If you want to see a heavy Anthony Hopkins as a husband trying to committ the perfect crime and Ryan Gosling (channeling Matthew McConaughey's performance from A Time to Kill) trying to convict him, this is the movie for you. If you want a movie that thinks it's smarter than it is, this is the movie for you. If you want to shut off a movie when it's done and be like, "Huh, that was really clever", you should rent something else.

I liked watching a movie that looked and sounded like where I live. Lots of twists in this story originally by Dennis Lehane. Ben Affleck's directorial debut isn't a grand slam, but it's at least a run-scoring triple.

There's a level of watchability, excitement, and entertainment that one can reasonably expect a franchise blockbuster to attain. Spider-Man 3 just didn't get there. Toby Maguire is woefully overmatched as a superhero and I still have James Franco's smile/grimace burned in my head.

A couple weeks ago, Matt reviewed Vosges Haute Chocolat Mo's Bacon Bar. I had seen these bars a couple days earlier, and Matt's generally favorable review pushed me over the edge. I had to try it. I felt differently about the bar starting with the cost and ending with the amount of bacon. A $7 candy bar should taste like a Josh Beckett playoff performance in your mouth. It should taste like angels' harp music. It should taste like falling in love with kittens. The bar was good, but there were no kittens playing harps in my mouth, that's for sure. Also, a bacon candy bar should have bacon in it, not diva ass baco bits. I was disappointed, but also strangely invigorated. The idea of bacon and chocolate is a great one, it just wasn't executed correctly. I'm not the type of person who generally thinks I can do everything better than everyone (well, I guess I am), but I definitely knew I could make a better chocolate covered bacon treat.

After a few weeks of pondering, I came up with a plan. Today, I cooked a pound of bacon a little longer than normal so it would be especially crispy. I then crumbled it into a brownie pan and put it in the fridge. Then I melted about a pound and a half of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I then poured the melted chocolate over the crumbled bacon and spread it evenly with a spatula. I threw the brownie pan into the fridge for about an hour until the chocolate had completely hardened.

It was then ready to serve and it was delicious. I've discovered Jesus' candy. Chocolate covered bacon. Bacolate. Believe.

American Gangster is highly entertaining and extraordinarily acted, which, unfortunately isn't enough to make this movie an all-time-great. The scope of the story is too broad to put into one movie, even one two hours and thirty seven minutes long. Frank Lucas' story could easily and successfully be made as a trilogy: The Rise, The Fall, The Redemption.

These guys were even better than when we saw them in April, maybe because they used a couple of the opening band's musicians (pedal steel and keyboards from Bobby Bare Jr (who was great in his own right)). There was less beer throwing this time, but, really, when has that been such a bad thing? At the end, my friend broke up a fight, which is also, not such a bad thing.

This is the second year that we've participated in the Ledge Ends CSA with our friends Janie and Ken, and the second year that we've celebrated the last share of the season with a "well, what'd we get?" pizza potluck. We elected to leave the rutabagas, radishes, and kale off of the pizza, but Ken and I still made four delicious pies using locally grown organic vegetables, and, uh, the bounty of the neighborhood Whole Foods:



Left: tomato sauce with mozzarella and parmigiano.
Right: sliced heirloom tomato, spinach, garlic, and mozzarella.



Left: hot italian sausage, green pepper, red onion, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and parmigiano.
Right: olive oil, garlic, leek, fingerling potato, black forest bacon, chevre, and mozzarella.

Four deeeelicious pizzas. Thanks to Ken and Janie for sharing delicious veggies with us all year long.

Update: Behind-the-scenes photos from Ken here and here.