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Created by Bart King

Suitable for 15 years or older. Films in this category can be about anything, say "fuck" a lot, probably get to see all sorts of guns and shooting, but no open heart surgery with a knife. Most "R" rated films in America fit into this category.

Examples: Alien, The Sixth Sense

Simpson, 25, the magazine's July cover girl, also reveals her smooching style. "I love to kiss with my eyes open," she says, "because I can take in the entire situation and know if I'm enjoying it or not."

Um. I'm not even sure what to say about that. Sounds like she's the one who needs an imagination . . .

People.com

Good stuff from Neil Gaiman:

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place. I love the work of many creators who self-avowedly believe or believed things that I consider to be 'fairly wretched', not to mention wrong-headed, lunatic, irresponsible or simply wrong. Worse yet: there are artists, actors, songwriters, authors, whose work I love, like or admire and who, biographers or historians tell us, actually did things that were utterly reprehensible. And worse even than that, there are all those things by Anonymous, who could have been or thought or done, well, anything, and we'll never know...

Ezra Pound was a fascist, an antisemite on a level that makes the Aryan Nation seem wishy washy, a traitor (or at best, a collaborator), and I'm very glad I got to read his poetry, and appreciate it and learn from it. I could list dozens more without breaking a sweat. Most, probably all, human beings get to do awful things and believe things that other human beings think they should be burned for believing, and they get to do and believe wonderful things too, and artists, writers, musicians, creators, actors, are nothing if not human beings.

The art isn't the artist, the poem isn't the poet; trust the tale, not the teller.

That's how I've always felt -- I never felt that I needed to applaud an actor's personal life, for instance, in order to enjoy watching them onscreen, or that it was necessary to admire a writer for the things they do (or don't do) apart from writing in order to enjoy their books.

It's one of the reasons I don't watch talk shows. I'm often disappointed to find that a favorite actor doesn't express him or herself well when speaking words that weren't written for them . . . I've always been able to suspend disbelief when I'm watching a movie--I never wonder how the special effects are done, for instance, I tend to believe it all. And also, I like to be able to believe that the actors are actually the persons that they're portraying, not acting at all. So why would I care about the personal life of the person playing a part?

It's a bit different, I think, with songwriters or poets, because they tend to be writing about themselves, for the most part; they're not (in general) "playing a part." So I can understand (to a point) being interested in their personal lives. And writers, maybe. But actors? Who cares?

Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman's Journal: in the wee small hours of the morning

Nice article in Time about the decline of the family dinner, and why it's so important.

Yet for all that, there is something about a shared meal—not some holiday blowout, not once in a while but regularly, reliably—that anchors a family even on nights when the food is fast and the talk cheap and everyone has someplace else they'd rather be. And on those evenings when the mood is right and the family lingers, caught up in an idea or an argument explored in a shared safe place where no one is stupid or shy or ashamed, you get a glimpse of the power of this habit and why social scientists say such communion acts as a kind of vaccine, protecting kids from all manner of harm.

We seldom eat dinner together at the table -- when we eat together, it's mostly in front of the television -- but most weeknights, I come home to a meal that Bob has cooked for me, and I sit at the table and eat, and he sits in the room with me and we talk about our days before he goes upstairs to his office/television/computer, and I log on, or sit down to read.

It's become something that I definitely look forward to, probably the best part of my day.