The movie Intermission, with Cillian Murphy and Colm Meany and Colin Farrell (among many, many others).  If more people loved that movie as much as I do, more people would get it when I spontaneously blurt the phrase "hard as nails cunts".  Right now it just gets me in trouble at work.

I adore National Treasure!  I love it so much that I even love the sequel despite the sequel sucking.  That movie is just perfection.

Congratulations!  There is nothing better than food that you grew yourself.  It's like you taste all the time and effort and worry that went into it.

Okay, I'm sorry — you get CORN CHIPS?  And CHEESE??  You're making my CSA look like a pile of puke.

That sounds amazing!  And you're so right about farm fresh food being best when it's treated simply.  That's what I love about summer cooking — when you've got produce that good, it's almost a crime to get too fussy about it. 

Oh man, trashy food.  Heh.  We Tivo all of Sandra Lee's cooking shows (the classic Semi-Ho and the shockingly hilarious Money Saving Meals), and watch them to point and laugh and feel superior.  Anyway, so one day we're watching whichever show, and Aunt Sandy's making "chocolate mousse", a recipe that involves folding…

I saved a bunch of cherry pits from last summer with the notion that I'd use them in baking at some point.  Well, cherry picking opens this coming weekend at my local orchard, so it seemed time to do something with the bag of pits still in the freezer.  I steeped them in milk, and then used that in a devils food cake,…

One of my favorite days ever was on vacation in London, and the day involved the National Gallery, getting cheese, bread, and apples at Neal's Yard, stumbling onto an open-air screening of a Charlie Chaplin short in Trafalgar Square on what turned into a drizzly fall evening, then picnicking on the cheese/apples/bread…

Kaada - "A Day and a Night and a Day"
The Cryin' Shames - "Please Stay"
Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - "Theme of 'Rome'"
Grails - "Bad Bhang Recipe"
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - "Easy Does It"

Peach-habanero is one of the greatest flavor combos ever.

Whole Foods's pineapple is consistently excellent.  I don't normally shop there myself (because I don't like to drive, and the closest one to me involves a scary highway), but periodically my mother will bring home their pre-made fruit salad, with the various melons and pineapple, and I'll just drop everything and…

@avclub-dd34286490edaaa9c5dae6f7c823ece3:disqus Oh man, that is the worst.  NBC famously did that to the NHL a few years ago, cutting away from a Conference Final overtime to accommodate… pre-show for the Preakness.  Not even the actual race, mind you, just the hours of filler they have before the race.

There, there @avclub-ebb15a2c66cc64cbc83fcb33c8acd699:disqus.  My motto for when I realize how much time and thought I've put into The Voice is "NO SHAME!"  (I mean this honestly — as mentioned above, I unapologetically love this show, and unapologetically overthink it.)  (And I agree that the Swons are a very…

Man, try approaching ESPN as a hockey fan.  Although I suppose it's fun to be on the vanguard of modern American sports trying to prove that there is life outside of ESPN coverage (or whatever ESPN claims counts as "coverage").

I had a high school gym teacher about whom there was rumor that when he'd been in college, the phys ed program he was taking had just two students and was only going to graduate one.  The student that came in second was going to have to go to Vietnam.  In hindsight this seems apocryphal at best, but at the time it…

Square dancing was the most hated gym unit in my elementary school on Long Island in the '80s.  It was a private school, though, and Quaker, so probably not at all indicative of the trends in the local school systems.

My family still references the one where the Sportscenter anchors were doing commercials for local business, with Steiner enthusing, "I like the chicken!  I like the donuts!  I like the chicken and the donuts!"

Pish posh — we didn't dispense with Lance Armstrong arbitrarily!  That was a well-earned dispensing, and one I, for one, was looking forward to for years.

Yeah, the Littler Swon seems to be part of the act just because he's the cuter one.  For most of the first half of the season my household kept hoping Chubby Swon would ditch his brother and set out on his own.  We like to rate their performances now on how much Littler Swon got to participate.

I'm an unapologetic Voice fan, and I have to agree that this season all of a sudden became a slog of same-iness.  What I love about this show is something that was pointed out in a previous article here on AVC — that it's essentially today's version of a variety show.  But as Blake's "all pop country, all the time"…