M c S W E E N E Y ' S
R E C O M M E N D S .
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Here is where we will be recommending things to you. There will be many different kinds of things, from films to hairstyles, all of which have been researched, tested, and submitted to a month-long stay at a resort for people who appreciate the finer things in life, before finally being voted on in a democratic manner resembling that of our forefathers. We will add new recommendations as such time allows, and there will be no accounting for personal taste.
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Carrier
This 10-hour documentary on PBS about life on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier is a huge but satisfying commitment. At times, it feels like a recruitment video, as it looks something akin to "The Hills" Goes to the Navy. But, over all, it's a compelling look at the men and women of the United States military, and not nearly as jingoistic as we initially feared.
Volume One by She & Him
Take this recommendation for what it's worth, given that we're fans of pretty much anything the actress Zooey Deschanel does. She could release a CD of herself taunting kittens and we'd think it was the best thing ever. This collaboration between her and the musician M. Ward features little to no kitten-taunting. Instead, it's a lovely collection of old-timey-sounding songs, delivered earnestly by Ms. Deschanel's imperfect but nonetheless alluring vocals. For us, "Change Is Hard" is the album's highlight.
The Remington ShortCut
If you cut your own hair and like it really short, this is the Jesus Christ of hair clippers.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis
Yes, looking at things objectively, progressive rock is kind of ridiculous. The songs are bloated, the lyrics dumb, and concept albums ... forget about it. Still, every so often we come back to this album and listen to it straight through.
Peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwiches
Despite what your spouse or loved ones or arteries tell you, there's no shame in eating one of these every now and then. Just be sure to toast the bread.
Not watching the commercial for the forthcoming movie The Strangers,
starring Liv Tyler
Nightmare City. We're thinking of starting a campaign to keep them from releasing this movie because it violates some kind of law against spookiness.
College Hoops 2K8
We've been playing College Hoops 2K8 for about a month now and, quite honestly, we don't know how we lived without it. It's terribly addictive. You start out as a bright-eyed coach at a small university (we began with the Big Green of Dartmouth) and work your way up the coaching ranks. Yes, we tend to cheat from time to time in recruiting (you can create your own blue-chip recruits, and if you play it right you'll have a 7-foot-5-inch power forward with an above-average outside game leading your team to the conference championship), but it's not like that's not the norm in real life, right?
Scott Fisher
More not-rocking music. Ben Folds meets early Elton John. Remember, it
doesn't rock.
Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
With the economy tanking and all, we figured we should recommend a very
readable and relatable book about economics that isn't Economics for
Dummies so much as Economics for People of Normal Intelligence Who Can
Grasp Things If They Aren't Treated Like Dummies.
Amy's organic frozen pizzas
They're a couple bucks more than the average frozen za, but they somehow seem a
bit fresher and there's a pleasant wheatiness to the crust that we think you'll enjoy.
The Jeannie Tate Show
A series of webisodes featuring Liz Cackowski as Jeannie, a suburban housewife who interviews celebrities in her minivan while taking her sons to karate and trying to keep her delinquent teenage stepdaughter out of trouble. Very, very funny.
Desktop Tower Defense
This is a Flash-based game playable in your browser. Maddeningly addictive. Zombie-free.
"My" by Okay
Sounds like Sparklehorse, only more accessible. Sad and transcendent. Our favorite song of the year thus far.
Homemade marshmallows
You can even make chocolate ones (just add cocoa).
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Typical Russo, which, to us, is a good thing.
Fastpasses for rides at Disney's Magic Kingdoms
We wish there were Fastpasses for other things in life, like grocery shopping and graduate school.
400 Words
This is a magazine of nonfiction short-shorts that comes out but once a year. It's not only the most aptly titled magazine we know of—all the short-shorts are about 400 words long—but it's sincere and pocket-sized, too. They've published two issues so far, both of which contain a good percentage of pieces that are in some way endearing.
West Indian Girl
Wikipedia tells us that this is the street name for a type of LSD, which we're definitively not recommending. Instead, we're recommending the band, which has taken its name from said drug and employs synthesizers.
Sledding with your 6-year-old
We defy you to find an activity more fun than sledding with your 6-year-old. It's the very definition of delightful.
