I don't watch enough of the Cooking Channel, so except for having heard the name, I didn't know anything about Mario Batali. In
Heat Bill Buford goes to work in Batali's kitchen (among other similar apprenticeships) and I don't know how he survived. The food history parts were alternately boring and illustrative, but overall an inspiring read.
The thing about sports books, especially those from the recent past, is if you're a fan of the team, you're already going to know most of what's in the book.
Feeding the Monster reads like a long form magazine article, mostly interminable, except for the beginning documenting the sale of the Red Sox and the end about Theo Epstein leaving and then coming back. The 250 pages in the middle detail the 2003, 2004 and 2005 season, seemingly and unnecessarily game by game.
People with amazing lives must be somewhat gun shy after James Frey cornered the market on fantastical (and ultimately made up) memoirs a couple years ago (and let's be honest, Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" really was just a drawn out and exaggerated "Oh my God, I was so wasted last night..." bar tale).
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City doesn't reach that level, though Nick Flynn doesn't meet his father for real until the man walks into his life as a client at Boston's Pine Street Inn. Just like I enjoy movies that look like where I live (and thus applaud Boston's emergence as the new Toronto), I also enjoy books that sound like where I live.
Laura Linney's character in
The Savages was a playwright who kept wondering if her work was some sort of boring middle-class complaining. I had the sense that this was a question the writer of the movie had about the movie, and not unreasonably, because it was. Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman were great, but in a bad movie.
I had only watched a bit of
Arrested Development when it was on a couple years ago, but thoroughly enjoyed watching all three seasons at once. I enjoyed David Cross' character, Will Arnett's, "But still, where'd that lighter fluid come from", Michael Cerra's general brilliance, and the fake "Scenes From Next Week" device. Watching it all at once, it was clear the writers had about 6 different story lines they recycled over and over and over again, though usually successfully.
Normally Cillian Murphy's eyes are freakishly too wet and his cheeks freakishly too red. In
The Wind That Shakes the Barley, I only had to contend with his cheeks for some reason, and his bloody accent. I swear, subtitles were warranted for most of this informative and well-made movie.
28 Weeks Later had me wondering why the force working to repatriate Britain (very clearly US forces and not NATO forces) had some semblance of a plan, but no sense of a back up plan if it didn't work. I remember when the movie came out and critics claim echoes of Iraq and this might be what they were talking. I don't think there's very many things scarier than Rage Virus.
I still don't know why I loved
Barcelona, though the delivery on my favorite line, "Well, I wasn't using prig pejoratively" was impeccably timed. Unfortunately, no one I know has seen the movie, so it falls on deaf ears when I reference that line. I'd say, "Before 'Bottle Rocket', there was 'Barcelona'," but they came out the same year, so...
Posted by matt
Feb 21, 2008
The latest in a long string of bacon related links sent to me by my friends. The Bacon Bloody Mary. At this point (or until Matt throws me out), I say, 'why fight it'?
Bring it on, people, let's see your bacon related links.
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