Anyone know if anyone makes or distributes it stateside? Wondering how easy it would be to find, just to satisfy nearly two decades of curiousity as to what it's really like.

Try Ziyad Brothers in Cicero, IL, under the heading Sultan Turkish Delight. I can't speak for the rose flavored variety, but the mastic flavor is nice. Essentially like a soft gumdrop with powdered sugar on the outside instead of granulated.

I hesitate to even speculate what "mastic" tastes like. I've had rose-flavored cakes and they're quite nice.

Aplets and cotlets. Little jellyish fruit candy things with nuts, basically.

I hesitate to even speculate what "mastic" tastes like.

The white gumdrops, basically. It has a hint of minty licoriceness, but it's not a strong flavor.

The New Yorker is posting the original short story Brokeback Mountain from their archives.

I just finished Cantet's Time Out, an utterly fascinating character study of a middle-class man who can't admit to his family that he's lost his job. Like the other Cantet movie I've seen, Human Resources, this movie has a fundamentally political message, but the politics are far subsumed into the movie's humanism. Few directors care this much about their characters, even when the characters are being kinda shitty to undeserving people. He reminds me of Renoir in his treatment of his characters, even though Renoir's humanism is deeply tied to the richness and art of his shots, whereas Cantet is working with breathless close-ups and office-drab greys. Highly recommended.

Nutty Alert: Atom Egoyan on Hitchcock

Richard Pryor, RIP.

He will be missed.

Thinking about that Superman trailer again. We have a powerful being who so loves the species that he sends his only son to show them the light. But the meat of the story takes place after said son has left and returned.

What up with that?

A world without Richard Pryor. That's a less good world.