Hooray! It’s October, which really is a terrific month. It seems to get better and better every year, October. (Or maybe it’s just that all the others get worse and worse, and maybe October does, too. But a bit less dramatically so.) A smarter, more contemplative person might note that as we get older we’re more inclined to appreciate stuff like falling leaves, and the slowing of nature’s life cycles. One might make a date to go walk in the woods somewhere, to take full advantage of this fleeting blip of pleasant weather we get before the gloom and bitter cold of too-short winter days afflict us all with seasonal affective disorder. Again. READ MORE

RIGHT? I mean some of us wear glasses at the movies, and wearing glasses on top of glasses is not a cute look. For starters. Also it's hard to turn to your neighbor and roll your eyes in those things. Because also I was thinking: "when they looked at the final script, did they think that those 20 sloggy minutes in the late middle weren't going to be exceedingly sloggy?"

Even though I'm someone whose cultural markers were being formed at pretty much the precise moment when Michael Jackson became the biggest entertainer in the world, I'm mostly unmoved by his passing. I mean, I "get" the outpouring of grief and chatter and the rest of it, but I don't really "get it." Or at least I didn't until I saw this "Achewood" cartoon. It makes a hell of a lot more sense now. At least I'm no longer worried that it's a left-wing conspiracy to overshadow Iran.