You Suck at Photoshop
Each one of these short how-to videos not only makes us laugh but also makes us realize that, yes, we really do suck at Photoshop.
Battlestar Galactica (the newer version)
Way behind the curve on this one, but this is a great, great show. Now they just need to release Season 3 on DVD.
Backing up your computer
Don't ask.
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
The story of the genesis, apex, and end of Mr. Martin's standup career. This book has been justifiably praised.
Laura Linney doing aerobics in The Savages
Despite only two brief glimpses of her in action during the film (which is easily one of our favorites of 2007), there's something so determined and focused about the way Ms. Linney does aerobics that we can't help but fall in love with her a little. We could watch her do her aerobics forever and ever and ever.
Not having Internet access for a few days
Have you tried this? It's scary and awesome. It's amazing how much you can get done when you aren't checking your e-mail every five minutes. Highly recommended.
Comparing apples and oranges
With one, you eat the skin; with the other, you likely peel it. One is generally red or green; the other, almost always its eponymous orange. One is crunchy when you bite it, and can be mashed into sauce or squeezed into juice or made into cider or put into "jack" form for the purposes of cereal; the other isn't crunchy, but can also be turned into juice. Besides all that, we're comparing stuff like this all the time, so why act like it's a deal-breaker in a debate?
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
A tense, emotional mystery that's a whydunit and a howdunit, rather than a whodunit.
Hershey's Kissables
The candy of the future. These are unstoppable.
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
Kind of a crazy-ass novel that's funny and page-turning but also really dark in a totally satisfying way.
Reaper
A new show on the CW (check your local listings). Kid's parents sell his soul to the devil and the devil comes calling on the kid's 21st birthday, tasking him to recapture souls that have escaped from Hell. Has a Buffy-ish vibe about it. Caused us to cancel our House TiVo season pass and replace it with this.
FruitaBü Organic Smoooshed Fruit
Organic fruit roll-ups for adults as well as kids.
Giving up hope for your favorite sports team
Truth be told, we're going to have a hard time sticking to this one ourselves, but recently we made a conscious choice to schedule something else during the big game, and, upon arriving home and learning our team had lost, felt much better for it.
"Dirty Dishes" by Deer Tick
A song that feels old and new all at once. There's a video on YouTube of Mr. Tick (aka John McCauley) singing the song in somebody's bathroom. It's a must-see.
Skinless, boneless chicken thighs
Skinless, boneless chicken thighs have long been frowned on by the diet-conscious elite. We think it's high time that chicken thighs made a comeback. They're so much tastier than their breast counterparts it isn't even close. Love handles be damned.
Ritalin Reading Series
Every month, at Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, in New York, an assortment of goofballs and prodigies gather and each one presents four perfect minutes of original material. The host and hostess are uproarious and remarkably attractive.
Cider Donuts
These toothsome flavor-rings, Entenmann's tip of the hat to autumn, come round but once a year. The search begins now.
The movie Once
We've seen it twice. We can't remember the last movie we've paid money to see twice. It may have been Under the Cherry Moon, and, if so, that was a huge mistake. Once, however, is definitely worth seeing twice—for the scene in the music shop alone. That's the scene of the year.
Strawberry caprioskas
The perfect summer drink: limes, sugar, strawberries, vodka, and ice. Given that summer is almost over, we're ready to declare it the perfect fall drink as well, and, while we're at it, winter better watch out, too.
CDs from the public library
Check 'em out, load 'em into your computer, take 'em back. Depending on how nimble your public-library system is, you can sometimes even reserve the ones you want online and have them brought to the library nearest you. The only problem, of course, is guilt, but there are ways around that: tell yourself you're more likely to support the artist in other ways, rationalize something having to do with the taxes you already pay, convince yourself you used to own this album and this is merely a replacement for something you sort of already own. Regardless, free music. Do the next person a favor and return it quickly once it's loaded up.
Losing a few pounds
Losing a few pounds makes everything easier: walking, running, jumping. Losing a few pounds even makes sitting easier. We've always been fans of sitting. Before we lost a few pounds, we didn't think sitting could get any better, but we're happy to report that it can. It really can.
