"I fell upon this documentary and it is an absolute gem. What makes it so is the five people’s homes that we are invited into. Their homes are — of course — insane, but it’s their happiness and comfort with them that is really the thrill. Again, it’s funny and tender and the filmmakers don’t try to try to be shady with their subjects at all. They just let them speak and their enthusiasm and joy floods over us."

"I think this is a work of genius. It manages to be utterly hilarious, completely tender and touching, and biting and satirical at the same time. It actually taught me a lot about America. As I saw it shortly after I moved here, I realized that if these type of situations and characters were being parodied then they must actually exist. When the DVD came out, I bought it and I’m still reeling from the number “This Bulging River”. I think the only people I’ve ever geeked out about in an embarrassing way are the people responsible for this film."

"""Among all of Orwell’s great unflinching reportage, this book stands out as a personal odyssey and first-person witness to history. He went to Spain in 1936, during the civil war there, to help fight Fascism. He joined a leftist militia and found himself targeted not only by Franco’s forces but by Stalinists intent on crushing anyone not toeing the Moscow line. Orwell’s descriptions of wartime Barcelona and impoverished rural Spain, his clear-eyed analysis of the shifting factions in the war, are triumphs of tender, hard-headed participant-observation. He was wounded at the front, shot through the throat by a sniper. His peerless moral grasp of the dangers of totalitarianism began in Spain."