Tywin et al.

I'll have to check that out. AN is my favorite war film. It will be interesting to see what they do with the final cut. Hopefully they clean up some of the French detour. That's really the only part of the movie I'm not that fond of.

I still can't get passed the fact that Michael Jackson tried to buy Marvel so that he could cast himself as Spider-Man.

I have no faith in this. Even less than the Destroyer of Moons.

Ah, the big day is arriving. Wheels up tomorrow morning! I'm looking forward to exploring the city and trying not to vomit the first time I go up on the roof. Apparently I get a direct shot of the sun setting on the Upper East Side skyline.

Ah, the feeling of setting a goal with a date and achieving it. The wedding is this Friday, and I'm a pound under my target goal I set in May. Didn't get the ab definition I wanted, probably because I refused to cut out beer, but still it feels good, and where it really shows is in athletics. Been killing it playing tennis this summer (not so much on the links though). Next goal is to have a six pack and to start packing on some bulk by the end of the year. I got a lot leaner in my limbs than I expected (I had a really low cal diet, so it makes sense).

I literally just ate salsa last night with a few beers. I'm an adult! ETA: I do have a nice steal lined up for tonight though.

You may be quite right, but I do think it's smart to view a lot of international affairs through the Trump lens. He's simply too much of a vacuum to ignore.

We'll just do it here. Only change I've made so far is allowing the possibility of going against the spread, and you can actually do both spread and confidence points. Anyways, I renewed the league last night. Invites were sent to all past players, but not new requests. I have to pack tonight and will be on a plane in the morning, so I'll be radio silent here until Monday. Keep PMing me email address though if you're new and want to play. You have up to the start of week two to join, but keep in mind if you miss week one, that's your drop week.

Think bigger. My favorite radio show/podcast pitched the idea of a Friends slasher horror film.

Same, and much like how I rank Tarantino's movies, it changes daily. As to the decline, I look more at season 11 than 9. Seasons 9 and 10 are a step down, but you can't keep matching perfection forever. However, there are still a number of quality episodes, and the down ones weren't that bad, especially by the later seasons' standards. 11 though was a notable drop off. I checked a few different ranking lists, and it was often cited in the high teens to low 20's, with season 12 doing even worse (and not surprisingly 16-30 is like 90% of those seasons). Season 11 is where they got lazy, and while they still produced quality episodes from time to time, that clearly as become the outlier and not the norm. Funnily enough, season 11 is when they predicted that Trump would become president and bankrupt the country. We're about to run a trillion dollar deficit again with a recession looming around the corner. Yay?

But aren't realignments gradual shifts by nature, albeit it with a fixed point political scientists try to agree on? 1968 is often used as the point where the last realignment occurred, but it really started during the passage of the Civil Rights Act. That's a roughly four year period. I don't think it's wrong to say that the Tea Party uprising marked a notable shift in the GOP, and that the election of Trump was the culmination of that shift. Let's face it, the old Republican Party is dead, at least nationally. The party is now the party of Trump, and to me that does seem to meet the requirements of a potential realignment.

We are of like minds my friend. I too was work shopping a title that captured this insane day of headlines. Here's a quick recap: Trump called the Danish PM "nasty." Trump claims to me the messiah (remember when Republicans attacked Obama making up claims that he was a messiah). And the king of Israel Trump Administration removes the time limits on detaining children (yup, the situation at the border is getting worse, not improving). Trump doubles down on his anti-Semitic attacks Trump does want to cut the payroll tax, then he doesn't, then he does, then he doesn't then he wants to cut the capital gains tax which overwhelming go to millionaires. Oh, did you hear, were about to run a trillion dollar deficit next year. MOAR TAX CUTS NEEDED! WE CAN GET TO TWO TRILLION, but only if the Fed, and us Jews, stay loyal. If this all happened during Obama's entire presidency, he'd be impeached. But for Trump, it's just another day at the office.* *couch watching Fox.

A demand for one hundred billion dollars based on a threat to global security. Where have I heard that before?

Season eight is stacked dude. I’m going through the episode list and I’ve found so many classics, including one that’s in the conversation for best episode ever: You Only Move Twice. The Halloween episode is strong, it’s got the Sideshow Bob dam episode, homer turns into a pro boxer episode, the burlesque episode, Lisa babysits Bart, etc. Season eight was still part of the core peak of the show.

I’m going to revise my answer and suggest that Homer at the Bat is the greatest sitcom episode ever, if for no other reason than it got the titular character ‘inducted’ into the baseball Hall of Fame.