A while back, someone (or actually a lot of someones, independently of one another) discovered that “Garfield” — the lame, unfunny comic strip by Jim Davis — is actually much better if you remove all of Garfield’s thought balloons. It becomes surreal, sublime, sometimes odd like a Fellini film.

This thread at the Truth and Beauty Bombs message board has quite a few examples that various people have compiled, with Garfield’s thoughts Photoshopped out. There are some classics there.

On my own, I discovered these two strips and immediately recognized they’d be better if I got rid of Garfield’s contributions.

Original version: Garfield says, “Yeah … They’re your shirt, dummy.” I don’t even know what that means.

Original version: In the third panel, Garfield says, “Whoa! That loosened up some hair!” I like my version better, where he’s shedding intentionally and gleefully in response to Jon asking him to stop.

[In lieu of the weekly "Snide Remarks" Classic, today we bring you a special anniversary feature. There will be more special features in the weeks to come, leading up to the official "Snide Remarks" 10th anniversary on Sept. 29, which is recognized by most major religions as a high holy day.]

Almost since the beginning, one of the most entertaining parts of “Snide Remarks” has been the angry letters that people sometimes write in response to it.

The perception is that I get these letters frequently. In truth it’s been ages since I got one. Ever since the column became online-only, where it could not assault unsuspecting readers from their morning newspapers, it’s been read pretty much only by people who like it, or who at least know what they’re in for.

But back in the old days, when it was in The Daily Universe, the student paper at BYU, angry letters were commonplace. In fact, of the 64 columns I wrote for the Universe (1997-1999), 22 of them got angry letters. That’s 34 percent! BYU is a hotbed of righteous indignation, and probably always has been.

I wrote 305 columns for the Daily Herald (1999-2003), of which 57 inspired angry letters. That’s only 19 percent, although it’s worth noting that the Herald’s website allowed people to post anonymous comments during much of that time, and nearly every column got at least one negative comment. In fact, there were some people who hated “Snide Remarks” so much, they read it every single time it was published, just so they could comment on how much they hated it. I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP.

(I only wish that, when the Herald administrators redesigned the website a couple years ago, they had not deleted all the old threads of anonymous comments. Many of them were classic.)

In all, 81 columns have elicited angry letters. Here I have chosen my favorite eight. I hope you find them as entertaining as I do.

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A devoted reader named Sarah e-mailed me to ask the following.

I have a movie business-related question. Midnight showings of popular movies have been happening for years, but I thought it was very interesting that Pirates 3 started its showings as early as 8 p.m. on Thursday. I’d never seen a movie open like that before, so I suppose my question is: What is the reasoning behind that? Is it to purposely inflate the movie’s box office earnings and break records for opening day gross? Is it to create even more buzz for the film? (Not like Pirates really needs it, in my opinion.) I mean, it seems like once you start giving special showings of the movie at 8 o’clock, why not move the time back even further to 6 o’clock or whatever? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a definitive release date at all?

You ask excellent questions, Sarah, and that kind of common-sense approach is why you could never make it in Hollywood.

You’re right that midnight “sneak previews” for big releases have been common enough for years. Ten o’clock screenings are not unheard of, either; I remember seeing “Batman Returns” that way in Los Angeles all the way back in 1992.

But if a film opens on Friday, May 25, yet has screenings (they don’t even bother calling them “sneak previews” anymore) as early as 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 24, then doesn’t that mean May 24 is the real opening date?

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We love the fact that EricDSnider.com readers are able to post comments on the reviews, columns, and blog entries. It lets us know what you think about the issues addressed by the articles, and about the articles themselves. It also gives us a chance to laugh at how bad a lot of you are with spelling and grammar.

There are just a couple things I want to mention that perhaps you will keep in mind as you go about your comment-posting.

- If someone posts something ridiculously illiterate or dumb — e.g., “OMG, the Covenant is teh best movie evar and u only don like it cuz ur jelous” — just let it go. In 99.9 percent of those cases, the idiocy of the comment is self-evident. We don’t need to have 10 comments immediately following it in which the person who wrote it — who probably is not even a regular visitor to this site and won’t see your responses anyway — is torn apart for being so bad with spelling and grammar. Yes, yes, we all weep for the future generation. We don’t need to say it every time.

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With his “Hostel Part II” having done poorly since its June 8 release, writer-director Eli Roth is pulling a Homer Simpson: “This is everybody’s fault but mine!”

