I love that movie too! Found out about it from Joe R. Lansdale posting on social media, which is also what led me to the Hap & Leonard series.

I was going through the slides just to see if Blue Ruin made the list.

Maybe it’s like cilantro where it tastes completely awful to a lot of people, but I can’t imagine disliking dill. Salmon, potato salad, not to mention nearly the entirety of both Greek and Polish cuisine.

Counterpoint: Dill is wonderful and people probably shouldn’t take life advice from the founder of a new-age, snake oil company with a corporate ethos that essentially boils down to: “If you want a good life, then make sure you’re born wealthy.”

Kalamatas were my gateway olive. I also hated olives as a kid, but my love of Greek food kept putting kalamatas in front of me as garnishes for things like skordalia and taramasalata.

Agreed, I like peas, but not in my carbonara.

I definitely remember my own family making “bacon spaghetti” because there wasn’t any Italian sausage or ground beef around.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was thinking of an entirely different dish with a similar sounding name like arrabbiata.

They’ve since moved on to killing customers.

The amount of times I’ve overheard diners in Italian restaurants insisting to waitstaff that carbonara is supposed to be served with Alfredo sauce, which is itself usually a modified bastardization, is disturbing.

And I remember being slightly put off, which I usually am about doing anything, because I had to go find this studio in the middle of Tucson. I believe it coincided with me visiting my parents, and I needed to get it done. I knew very little about the show.

Discovering that Root Boy Slim song years ago remains one of the greatest Christmas gifts of my life.

As the idiom goes, he had to make his Bones first before becoming an auteur.

I recently started watching Bourdain again too, and it really is such a mixture of emotions. His endearing snark and cynicism was always counterbalanced by a sense of community and the joy of venturing into new places and possibilities.

I was such a huge fan of Jeff Smith and The Frugal Gourmet growing up. That show was the first thing that ever made me interested in cooking. When the hideous abuses he committed came to light, it destroyed any interest I had in learning about food for years until eventually discovering Anthony Bourdain.

Different Sedaris, this was about Tiffany not Amy.

With the exception of the immediate post-COVID period we have been in a labor market since late 2017 where there are more available posted jobs than there are people looking for employment. Anyone who wants a full-time job could have one, right now.

If it’s good enough for the B-52s, then it’s good enough for me.

Don’t forget about Keith Phipps. He was a fantastic Editor-in-Chief as well as a great writer in his own right.  The day he left was the beginning of the end.

In addition to home entertainment equipment getting better, I think the other big factor is the theater experience getting worse.