Hang Up and Listen podcast
Slate’s sports podcast, hosted by Josh Levin, with Mike Pesca and Stefan Fatsis. The wit both Pesca and Fatsis show on NPR is let loose a bit more, which gives the show a sharper, funnier edge.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
One of the funniest books we’ve read in the last year. Semple used to write for Arrested Development and it shows. It’s an acerbic, oddly moving, and cleverly told novel.

The Americans
A 1980s KGB/CIA action/drama, except the good guys are the Russian spies who’ve lived undercover as suburban Americans for years. Now suddenly, uh-oh, who should move in across the street, but a smart CIA agent (played by the fine character actor Noah Emmerich). Four episodes in and the show just keeps getting better and better.

Bellroy wallets
Wallets might go the way of the beeper soon, but until then Bellroy is our wallet maker of choice. Its sleek, slim design helps you keep from stuffing the thing with every unnecessary discount card and receipt you collect. Our pants’ pockets are very thankful for this.

“Picking Up the Pieces” by Paloma Faith
Faith doesn’t have the classic pipes of Adele, but “Picking Up the Pieces” is as good a blue-eyed soul pop song as Adele has ever recorded.

Kua ’Aina
Great burger/sandwich joint on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. You can’t go wrong with anything on the menu, just be sure to add fresh avocado, which they aren’t shy about piling on. Delicious. Being just minutes away from some of the best surfing in the world doesn’t hurt either.

Wordament
Our newest favorite IOS word game. It’s basically Boggle with some subtle twists. Instead of playing against a few opponents at a time, you play against thousands from all over the world. As an added bonus, the game tracks your stats and you can see how you measure up against your friends each day.

NCAA’s OnDemand Channel
This YouTube channel features network broadcasts (we miss you, Al Maguire!) of pretty much every meaningful moment from the NCAA tournament in the last 35 years. March Madness can’t come soon enough.

Keyhole Factory by William Gillespie
If you’re worried that too many of the novels you read sound kind of the same, this is the book for you. It’s dystopian, sure, but that doesn’t really tell us all that much by itself. Inventive, unusual, worth your time.

YouTube videos of The Faces performing live
If they’d stuck together, we’d talk about The Faces (Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Kenney Jones, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane) in similar breaths as Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. There’s some YouTube videos out there of the band captured live in their prime playing on some television show, and they’re just awesome.

SelfControl
This is a program that blocks the internet for people who indeed have no self control. Set the timer for as few as 15 minutes or as long as a whole day, and watch just how much more work gets done.

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman
While not really a self-help book (Burkeman is highly skeptical of the genre), it offers more practical (and funny) advice on how to be happy (or better put, how to appreciate being happy) than any talk-show “Dr.” ever could.

“La Espina del Cardenche” by Algodón Egipcio
Our favorite song of the year. Hands down.

Shark Tank
Entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to successful millionaires in hopes of getting their businesses off the ground. On its face, the show seems like a boring exercise in free enterprise. But the millionaires (the “Sharks”—led by the anti-Trump, Mark Cuban) are so invested (an unavoidable pun, regrets) in their roles that it makes for smart, savvy and engaging television.

William Stafford
His poetry is sneaky, pithy, and sometimes a discovery. His style is somehow both out of time but placed right there in the twentieth century. It makes you want to ride a bike by a creek and throw a twig in the current. Watch it swirl and flow.

Bookmarking poetryfoundation.org
Where do you think we got all that stuff about Stafford?

Beasts of the Southern Wild
We finally got around to seeing this indy hit from this past summer. Glad we did. Its last five minutes might be the best five minutes of film this year.

Rock bands named for states or cities, but not continents
Sorry Europe and Asia.

Head Case
It’s a good show, and look, there’s the guy that was in Barney Miller, the late Steve Landsberg. He nails it.

KCRW’s Strangers
They have a whole stable of podcasts, do what you can, but Strangers is an intrigue. Maybe try the Debbie Jhoon and Sam Feirstein episodes as a starter, maybe wonder what we’re supposed to do with this crescendo of on-line audio art, maybe help us make sense of it all.

Waiting for the new frozen yogurt bubble to pop before committing to a favorite
Market research by our interns shows between 400 and 750 new frozen yogurt franchises, and that’s in Coastal Florida alone. Those pay-by-the-ounce jobbers, all the toppings you want—and, if we might say, live it up with the low-weight/high-goodness whipped cream—that make old TCBY turn in its grave. Like home brewing and dot coms in the ‘90s (and TCBY), this too shall pass. Wait until then before declaring your franchise allegiance. Three or four will likely remain.

The Wirecutter
Have a new gadget, computer, television, kitchen appliance, or nose-hair trimmer to buy? The Wirecutter saves you lots of time with its recommendations. It’s like Consumer Reports’ hip cousin.

Neko Case
Because she’s great.

Bread and butter jalapeño peppers
Our mom jars these, so there’s not a whole lot of objectivity here, yes, yep, we know. But man oh man, they’re good! More sweet than spicy. Perfect on chicken salad sandwiches. And all other sandwiches. And foods.

Not having a chondral defect in your knee
This the best! Not having the cartilage under your patella look and feel like leftover linguine that’s been in a tupperware container for a week is really the way to go when it comes to not having substantial issues with the cartilage behind your knee. Not having this rocks! You should totally not have this! Trust us!

Storm King Arts Center, Mountainville, NY
This is a sculpture park in the Hudson River Valley, maybe 50-odd miles north of the city. This is a phenomenal outdoor garden of art installations, landscapes, and environmental vision. This is a place you want to go so you can sit for a time, so you can get past any vestige of skepticism about public art, so you can wonder about serenity, space, scale, and what majestic might mean.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
It’s a novel about the Iraq War that’s mostly about America, the worst and best parts of our American selves. This is the kind of book people will point to when they want to describe our present age.

Emily Hearn
Emily Hearn writes and performs music that makes you feel good just listening to it, but at the same time isn’t weightless. Check her out if you enjoy tapping your toes.

Puddin’
Short comedy films, posted daily, set in a generic office workplace kitchen starring the hilarious Eddie Pepitone as a sad-sack manic everyman. Plus cameos by Patten Oswalt, Robin Williams (who’s featured in a fine sequel to Dead Poet’s Society), and others. Ridiculous. Sophomoric. Perfect.

Peter Abraham
Red Sox beat writer for the Boston Globe. A voice of reason in Boston’s forever overblown and fatalistic sports’ media. He’s a huge Springsteen fan, too. That never hurts.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Another great mystery by Flynn, who’s appeared on this page before. This one’s about the disappearance of a transplanted New Yorker in suburban Missouri. You’ll be wise to stick with the book, and its largely unsympathetic characters, until halfway through when the surprising and brilliantly written twist is revealed.

Kishi Bashi
He’s an indie pop violinist. For us that’s enough to at least check him out on Spotify, but we should also mention that his new album 151a is full of sublime hooks. Start with “It All Began With a Burst.”

@DadBoner
Hilarious Twitter of Karl Welzein, a fictional guy from Michigan who, despite usually being down his luck, remains upbeat and ready to party.

The Chris Gethard Show
Public-access variety television at its finest. He’ll have his own late-night network show eventually. Mark our words.

leasthelpful.com
A collection of the worst, most nonsensical customer reviews on Amazon.com. You’ll check it out for a second and then an hour later you’ll find yourself still there, reading away.

Songza
A new music app, in the mode of Pandora and Spotify, except this one matches playlists to the time of day and the type of activity your doing. Is it Sunday afternoon? Are you working out? Reading the newspaper? BBQ-ing in the backyard? Songza has a playlist for each and every of these occasions. May sound gimmicky, but the song choices are pretty spot-on. Our favorite playlist so far? ‘70s Pool Party.

Mutemath
There’s nothing wrong with music being earnest and heartfelt, especially when it grooves like this. The drummer, Darren King, duct tapes headphones to his head during concerts. Just thought you should know that.

Veep
A sharp, silly poke at Washington from the makers In the Loop (recommended way down below). Julia-Louis Dreyfus plays the struggling Vice President, desperately trying to overcome the inconsequentiality of her job. While the show doesn’t quite reach the heights of the film (or, for that matter of The Thick of It, the British TV show that inspired it), it still provides for a funny, F-bomb-laden 30 minutes.

Stacey’s Pita Chips
Just baked chips of pita with a little sea salt, nothing revolutionary. You will eat a minimum of 32 of them in one sitting. Mark our words.

SpellTower
Yes, another word game app. This one has supplanted W.E.L.D.E.R. (see below) and Puzzlejuice (another great word game app that we didn’t recommend for fear of word-game-geeking-you-out). SpellTower’s elegance and difficulty are the main draws, plus it offers multiple ways to play. (We prefer RUSH MODE. Our current high score is 10,679.)

Conversations under umbrellas
This combines a few pretty good things all at once. There’s this: it’s like sitting on a porch in the rain, since you get the joy of the pling-pling over your head but stay dry and alert; and this: it’s bound to be a chat with someone you like, else why would you even be out in the rain, right?; plus this: the awareness that you’re clearly about to part ways makes those final comments all the more meaningful, both of you getting the privacy you’d want even though you’re out there in public, since everyone else is scurrying to stay inside.

D by White Denim
If someone told you there’s such a thing as Prog-Pop, you’d say, “get the heck out of here!” because those two things don’t go together, except here they do in awesome ways. If you like hooks, grooves, and shifting time signatures (and who doesn’t?) White Denim is for you.

Rachel Getting Married
Who says we can’t recommend perhaps flawed four-year-old movies? Films don’t have to be perfect to be endorsed. And with June coming up and friends getting hitched, the title keeps ringing in our heads. Happy weddings, everyone.

Dexy’s Midnight Joggers
After spirited in-house debate over whether this or “Dexy’s Noontime Runners” was the better option, we’re giving this one away for the name of your next ’80s cover band. Just send us any YouTube links if you ever get a gig.

Bruce Springsteen’s keynote speech at SXSW
A pop music history lesson like no other. We love the parts about Elvis, Roy Orbison, Do-Wop and the changing landscape of American culture in the 50s and 60s. And his bit about how he ripped off the riff from The Animals’ “We Got to Get Of This Place” to write “Badlands” is wonderful too. Plus great stuff about Dylan and James Brown. Curtis Mayfield! The Sex Pistols! Hank Williams! Woody Guthrie! We could go on and on.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
John Green’s bestselling YA novel is a charm fest that never feels manipulative, even with its kids-with-cancer plot.

A ham sandwich on challah
Cognitive dissonance? Yep. Talmudic violation? We couldn’t say. Delicious lunchtime fare? You’re damn right it is.

A Sleep & A Forgetting by Islands
Sublime, catchy indie pop. We’ve had “In a Dream It Seemed Real” on repeat for the past week or so.

Sitting in the emergency exit row on an airplane
Sure, there’s the burden of potentially having to, you know, help people safely flee a wrecked airplane should a terrible disaster occur, but, oh the legroom! It’s like First Class-size legroom in the emergency exit aisles. This allows you to stretch out and enjoy your complimentary cup of water. We are enormous fans of legroom.

Bill Raftery
Our favorite college basketball analyst. With his trademark expressions (“And, Verne Lundquist, Kentucky comes out in the man-to-man,” “With a kiss!” “Onions!”) are broadcasting genius. He skillfully balances just the right amount of bombast and informed analysis. We only wish CBS teamed him with Sean McDonaugh and Jay Bilas. The three make the best announcing team in sports.

