“Mom! Let's park in the Alligator parking lot!” Yes, we said that. 

• Natalie Portman has been tapped to play U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a biopic about her fight for equal rights. SCOTUS rules 6-3 that it's excellent casting (Scalia, Thomas, Alito dissenting).
• Via Jim Walsh, all the Minnesota bands who played on David Letterman. It's memory-lane time, kids. 
• Via Adam Wahlberg, Norm Macdonald's very funny and super heart-felt last appearance on Letterman. 
• Fom Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post: Why Bill Simmons > ESPN.
• Jeff Wells talks up the new documentary, “Hitchcock/Truffaut”: “To me Hitchcock/Truffaut seems good and wise enough to seduce the novice as well as the sophisticated cineaste. It's a fully absorbing, excellent education. As you might expect, it made me want to read the book all over again.” I'm there.
• Great Guardian interview with Chris Rock, whose thoughts are always more interesting than his movies. Yes, including “Top Five,” Ben.
• Bryan Harper had a crazy 3-2-1 week: 3 homers one game, followed by 2 the next, followed by 1. And that last one was a walk-off. 
• It was Paul McCartney's idea with the Beatles back in the '60s but Jimmy Fallon makes it happen with U2: they busk in a NYC subway. 
• This is fun: a video look at one of my favorite bookstores in Seattle: Cinema Books run by Stephanie Ogle. 
• Jeff Wells on why the French title for Michael Mann's 1981 movie “The Thief” is better than “The Thief.”
• Pres. Obama mentions a common FOX News theme (the poor are moochers and leechers; they are poor because they lack character) and FOX News goes “Who, us?” Actually, worse: They go on the attack. Because there's no defense on (or for) FOX News.
• The Guardian is doing a history of cities in 50 buildings. For the Twin Cities, it's Southdale shopping mall, the world's first indoor shopping mall, which we went to all the time when I was a kid. (We even tended to park in the Alligator parking lot, per the picture.) For Seattle? The first Starbucks. I'm 2 for 2.
• Via my sister: Seyward Darby has been anxious for loved ones since losing her boyfriend at the age of 20; then she was on Amtrak 188.