LAZYHEAD AND SLEEPYBONES ALWAYS DISAGREE: Hey, Phillies fans, did you ever get too drunk in the stadium ("Gillick is killing me!") and pass out in your car with the transmission in neutral, the throttle all the way open, and the tachometer right at the red side of six-o-clock? This guy did.

ARRIVEDERCI, ROME: TWoP's recap of "De Patre Vostro (About Your Father)" is now up, and with that, HBO's magnificent twenty-two episode arc from the end of the Gallic Wars through Actium and its aftermath.

For those who were fans of the time when men were men, women were frequently naked and numbers were letters, let us reminisce in the comments. (The rest of you probably worship dogs and reptiles, blacken your eyes with soot like a prostitute, and dances and play the cymbals in vile Nilotic rites.) XIIIth!

NOT ONLY A LITERAL SIGN OF THE COLLAPSE OF HUMANITY, BUT AN ASSAULT: We haven't been following the fight between After Dark Films and the MPAA over advertising for their "Elisha Cuthbert gets captured and tortured" flick Captivity, because, honestly, it's not that interesting and the movie looks horrid. But now that Joss Whedon has weighed on strongly (and somewhat surprisingly) on the side of the MPAA, that's well worth discussing, and, generally, I couldn't agree with him more--as someone who's seen more than a few horror flicks, the current "torture porn" subgenre utterly repulses me.

IS THIS THE TRAIN TO DESERT MOON? Very low-grade brush with fame on the BART train home from San Francisco this afternoon. Across from me are two guys, taking the train in from SFO, one of them packing a guitar case, the other looking very very familiar. After a while, its clear that he's talking to this nice couple about the pros and cons of being a rock star:"Do I deserve this fortune? I used to wonder about that, but then I realized "deserve" has nothing to do with it. But it's what I have, so I try to do something good with it." That's nice and all -- and sincere -- but it took me 35 minutes to place the guy: light-to-medium rock; late 70s/early 80s: REO Speedwagon? Air Supply? And as he's getting off the train in Walnut Creek, of all places, it hits me that it's Dennis DeYoung of Styx. Now, damnit, I've got ten good Styx references off the top of my head, only three of them about Mr. Roboto. Cornerstone was the third album I ever owned and I missed my chance.

SURPRISINGLY LITTLE TOOTIE WAS EXPOSED: It's rare that a film combines as many of this blog's fixations as does Blades of Glory--among those featured are Will Ferrell, Jenna Fischer, GOB Bluth, Amy Poehler, figure skating, and random celebrity cameos (from both the worlds of acting and figure skating). It's not perfect--the romantic subplot feels tacked on, the figure skating is completely inaccurate, and the relationship between our two leads is woefully underdeveloped, but it's probably the funniest thing since Borat, and lord knows, we could use some good laughs. Worth your time if you are a fan of any or all of the above.

RATED 'L' FOR LUPUS: Two reasons to pick up this week's Entertainment Weekly -- a cover story on the upcoming film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and accompanying fifty-question Potter quiz ("24. How do you repel a boggart?"), and a nice A to Z glossary of all things House, M.D., where 'E', of course, stands for 'Everybody Lies'. There's also a Paul Verhoeven retrospective, but I like mine better.

One disappointing note about the Potter film, though: they've apparently axed the scene involving Neville's parents, which is one of my favorites in the whole series, which also doesn't bode well for one of my theories as to how Deathly Hallows plays out.

Saving Starbucks' Soul

COME TO THINK OF IT, THIS MAY NOT LAST TERRIBLY LONG EITHER: Coming soon to a Starbucks near you: dulce de leche-flavored lattes and frappuccinos.