I'm meeting Aurelia for Thai! Dude, I'm being all social this week. It's crazy.

Oh and I wondered why the daughter wasn't married already -- wasn't there something on 60 minutes or something similar about Travellors and their child-bride/arranged child-marriages? Or am I confusing them with another cultural group?

Oh, and how much did I love that his youngest son

YES!

sumi, as far as your first question I get the feeling that the old guy wasn't really comfortable with his son taking over. Also, I get the idea that Wayne is a relative outsider and though uncle Earl couldn't put him in charge, he liked the way Wayne handled his family and his and Dahlia's love. So yeah, I think it was pretty much, "Take it and get the fuck away before that craxy ass does something really dumb."

the second part Again, I get the idea that Wayne doesn't do things that way.

I wasn't sure if the patriarch let Wayne go, or if he just sleeps with his eyes open, a la Gandalf.

I'm gonna say he let him go based on his son being a shit with the "Enough with the bell daddy!" and just general assishness.

ETA: Also Earl didn't trust his son enough to give him the combo to the safe.

Also, what DJ said about it.

I definitely got the impression that Wayne was a semi-outsider to the culture or something, and just joined in gleefully because he loved Dahlia, but that the patriarch would rather Wayne get all the cash, instead of his butthead son.

I felt like that was the point of Wayne chellenging the son as to what the combination of the safe was, because Wayne clearly already knew, probably when the patriarch told him drunkenly late one night. I'm betting hearing the combination shocked the shit out of Wayne.

I saw and loved the Riches too. The accents bugged but not as much as I thought they would from the review in the local paper (which also loved the show). I wonder if Di Di not already being married has something to do with how long her mom was in jail? Like she would have been married off if her mother was around but they waited because she wasn't. Or, more likely, it's just plot contrivance. How old is she supposed to be anyway? 15?

[link]

A children’s book that included the word “scrotum” was recently the subject of great controversy in school libraries nationwide. A Google search has discovered several more questionable titles and excerpts from other works intended for readers twelve and under.

Tom, I read this in the print copy and I was laughing out loud. mr. flea couldn't make it past the first one...

I love retro-futurist stuff.

This is a rare glimpse of how Moscow might have evolved, if communists had not come to power in 1917...

These amazing visions appeared in Russia at the turn of the century, in 1900 - probably one of the very first truly "Futuristic / Urban" series of images ever published (issued by the Joint Stock Publishing Company "Einem")

[link]

Of course, I disagree that all this stuff would have come about if there was no revolution....