My favourite film, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, will be screened again at The Cleveland Cinematheque on 17 and 19 February. Also on their January/February schedule: The Magnificent Ambersons on 24 January.

Ah, the kind of winter weather Northeast Ohio is famous for: bitterly cold winds, inches of snow piling and drifting… a day for staying inside with a warm drink.

A Gibson SG guitar used by both John and George, but subsequently given by George to Pete Ham, has sold at auction for £294,000.

During her first Christmas here, my wife simply could not believe that American television sleeps through Christmas. She was brought up with special Christmas specials, first-run episodes of existing series created specifically for broadcast during the Christmas holiday and premium films. The concept is so alien here that The Office—The Christmas Specials had to be retitled The Office Special for US release even though the plot centers around the Wernham Hogg Christmas party.

Some US cable networks are a little better, although they tend to repeat themselves (every Rankin-Bass Christmas special save Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer airs continuously on ABC Family, and there is Turner’s annual 24-hour marathon showings of A Christmas Story), but it’s at once too much and too little. It depresses that so far as US network television and its local affiliates are concerned, Christmas ends on the morning of the 25th, back to business the following day.

Paul Metcalfe will be born on this date in 2036 in Winchester, England.