Basia Bulat
It seems her debut CD is available everywhere in the world except in the U.S. and Canada, so we've only heard a few of her songs here and there on the Web, but each one has pretty much dazzled us. "Before I Knew" is just over a minute long and it's so good that after its first few notes we get disappointed because we know the song will soon be over. And then there's her cover of the Strokes's "Someday," which sounds like the demo that it is, but nevertheless is lovely and different, and reminds us why we still have a soft spot for the Strokes.
Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
Our German readers, if any, realize we're bandwagoning here; it's been a best seller in Deutschland for a while now, with Rowling-like sales. But no matter where you happen to live, this novel about scientific exploration, two scientists (Humboldt and Gauss), and a world gone by is brisk and witty and fluid.
Wraps
There's a battle going on out there: the Wrap and the Panini are at each other's throats as they struggle for middle-class-eatery dominance. We side with the Wrap.
Mad Men on American Movie Classics
It only took three episodes for us to succumb to this AMC original drama. Ostensibly a show about the American advertising industry circa 1960, it's really much more than that: it's an examination of family, identity, adultery, and the shifting values of that era.
Laying off the firecrackers on July 4
Seriously, they terrify the dog.
Famous Fathers and Other Stories by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
Readers of the quarterly know Ms. Ehrhardt's stories from Issues 14 and 16, and now there's a whole book of them together in one place, which is very convenient. So emotionally honest you almost want to flinch while you're reading.
God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr.
This is one of those "linked" story collections. Linking these stories is the question What if God died and people found out? Each story burrows into you and rolls around for days, possibly even weeks, but it hasn't been that long since we devoured the book, so it's hard to say that for sure.
National Geographic magazine
You remember this one. Yellow border on the cover. Great photography. Insightful, colorful articles. That's all still true, we're saying.
Patton Oswalt in a guest supporting role on any show
His minor guest roles make everything better. Always. Reno 911, there's a good example. We're saying this for our audience, but we're asking P.O. to keep at it, too. Funny face, that one.
Microwaving cake for 20 seconds before eating
Doesn't matter how powerful your microwave is—you put the cake in there for 20 seconds. Remove. Add a dollop of vanilla ice cream (chocolate generally doesn't work in these cases, probably because of some kind of microwave-induced molecular rearrangement). Use a spoon. Do that mmm-mmm-wow moan-noise thing. Thank us later.
Colored kitchen glasses, if you have a toddler
If said toddler were to drop one of the glasses onto the floor, shattering it into thousands of microscopic fragments, you could at least see where they were to clean them up. With glasses made of clear glass, you don't stand a chance. Even if you sweep four times, use a mop, get on your hands and knees, shine a flashlight over the floor, and test the floor out with your own life-hardened bare feet, even then you'll be cursing the impossibility of how far and how wide and how high (yes, how high! Countertops, tables! How does that happen? What the—?) they all go. But, see, if the glasses were maybe red, or green, or blue, you'd stand a chance of finding all those demonic little shards.
Getting along famously
Has to be the best way to get along with someone. Try it.
Planet Earth
The BBC really outdid themselves with this astonishing documentary series about our planet and the animals that live on it. It's full of rarely seen things: the two-humped camels of the Gobi Desert; lions killing an elephant; a snow leopard lunging after its prey on the rocky slopes of the Himalayas as glistening snowflakes fall. As beautiful as it is fascinating, this series provides more wows per minute than anything else currently available on DVD.
Maria Bello
She's good. Not all of her movies are good—that's a different point—but she is.
Recommending things
Sure, there's a risk, the inevitable "Why the hell did you tell me to try that/see that/listen to that/drink that?—you must be some kind of idiot" response, but from our experience the rewards outweigh the risk.
The Complete Prose of Woody Allen (aka The Insanity Defense)
Collects three collections of short funny things into one volume. Worth anyone's time.
Straight Man by Richard Russo
A "campus novel." Funny. Should be made into a movie.
Buffaloaf
Meat loaf, but with ground buffalo. Lower fat, cooler name.
Taking the first flight of the day
Sure, you have to get up unreasonably early, but there's less chance of a delay and the airports tend to even smell a bit better.
The Sopranos
Now that it's wrapping up, those of you who haven't watched this should start investing in the DVDs, or using Netflix, or stealing the shit from the Internet, or whatever it is you people do, and watch the best television series of all time.