“Emmylou” by First Aid Kit
We’ve sung the praises of First Aid Kit before on this page but they’re worth mentioning again, particularly for this song off their new album, which references two of the greatest partnerships in country music to a sentimental and joyful result.

Snowless winters
Sure, 50 years from now when we’re all under water we might long for a blizzard or two like in the olden days, but not having to shovel or deal with the threat of slipping on an icy sidewalk has been sort of fantastic this year.

Key & Peele
A hilarious new sketch show on Comedy Central that smartly pokes fun at race, gender, and class.

Store bought egg whites
Yes, yes, they look like snot when poured from the carton, but egg whites soon fry up to an appetizing silky white puff. Add mushrooms, onions, braised spinach and some light cheese, and you have what we’ve been eating for breakfast the last month or so.

Watching an entire season of a TV show over the course of a long weekend
We did this with Homeland recently, watching all 12 episodes of its fantastic first season. Knowing that the entire arc of the season’s plot and subplots were just a click away helped make it all the more enthralling.

Liberty Ballers
The ultimate fan blog for Philadelphia 76ers fans, written with all the wit, neurosis, trepidation, cynicism and hope of a typical Philly sports fan.

Max Greenfield on The New Girl
Greenfield’s great timing and awkward swagger makes his character, Schmidt, easily the most likeable douche in prime time.

The Whore of Akron by Scott Raab
A wholly subjective chronicle of LeBron James’s final year with the Cavaliers and first season in South Beach that’s much more about Raab, a lifelong Cleveland fan, and former addict who invests all he has in his home city’s chances for an elusive major sports title. Profane, hilarious, and worth it for the insults to Art Modell alone.

W.E.L.D.E.R.
Word-based game apps are a dime a dozen and often redundant and derivative. While W.E.L.D.E.R could be accused of being the later (think Boggle + Tetris), it most certainly isn’t the former. Addictive, challenging and fun.

Jupiter
Look up at the sky tonight. Jupiter is that enormous, beautiful bright thing just below the Moon. Dazzling.

The Alabama Shakes
A 21st century band that pays tribute and, at the same time, expands on 1960s Muscle Shoals-era soul music. Ethereal stuff.

Slow cooking anything
We brought our slow cooker up from the basement a couple months ago. Hasn’t returned. Throw some meat, veggies, and herbs in the thing before you head out to work, then come home 8-9 hours later with a tasty dinner waiting for you.

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
For anyone currently struggling with their New Year’s resolutions, this book will help you understand why holding to them is so difficult (you need to train your willpower like it’s a muscle), while giving tips on how to see them through (diet and moderation, for starters).

Beginners
We’re late on this one having just seen it (a good six months after its release in theaters), but we’re hard pressed to name a more engaging and lovely film of 2011.

Waze
A crowd-sourced GPS app. Works like a charm. And it’s free!

Parenthood
We’re talking the TV show here, though the movie is also recommended. Created and run by the same team that was behind Friday Night Lights, you can see the similar DNA in the naturalism of the dialog. Not groundbreaking, just deeply satisfying television, which is worth a lot in our book.

Peanut butter cookies with mini M&M’s from Publix bakery
The overall quality of the in-store Publix baked goods is high, but these are the best. The cookie itself is moist and salty-sweet, when combined with the finishing chocolaty kick of the M&M’s makes for a gobbleable treat. Comes in a baker’s dozen package, which is nice.

Brad Listi’s Other People Podcast
There’s only like nine episodes as of this writing, but somehow this is good from the word go. It’s like listening to Marc Maron’s podcast, only with kickass writers, instead of comedians. Funny, pointed, thought-provoking. If there’s any justice in the world, this will become huge.

Embracing the new era of whistling in songs
No longer in the pale shadow of Andy Griffith or G’n’R’s “Patience,” we are over-blessed with a wonderment of these. From Alexander’s “Truth” to Andrew Bird (“Scythian Empire,” for one among many) to Wilco’s “Red Eyed and Blue” to we better stop or this’ll have to go over on the lists page, the whistle-as-instrument is once again effective and admired.

Roadside America, Shartlesville, PA
You will someday find yourself in central Pennsylvania, driving I-78 to find notice of “Roadside America: The World’s Greatest Indoor Miniature Village.” You will stop. You will enter. You will be wide-eyed, astonished by the intricacies and joyfulness of the very many little scenes set so carefully about this vast tiny world, not leaving, as instructed, until you witness the night pageant that runs every half hour. You will write to thank us.

The middle distance
Indisputably the best place to stare.

Revisiting Freaks and Geeks
We field-tested this. See if you can work it into an 18-24 month rotation. Wait for that one mid-season episode where Bill (Martin Starr) is eating grilled cheese and watching Garry Shandling. Revel in bliss.

Some revolutionary kind of ice cream container, a tub or box or firkin or whatever, but something where you don’t get the ice cream on your knuckles when you get the damn ice cream out
Invent this. Please.

The hand-written love letter
Some recommendations are self-evident, lord knows. But at least this one comes with the chance for a tender word, a thoughtful turn of phrase, an honest and living thanks for the affection of another, all embodied in the smudgy, organic handiwork of pen to crispy paper.

Revelator by Tedeschi Trucks Band
You could call it a supergroup since husband/wife Trucks and Tedeschi have had solo succes, except that you haven’t heard of most of these players because rather than being big-time famous, they’re just awesome. An amalgam of soul, funk, gospel, and blues and when the whole band is in the pocket, your breath will catch.

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Funny, charming, moving, and written with a deft touch. This book is worth your time.

The Hour
Much has been made of this BBC America show’s similarities to Mad Men, (the late 1950s setting, the ever-present cigarette smoking) but we find it’s the acting and storytelling that really compare. Consider us hooked.

Pitch
Our card game of choice this summer. Play against two others or work with a partner in a game of two-on-two. Add a deck or rooftop, some fru-fru drinks and chips and dip, and you have yourselves a party.

The Cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki
You’re right if you think this is a backdoor way to recommend Tree of Life. We don’t usually know our cinematographers from our best boys. But holy Jesus, the visual masterpiece of that movie, of Lubezki working with Malick, regardless of whatever else anyone might say of it, the aesthetics make you appreciate that we live in a time when such things are still possible, that such beauty is still there to be found and made. 

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
Fascinating and hilarious. This book will make you reexamine everyone you know—particularly the jerks.

“Changing” by The Airborne Toxic Event
Yes, yes, the song is minor-league Modest Mouse, but just the same, it’s three and a half minutes of fun, sunny, tap-the-steering-wheel indie pop.

Emma Stone
We are entirely, completely on this bandwagon. Charm, wit, character and all.

Describing a singer’s voice as “serrated”
A friend of ours recently used that word, so perfect, so right, before which we too thought it was solely applicable to knife teeth. Go back and listen to, oh try this one, John McCauley, the Deer Tick guy, and you’ll see. It isn’t gruff or gravelly or raspy, or whatever Pitchfork will go to. It’s serrated.

My New American Life by Francine Prose
A pretty sharp satire of the America we live in that also manages to engender a good bit of sympathy for the characters inside.

Bond: The Paris Sessions by Gerald Clayton
A young jazz pianist, who has some Mehldau and McPartland in him. The tunes map a wide swath, but he’s at his best when the whole trio attacks simultaneously, everybody swinging without getting in each other’s way.

These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
An oral history of ESPN filled with insider gossip and intrigue. Juicy and fascinating. If you are the sort of person who can and will watch the same SportsCenter three times in a row (and we are legion) this is a must read.

The Willow Rest in Gloucester, Massachusetts
Sandwiches. Order the sandwiches. You really can’t go wrong with any of them. The “Annisquam Delight” (turkey, brie, mixed greens, cranberry horseradish sauce and mayo)? Delightful! The “Riverdale” (black forest ham, swiss, lettuce, tomato and honey mustard)? Riverdance-able! “The Route 127” (tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil and drizzled with balsamic glaze)? Route-127-sational!

The Yale Digital Commons
Yale is the first Ivy League university to open its digital image archive to the public. The collection’s 250,000 “digital assets” include over 8,000 images of ancient globular bowls, 4,000 photographs of historical scientific instruments, 900 maps of Tanzania, and 20 paintings of donkeys.

Skiffle
Skiffle was a 1920s popular music genre with a jug-band ethos and roots in New Orleans jazz. Homemade instruments were essential to the skiffle sound, from comb-and-paper kazoos to cigar-box fiddles. The term disappeared from the American scene in the 1940s but returned in Britain with the 1950s folk revival.

John Goodman’s screen debut
It’s come to our attention that Goodman first appeared in a film called Jailbait Babysitter. IMDB sets the scene: “Vicki is seventeen and her older friends call her ‘Jailbait.’ Her boyfriend Robert is frustrated because Vicki doesn’t want to do the wild thing, but he’s willing to wait…” We’ll stop there. Thank god for Raising Arizona.

Electric Warrior by T. Rex
This is T. Rex’s best album, and we rank “Girl,” “Cosmic Dancer,” and “Life’s a Gas” as its standout tracks. We’ll never stop listening, no matter how many ridiculous stunts Marc Bolan is rumored to have pulled (we heard he named his son Rolan Bolan).

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Did we forget to mention how much we dig this novel? It won the Pulitzer Prize this year, sure, but for the record we loved it first.

Folkstreams.net
It’s a “National Preserve of Documentary Films About American Roots Cultures.” You can browse by subject (women, music, rural life) or region (Pacific Northwest, Appalachia, Southwest) and you’ll find over 150 instantly streamable films with titles like Sadobabies: Runaways in San Francisco; Fishing all My Days: Florida Shrimping Traditions; and I Ain’t Lying: Folktales from Mississippi.

My Korean Deli: How I Risked My Career and Mortgaged My Future for a Convenience Store by Ben Ryder Howe
A laugh-out-loud memoir by a former editor of The Paris Review that details his experience owning and operating a Korean Deli in Brooklyn with his wife and mother-in-law. This book is the very definition of delightful.

“Price Tag” by Jessie J
About as infectious as a pop song can get.

Richard Lawson’s American Idol recaps
It’s relatively easy to be snarky, especially when American Idol is concerned, but Lawson gets so much hilarious mileage out of the show that he raises the ubiquitous TV-recap genre to a new comic level.

Honey mustard
Put it on anything: sandwiches, seafood, pretzels. You won’t be disappointed.

The Patterns of Paper Monsters by Emma Rathbone
Rathbone’s narrator is a seventeen-year-old boy in a juvenile detention center. It will be called a coming-of-age story, good ole Bildungsroman, and it is. It’s also fun and funny (remember that books are entertaining, and possibly, in cases like this, more so than a movie?), with the author giving impressive attention and care to every paragraph.

Stove-top popcorn
It doesn’t really take any longer to cook than microwaved popcorn. Admittedly, we weren’t aware of that before. It also doesn’t have the god-knows-what chemicals of that microwave bag. Plus, more new information for us, it tastes all kinds of better.

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard
Some of you will be familiar with Ms. Pittard’s particular magic from the pages of our print journal. This is a stunning first novel told in the first person plural with devastating results.

