Linda Holmes

There's a very funny comment attached to yesterday's post about London, in which someone points out that apparently, some media outlet or other "did a minute and a half on the vacuuming of Westminster Abbey." To all who lament this particular kind of fixation on finding an angle — ANY angle — on which to hang a story, I say: I am with you.

Greetings! Cheerio! Tally-ho! Other annoying tourist-y sayings that will get me punched!

I have arrived in London, where I will be until Saturday, checking out the town and the whoop-dee-doo surrounding the Royal Wedding on Friday. (In case you haven't heard, Prince William is getting married. Probably you've heard.)

So far, I have to concur with those who have noted that London is not, in fact, in any particularly giant tizzy, as of 48 hours before the big event.

This Sunday on Weekend Edition, Liane Hansen talks to Dan Barry, author of the new book Bottom Of The 33rd: Hope, Redemption And Baseball's Longest Game. The book is all about a minor-league game that took place — or, rather, began — on April 18, 1981. It was suspended after 32 innings, tied at 2-2, at four in the morning on April 19, Easter Sunday. It resumed two months later, when the Pawtucket Red Sox finally beat the Rochester Red Wings 3-2 in the bottom of the 33rd inning.

This week's episode kicks off with a discussion of my upcoming trip to London and offers an opportunity for me to get a lot of advice from the panel about what to do while I'm there. It also offers Stephen an opportunity to mercilessly make fun of my tendency to get lost, but THAT'S FINE.

Warning: We're talking about the current happenings on The Office, including last night's episode, so please feel free to skip this entry if you are still holding out and haven't been keeping up.

The Office is clearly having a lot of trouble saying goodbye to its good-hearted nightmare of a boss, Michael Scott, and to Steve Carell, who plays him.

The occasional Monkey See I Will If You Will Book Club has reconvened to read Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Dream Country. This week, we read "Calliope," the first of the four stories in the book.

Our main discussion will take place in the comments to this post, but I decided to start by exchanging a few thoughts with our comics blogger, Glen Weldon, who is massively more experienced in this medium than I am. Head to the comments to share your thoughts about "Calliope."

To: Glen

From: Linda

The vast majority of the world's books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It's just numbers.

Consider books alone. Let's say you read two a week, and sometimes you take on a long one that takes you a whole week. That's quite a brisk pace for the average person. That lets you finish, let's say, 100 books a year. If we assume you start now, and you're 15, and you are willing to continue at this pace until you're 80. That's 6500 hundred books, which really sounds like a lot.

Imagine you are a vegan magazine. Specifically, you are VegNews, and you need some photos to run with, for instance, your story about 99 Things You Must Do, a story you're calling a "vegan bucket list." One of the things on the list is to eat a vegan sundae. Great, right? So you need a picture of a vegan sundae. Who doesn't love a picture of ice cream?

Neda Ulaby reports on Wednesday's Morning Edition that there's a surprising channel where you can see Latino, Asian, or African-American people, as well as gays and lesbians, in significantly larger numbers than in much of the rest of broadcast and cable television.

The promotions for the new season of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which returns to ABC tonight for a second season, set up a central conflict of one man against the system. Celebrity chef and healthy-food activist Oliver, it is suggested, wants to come in and work with the Los Angeles Unified School District, as he worked with a much smaller district in West Virginia in his first season, to improve the freshness and nutrition of its school lunches. But the district has balked and won't let him in.

There's a big public library literally across the street from my bank and the supermarket where I most frequently pick up stuff like milk and paper towels. Across the street. As in: first I buy Diet Coke, then I dodge one SUV careening around the corner, and I'm there.

And yet, until this weekend, I'd never been in it and I had no library card.

I know.

This week, we took a hint from one of our Facebook fans and talked about what "comfort food" we turn to when we get into a cultural rut and want to reawaken our love of the things we love, as it were. We took this topic in a number of directions, from pterodactyls to girls' bikes to the things Trey thinks might be the comfort food of the future.

It's an inalienable right of childhood to appreciate a little formulaic entertainment without fun-killing adults telling you how formulaic it is. But it's an inalienable right of parenthood to minimize your consumption of material that's utterly boring if you aren't 8 years old. That makes some movies difficult to condemn, but also difficult to recommend.

The press release that arrived today touting the re-edited, PG-13 version of The King's Speech opening April 1 claims, "Oscar's Best Picture Is Now The Best Family Film Of 2011."

It takes nothing away from Elizabeth Taylor's considerable talents — which won her two Best Actress Oscars — to acknowledge that no one has ever so thoroughly and comprehensively embodied American celebrity.