The Zero by Jess Walter
A really fantastic novel that is hard to describe. Part mystery, part lots of other things, this book is, along with Ken Kalfus's A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, among the best "9/11 novels" we've read.
Bumpus
This is a Chicago-based funk group. Back in the late '90s, there were a bunch of funk bands in Chicago—Bumpus, Nubile Thangs, Liquid Soul, Cassius Clay—that were really, really great. Most of them are no longer around, but Bumpus continues on. Their albums are now available on iTunes, a boon to those of us who are no longer able to see them live. Stereoscope is most recommended.
Can I Keep My Jersey?: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond by Paul Shirley
A highly entertaining reminiscence of the author's life as a professional basketball player. Interesting insights into what it's like to be among the best 1 percent in the world at what you do and still not be "good enough." We're not even finished with the book yet, but nevertheless we eagerly recommend it.
Abita Purple Haze
This is beer, raspberry-flavored, sort of. The taste is more suggestive than literal and lives only briefly, somewhere toward the rear of the tongue, after each swallow. Pour it into a glass instead of drinking it out of the bottle.
Deadliest Catch
Documentary-style show tracking the king-crab season on the Bering Sea. "Deadliest" is not a misnomer for these fishermen, which makes this tough watching on occasion.
Henning Mankell
A mystery writer of Swedish nationality. All of his books are translated into English, so that makes things easier for most of us.
Intervention
Television show on A&E. This is actually very tough to watch, as it follows substance abusers as they hit bottom and are then confronted by family members in a final intervention. We haven't done the math, but we'd say fewer than half have "happy" endings. ("Happy" meaning that you feel like the addicted person has at least a shot at getting clean.)
Tape measures
Far more versatile than a ruler and they make that satisfying "whinging" noise as they retract back into the case.
30 Rock
We didn't think this was so good at the beginning, but now, quite good.
Yogurt
Laugh all you want, but it actually took us decades to come around to this stuff. And now we can't let it go. It's like, you can just eat one for a snack. And it tastes good. And it's all over the place; everybody's selling yogurt. Might we suggest you shy away from custard-style, though?
The D chord on guitar
How pleasant to play. How charming to hear.
Professional massage
A luxury for sure, but did you know they even get your earlobes?
Psych
This is another one of those USA Network original shows (see Monk below) that they air on Friday nights, when only the uncool and old are watching TV. If you find yourself in either of these groups, try this show out.
The Last Waltz
We're talking about Martin Scorsese's film of the Band's 1976 Thanksgiving Day farewell concert, though the associated soundtrack is also recommended. Let's just get the debate out of the way by us saying The Last Waltz is the best concert film ever, and you saying, no, Stop Making Sense is the best concert film ever, and us saying, no, The Last Waltz is what made Stop Making Sense possible, kind of like how without Richard Pryor there would be no Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock, so shut up with your nonsense. Let's also set aside the whole discussion about how the movie shows an era when it was about the music, man, and not about the slick, corporate packaging. Instead, let's focus on a couple of other things, like Van Morrison joining them for "Caravan," during which even the notoriously grumpy Van the Man can't help but grin as the sound absorbs him. Let's reflect on how, when Eric Clapton's guitar comes de-strapped, Robbie Robertson jumps in and solos like a motherfucker. Let's talk about how Levon Helm had one of the top five singing voices of all time. And, finally, let's remember a guy many of you have never heard of, a guy named Rick Danko, the bass player and one of the singers, and how it's so apparent that he put every ounce of himself, every ounce of—dare we say it?—his soul, into playing and singing with that band. There's a scene in the movie where Danko and Scorsese are sitting at a mixing board in the Band's hangout and Scorsese asks Danko what he's going to do now that the last waltz is over, now that the Band is done, and Danko just kind of stares into the middle distance and barely answers, mumbling something about just making music, and it becomes apparent that this fucker is doomed, that this beautiful, talented fucker is not going to make it. (And he didn't.) But there's a shot in the movie, during the performance of "Stagefright," of Danko, from behind, the single spotlight outlining his form, and when you see that shot you realize that Scorsese has never done anything better.
Anyway, watch it, it's good.
Bookshelves
Turns out there's something better than stacking books on tables and desks.