Highway Rider by Brad Mehldau
Longtime readers of the Recommends recognize our general fondness for Mehldau, and here, he steps out of the comfort-zone of the trio and gives us a fully-realized album-length composition that leans heavily on the trio (with additions from Joshua Redman on sax) and a full orchestra on others. The album demands that you listen to the entire thing every time you play it.

Misfits
Another smart, crass, and captivating British dramedy about disaffected youth (see our rec of Skins below), but with a supernatural twist. Saying too much about it would risk ruining the show’s many surprises, so just watch the thing (all 13 episodes of its first two seasons are available for viewing on YouTube). You won’t be disappointed.

Early Girl Eatery in Asheville, NC
Unpretentious, fresh ingredients, great specials every day. The sweet potato scramble is especially recommended. After eating, wander down the street and around the corner to spend some time at Malaprops Books.

Full-stop.net
A recently launched website for endlessly insightful contemporary lit reviews and author interviews. From their “About” section: “Full Stop is a new site committed to an earnest, expansive, and rigorous discussion of literature and literary culture. Despite the popular critical sentiment that the ‘death of the novel’ is upon us, we submit that the opposite is true and refute the fatalism inherent in a narrative that threatens to ignore the diversity and quality of contemporary fiction.” A site after our own heart.

Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle”
We might’ve recommended any number of remarkable Redding hits, but this one—perhaps put in a playlist against The Black Crowes’s remake and thus shaming it—is top shelf. Hey, why not go big money, buy the whole posthumous The Immortal Otis Redding and revel.

The poetry of Wislawa Szymborska
She’s Polish, she’s a Nobel Prize winner, her poems are humane, grounded, and wise. We finally caught up with the octogenarian and her work. Apologies for the tardiness.

Abner Jay’s album One Man Band
Aber Jay was an eccentric ragtime-y multi-instrumentalist of recent (sadly postmortem) acclaim. On this album you’ll find songs about cocaine addiction, depression, Vietnam and venereal disease. You’ll also find jokes, plenty of them, sung and spoken, filthy and clean. An engrossing and sporadically deranged mosaic of earnest weariness and meandering humor.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
A funny, smart, and poignant time travel/existential crisis/father-son-themed novel.

Kranthout
It means “newspaper wood” in Dutch, and that’s what it is. It’s wood made from compressed newspaper (which, in case you’ve forgotten, is made from wood). It was designed by Mike Meijer for design company vj5 and it’s cheap, sustainable and crazy-looking, as you can still see bits and pieces of celebrity mugshots in the grain.

The chorus to Alan Jackson’s country hit “Chattahoochee”
This part of the song is about driving down to the river after the working week is over and drinking a lot of beers, so many beers that you can build a pyramid of empty cans, which you can only see by moonlight because you’re deep in the wildwood, on the far side of a threshold beyond which artificial light is forbidden to pass. Jackson’s got it right—the sun reflecting off the moon reflecting off your pyramid of silver cans is truly a miraculous thing.

The snowplow plowing snow toward the other side of your street
Out of our control, but when it happens, especially given all the snow this season, it’s like Christmas for our backs.

Lesbian bars
Jonathan Richman differentiates between lesbian bars and regular bars thusly: “In the first bar things were so controlled, but in this bar things were way way bold—I was dancing in a lesbian bar, ooh!”

TV shows inside TV shows
Think “Sick Sad World” from Daria and “Cookie Party” from The Sarah Silverman Program. I would like to see these fictional shows turned into real shows.

EnglishRussia.com
You have to get your browser dirty to uncover this site’s treasures, but they’re worth it. Consider the post “Creepy Children’s Playgrounds,” which features photos of horrifying, neglected Soviet-era play structures with captions like “Elephant addict,” “Sadistic inclinations,” “Mutated turnip,” “Decapitated monkeys,” “Sinister hare from a children’s camp,” and “Impious playground.”

Silent Light
An elegant, gentle film about a rural Mexican Mennonite who weighs lust and romance against lacerating guilt as he repeatedly betrays his faithful wife with another Mennonite woman. The perfectly restrained dialogue is spoken in both Spanish and Plautdeitsch, or Mennonite Low German.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
Roach has written yet another entertaining and witty science book, this one about the basic logistical problems of space travel (food, sleep, hygiene, waste). After reading the chapter on space toilets we have a new appreciation of what it means to be an astronaut and a hero.

Truffettes All Natural Chocolate Truffles
We’ve only see these at Costco, and even then mostly during the holiday season, but maybe they’re available elsewhere as well. Dusted in cocoa powder, the first taste is perfectly bitter followed by a melting sweet chocolate goodness. You’ll want to eat more than you should, but we don’t recommend that.

“Staring Out the Window” by Fulton Lights
A dazzling, churning, all-encompassing piece of indie pop.

La Maison en Petits Cubes
This one is better left recommended without overwrought commentary. Except to say that clearing your desk for a clean 12-minute time slot to google and then watch this animated Japanese short is about right.

The orange properties in Monopoly
We’ll go to our grave defending this Monopoly strategy. Obviously you buy St. James, Tennessee, and New York if given the chance. Low-investment, high return. But also make any deal necessary to secure this Orange trinity if some hack ends up buying them before you. Negotiate, trade, connive, whatever, just get them. So many people go to jail, there’s more traffic coming up that side of the board than others. Orange always wins the game.

RSA animated lectures
These are something else. The RSA is the London-based Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. These animated lectures are visual companions to fuller lectures hosted by the RSA. So, you know, you don’t have to be a David Harvey acolyte or a Slavoj Zizek student to keep up.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
About as highbrow as a third-person action and adventure video game can get. Set in early 16th-century Italy (mostly), you walk the streets and hop the roofs of Rome, trying to take the city back from the evil control of the Templars. There’s plenty of killing to do, but we instead often find ourselves collecting famous artwork or climbing towers for grandiose views of the city. Oh, and Leonardo da Vinci is your best pal!

Rikki Ililonga
The so-called “godfather” of Zam-rock, Zambian funk rock that first came of age in the 70’s. It’s funky, it’s bright, it’s joyful. It’s available in a box set from NowAgain Records, but Ililonga solo, and with his band, Musi-O-Tunya.

Skins
This British TV show is like a cross between Freaks and Geeks and American Pie. It’s not perfect (the adults are cartoonish and the storylines occasionally fall victim to melodrama), but every episode we’ve seen so far (Netflix streaming!) has at least one or two “wow” moments.

Baker’s boxes
Use these for just about any delivery. Those white boxes, with brown unbleached interior. A thin string or solid-colored ribbon to tie it all up is okay, but we’re surprised it took us this long to realize that the sharp simplicity of un-paper-wrapped boxes has an elegance we usually can’t pull off.

You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin
This is a smart book. Baldwin, co-editor of The Morning News, tells a love story, a loss story, a meditation on memory and marriage and the mind and science. It works. Plus, it helps our larger argument that this is a great year for first novels. Holiday shopping should be pretty easy this time around. Deliver it in a small baker’s box, why not?

Trader Joe’s Trader Potato Tots
We know: it’s hard to ruin a tater tot. We still fondly remember the ones our school’s cafeteria dished out in the 4th grade. With that said, Trader Joe’s Potato Tots are kind of special. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, and not too salty. Load ’em up with ketchup, or dazzle ’em with vinegar. Recess time!

Acknowledging the new reign of British comedians
Listen, we’re right there with you a little crook-eyed on the overuse of the adjective “silly,” but don’t let that obscure the brilliant level of English and Scottish comedy in our day. Gervais, Coogan, Iannucci, Chris Morris, Susan Boyle, the list goes on.

The Imposter’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell
A graphic memoir about the author’s sordid relationship with her con-man father. Heartfelt and honest. What every memoir should be.

Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky
When you pick up this book, make sure you’ve left yourself enough time to read it in its entirety because there’s no putting it down. The most seductive first person narration we’ve read in a long time.

Not getting worked up about raking
Just let it go. Does the yard need to be raked? Sure. Does it need to be raked right now? No. In the meantime the leaves will keep falling. And that’s OK. You’ll get to them eventually.

Sherlock
This BBC revamp of Sherlock Holmes, set in the present day, is a lot of fun. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman make for a decidedly more manic, yet less stuffy version of Holmes and Watson.

Brian Wilson, San Francisco Giants’ Closer
His pitching is solid and his dyed beard is perfectly ridiculous, but the sense of humor he displays during post-game interviews is what we like best. His comic delivery and timing are Ferrell-esque.

Kurt Cobain: About a Son
The thought of listening to a teenage idol talk for 100 minutes about what makes him angsty, sounds excruciating embarrassing for everyone involved. But for all his flaws, Kurt comes across well and his frustrations with the world are still real and valid. It was moving enough to get us rifling though our dust-gathering CD collection for Bleach.

Buying new duvet covers
Is sleeping becoming a monotonous bore? Are you waking up feeling like you’ve achieved absolutely nothing? Maybe it’s time to change your duvet cover! We picked up something bright and jazzy-patterned and it’s like being in a whole new home. Alternatively, try sleeping with your head at the feet-end for a night—it feels oddly like camping.

The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter
The best novel of the financial meltdown was published over a year ago (as of this writing), a testament to Walter’s clear-eyed view of who we are and how we live today. That he manages to mine humor and light verse from the ashes of our economy is even more amazing.

NFL RedZone
Six hours of pro football with no commercials. Hard to beat. Granted, if you are fan of commercials and not of football, the RedZone probably isn’t for you. Otherwise, it’s totally worth the extra eight bucks a month.

Graham cracker crust
What doesn’t it make better?

Mentor by Tom Grimes
A kind of memoir of Grimes’ time at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and his ensuing friendship with the workshop’s director, Frank Conroy. The dynamic between these two is fascinating, but for our money, the best bits are about Grimes’ own journey to publication and beyond.

The Black Stallion
We recently watch this film for the first time in nearly 30 years and were pleased by how well it holds hope. What struck us even more was the performance by Cass-Olé as the title character. Considering what this poor animal had to do (freak out in a fire; swim in the ocean; hangout with Mickey Rooney—who, we should add, is also great in the film), we can’t help but wonder why Cass-Olé didn’t get some some sort of Oscar for his work.

The Report by Jessica Francis Kane
A well-paced, flowing, accumulating novel, this one could be called historical fiction—it’s a fictionalized account of a real 1943 wartime disaster in a London shelter—which would be okay. But friend-of-the-site Kane’s brisk book is a great deal more, a subtle meditation on memory and inquiry, family, reckoning, and, yes, truth. Plus, check out the design element inside the cover flaps, a nice added touch for a well-realized first novel.

Leaving the tofu on some paper towels to soak up some excess moisture
Maybe this is totally known within the tofu cooking industry, but it was news to us and it makes the end result way, way better.

“Remembrance Day” by Frally (feat. Teddy Thompson)
First heard this haunting, beautiful song on Friday Night Lights, during that terrific scene where Riggins brings Becky over to the Taylor’s house and she tells Connie that she’s pregnant, and if we go on about this any longer we will get teary so we’ll stop.

Hosting a ‘70s-themed disco party for your spouse’s birthday
Yes, it may be a little cliché, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Seeing all your friends decked out in ’70s fashion and dancing to the music of Chic is a, uh, trip, man. Dig it.

Flight Control
This is an iPhone game where you try to keep a whole bunch of places from crashing into one another at various airports while a pleasant, Lawrence Welk-like music plays in the background. There’s not much more to it than that, yet we keep playing and playing and playing.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Long, totally involving novel set in a prestigious preparatory academy. Somehow Murray makes his title a spoiler and still keeps you edge-of-the-seat-eager to find out what’s next. Heartbreaking, funny, worth every moment spent.