And the primary reason for the film’s failure? Not its general lack of quality, or the fact that it’s an unimaginative rehash of the movie it’s a sequel to, or the fact that it wasn’t screened for critics (which drastically reduced the amount of opening-day publicity). No, Roth has determined that piracy is the reason “Hostel Part II” is flopping.

He writes on his MySpace page:

I want to thank all of you for your kind e-mails and incredible support for the film. However, piracy has become worse than ever now, and a stolen workprint (with uninished music, no sound effects, and no VFX [visual effects]) leaked out on line before the release, and is really hurting us, especially internationally. Piracy will be the death of the film industry, as it killed the music industry, and while it makes a smaller dent in huge movies like Spider Man 3, it really hurts films like mine, which have far less of an advertising and production budget.

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This week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “Sein of the Times,” is now available for viewing. Usually there’s a Snidecast® recording of me reading the column aloud, but since this week’s is in script format — and since the characters are established characters with famous voices, rather than new fictions devised by me — I have forgone the recording this time. It would have required doing impersonations of all four “Seinfeld” characters, or reuniting the actors in my apartment, and neither scenario was feasible this weekend.

In this summer of sequels, is any film less-anticipated than “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”? The 2005 original is widely regarded as one of the worst superhero films, and it grossed only $150 million at the box office. (That’s big money to you and me, but for a summer blockbuster franchise, it’s a flop. You may recall that “Spider-Man 3″ made that much in one weekend.) But apparently they felt justified trying again, because here we are with a sequel … and it’s actually quite a bit better. Not quite “good,” but definitely better.

They didn’t screen it until last night in most markets, which is indicative of the amount of faith Twentieth Century Fox has in it. In some places, they had press screenings earlier in the week, but only for “legitimate” critics, i.e., those who write for daily newspapers. People at the weeklies and of course us no-good online critics had to wait until Thursday night, for a promo screening. At the Portland screening, they didn’t even bother taping off seats for the press, like they usually do. That’s how uninterested Fox is in dealing with the critics when it comes to this particular film.

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A devoted reader named Shawn e-mailed me with alarming news:

I just caught a commercial for “Captivity,” the upcoming horror movie with Elisha Cuthbert (one would assume that she plays a young girl in peril). It’s rated R, of course, but I was disturbed to see that it’s rated R for “strong violence, torture, pervasive terror, GRIZZLY IMAGES, language, and some sexual material.” I don’t know about you, but I find images of grizzlies highly offensive. Especially if they’re not eating Elisha Cuthbert.

I can only hope that no one notices the grizzly reference for a while. Someone needs to tell Stephen Colbert about this.

Sure enough, if you visit the movie’s official site, you’ll see that the film is rated R for the reasons Shawn cited, including “grizzly images.” The word should be “grisly,” of course — unless there are indeed images of grizzlies, and those images somehow contributed to the film’s being inappropriate for viewers under 17 unless accompanied by parent or guardian. Maybe the bears are doin’ it?

We’ll find out on July 13, unless the release date gets pushed back, as it has been twice already. In the meantime, stay alert, and keep watching the forests.

I have been watching “The Price Is Right” this week, because I wanted to see Bob Barker’s last few shows before he retires on Friday, and it is making me inexplicably wistful. I haven’t seen more than about 10 episodes in the last 20 years, but I watched it every day when I was kid. Bob has been hosting the show for literally my entire life. And now he’s going to stop. How can that be?! I’ve never known a world in which Bob Barker was not hosting “The Price Is Right.” I don’t even know what that world will look like!

So I’ve been TiVoing it this week, watching it while I eat lunch, and it’s easy to see why millions of people watch it all the time. You can complain if you want about how it promotes materialism, but I don’t care: Seeing people win money and prizes is exciting. I’d even say it’s uplifting. When someone is awarded a car or a bedroom set or whatever, they are genuinely happy about it, and it’s hard not to feel some of that joy yourself, too. It’s an hour of feel-good programming, five days a week.

Yesterday a father of four won a minivan, something he probably actually needs. He was ecstatic. What’s not to love about a show that brings people happiness?

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The man and knife in question.

The Derby Telegraph in Derbyshire, England, reports that a man got a 7-inch knife past the security checkpoint at Birmingham Airport, while his daughter’s soda was confiscated.

The man, Nick White, says he’s a construction worker and he forgot he had the knife in his pocket when he and his 13-year-old daughter went to the airport. He realized it was with him when he approached the security checkpoint and, not knowing what else to do (he didn’t want to just throw it away), put it through the scanner along with the other stuff from his pockets. And no one said anything.

His daughter, meanwhile, had her soda taken away due to the ban on liquids on airplanes.

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