Much Less Much More

lifeaquatic:

growltiger:

Hi internet friends. Informal question for you: if you watched Snick, what was your favorite era of Snick? And would you watch Snick if the same Snick you once loved magically returned to saturday nights? JUST WONDERING SERIOUSLY DON’T READ ANYTHING INTO THIS BEYOND THE FACT THAT I AM ASKING YOU FOR YOUR INSIGHT. (i am too old to have the right insight).

1992-1994:

• 8PM Clarissa Explains It All
• 8:30PM Roundhouse
• 9PM The Ren & Stimpy Show
• 9:30PM Are You Afraid of the Dark?

1993 to mid-Summer 1994:

• 8PM Clarissa Explains It All
• 8:30PM The Adventures of Pete & Pete
• 9PM The Ren & Stimpy Show
• 9:30PM Are You Afraid of the Dark?
• 10PM Roundhouse

Can they please just put season 3 of Pete and Pete on DVD already? 

barthel:

I read all of these Moby Illustrated Classics as a kid. I’m pretty sure we got them from Kay Bee Toys in the mall (slogan: ”The Toy Store in the Mall”) or at least that’s what I remember the price sticker on the cover saying. They were abridged versions of classic novels, keeping the plot but losing the language. People think they’re a bad idea but I dunno. When I was six I don’t think I had much patience for Victorian sentence structure and vocabulary, but they did a good job (I think, who knows) capturing the characters and themes, and those are pretty important, too. I read them over and over again: Tale of Two Cities, Robinson Crusoe, Ben-Hur, The Man in the Iron Mask. But I realize in searching for images that I don’t remember the interiors. I remember the exteriors, the books themselves, as objects. They’re little bricks of things, 4” by 5”, and though they’re reductions of the originals, they weren’t flimsy, like some broad, floppy square of a children’s book. They were solid, substantial, thick with text (albeit large-print text). They were more condensations than reductions, taking classics and making them smaller without reducing their heft. Thick and sturdy, the language may have been simpler, but they still felt important.

Are these the same as these? When I was in fifth grade, my school had this program called Accelerate Reader. You would read a book from this giant list, and then take a test on the computer about it. Based on the “difficulty” of the book, you’d get a certain amount of points, which every month could be redeemed for prizes (t-shirts, frisbees, stuff like that.) I read the Great Illustrated Classics version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, because that book was worth like, 50 points, and proceeded to get something like 18 out of 20 questions wrong. But still, from that point onward, I was familiar with the plot of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was more than most fifth graders could say.

erikonymous:

nickminichino:

latticeofcoincidence:

crisscrosscutout:

amazonpoodle:

lavishness:

johnflynn:

I like the adventure.

RECALCULATING.

#zara is this true?

Yes.

SHOUTOUT TO MY FABULOUS HOMETOWN AND OUR OLD PROVERB ‘YOU CAN’T GET THEYAH FROM HEEYAH.’

Pretty much the same thing that can be said about Boston can be said about New Orleans.

With New Orleans that’s just because of the crescent created by the river, though, isn’t it? (Not to mention being bounded by the lake to the north.) It’s pretty well gridded in a fan once you know that. (ETA: Arguably it’s well-gridded because it’s bounded.)

With Boston I always got a sense that the “problem” wasn’t merely due to the limitations of geography and of established roads but additionally because there was never a grid plan put into place. (That’s just a hunch, though: I don’t know the specifics of zoning and legislature history so I invite anyone who knows better to tell me how and why I’m wrong.)

(Also New York > Manhattan)

Uh, yeah, New Orleans was built on a grid, beginning with its first settlements in the French Quarter around, oh, 1718. The rest of the city followed suit. The grid just kinda fans out to accommodate the bend of the river. I always found it really easy to get around New Orleans.

And don’t forget that two of Boston’s neighborhoods where grids do exist—the Back Bay and the South End—were deliberately designed so that their grids didn’t line up, in order to separate the South End riff raff from the posh residents of the tonier Back Bay.