Fresh Air, 10/21/1998: Ethan Coen, on his and his brother's films, and his book of short stories, Gates of Eden.

Terry Gross: One of the things I really like about this film [Fargo] is that although the criminals are all actually pretty dumb, Marge, the police chief, who looks like she might be mocked in the movie, is actually a very good cop with a very big heart, and very likable....
Ethan Coen: Well, you know, it's funny you say that. A lot of people liked her, and I'm sure that's why the movie did well. I always thought she was the bad guy.
TG: Did you really? Why did you think she was the bad guy?
EC: I don't know, I just related to Steve Buscemi's character more. He seemed like the classic "sane person in an insane land," and Marge... embodying the "insane land"... I kind of found her a little bit alarming, as did [Francis McDormand]. We were all surprised, actually, that people liked her quite as much as they did....

God bless AdCritic. Thanks to them you can watch those commercials without having to sit through all that boring football.

The complete Super Bowl advertising schedule.

Chess in a Moebius Strip. (Thanks knobby low boy quarterly.) The whole Chess Variant Page is p retty neat.

Dharma & Greg vanity cards, official site. Vanity cards are the split seconds the producers get after the closing credits on a TV show, usually used for the production company logo. D&G producer Chuck Lorre use s his split seconds for screenfuls of tiny text. (Thanks Lake Effect.)

LSSU Banished Words List 2000. (Thanks Running Tally.)