Limoncello
It’s liquore di limoni, made from sugar, water, lemons, and grain alcohol—sorry, zucchero, acqua, limoni, and alcool. You generally get this from southern Italy and it comes in small, decorative glass bottles. Keep it frozen and have a taste upon occasion. The lemon zest is so perfect against the almost-thick, not-frozen-but-cold alcohol. Not to be outdone by foretaste alone, it comes with a delightful, tiny kick right after.

Storycorp’s animated stories
The Rauch Brothers have animated several installments of NPR’s much-loved Storycorp series, which will be featured on the PBS documentary program POV over the next couple of weeks. The audio is powerful enough alone and we worried adding visuals might lessen their effect, but thus far the two shorts we’ve seen, Q & A, and the tearjerker to end all tearjerkers, Danny and Annie, are pretty much perfect.

Mason Jars as drinking glasses
Didn’t you know these make beverages taste better? How about some limencello blend to test it out?

The trailer for Nights and Weekends
This is one of those Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig movies, the so-dubbed “Mumblecore” genre that’s all afoot (but without any Duplass Brothers). The trailer is silent and stirring, rightly layered and compelling, a smart short film right there. Some might argue better than the movie. We’re not going out on that ledge, but odds are some might.

hungoverowls.tumblr.com
A website featuring photographs of owls who appear hungover. If that’s not sufficient enough information to make you follow our recommendation then we’re afraid we cannot help you.

“South Dakota” by Magic Man
An ethereal electronic anthem that sounds like the past, present and future all at once.

Rubicon
AMC’s new political/conspiracy theory drama is very slow, and the lighting in most of its scenes is very dim, so we don’t even bother trying to watch the program at its regular time at 9 p.m. on Sunday night. No, we prefer viewing it during the daytime hours when there’s less of a chance of a sleep attack. So why bother recommending it? Well, it’s clearly a well-constructed story in the same mold as other novel-as-television shows, like The Wire and Mad Men. _Rubicon_’s ad campaign keeps beckoning us to “connect the dots” and now that a few said dots have started to connect (at last!), we are confident that we’re being taken on, what will be in the end, a smart and satisfying ride.

“Loin du 16e,” from the film Paris, je t’aime
In an eminently recommendable movie made up of eighteen short films, this one—the fifth one in—distills modern class consciousness, or lack thereof, in just a few minutes with a nanny, a baby, an immigrant against the image of privilege, the privilege itself, and then that city, Paris, France.

Sporcle
Online user-generated trivia games on every subject imaginable. Don’t go unless you’re prepared to waste an afternoon.

The clever soccer jargon used by British and Scottish announcers during the World Cup
Our two favorites: question, for when one team or player makes a strong play against the opponent, as in, “Messi has a rather pointed question for the South Korean defenders”; and collector’s item, as in, “David Villa’s wonderful goal is certainly a collector’s item.”

Stoner by John Williams
A relatively recent reissue of a novel first published in the ‘60s. Tells the life story of William Stoner, a professor of English at the University of Missouri during a period roughly between WWI and WWII. Quiet and powerful and haunting long after you’ve finished it.

Day & Night
This animated short appears before Toy Story 3. While the main feature is another satisfying romp with Woody, Buzz, et al., Day & Night has lingered with us far longer after viewing. It’s everything we’ve come to expect from Pixar: funny, poignant, and beautiful—and in just five minutes, no less.

Capturing your nine-year-old’s game-winning home run on video
Yes, there’s the issue with all the hours of wasted video on base on balls, strikeouts, and pop ups to first base, but our resilience won out in the end. The 58-second clip is an instant family treasure.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
There’s a lot of outstanding literature on the subject of the Vietnam War. This book belongs in that group.

Open-mic stories told by ex-cops
We may be living in a golden age of podcasted open-mic stories. Some of the better of them, like The Moth—hosted by our friend Dan Kennedy—set the pace here. Look for the ones featuring stories by ex-cops. It seems they never let you down.

The series finale of LOST
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. When Vincent showed up there at the end, a smoke monster of tears came streaming down our faces.

Rajon Rondo
A point guard who thinks pass first. Imagine that. Nevermind that he can’t really shoot, Rondo is unlike any player in the NBA. He’s redefining what it means to be a playmaker.

First Aid Kit’s The Big Black & the Blue
This Swedish teenage folk duo (and already we fear we’ve lost you, but please stick with us here) wears their inspiration on their guitar and mandolin straps, so yes, they can, at times, be the very picture of derivativeness. Still, for anybody who loves the McGarrigle Sisters or Joni Mitchell or Neko Case, we happily recommend them. Start with “Hard Believer” and “I Met Up with the King”. Each is a strong candidate for our favorite song of the year thus far.

Red Dead Redemption
This video game is for anybody who ever wanted to feel what it would be like to be immersed in a Sergio Leone western. We would play this all day long if we could.

TiltShift Maker
It’s a photo-manipulating website, tiltshiftmaker.com. The site’s particularly good if you want to make your backyard pictures look like scenes from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Which you might. We don’t judge.

Check it Out! With Steve Brule
John C. Reilly’s blitzed out local-TV-news doctor has always been our favorite character on the also worth recommending Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Now he has 15 minutes all to himself, and so far he has not disappointed. For your health!

$9.99
This is a stop-action animation film directed by Tatia Rosenthal, based on stories by Etgar Keret. It may be uneven, but somewhere later in the film is this line, one that makes the whole thing worthwhile: “He said he was an angel, but he was just a liar with wings.”

Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne
Teddy is one of our most frequent contributors so take this with as much salt as you like, which shouldn’t be any because this novel is flat out top-notch. Kapitoil makes you see America and the English language more clearly than ever before, and Karim Issar, the book’s protagonist, is one of the most interesting characters we’ve had a chance to spend time with.

12 Bones Smokehouse in Asheville, NC
President Obama went here, but we went first. The blueberry chipotle ribs and fried green tomato BLT are especially recommended.

Taking a break from listening to sports talk radio
Highly recommended. Makes your brain feel fresh and new. Clean, even. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re not subjecting yourself to overheated arguments about batting orders, coaching mistakes, and ridiculous trade scenarios. Plus no more nine-minute commercial breaks!

Hot Springs by Geoffrey Becker
Tin House is not so quietly putting out some awesome fiction and this is yet another example. Emotionally complicated, funny, page turning.

Survivor Heroes vs. Villains
We’re late to mention it (the finale airs in a few days), but without question this has been one of the most entertaining seasons of this “granddaddy” of reality television programs. While we’re still mourning Boston Rob’s early ouster (sigh), we have our fingers crossed that somebody figures out how to keep Russell away from an immunity idol long enough to finally (finally!) vote him out (please let it be Sandra!).

Lobelia
We’ve grown this annual flower in our garden the past few years now. Pretty! Its tiny petals come in blues and purples, and other Miami Vice-ish shades, but best of all it’s really, really hard to kill.

So Much for That by Lionel Shriver
The great thing about Shriver is that her novels are filled with ideas, but not at the expense of compelling characters and a gripping story. Could be the first novel ever about the American health care system. If it’s not the first, we have a hard time imagining a better one.

Going to a Major League Baseball game early for batting practice
We did this for the first time in ages last week. Not only do you greatly increase your chances of catching a souvenir foul ball or homerun (bring your glove), but the concession lines are nonexistent, so you don’t have to wait forever for your hot dog, beer, and Crackerjacks.

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas
This is a German translation of a novel written in the form of an interview about a book called The Weather Fifteen Years Ago. The interviewer and the interviewee, “Wolf Haas,” discuss the intricacies of the book, so that we, the readers, only know what it is through their conversation. Yes, it’s experimental fiction. And yes, it works.

Clarke Peters on HBO’s Treme
We’re slowly warming to David Simon’s new show, which is set in New Orleans three months after Hurricane Katrina. While we knew it wasn’t going to be another version of Simon’s previous show, The Wire, it’s taking time to adjust to Treme’s different moods and rhythms. The cast, though, is terrific. The standout performance is Clarke Peters’ portrayal of an Indian Mardi Gras Chief who’s returned home to pick up the pieces. A part of us thinks the show would really hit its stride if it narrowed its focus a bit more on him. Peters is a brilliant enough actor to pull it off.

The films of Ramin Bharani
These are artful but unpretentious, deliberate but not grandiose. Goodbye Solo received much deserved acclaim, but even Chop Shop before that, with its understated thoughtfulness, makes it clear Bharani has a gift.

Getting together for breakfast
Meeting people for breakfast solves two problems at once: it gets you out of the house and it forces you to hone your biscuit v. toast decision-making skills.

Daytrotter’s iPhone App
All of Daytrotter.com’s (the website for Illinois-based recording studio Horseshack) wonderful music archive in your pocket. Best of all: it’s free!

Meanwhile by Jason Shiga
An at times perplexing but in the end captivating and fun (children’s?) graphic novel. A sort of Choose Your Own Adventure book for the new millennium, except with way better illustrations.

Drunk History
It’s time. It’s okay, it’s time. Trying to summarize what this Derek Waters-created set of shorts is, we can’t really do. Here’s what we can offer, though: the view that it’s worth devoting one of your thrice-weekly YouTube outings to the run of them. (Then try Muppet Show clips to cleanse your eyes.)

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
Lipsyte’s first novel since Home Land is just as funny and despairing as its predecessor. All the positive buzz about this book is deserved.

The Gus Johnson Soundboard (www.gusjohnsongetsbuckets.com)
Just in time for March Madness comes this audio clip collection of our favorite sports announcer’s classic lines. Yes, he can be more than a tad over the top, but his enthusiasm for the events he covers is endearingly authentic. We’ve pressed his “The slipper still fits!” clip thirteen times in the last ten seconds.

Cornell’s men’s basketball team
While we’re on the topic of Cinderella’s slipper, we can’t go without mentioning one of this year’s surprise success stories of the NCAA tournament. For those who have followed this squad (which includes eight seniors who all live together off campus and watch episodes of Friday Night Lights for added inspiration before games), their rise into the Sweet Sixteen is not really that surprising. The Big Red have what every great tournament team must have to win it all: veteran leadership, a poised point guard, great shooters, and a 7-foot center. They play #1 seed Kentucky next, an exciting team with more talent, but not nearly as much experience. We can’t wait.

Justified
This is based on only seeing the pilot episode, but this FX series looks to be awesome. Great action. Fantastic dialog. The pilot does something rarely seen in television these days, which is let two characters have an extended scene where different subtexts weave in and out of the conversation. Plus, Timothy Olyphant.

Next by James Hynes
Hynes is a flat out great writer and this is his best book yet. Wholly absorbing. The end will make you not want to read anything else for a while so you can just let it echo through you.

The kitchen in The Good Wife
The show’s plot is too often a Law and Order rehash, but the backsplash is to die for.

Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back
This is an album of covers arranged for chamber musicians and sung by Gabriel. You get the sense that Gabriel’s range has narrowed over the years, but there’s a beautiful sadness/melancholy to the vocal tones that is also uplifting to hear.

