that movie. One character is a nutjob who is afraid of fluoridated water. Another is a foreign-born special advisor to the president who speaks oddly, occasionally gives Sieg Heil salutes, and suggests using polygamy to help elite government officials repopulate the world after a nuclear war. I worry all that will make Trump think it's a realistic movie.

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L.S. in Greensboro, NC: Dr. Strangelove. Our nitwit President would likely come out with the conviction that dropping a BOMB on something is a good idea! Although the positive is that he might be able to convince Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) to ride it.

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T.S. in Maple Heights, OH: I going to exercise the nuclear options and hope that neither Dr. Strangelove nor "Fail Safe" get shown at the Southern White House. With the apparent lack of self-awareness or compassion required for grappling with satire as social commentary, I fear that too many Mar-a-Lago viewers would begin to ponder, "Would it really be all that bad?"

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D.E. in Lancaster, PA: That's easy, Soylent Green! For those not in the know, Soylent Green is a dystopian 1973 film where the world in 2022 is wracked by overpopulation, food shortages and climate change. In the film, U.S. citizens eat a highly processed wafer called Soylent Green. Spoiler alert: The famous last line, spoken by Charlton Heston, reveals the plot: "Soylent Green is people! We have to stop them somehow!" If Trump watches that one, the next thing you'll know is that he's hawking a new energy bar called Soylent Trump!

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J.E.S. in Sedona, AZ: Woe betide us should Soylent Green air at Mar-A-Lago, as it would offer our Maniac-in-Chief a streamlined solution to: (1) where deportees go, and (2) grocery prices. Though, of course, given the proclivities of his core team, his version would actually need to be named "Soylent Brown."

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M.M. in San Diego, CA: Planet of the Apes, because I fear Trump would order Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem to exterminate all the Great Ape species as a preventative measure.

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A.G. in Plano, TX: God help us all if Trump is sitting on the throne at Mar-A-Lago one early morning and sees Moonraker. He's absolutely dumb enough to believe that we can build a space station to house a couple of hundred "perfect specimens" (like Laura Loomer and Stephen Miller, no doubt) while they exterminate the rest of Earth's population, only to come back and repopulate humanity in the mold of Trump. Of course, that would require finding someone other than Laura Loomer willing to sleep with him...

P.S. I realize there are some tasteless statements here, but considering the entire Trump existence is tastelessness in its purest form, I stand by it.

Here is the question for next week:

(V) & (Z), et al., ask: Ok, now that we have covered movies that Donald Trump should NOT see, what movie do you hope he sees, and why?

Submit your answers to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Hooray for Hollywood?, Part II"!

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