THE FUTURE ONLY BELONGS TO THE FUTURE ITSELF:  Yes, tomorrow night's new SyFy film features Debbie Gibson v. Tiffany (c'mon: Gibson way more talented), but more importantly it's Mega Python v. Gatoroid -- yes, the alligators are on steroids. Also featuring Mickey Dolenz as himself, and Mrs. Landingham as the park ranger.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE LOVELY BOYLAN SISTERS? On October 3, 2004, the pilot episode of Boston Legal explored whether there should be a black Annie, with the help of a Very Special Guest. (HT: Vulture.)

EXCUSE ME, MR. PRESIDENT, SIR, IT'S YOUR 11:30 PHOTO OPPORTUNITY - THE LITTLE GIRL WHO SOLD THE MOST GIRL SCOUT COOKIES: The Girl Scouts are experimenting with discontinuing sales of cookies beyond the "core six" varieties -- Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos, Trefoils, Samoas (Caramel deLites), Lemon Chalet Cremes and Tagalongs (Peanut Butter Patties) -- the top five of which account for 77% of all their cookie sales.

ALOTT5MA FRIDAY GRAMMAR RODEO: Over the transom from Watts:

Ran across this at work tonight: "an historical encyclopedia"
"An historical" or "a historical"? To n or not to n?

I assumed this was easy: it's "an historic," isn't it? But then I start looking at other sources, and it turns out I've been making a historic error.  Merriam-Webster recommends:

The court made a historic decision last week.

 But why?  Oxford Dictionaries:

An is the form of the indefinite article that is used before a spoken vowel sound: it doesn’t matter how the written word in question is actually spelled. So, we say ‘an honour’, ‘an hour’, or ‘an heir’, for example, because the initial letter ‘h’ in all three words is not actually pronounced. By contrast we say ‘a hair’ or ‘a horse’ because, in these cases, the ‘h’ is pronounced.

Let’s go back to those three words that tend to cause problems: historic, horrific, and hotel. If hotel was pronounced without its initial letter ‘h’ (i.e. as if it were spelled ‘otel’), then it would be correct to use an in front of it. The same is true of historic and horrific. If horrific was pronounced ‘orrific’ and historic was pronounced ‘istoric’ then it would be appropriate to refer to ‘an istoric occasion’ or ‘an orrific accident’. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people often did pronounce these words in this way.

Today, though, these three words are generally pronounced with a spoken ‘h’ at the beginning and so it’s now more logical to refer to ‘a hotel’, ‘a historic event’, or ‘a horrific accident’.

WHAT'S WITH ALL THESE AWARDS? THEY'RE ALWAYS GIVING OUT AWARDS. BEST FASCIST DICTATOR -- ADOLF HITLER: Splitsider's Josh Kurp ranks the ten funniest films ever nominated for Best Picture.

It's not that great a list, because here's what's missing: The Graduate, Tootsie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Broadcast News, Working Girl ("$6000? It's not even leather!"), The Great Dictator and especially M*A*S*H.

KEEP THE CHANGE, YA FILTHY ANIMAL: New York law has two big restrictions on what landlords can do with security deposits. First, they have to put the money in an interest-bearing account and the interest must be paid to the tenant. Second, to cover the expense of opening, maintaining, and dealing with the account, they can keep up to the first 1% of interest. Interest rates being what they are, this means I received my annual interest check from Bank of America on my security deposit this week, which I believe amounted to interest of .1% on my security deposit. Even at the ridiculous rental rates in Manhattan, that amounts to a check that's less than the cost of a first class stamp (and may even be a check that's for less than it cost BOA to mail it in bulk mail). Any suggestions for what the appropriate thing to do with such a check is? Is it even really worth depositing? Do I walk to my friendly neighborhood bank branch and ask for cash--in pennies?

CARL MONDAY-ISM IN OUR TIME:  Oh, yeah: this was amusing as hell on last night's local news -- your mailman may be drinking on the job!  Yes, it has hidden cameras.  Yes, it has the post-tavern confrontation with the reporter saying "Please don't drive!"  Oh, so good.  (HT to Dan Suitor on the title.)