The Farm and Garden section of Craigslist
Seeds, chickens, chicken coops, tomatoes, peppers, bricks, cow shares, ropes, fresh produce, garden plots, dirt, rain barrels, hay, Japanese maples, wood stoves, definitely something made by Husqvarna, mulch, a Palomino or Arabian or Walker, grass, straw bales, a Scott push mower that’s a whole lot heavier than you’d think, pasture-raised pork, man, there’s crazy good stuff to be had, at least around us. Try it out.

Angry Birds
If we haven’t been very productive as of late, this dangerously addictive and entertaining game for the iPhone is probably to blame.

Tommy Craggs, sportswriter
Currently something of the token in-depth analysis and meta-sports journalism guy at Deadspin.com, though he’s also had great material elsewhere. He was twice in Best American Sports Writing before he turned thirty, and his most recent non-Deadspin piece, for Boston magazine about Dustin Pedroia, was somewhat infamous.

Saving a lucky chestnut
Ages well, appears plausibly powerful.

Stopping at a scenic overview to take in the scene
We’re not as jaded as you think. Some of those overviews are pretty damn scenic.

Doritos
Not all the time, and not Cool Ranch, but most people would probably be happier if they ate at least a single Dorito per year. Don’t be a hero.

Charlie Brooker of the BBC
Take a spin around YouTube and see how this guy strikes you. His show Newswipe is worth a look. We’re not over the moon about him and haven’t gone much past the YouTube versions yet, but we’re near the moon, or going to the moon, or, what’s a good metaphor here, taking a longer look at the moon, about him.

Pesto anything
Pesto pizza, pesto wraps, a pesto omelet, pesto biscuits, pesto on pesto, you can’t go wrong.

Model Home by Eric Puchner
The only conclusion to come to after reading this novel is that Eric Puchner is a massive talent who has already hit his stride and it’s great to realize that he’s got a lot more books in front of him. The story of one family dissolving, and then trying to come back together against the backdrop of ’80s California. Funny and sad, each character is perfectly drawn and deeply interesting. Go read this book.

Fiber
Also known as “fibre.” Doesn’t seem like that big a deal when you’re young, but as you age, for sure, make sure to ingest a healthy daily allowance.

Alberta Cross’s Broken Side of Time
Sort of like an alt-rock version of The Band. Also kind of Gomez-ish. Not necessarily earth-shattering, but we’ve kept going back to it over the course of the last few weeks and it feels fresh each time.

@mrdavehill
The Twitter feed of comedian/musican Dave Hill. He’s always"on," and by that we mean “hilarious.” We admit to be being a little bitter and jealous about this.

Playing Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” on Rock Band with your family
This ‘70s rock classic’s stature had faded a bit for us, largely due to overexposure. But recently it’s come back into favor—through the magic of video games, no less. It’s the quintessential Rock Band song. We suggest youngest child on drums, oldest child on bass, less-musically-inclined parent on guitar, and more-musically-inclined parent on vocals. Five stars and new gigs in Amsterdam, here we come!

Chicken sandwiches
We used to think that when it came to bird-based deli meats, chicken was like the poor, sad cousin of turkey. We blame the power of Thanksgiving propaganda. Get chicken breast instead of turkey breast next time you pop by the deli. It’s tender, more flavorful, and, if properly wrapped, lasts a little longer in the fridge.

Sade’s Soldier of Love
When listening to Sade’s first album in ten years we can’t decide whether we want to make out or take a nice long nap. Either way, we love it.

In the Loop
The funniest movie we’ve seen in years.

“I Make Windows” by Forest Fire
For a rainy day when there’s nothing to eat but toast, and all you want to do is play your twangy guitar along to this song, but you never learned how to play guitar, twangy or otherwise, so instead you just stare out the window, strumming on a wooden spoon, pretending. So many wet squirrels. Oh, will the sun ever return?

Half-caf coffee
It isn’t a compromise, it’s a blessing. It allows the most flexibility. You tamp down the jitters but leave the opportunity to amp up if need be. Put yourself right in the middle, look both ways, reap the rewards.

The Human Spark
This Alan Alda-hosted three-part series on the nature of human uniqueness ended last week, but it’s worth your time to check out its rebroadcasts on PBS. As with his prior series, Scientific American Frontiers, Alda is the star of the show. But he’s not some famous actor simply running through the motions, he’s fully immersed and invested in the subject matter, and his enthusiasm charms. Plus learning how we are different from chimps is cool, too.

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt’s “Here Comes Your Man” in (500) Days of Summer
Spot on, that was it. The whole movie, that too, we were smitten. But karaoke of The Pixies stellar work, set rightly amidst the plot, sung in the right spirit, that was good.

Getting a window seat on the red eye flight
There are risks to this, known risks, but the benefits outweigh them. You have the wall to lean against, you have the view of lights below (should you want them to mark the journey), you don’t get your knee knocked by the inexplicable 4 a.m. coffee cart run down the aisle that a row seat will get you. There’s just no chance of sleeping otherwise. Of course, fly first class and all recommendations are off. But live like us and rue the day you get the aisle or, lord help you, the center seat.

Charles Pierce’s blog on Boston.com
For a long time Pierce has been our favorite sports writer. And now he has a blog, which thus far he’s been updating at a pretty high clip. We are giddy about this. http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/pierce/

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Got some mixed reviews when it came out. Only the ones that said how absorbing and charming this is are right.

Vampire Weekend’s Contra
Sure, sure, roll your eyes. Of course we’d recommend Vampire Weekend. Of course! You’re so smart. At any rate, their new album was released this week and we’ve been listening to nothing else. Paul Simon references be damned—this is fun, engaging music. (And for the record: we will always love Graceland.)

Tomatillo Salsa
Typical story: boy meets salsa; boy doesn’t try salsa because it’s green; girl tells boy that green salsa is “actually really good, don’t be dim”; boy listens; tomatillo salsa changes his outlook on life. It’s green. It’s superior.

In Treatment
At first, you start watching this show, two people talking in therapy sessions, one of whom is always played by Gabriel Byrne (the therapist) and think, there’s no way this could be consistently engaging, but damn if it doesn’t suck you in. Originally broadcast on consecutive nights, this seems the best way to watch it, each episode on top of each other to better catch the nuances in the telling from character to character. We’ve only watched the first season, so we can’t vouch for season two, but we suspect it’s pretty damn good as well. We’ll let you know if it isn’t.

“The Waking” by Kurt Elling
Contemporary jazz vocals are not usually our thing with all that scoobie-dooing and bip-boddle-be-bopping, but this is an amazing song. The lyric is taken from a Theodore Roethke poem of the same name and arranged for voice and stand-up bass. Elling’s voice is amazing, the melody completely haunting. We like to put it on and listen to it over and over.

Napping in the park
Like a beer at lunch (see below), this one comes with the qualifier that more is not better and that you have to pick your park smartly. But sometimes, once or twice a season, sometimes, putting out a blanket on the park grass and dozing for 45 minutes in open space, that’s alright, that works, that’s the promise of a better America.

Buying holiday presents for strangers
Adopt a family in need this year instead of giving presents to your relatives that you aren’t sure you even like. You won’t even miss the Sharper Image toothbrush.

A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
A domestic drama that somehow also reads like a mystery. Involving at every level: character, plot, language. One of the more complicated portraits of a father’s love for his son we’ve ever read. Obviously everything on this page is recommended, but this one is highly recommended.

Out of Place
This documentary chronicles the few Cleveland crackshot surfers and outlanders that find solace in surfing on Lake Erie in the dead of an Ohio winter. You may want to discount their irrational and dangerous efforts; but these super heroes of the Northeast know something we don’t. It’ll make you homesick for the true blue and the earnest.

A beer at lunch, just every once in a while
Have a lager, no an ale, no no: a lager. Every once in a while. It adds character to your meal and definition to your day. Try it at a sunlit table away from the bar and looking out to the corner intersection. Take a gentle sip when you see that woman with the stroller cross the street. Set it down and grab another forkful of salad, another bite of pickle-topped burger, another ketchup-dipped fry.

Featherproof Books
They make normal (i.e. really great) books too, but it’s Featherproof’s mini books that have our imaginations cooking. It’s short stories + origami. Or, if we were writing a Wall Street Journal piece: They’re a publisher who crowd-sources their printing and binding!

Making a mixtape/CD for your dad
He will actually listen to it. And lord knows, you are sick of driving around to “Ramble On.” It is time to put the Led away.

Grizzly Bear’s version of “While You Wait for the Others” featuring Michael McDonald
We understand that this iteration of the song originally on Veckatimist is polarizing, but there’s something about McDonald’s vocals that just take this song to another, wholly enjoyable, place.

Grilled Cheese with Chutney
Can we recommend something we’ve never actually tried? We just think it might taste good. We are probably right. Yes, absolutely right.

Glee
There’s a temptation to break bad on this because it’s become such a critical darling, but the show is every bit as funny and charming as everyone says.

Them Crooked Vultures
Supergroup of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters), and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin). Described aptly as “caveman rock,” but Grohl and Jones still give the music plenty of swing.

The large bin of butter, cheese, and caramel popcorn the in-laws send us every year during the holidays
Our bin came early this year. It’s still just as enormous and delicious as ever. We have the five extra pounds of back fat to prove it.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain by William Kotzwinkle
A Maine bear finds a manuscript under a tree and becomes a publishing sensation. Satire that’s sharp without being mean.

Rick Moody’s essay on “Higher Love”
A superb examination of a truly dreadful song. The reader comments are great too. http://therumpus.net/2009/11/swinging-modern-sounds-17-higher-love/

30 For 30
These ESPN sports documentaries produced to celebrate the network’s 30 years of broadcasting have been up and down, but the ups, like Albert Maysles’ brilliant Muhammad and Larry, have been enthralling.

The Hunnies
This recently defunct Austin group spangles as much as it is smokes. Their best track is a grimy ballad entitled, “Calm Before the Storm.” The lead singer has the heart of Charlie Brown, the voice of a parking lot raven, and likely the body of Paul Bunyan. The Hunnies howl with the soul-crushing anguish of a hundred horribly brutalized Romeos. And so we ask, what’s not to want?

Lilliput Jewelry
A tiny designer, aptly named Lilliput, who designs even tinier necklaces is aptly named We are a fan of minutiae and an even bigger fan of anything miniature (muffins, dogs, etc.) Things that are smaller than a thimble or happen to be a choking hazard cannot be beat. Lilliput’s necklaces make Barbie’s hands look like hulk fists. Dreamy!

Psych
We are so tired of being teased about loving this show. It’s great. The jokes are solid and the actors (Dulé Hill and James Roday) are Tiger Beat material. Maybe we’re being middle-aged Midwesterners about this and maybe we are middle-aged Midwesterners, but this show has chops. And we know that you totally TiVo’d that marathon of The Closer so can it already. And give Roday an Emmy, for God’s sake.

Brown wax paper
It’s very versatile. It’s always there and has always been so. It’s better than plastic. You get the workaday feel when you unwrap that sandwich. We found this, too: it’s superior for wrapping cookies and slices of apple bread and the like.

Moments by Will Hoffman
We recommended WNYC’s Radiolab not too long ago (see below). Now comes this, a four-minute film by Will Hoffman hosted over at the Radiolab blog. Better to leave our recommendation unadorned and withhold the effusion it deserves. Instead we gently insist/forcibly suggest you experience the joy of watching the film. Go, go on. Watch. We’ll wait.

