John Waters seems, now, to have a grand old time being John Waters.

Anyone who’s watched Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver surely remembers, or has remained haunted by, many images from the film, most of which — if not all— began as humble pencil drawings.

Living and filmgoing here in Los Angeles, I seize every opportunity to watch Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen’s extensive and entertaining documentary on the uses and abuses of the city throughout cinema history.

Much of what we once used the telephone for, we now use the internet for. Conversely, some tasks to which the internet now seems perfectly suited were once performed, imperfectly, through the phone. Take the case of hearing poetry read aloud.

Street artists: you either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Or, to put it less bluntly, you either find ‘em innovative public iconographers or find ‘em puerile public nuisances.

You probably know Mikhail Bulgakov through one of two works: Heart of a Dog, his short novel about the forced transformation of a dog into a human being (comparisons to the grand Soviet project have, indeed, been suggested), or The Master and Margarita, his longer, later novel about a visit paid to Soviet Russia by the devil himself.

Put yourself in the mind of an artistic young woman who goes to see Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when it first opens in 1937. Captivated by the film’s groundbreaking cel-based cinematic animation, understanding that it represents the future of the art form, you feel you should pursue a career with a studio yourself.

Celebrities tire of giving interviews. I’ve learned this by spending most of my career conducting interviews myself, and thus desperately trying to master asking the questions that wake up a weary interviewee, getting them engaged enough to cast aside the boilerplate and speak like a conversing human being.

David Lynch meditates, and he meditates hard.

“The Mad Men collection at Banana Republic is okay,” joked a comedy-writer friend of mine, “but the Breaking Bad collection at TJ Maxx is to die for.