Half Nelson
It's not about wrestling. Quite the contrary, and it's likely the best film of last year. Plus, it breaks the record for the difference between its super-low-quality-sounding synopsis ("druggie teacher befriended by student") and its actual high-quality nuance (subtle and sharp at once). Queue it up again, oh lovers of Netflix.
Blocks
Hands down, these remain the best children's toy they've come up with. Hands. Down.
Kleenex Tissue With Lotion
Don't use it to clean your glasses, but it really does cut down on chafage.
Napoleon Perdis
Maker of fine red lipstick. Our favorite shade: Captain Rum. The only drawback to Napoleon's high-end cosmetic line is that it's not available at Walgreens.
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
We hope this show will stay on for the rest of our lives.
Kasugai gummy candies with muscat (green grape) juice
Gourmet gummies straight from Japan. The bag boasts that they have the gentle taste of a graceful lady. It's true.
Marathon Man
Seems like everyone but us has seen this. You know, with the dentistry. A great thriller. They don't make them like this anymore. Or maybe they do. Do they?
Friday Night Lights
We're talking the TV show here, though the movie and book aren't bad, either. Special recommendation to observe the acting and interplay between Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, who play coach and coach's wife.
The books of David Lodge
Small World and Changing Places recommended in particular. Hilarious.
Breyers Double Churned Light Ice Cream
It really does have less fat and doesn't taste too crappy.
Bacon of the Month Club
You haven't known pleasure until a full rasher of applewood smoked bacon shows up in the arms of the UPS man just as you're prepared to give in to the forces of healthy living and eat yogurt, or some crap like that.
Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Squares
They come in caramel, plain, and raspberry varieties. Antioxidants!
Not showering for a day or two
Sure, you're a bit grungy if you do this one, but after you do shower you realize you've really been taking being clean for granted.
Baths
Not recommended after not showering for a day or two, because then you're just kind of steeping in your own filth.
Ignoring the NBA regular season
You know what? It really doesn't matter. The players even know it. Have you seen what the Heat and the Pistons are up to this year? Unless they're on national television, they just phone it in.
Monk
Don't do what we did and treat this show with reflexive scorn because it's buried on basic cable. It's way better than most of what passes for entertainment on the big networks.
Bissell SpotBot
We are the type to get this nifty little gadget as a Christmas gift and then enjoy it enough to recommend it to others. Watching the process is even more enjoyable than seeing the end result. We could do worse than have an army of sentient SpotBots rise up and seize control of the government.
Man vs. Wild
On this Discovery Channel show, host Bear Grylls drops into the most inhospitable places on the planet and makes his way out using nothing but the clothes on his back, his wits, and a really kick-ass knife he keeps in a sheath on his leg. In one episode, to keep cool, he pisses on his shirt and wraps it around his head.
Brendan Benson
He's the "other guy" in the Raconteurs. Power pop of an updated Matthew Sweet kind.
Taking a couple weeks off from the Internet every so often
We're not saying to drop off the grid entirely, but, really, is there anything here that you can't live without for at least a little while?
The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
Ford's third book featuring Frank Bascombe. The first two were The Sportswriter and Independence Day. This one's every bit as good as those, which is plenty good.
Figuring out some way to have leaves change to their fall colors but then not fall off the trees
We like the fall landscape, but not so much the raking or even the leaf-blowing. Seems like something the science types could figure out.
Cheap Trick
Rock goodness since, like, 1976.
26
Place all your bets on this magical number. We did not like the slots, but we are now faithful to the mighty and forgiving roulette table.
CatHolic
Evil Twin Publishing has created a weird anthology of feline stories that your mom won't like one bit. We love, love, love this book.
Bioluminescent bays
Kayaking in the mangroves in the middle of the night with 30 strangers will get your heart pounding, but add in the mysterious glowing plankton—well, Mother Nature will fucking freak you out. Do this as soon as possible.
Hem
Back to the nonrocking music recommendations. Believe it or not, we first heard Hem as the soundtrack to a commercial for insurance. When a song that's part of a commercial for insurance sends you Googling for "Who the hell is that group on that life-insurance commercial?" and in that Googling you realize that, like, 1,000 other people have asked the same question, well, then that's some music you should probably check out.