Edith Zimmerman
Watch out for this lady. She’s got funny down to science and she’s taking over the Internet, one hilarious article at a time. Her recent piece called, “How To MakeYour Husband a Nice Dinner” pleased us to no end. Keep writing, Ms. Zimmerman. We want more.

Parks and Recreation
This show has finally hit its stride. Yes, the constant comparisons to The Office (which is also having a stellar season) are justified, but to dismiss Parks and Recreation as a retread is unfair. The cast is great (Nick Offerman, as grumpy boss Ron Swanson by day and sexy jazz saxophonist extraordinaire Duke Silver by night, is a particular favorite) and the writing is getting funnier with each new episode.

EverythingIsTerrible.com
We feel a little funny recommending a website that prides itself on showcasing all things terrible, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t check it out daily. With adept and hilarious editing, EIT proves that there is art in everything, be it a bad infomercial, music video or B-movie. Watch “All Things Beanie” if you don’t believe us.

Frozen mini-pancakes
Doesn’t matter what brand. A frozen pancake is a frozen pancake is a frozen pancake. But as frozen breakfast items go, they are the best. Almost smell like the real thing too. Highly recommended for sleepy parents looking to make a fast and easy breakfast for their cranky first graders. Just remember to turn off the toaster oven!

“Holland, 1945” by Neutral Milk Hotel
It’s hard to believe this song is over ten-years-old. Still just as great and sad and glorious as ever. Also relevant again given the new footage of Anne Frank that’s popped up.

Funny People
This movie was unjustly dismissed. It maybe isn’t the best film Judd Apatow is going to make, but it’s very very good.

The Miami Dolphins’ Wildcat Offense
There are many who think this offensive formation is a slap in the face to “real” football, but if our memory of The Knute Rockne Story serves us correctly, Wildcat-type offenses were quite the norm back in the day. And what style of football is more “real” than Knute Rockne’s? What makes the Dolphins’ system all the more impressive is that other teams can’t seem to replicate the Wildcat with the same proficiency, never mind that most defensive coordinators can’t figure out how to stop it. For the first time in years pro football is fresh and exciting.

The Beatles: Rock Band
No surprise that it’s awesome because the music is so damn good. “Easier” than traditional Rock Band, but unlike other play-along music games, The Beatles: Rock Band invites attempts at “perfection” as opposed to mere survival. Almost as much fun to just sit and watch and listen to as to play. Now it’s time for Led Zeppelin: Rock Band.

Trader Joe’s Gummi Vites
The perfect dietary supplement for the child who only eats bananas and grilled cheese sandwiches. They’re loaded with vitamins and taste just like Gummi Bears. Way to go, food science!

“Hi-Fi Goon” by Throw Me the Statue
Don’t ask us to recite the lyrics—we haven’t a clue—but who really cares? Our fingers and toes can’t stop tapping. This is happy music. We think so, at least. (Again, most of the lyrics are beyond us.) There’s an elephant in the video. What’s happier than elephants?

Squash
Butternut, Acorn, it doesn’t really matter the variety. Halve it, roast it face down in a pan of butter, salt liberally, and you’ve got a meal.

Adventureland
A movie that probably suffered from the marketing campaign trumpeting the director’s previous hit, (Superbad). Best coming-of-age film we’ve seen in years.

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
Spare and unsparing memoir about his daughter’s first bipolar episode. Has an “I can’t believe he’s saying this” feel that speaks to Greenberg’s fearlessness as a writer.

Lapham’s Quarterly
If we sat around lamenting about all the book or magazine ideas we wished we’d thought of, this one would be tops. We should pick huge topics; topics that intimidate us with all their possibilities—we would’ve said had we thought of this—and then we’ll compile all the best writing on these topics going back to ancient times. Then we’ll add some amazing contemporary writers and make it all one huge narrative spanning the breadth of human existence. And we’ll do this every three months.

Coronating the poppyseed bagel
For it truly is the king of all bagels.

Geneva Carr
We only know Ms. Carr’s work from her performances as the mother in those AT&T rollover minute commercials, but if this role were the only one of her career, she would still be worthy of high praise. She is the master of the exasperated-mom glare.

Real Estate Intervention
Mike Aubrey hosts this reality/real estate show on HGTV. He’s the assistant principal we loathed but secretly knew was always right. We need discipline, and he gives us what for with his resigned posture and disappointed eyes.

End of summer letters from your teacher
As children, we may have been guilty of taking the annual letters we received from our upcoming teachers for granted. But now, as parents, we look forward to them with the same excitement and anticipation as we do the Oscars or cake. The letters are so chock full of reassurance and optimism that you can’t help but think that this upcoming grade will surely be the BEST GRADE EVER.

The Sound of Young America podcast
This is the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world. We feel better after an episode. The fact that we just found it and that they have an immense back catalog bodes well for everyone.

Nellie McKay
She’s smarter than us. And more creative. And her songs are crazy.

True Blood
All right, we surrender. We resisted this HBO vampire soap for as long as we could, and after viewing the first few episodes of season one it seemed for good reason. But now, well into season two of the show, it’s become one of television’s most ridiculously fun hours of programming.

“The Reeling” by Passion Pit
We worry that we are too old to like this record, but they are from one of our hometowns and, well, have you seen the video? It’s beyond neat. So, like: kids today, right?

Blueberries
The perfect food. Don’t bother arguing with us on this one.

Louis Theroux
Theroux hosted one of our favorite shows in the last ten years (Weird Weekends with Louis Theroux) and it’s good to see him back. He’s producing hour-long documentaries for the BBC (many are available online). Theroux (the son of author Paul and the cousin of actor Justin) is quite likeable, and his disarming interview style puts his subjects at ease, be they drug lords, cultists or white supremacists.

I Love Movies, with Doug Benson
You don’t have to love movies like Doug Benson loves movies to dig this podcast. But if you do, you’ll go from Foul Play to Woody Allen to Reality Bites in a matter of a few conversations (with anyone from Patton Oswalt to David Cross to Sarah Silverman to new comedians we’re glad to have met).

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.
Awhile back we recommended Currie’s story collection, God Is Dead, and now we have a novel from him that is being justifiably hailed as Vonnegut-esque, or Vonnegut-ish, which, while apt, is an unsatisfactory shorthand that doesn’t give full credit to Currie’s own unique vision.

Bringing a full-on garden shovel to the beach
If you’re heading to the sand, and at least one in your party is under 9, then you’re making a sand castle. Bring a real shovel. Square-headed are best, but no matter, stop dicking around with the little plastic ones. You’d be surprised how few come prepared, and how many want to borrow yours.

Radiolab
This irregularly occurring radio program from WNYC is a sort of This American Life for science. The show is always informative and engaging. If only we found science this much fun in high school.

“Push and Shove” by The Sub-Dudes
It’s hard to believe that this song off the New Orleans-based roots rock band’s album Lucky is nearly twenty-years-old. We listened to it for the first time in ages the other day and were glad to hear that, despite its slightly schmaltzy message about social change, the song still holds up quite well.

Castle by J. Robert Lennon
It is rare to find a book that creeps you out so badly that you find it hard to sleep, but this is one of those. Psychologically penetrating and completely gripping novel from one of our underappreciated greats.

Greek yogurt
We’re not sure how it’s different from regular yogurt, but it just tastes zestier. Best with fruit in the bottom so it all mixes together into a tart, tasty slurry.

Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirn
Kirn has become quietly one of our consistently most satisfying novelists, but here he’s in the realm of a kind of loose memoir tracing his rise up the academic ladder from rural Minnesota to the Ivy League. Funny and scathing. Our only wish was for more.

Klondike Bars − Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups flavor
It’s got the milk chocolate coating you look for in a Klondike bar, but then inside just a hint of peanut butter that lingers on the palate. More art than science.

Doug Glanville’s Op-Extra Column for the New York Times
Glanville is a former major league ballplayer who writes about sports in general and baseball in particular with insight and care. We understand that he’s got a book coming out in 2010, which is good news for all of us.

Heist movies
For whatever reason we can’t get enough of these. We’re talking Ocean’s Eleven, Heist, The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair (the original with Steve McQueen), that one with Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton where Norton pretends to be mentally challenged to infiltrate the security at a museum, The Bank Job.) No matter how cheesy or convoluted, you give us a heist movie and we’re happy.

The Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca
Believe the hype. Album of the year so far. By a mile.

Expedition Africa: Stanley & Livingstone
This reality show on the History Channel is Survivor for scholars, which makes sense given that the program is produced by Survivor creator Mark Burnett. Four explorers (each one a walking example of the Type-A personality) and their team of porters (yes, the racial dynamics are kind of a concern: the explorers are Anglo; the porters African) follow the same route (all 900+ miles of it) Morton Stanley did to find Dr. Livingstone way back and 1871. As guilty pleasures go, you can’t get much more highbrow than this. Twende!

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
This is what they call a novel of suspense and it’s plenty suspenseful because it’s grounded in a great character (the now grown only survivor of a mass murder) and rendered in wonderful prose.

Up
If Werner Herzog made a Disney film. Strange, sad, funny, charming. Plus talking dogs. Top that, Transformers.

“Doomsday” by Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Don’t let the title of this song fool you: this is party music. This is bang on pots and pans and stomp around the kitchen until we all hug it out music. Also, there’s a trombone.

Chaperoning elementary school field trips
Yes, we dread them beforehand, but once on board a school bus full of 2nd graders we quickly remember our youth and succumb to the joys of sudden pothole-induced bumps and impromptu sing-a-longs.

Lush Life by Richard Price
Every bit as good as Clockers, which is plenty good. Surprising that this didn’t come in for more attention during awards season last year.

Buying fresh, non-processed bread and freezing half the loaf
If you’re like us, you’re often at the crossroads of a bread conundrum. On the one hand, you love the fresh-baked bread, but on the other, you don’t eat enough to get through the loaf before it turns into something out of a science experiment. On the other hand, you have some name brand supermarket stuff from the Nixon administration that’s still “fresh,” but un-tasty. We’re slow on the uptake, but freezing the fresh stuff works better than fine. Just make sure to wrap it up tight before socking it away.

Films about films
For a sampling, try these: Contempt, 8½, Stardust Memories, The Player, Lisbon Story (1994).

Sneezing
Let it go, let it rocket you backward, feel the release, don’t bring it up short. Hot damn, it feels good.

“The Big Picture” at the Boston Globe
This photo blog on the [Globe]‘s website is a Life magazine / National Geographic kind of thing, curated by Alan Taylor. It’s beyond stunning.

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead by David Shields
A funny, poignant, and horrifying memoir about aging that details all the ways you’re slowly but steadily deteriorating. Though the physiological facts it dispenses are depressing (example: your brain starts shrinking when you’re 25), the book still manages to inspire, largely due to Shields’s 97-year-old father, who exhibits a level of vigor we can only hope to have when we’re 47, let alone 97.

Not whistling
Whistling rarely works, and often does more harm than good.

Some of our favorite songs of 2008:

“Frankie’s Gun!” − The Felice Brothers
If the Band and Bob Dylan returned to the basement, we think it would sound very much like this.

“L.E.S. Artistes” − Santogold
It’s 1987 and we’re wearing docksiders and white jeans and three layers of different-colored Oxford shirts and the world is ours for the taking.

“Always a Friend” − Alejandro Escovedo
We fear Bon Jovi will cover this song any minute now. Hurry and hear the original before it’s too late.

