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There’s no doubting it, folks: Captains are cool. Captain is probably the coolest rank, right ahead of General. Lieutenants are OK, and Commanders are fine. Colonels seem to be mostly desk-jockeys and out of touch; Privates and Corporals are just getting started, while Admirals mostly seem to wistfully recall the days when they were Captains. Yup, Captain is where it’s at, folks. At least, in the world of fiction, Captain is where it’s at. So here is a tribute to fictional Captains of all sorts: ten Captains from fiction that I like a lot. But first, a couple of specialDown the rabbit hole….

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The best part of my job, as a Maintenance Man, is the collection of tools I get to use on a daily basis. I love tools. Tools rock. I now get the same rush from heading into Home Depot or Lowe’s that I once got from walking in Toys-r-Us. It’s the same rush that I get from going into Borders or Barnes&Noble! Tools rock. Since I do general maintenance work at The Store, I have to have a fairly wide variety of tools at my disposal. People who work in specific trades will find themselves using some tools and almostDown the rabbit hole….

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Some time ago a reader asked me to recommend a list of filmscores that represent a good place to start with exploring the wonderful world of film music. I’ve been kicking that request around for a long time, and I’m finally going to attempt an answer. The problem is that film music is a very large field, despite that it looks, at the outset, to be fairly small. But consider: films have been around for around a century, and films have had music pretty much the entire time. The world of film music runs the gamut from composers who knewDown the rabbit hole….

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I remember when Pulp Fiction came out. I was watching Siskel and Ebert one night, and one of the movies they reviewed was this drama set in and around the LA underworld, and they gushed over its quirky twists of story and its crackling dialog. Even though at first glance the movie didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would interest me, the one scene they showed really caught my attention: Sam Jackson, holding a gun to Tim Roth’s face, and shouting at his girlfriend offscreen: “We’re gonna be like three Fonzies here. And what’s Fonzie like? Come on,Down the rabbit hole….

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Every genre’s got ’em: works that are familiar to just about everybody who knows anything about that genre. These are the “Warhorses”. A list of warhorses doesn’t necessarily comprise a list of the very greatest works, but a list of works that a person with an average level of familiarity with the genre will have heard at least once. Science fiction’s warhorses might include 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Neuromancer. A classic rock radio station’s warhorses will include “Stairway to Heaven”, “Hotel California”, and the like. Warhorse pieces, though, can lead to a bitDown the rabbit hole….

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The Top Ten Episodes of Magnum PI This post is suggested by a recent post by Jason, wherein he reports that in the inevitable movie version of this old teevee show from the 1980s (because if it was on teevee in the 1980s, it’ll be on a movie screen soon enough, so bring on that Riptide movie! And Simon and Simon!), the role of Thomas Sullivan Magnum will be played by Matthew McConnaughey. Personally, I don’t have much of a problem with McConnaughey as an actor, but he’s got his own thing going on, and I don’t see him recreatingDown the rabbit hole….

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I think I’ll start doing random “Top Ten” lists of favorite things of mine, on whatever odd topics I can think of. (And feel free to suggest more topics, folks!) Those crazy kids at Tosy and Cosh have been doing this for a while, and as always, there’s no idea I’m not too crass to steal outright. So here we go with my first random “Top Ten” list: my favorite supporting characters from Seinfeld. (For the purposes of this post, I will define “supporting characters” as none of the four leads, no one who appeared in only one episode priorDown the rabbit hole….