Hope in a Jar
This is face cream. Something like $6,800 an ounce, but, to our surprise, worth it.
Bringing back the word "lickspittle"
Superior to "ass-kisser," "suck-up," and "brown-noser" any day. Second choice: "toady."
Holiday television marathons
On Thanksgiving we caught, like, 10 hours straight of The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick as a space alien who speaks in a Georgia accent and solves crimes in Los Angeles. Best space-alien crime show this side of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Gravy
We're talking both literal gravy, the brown stuff that goes over starches of all varieties, and metaphorical gravy, something good that's extra and unexpected. That's gravy, baby!
Not twisting your ankle
Hobbling, not good.
Judging Amy
That's right, we're recommending Judging Amy—what of it? Sure, it's often contrived and melodramatic, but we love the repeats airing twice every weekday on TNT.
Jackets with pit zips
Overheating can often cause you to freeze later. These little guys allow for proper venting.
Sticky roller lint pickups
We remember the older lint pickups, the ones with the semi-velvety surface stretched across an oval head. Those didn't pick up shit. These do. (If by "shit" you mean sweater fuzz and dog hair and the like.)
Albondigas
Mexican meatballs. Not as tender as their Italian cousins or as gravy-smothered as their Swedish nieces, but at least three times more fun to say. Albondigas. Albondigas.
The invisible hand behind MTV Jams
There's a gratifying sense of continuity and purpose in this channel's programming, and only partly because it is an unremitting stream of hip-hop videos. Watch it for several hours while reading the Sunday paper to appreciate the segues, the asides, the visual puns. Someone has deftly pieced together the disparate miscellany of widescreen Hype Williams-isms and streetwise advice into an imposing mosaic, so thanks to him or her.
The persimmon
It's a delicious, underrated treat disguised in a tomato costume.
Dog-a-day calendars
Some people prefer the breed-specific variety, but we're partial to the ones where you don't know what you're going to get on any given day: a basket of cattle-dog puppies, a bulldog trying get a basketball in its mouth, an unidentified mutt peering through the slats of a wooden fence? All good, every day.
A brisk early-morning walk
Best started at exactly sunrise. Not a jog or a run, a walk where you spend some time looking around.
The Wire
Everybody's right. The show's amazing. We forgot to say so earlier.
Diane Rehm (of The Diane Rehm Show)
Striking to think it, but she'll save the world, she will. That's good radio.
Lost Mountain by Erik Reece
Damn, this is some book. About mountaintop coal removal. Formerly of Kentucky, Lost Mountain over the years shrank and disappeared. Reece had the definitive article-length version in Harper's a few years ago, and here we get it full out.
Stouffer's French-bread pizzas
You probably abandoned these around the time you left middle school, but it's time for a reappraisal. Crunchy, zesty. A nice sauce/cheese mix. Methinks they've been up to some fine-tuning in the Stouffer's kitchen.
Not being threatened with a lawsuit
You have no idea how blissful a lawsuit-free life is until your life is no longer lawsuit-free.
Mike Rowe
The Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs is estimable in and of itself, but Mike Rowe, the host, is the deal. You want him at the party. He's sitting on the back balcony, cracking jokes about the tool who brought his own snifter of port, giving you the laugh line on other setups, because he's that cool. Who knew? Turns out he was an opera singer before that. Bodes well for opera.
The Swearing of Jeremy Piven
In two or three decades, this will be the name of a documentary about Piven's career (sure, with lots of Entourage footage), at which point the main debate will be between those who favor Samuel L. Jackson's swearing capacity and those who favor Piven's. Shocking, yes, but we might be leaning toward Piven. More nuance, we think.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
It's the new Aaron Sorkin show, which is a lot like the other Aaron Sorkin shows, except this one is set at a late-night television show instead of at the White House or at a cable sports network. If you like those other shows, you'll like this one.
South Beach Peanut Butter Breakfast Bar
The best of the low-carb breakfast bars in that it tastes the least like pencil erasers.
My Mentor by Alec Wilkinson
As a young man, Wilkinson decided he wanted to be a writer, and ended up getting writing lessons from his dad's best friend, whose name was William Maxwell. Maxwell knew a thing or two about writing: during his 40 years at The New Yorker, he edited the work of J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, John Cheever, and many other great writers, and he was a highly accomplished writer himself. This is a beautifully written book about a wise and generous man.