“I Am Nothing” − Withered Hand
A little self-pity every now and then never hurt anyone.

“Dance Dance Dance” − Lykke Li
We now can relate to those who throw their underwear at Tom Jones, for we feel compelled to do likewise for Lykke Li. Sigh.

“Song of Home” − Van Morrison
Van steps into a time machine and turns out something that would fit right in on his 1970 album His Band and the Street Choir.

“Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” − Beyoncé
We tried so very hard to resist this one, but quickly discovered that doing so was impossible. Please take our ring, Miss Knowles.

Standing near a teapot just before it boils
You don’t even need to wait for the whistle. You feel this change in pressure in your midchest right about when the water gets to boiling. It stays with you.

Gingersnaps
You’re in some scene—under an awning outside a café for a friend while it’s raining, say; or perhaps you’re sitting at the kitchen table after dinner, reading on your laptop; then again, maybe you’re standing at the train station one evening, awaiting the arrival of the 8:07—and it’s a fair situation, comfortable enough, nothing special. Then imagine the same scene, except someone gave you a gingersnap. Boom—everything is better, everything is sharper and more poignant. That’s what gingersnaps add. We recommend them.

Nights of Cabiria
Yes, a Fellini film, from 1957. There’s something almost too intense about the understated ending. We’re still debating it.

Going to that new place just down the block
They opened up recently, and it’s a young couple. They’re making a go of it with sandwiches that are actually pretty damn good, or pastries or books or local art that, true, you don’t usually find around here. They probably have their 2-year-old either napping in the back or rolling around behind the counter in an ExerSaucer or something. People still have these places; we should check them out.

Stuffing with raisins
The idea of raisins in our turkey stuffing used to cause our foreheads to crinkle in deep concern, but now we’re disappointed when we’re served stuffing without them.

Whale Wars
This thoroughly captivating new reality series on Animal Planet documents the crew of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as they harass a fleet of Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic. Many of the group’s members are so maniacal and self-righteous about their cause (particularly Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson and his occasionally incompetent first mate, Brad Dourif look-alike Peter Brown) that at times we find ourselves rooting for the whalers.

Stretching your hamstrings before any physical activity
We wish we recommended this to ourselves a couple of weeks ago, before we tweaked our hamstring while playing in an especially ho-hum game of pickup basketball. We shouldn’t have even been there, as there aren’t too many things less inspiring than playing in a ho-hum game of pickup basketball. Lesson learned the hard way.

World of Goo
This physics-based puzzle video game (now available for the Wii) is as charming as it is clever. Play it with young children watching you. You’ll feel like a superstar.

The Terror by Dan Simmons
A historical supernatural thriller set in the Arctic Circle in the 1840s. The book follows the British vessels the Terror and the Erebus as their crews search for the Northwest Passage, while enduring brutal weather conditions, diminishing rations, and increasingly psychotic crewmates. Oh, and there’s an ice monster out there killing everyone, too. It’s the fastest 766 pages you’ll read all year.

Heluva Good! French onion dip
For far too long we abstained from trying this because it seemed so lowbrow. We like to think we have moved on from chips and dip and the sort. But recently we were at a party with minimal appetizer offerings and reluctantly gave Heluva Good! French onion dip a shot, and are we ever glad we did. Now we’re toying with the idea of using it as a substitute for mayonnaise on our next turkey sandwich.

Voting
You’re going to, right? Just do it. It will feel good. Trust us on this one. Yes, it might be cold and rainy, and you may have to wait in line awhile, but, still, power through it. You can do this. If you have children, bring them along. Show them democracy in action. Yes, they might not have much patience for waiting in line, or for the kind old people handing out ballots who ask them what grade they’re in and say nice things about how handsome or pretty they are, but your children’s presence when you pull that lever or touch that computer screen or jab that chad will make the voting experience all the more satisfying and (dare we say it? — yes) patriotic.

Inducting Rush into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
VH1 Classic dubbed this year’s Jewish New Year “Rush Hashanah” and celebrated with two full-length concert videos, shot in Rio and Frankfurt, respectively, on the band’s 30th-anniversary tour. Sure, the music’s a little ridiculous and the Ayn Rand-inspired lyrics are dumb, but both those facts are beside the point. Rush is completely and totally itself, if not sui generis, then something close. Seriously, Bob Seger is in and Rush isn’t? Is progressive rock not rock?

The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris
A dark and deeply involving novel with a haunting moment on just about every page. Suspenseful, gritty, great.

The “seasonal” sugar cookies from Barnes & Noble cafés
You can get these sugar cookies year-round, but the sprinkles change with the seasons: green and white at Christmas; red, white, and blue in the summer; and so forth. They have a crunchy outer rim giving way to a soft, but not doughy, interior. We like them with a hot chocolate and an Us magazine.

Pizza night
Pizza night makes things so much easier. Just pick a night of the week. (We prefer Fridays.) It’s as simple as that. Everyone is happy. Pizza’s here! So wonderful.

Fifteen-month calendars
Who doesn’t like a little overlap?

A Few Seconds of Panic by Stefan Fatsis
Fatsis, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, spent the summer of 2006 trying out as a kicker for the Denver Broncos. This entertaining book documents his experience, while at the same time exposing the often brutal business of professional football. We’ll never look at kickers the same way.

Greg Stones’s watercolor paintings
At first glance, a painting by Mr. Stones might appear to be a sharply rendered landscape or portrait, but look closer and you’ll spot a shark fin or a flying dog or a penguin aiming a revolver. Lyrical, lovely, and funny work.

“It Only Takes a Minute” by Tavares
We heard this 1970s hit on the radio the other day and for three minutes we bobbed our head and believed to our core that it indeed only takes a minute, girl, to fall in love.

The Summer Olympics
Yes, for many they may seem less relevant than ever, but we still have a soft spot for the games. Those few seconds before the starting pistol fires in the 100-meter dash will always be electric.

Welcome to My Study
Mitchell Magee is lonely and he collects things. These video shorts, which can be found on YouTube, feature him sharing the contents of his study desk’s drawer, from crabs to an avocado to a rubber boot. If only our study desk’s drawers were half as enthralling.

The Blue Star by Tony Earley
This is a sequel to one of our favorite books ever, Mr. Earley’s Jim the Boy (which features what is possibly our favorite last line ever). The Blue Star doesn’t quite hit the quiet, emotional heights of its predecessor, but the story is just as beautifully told.

Mac’s Seafood in Wellfleet, Massachusetts
This modest restaurant features fine seafood fare, but we go mainly for the soft-serve ice cream and the scenic views of Wellfleet Harbor. We once ordered a brownie hot-fudge sundae and the kind young woman at the counter told us that they were out of brownies but that she would be happy to substitute a chocolate-chip cookie if we liked. When we said that sounded like a fine alternative, she graciously offered to warm the cookie for us. We love Mac’s.

Hopkins
This six-part documentary on ABC about the doctors and patients of Johns Hopkins Hospital is riveting, even with its distracting and cloying Grey’s Anatomy-like soundtrack.

The Visitor
A small (in a good way) movie about a number of big things: music, healing, what it means to belong. We found the film all the more remarkable when we learned it was written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, the actor who played the smarmy, lying reporter on the last season of The Wire.

Alouette Light Garlic and Herbs Spreadable Cheese
The “Light” is key here, because it doesn’t taste like it’s light at all. This makes us feel less guilty when we’re cramming the stuff into our mouths.

51 Birch Street
This documentary, by Doug Block, is not only about how “parents are people, too.” It’s also about how struggles for identity and for a normal American life lurk behind the calm facades of our parents’ biographies. Though a little uneven, a little errant in structure, 51 Birch Street sneaks up on you. It’s an effective and graceful film. Did we say graceful? We did.

Fields of cut hay
On a country road, after the cutting but before the baling, these are good for the beauty, the smell, the world beyond the street, the parable potential, all at once, every time. Drive slowly. Even better, bike and stare and absorb.

George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass
When George was a Beatle, he came up with a lot of songs that never found their way onto a Beatles album, so, after the Beatles broke up, in 1970, he released this, the first triple album by a solo artist. A couple of songs on the album were written as early as 1966. Listen again. It only gets better.

Duff from Ace of Cakes
This guy Duff has a cake bakery in Baltimore and a show on the Food Network. Maybe you know the show. Our sense is that if everyone were like this guy, and if every show had this joy, we’d be all good.

Watching your son pitch his first-ever Little League baseball game
Never mind those four walks and two earned runs in his one inning of work. That little fist-pump he gave himself after striking out the final batter tells us that he is going to be more than all right, and we are terribly, terribly proud.

Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh
A fascinating and funny exploration of exactly what the title indicates, leavened with empathy. Radosh seeks to understand, not merely to mock, which creates a deeply engaged and interesting study of a subculture many are likely to be unfamiliar with.

Pretty. Odd. by Panic at the Disco
We thought their first album was pretty bleh, but these guys have been hitting the ‘60s-orchestrated-pop pipe pretty heavily and the result, while maybe a little kitschy and ersatz Beatles, is tons of listening fun. Don’t overthink things. Just go with it.

Weight Watchers Giant Latté Ice Cream Bars
We’re usually pretty resistant to low-fat desserts, but after much coaxing from a family member we tried these, and we’re glad we did. Best of all, they’re only 90 calories each, so you can have, like, four of them at a time.

Explosions in the Sky
Apparently, there’s something called “post-rock,” and Explosions in the Sky is a member of this particular genre. We were familiar with many of the bands people like to put in this category; we just didn’t know they needed their own genus or phylum or whatever. Point is, it sounds like rock to us, though sans lyrics and very heavy on the dynamics.

The Gentle Leader Easy Walk Harness
This is for walking dogs, and, unlike the traditional harness, the leash connects in the front rather than in the back, which as the product claims keeps the dog from pulling. It’s actually a bit of a miracle.

Hulu.com
Free streaming video of all kinds of shows: St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, Buffy, WKRP in Cincinnati, Picket Fences. The video looks pretty good, and, like we said, for now, it’s free.

What I’d Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats by Jack Handey
You know him, you love him. We know him, we love him. This is a collection of Mr. Handey’s published humor pieces, along with a smattering of his favorite “Deep Thoughts” and TV sketches. A national treasure, this guy.

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
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?

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. Wethinks 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.

What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
Funny, tense, sneaky.

30 Days
Television show created and hosted by Morgan Spurlock, the Super Size Me guy. People spend 30 days in an atmosphere they either don’t understand or think they loathe, e.g., a Minuteman spends a month with a family of illegal aliens. Consistently demonstrates that understanding, empathy, and grace are possible between human beings.

Adult recreation leagues
We’re talking soccer, hockey, softball even, anything other than golf.

Lettuce
We’re talking a band here, not the nutrient-free vegetable. Don’t really know much about them other than they’re some kind of funk jam band supergroup, but we found them because they covered an old Herbie Hancock song we were looking for and we really fell for the groove. Baby.

Air conditioning
Shouldn’t we have some kind of national holiday for whoever invented this?

Hobart
We had a chance to lay eyes on the most recent issue of this little journal, and it’s really great-looking. The stories weren’t too shabby, either.

Black-and-white wedding photographs
You know that stress-induced breakout that cropped up on the eve of the big day? Turns out you can’t see it if you’re photographed in forgiving and lovely black-and-white.

