...but why must she confirm my opinion at ever turn? This icy, self-deluded horsey girl should keep her retrousse nose out of the business of self-help and stick to her macro biotic diets, fashionably named babies, and schlocky films. She's like a caricature in a Woody Allen or Coen brothers film - and she's got no idea at all how she comes off. She's Ultra Wasp!

@Barry Nitko

Agreed. Folks, please keep spoilers out of your comments. Especially blatantly untrue spoilers.

It is an exaggeration - more of an out and out falsehood - to say that Eric "gets the girl". I'm not going to clarify any further, but I will say that the books leave things fairly up in the air in this regard, and Bill is by no means out of the picture. I realize that this may be viewed as further spoilage, but at least its vague enough that it can keep you guessing. Plus, Ball has taken great liberties with the plotting of the books (which are sort of vanilla porn with a skimpy story line around the numerous sex scenes).

This guy has been drinking hard for 18 years. In the last 85 days he has attended 131 meetings. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time for, oh, say, child care. Dishes. Cooking. Bill-paying. Being the adult.

Wanna place bets on how much time he's put into managing the day to day of that marriage? Seems to me that wifey deserves a girls night out. She deserves it for sticking with him through 18 years of hard drinking. She deserves it for getting through 3 months of doing everything while he focusses on his recover.

He's an alcoholic. It's an illness. But it doesn't mean that she has to become a martyr to it. She is not an alcoholic. Just because he's in recovery does not let him off the hook for the basics, like child care. Like laundry. Like giving a damn what's going on in his wife's life. Kudos to the sponsor and kudos to Cary for empathizing with the wife.

I'm not sure why, but somewhere along the way many people seem to have lost the distinction between jealousy and envy. I've read several different takes on the difference between the two, but I've always thought of jealousy as relating to the fear of losing the affection/favours of another, whereas envy has to do with coveting the things/accolades of others. Does anyone know the exact difference?

Yes, Reckoning is R.E.M.s best album (It is so dreary, so rainy, so depressing, then the get-out-of-dodge tiny crumb of hope that is Don't Go Back to Rockville). I listened to it endlessly when I was 17 and living in a too-small, grey rainy Canadian town. However, you must be out of your mind to just write off Life's Rich Pageant, Fables of the Reconstruction, Document.

Begin the Begin! Fall on Me! Swan Swan H! Welcome to the Occupation! The One I Love! O.k. enough with the exclamation marks, but please tell me you do not have that revolting hipster habit of writing off a band that you previously devoured simply because they gain popularity. When hipsters do this I always suspect that they like exclusivity more than music.

And I thank goodness everytime I look on Salon and see an article by Laura Miller. Please, whoever is making these decisions: Laura, editors, saints who watch over rapacious readers...please give us more book articles (preferably by Laura Miller).

Just dance. Gunna be okay.

Da-doo-doo-doo

Just dance. Spin that record babe.

Da-doo-doo-doo

Just dance. Gunna be okay.

Duh-duh-duh-duh

Dance. Dance. Dance. Ju-just dance.

Love me some Gaga on the dance floor, but she's basically taken an old concept (sexy lady - and freak-ay too!) and done, well, precisely nothing with it. I'm sure that there is subversive music/artists out there, but they're not topping the pop charts.

Sure some homeless people have found themselves without a home because of financial hardship and or systemic poverty. But many, many homeless people face mental illnesses that make it near impossible for them to assimilate in a group-living situation. And lets face it, not many of us get to live alone in this day and age. A person with paranoid schizophrenia, serious substance abuse problems, or just plain anti-social behaviour disorders of an kind, is a problem in the current system. They can't or won't last in a group home situation because they cannot compromise to the extent necessary. They can't share a home with other people because their behaviour is too disruptive. They can't earn enough to live on their own because the same things that prevent them from being able to live with others raise barriers to employment.

In Canada we made a half-baked decision to close psych wards and psychiatric hospitals accross the country back in the eighties. Suddenly there they were, on the streets, lying in bus shelters and on sidewalks, pushing shopping carts, and yelling at the demons inside their heads. My only point is that, even if we supplied houses for all of these people, many of them wouldn't make it a month, because they require so much more than housing. They require mental health and substance abuse treatment in an institutional or clinical setting.

For pure artistry, Miller's Crossing is the Coen's Chef D'Oeuvre. Aesthetically, poeticall, scriptwise, it is nonpareil.

As a kid and young teen I really liked Ladyhawke, Labyrinth, Popeye (most underrated Altman film ever!), Harry and the Henderson, The Watcher in the Woods (scariest film starring Haley Mills ever!), Legend, Willow...

We've had several high-profile honour killings in British Columbia over the last 15 years and the murderers and their victims have all been Sikh. In any case, my impression is that these killings are grounded in the highly patriarchical nature of the culture, the quasi-chatel status of wives and daughters, and the abusive relationships that already existed in the families (a universal phenomenon).