James Tate
His poems, in books such as Memoir of the Hawk and Return to the City of White Donkeys, read like brilliant, surreal short-short stories.
Anne Fadiman
Everything she writes is smart and engaging. Her book about a medical culture clash between a Hmong family and a California hospital, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is a masterpiece.
Junebug
Last year, Roger Ebert couldn't stop raving about this movie. We finally saw it, and it's amazing. In it, Amy Adams gives one of the best comic performances we've ever seen.
P.G. Wodehouse
Master of the breezy comic tale. His writing is incredibly sure-footed: he does exactly what he means to do with every sentence, every word. Start with the Jeeves and Wooster stories and go from there.
Bedazzled
We're talking the original 1967 film, written by and starring Peter Cook. Eric Idle, of Monty Python, has said that Peter Cook was "the funniest man in the world and all funny people know that." Bedazzled is his funniest film.
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for Those Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
It's simply madness to not read this book if you fall into either category of person defined in the subtitle.
Heroes
Television show on NBC. Frankly, we haven't seen it, but the commercials give us a good feeling about this one.
Two-a-Days
High-school football players struggle under the weight of a winning streak, girlfriends, and a coach straight out of Clichéland.
Fred Kaplan's "War Stories" column at Slate
Brilliant at cutting through the latest B.S. spewing from whatever side of the political spectrum. He's our choice for the Defense Secretary if Rumsfeld ever does the right thing and resigns.
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
Wow. This book is a motherfucker.
Led Zeppelin DVD
Wait until you're home alone, pop it in, crank up the surround sound.
A Bit of Fry and Laurie
Fry is Stephen Fry, whom we recommended a while back, and Laurie is Hugh Laurie, aka Dr. House. These guys are far smarter than they need to be, and their playful use of the English language is dazzling. This hilarious sketch show, which debuted on British television in the late '80s, has finally been released here on DVD. So far, just the first two seasons are available, but it's a start, and we are grateful.
The Hold Steady
A band that is, like, this close to being a novelty act, but there's something in the riffage that makes it work. Obsessed with "hoodrats."
Pinot Grigio
For years, there was no drinking of white wine, because we were only familiar with Chardonnay, but ultimately red-wine hangovers drove us to new varieties, and this one appears to be working out pretty well.
The North Woods of Wisconsin
They've got some kind of special air up there. Very breathable.
Howard Stern on Sirius
A while back we recommended satellite radio in general and said it didn't matter if you chose XM or Sirius. That was a mistake. Sometimes gross, sometimes distasteful, most often funny, Howard Stern makes choosing Sirius worthwhile.
Fiasco by Thomas Ricks
A while back we also recommended Cobra II, the inside story of the nitty-gritty behind the invasion of Iraq. After a quick recap of that material, Ricks picks up the ball and exposes the absolute, unconscionable botch-job perpetrated by Bush, Rumsfeld, Bremmer, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al. Perhaps the most depressing realization one gets from reading this book is how avoidable all of this would have been had our highest-ranking leaders not been absolutely consumed by hubris. We almost couldn't finish reading it because it gets so depressing, but you need to know what happened, and Ricks serves it up for real.
Kashmere Stage Band
Is it really possible that the best big-band funk of the late '60s and early '70s was played by a bunch of Texas high-school students? Find out for yourself.
The grocery-store scene in Nine Lives
As she pushes her cart past the Cap'n Crunch, Robin Wright Penn spots an old boyfriend, and over the course of the next several minutes we watch her world unravel. Shot in just one long take. We believe this is what is known as virtuoso acting.
Old used paperbacks that fit in your pocket
It's usually those old Bantam ones, like Hermann Hesse or Faulkner or Sherwood Anderson, but really any will do. So portable, you can have it right there, if you're in a waiting room or something. Or pull it out on a bench, wherever.
Serialized fiction
For example, J. Robert Lennon's Happyland running in Harper's. It reminds us of our younger days, when we'd run home to get the new installment of Dickens's Pickwick Papers, or of good old Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov.
Ground turkey
Not a 100-percent-reliable substitute for ground beef, but, truthfully, we like our chili better with this stuff.