LolliLove
Very independent mockumentary film by Jenna Fischer, of The Office, and her husband, James Gunn. Not every minute is gold, but at least three laugh-until-it-hurts-to-breathe moments are guaranteed, presuming you find clueless narcissists joking about the Holocaust funny, which we do.

Lindsay Wagner in The Paper Chase
Sure, she’s best remembered as bionic woman Jaime Sommers, but catch her in a supporting role as the daughter of Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman) in this 1973 semi-classic film.

Gordon Ramsay
Star of both Hell’s Kitchen, on Fox, and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, on BBC America. We don’t know if he can cook, but he makes us giggle.

A basil plant
When you’re making spaghetti or pizza, you just grab some leaves from your back-deck plant. Or we could put it this way: Fresh basil is to a jar of crushed, store-bought basil as ketchup is to catsup.

Spaghetti sauce on corn on the cob
Serendipity strikes. A classic case of the accidental—providential?—discovery. Man, is it good, with just a few dabs, not smothered. Another bonus: It doesn’t matter if you go typewriter or scroll style. Same great taste.

The Brand New Heavies
N’Dea Davenport is back with the band. Those of us who are fans know what that means. Those who don’t should find out.

The Hills
This is the Laguna Beach spinoff starring Lauren (L.C.) as she tries to navigate the treacherous waters of a Teen Vogue internship. The cinematography should be studied in film schools across the universe, but the real pleasure is in seeing awful people behave in ways you didn’t know were possible.

Listening to that CD you haven’t heard in a while straight through
It seems like, in the era of digitized music, you never listen to a whole album straight through. Try it with something you haven’t heard in the last three years. Sounds fresh, doesn’t it?

The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends
We never thought we’d see Bill Cosby and Jack Benny—who, it turns out, were good friends—chat with Joe Frazier about what it’s like to get punched. Nor did we suspect we’d ever see Groucho Marx interrupt Truman Capote to praise the work of Ring Lardner. But now we’ve seen both, and we have this terrific DVD boxed set to thank. These shows, which are presented in their entirety, transport you back to the days when Nixon was president and Woody Allen was known, first and foremost, as a brilliant comedian. Woody appears on two of the shows included here: one from 1969, on which there is only one other guest (the very entertaining Ruth Gordon), and one from 1971, on which there are no other guests. There are 12 shows in all, and each one is both funny and fascinating.

The American version of The Office
This show really snuck up on us. At first, we were maybe a bit dismissive, suffering from the vertigo that comes from comparing it with the original, but the recently aired season finale demonstrated that this is not only the best comedy on television (RIP, Arrested Development) but one of the best dramas as well.

Gomez, How We Operate
A little while back, we specifically recommended all of Gomez, but, at the time, this album was not yet released, so just to tidy things up we felt the need to point out that this is as good as anything they’ve ever done, which is very, very good indeed.

The West Wing
The end of the television season always makes us a little bereft, and the permanent ending of this show makes us feel even sadder. Bravo has plenty of reruns, so if you haven’t caught it you’re in for a treat.

“Discovering” a writer who has already published a bunch of books
We recently became acquainted with the work of Eric Kraft, who is highly recommended, but what makes it even better is that he’s published like 10 books, none of which we’ve read, which means we’re pretty much guaranteed a bunch of great reads in the coming months. Same thing happened with Steven Millhauser a few years ago.

Girl on the Bridge
This is Patrice Leconte’s sexy black-and-white film about a knife thrower (Daniel Auteuil) and his assistant (Vanessa Paradis). It has a sly wit, and its knife-throwing scenes are dizzyingly sensual. Also recommended: Leconte’s equally sexy The Hairdresser’s Husband.

U.S.! by Chris Bachelder
Mr. Bachelder is a friend, so take this recommendation for what you will, but his new novel, U.S.!, centered around a perpetually reanimating Upton Sinclair, could be the best book we’ve read this year.

Jenna Fischer’s blog
She plays Pam on The Office and gives inside scoops and anecdotes about what is rapidly becoming our favorite show. Just as charming in print as you’d think she’d be, which is very charming.

Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma’s Fabulous Flaming Lips by Jim DeRogatis
Really just recommended for fans (or maybe fanatics) of the Lips, but if you are a fan, this book is great fun.

Down by Law
We’ve been looking for the best angle on this—cinematography (excellent), mood (raw), pace (admirably patient)—but let’s just say Jarmusch’s film is good the way Led Zeppelin is good: an early work that’s refreshing and deceptively bold.

Led Zeppelin (I)
People aren’t recommending this album as much as they used to. We’re here to pick up the slack.

Love and Death
Woody Allen’s funniest film.

Any artist’s early stuff
Maybe you saw this one coming. Later stuff is good, too; we’re not saying you should be exclusive. But try a few of the first half-dozen Chicago albums, check out pre-“Legs” ZZ Top, reread In Our Time, watch Bottle Rocket again.

Cobra II by Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor
A “contemporary history” of the planning and execution of the Iraq war. Resolutely nonpartisan (the back blurbs for a previous book by the same authors come from Dick Cheney and Clinton cabinet member William Cohen). Basically proves that the fucked-up situation was caused by Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks’s piss-poor management and the complicity of Vice President Cheney and President Bush. Also demonstrates that the actual soldiers who see combat are incredibly brave, flexible, and intelligent. If we’d listened to them, the country wouldn’t still be in this God-awful mess.

Anything written by Michael Ruhlman
We previously recommended his book Walk on Water, which is about an elite pediatric surgical unit. We’ve since read more of his books and they’re all good. Even when you think you might have no interest in the subject, it turns out you do.

Screened porches
Protection from bugs and rain while still getting the benefit of the fresh air.

Ginnifer Goodwin
This is an actress who has recently appeared in Walk the Line as Johnny Cash’s first wife, and who is now co-starring in HBO’s Big Love as Wife No. 3, Margie. There is a scene in the second episode where Ms. Goodwin’s character has been feuding with Wife No. 2, Nikki (Chloë Sevigny), prior to sitting down for a few rubbers of bridge. In a four-way relationship, Margie seems to feel like a fifth wheel, and Nikki seems to enjoy reminding her of this, including during the bridge game when Margie makes a poor bid. Annoyed, Nikki picks at Margie, exclaiming, “What are you trying to do to me?” The camera cuts to a shot of Ms. Goodwin’s face as it morphs from wounded over the harsh words to a sly, secret pleasure in seeing Nikki twist. A small but incredible bit of acting.

Gomez
We get occasional grief for our music recommendations not “rocking” enough. We were recently introduced to this British band and we’re pretty sure these guys rock. The best thing is that they have, like, five albums out already with another one coming summer 2006, so there’s plenty of exploring left to do. We’re sure that people have reasons why this band “sucks” also, but we can’t hear them because we’ve got this Gomez shit cranked up loud.

Oxidants and histamines
It seems like we’re always against these two things, with all kinds of products trumpeting their “anti-oxidants” or people taking “anti-histamines” during allergy season. We don’t know what either oxidants or histamines do, but we’re sure they can’t be all bad.

Jennifer Government and The Company by Max Barry
Perhaps not soul-shattering “literature,” but deeply entertaining and sharp satires both. We especially hope that Jennifer Government is on deck for a film version.

Sela Ward
Hot!

Matthew McConaughey
Super hot!

Jon Stewart hosting the Academy Awards again
It seems like the people in the auditorium weren’t digging him, and neither were the television critics, but in our household, filled at the time with a range of demographics, everyone was laughing. Shows how much critics know.

Countdown With Keith Olbermann
Keith can, on occasion, be a bit smarmy, but it’s really the best newstainment show around. Let’s hope MSNBC does the right thing and ditches the 7 p.m. repeat of Hardball so Countdown can move up an hour so as not to interfere with other prime-time programming.

Curling
I know we’re not the only ones swept up in the Olympic curling fever. Catch it! It’s cold!

The Dan Patrick Radio Show
We’re sports fans, but generally not fans of sports talk radio, except for this show.

Project Runway
Very late to the game on this one, but much better than America’s Next Top Model. Particularly recommended is the episode where they had to make a polo outfit out of fruit.

Real Life
This 1979 Albert Brooks film is a brilliant, hilarious send-up of what is now called reality TV. (Be sure to check out the film’s trailer, which is included on the DVD. It’s the funniest trailer we’ve ever seen. It doesn’t show a single frame of the movie it promotes, and is presented in 3-D so that, according to Brooks, “you can literally feel the excitement.”)

The hockey play-by-play of Mike Emrick
Those of you who have been watching the Olympics know how tremendous Emrick is at calling the toughest play-by-play of any sport. It’s like the guy doesn’t have to breathe to keep speaking.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Great book. A page-turner plus more.

Born shoes
Comfy and stylish in both the slip-on and lace-up varieties. Leather.

Entertainment Weekly
Better than People magazine because it only covers celebrities and not people who make throw pillows out of dog hair. Better than Us because it actually has words to go with the pictures.

Number 1 Single
This is the show where Lisa Loeb goes on dates looking for a husband. That someone like Lisa Loeb, who is talented, smart, beautiful, and eager for a relationship, still remains single is clearly a sign of societal breakdown. Single men of New York between the ages of 32 and 40, let’s get on the ball here.

Sia, “Breathe Me”
She sang that song that played in the final moments of the finale of Six Feet Under, and though we’ve found that episode to be polarizing, there’s no denying the song.

A decent desk chair
No particular brand is recommended, but it really does make a difference in your life.

The Lady Eve
We recommend all of Preston Sturges’s films, but this one—a sexy, hilarious romantic comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda—is our favorite. Pitch-perfect, smart as a whip, and immensely charming.

Red plates
Eat on them. As a backdrop, these bad boys, like red walls at a restaurant, double the excellence of your meal. Don’t slight the eyes. They’re right up there in terms of sensory perception, you know.

Corduroy Saturday
We’re giving this one away. It’s either a band name or a name for a recording label. Or that club that doesn’t have a sign. It’s textured and you can think of maybe a dozen possible logos.

Blue Angel by Francine Prose
We’re a sucker for campus novels and this is right up there with Lucky Jim and Small World. Funny funny funny.

Flip This House
There are a lot of house-flipping shows out there, but this is our favorite. It’s on A&E and follows a Charleston, South Carolina, real-estate company (Trademark Properties) as they makeover houses in, like, a week without needing Ty Pennington.

Thai food
Spicy noodles. Yum.

Measuring twice to cut once
Saves an extra trip to the hardware store, if you know what we’re saying.

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
We’re talking the book and not the forthcoming movie—nor, for that matter, the 1949 movie—though maybe the movies are good as well.

A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley
Funny, sad, humane. But when it’s all said and done, sad in that satisfying sad way where you feel blue, but not too blue.

Spinach salad
Best part: the little shreds of real bacon. Second-best part: the warm, sweet dressing. Third-best part: the spinach.

Rotary phones
Makes you think twice about reaching out and calling, because it takes so long to dial and is genuinely taxing on the finger. We think this is probably a good thing.

Tuesday
Nobody gives it any love, but this may be the purest of the weekdays. The most shit gets done on Tuesdays. No hassles, no pressure, no image to live up to.

’Til Tuesday
Aimee Mann’s old band is a good listen still. But don’t confuse them with T’Pau, as we, in party conversation, once unwittingly did. That was embarrassing.

Satellite radio
Sirius, XM—not much difference, but for those of us who live in the smaller markets, having access to something other than the latest abomination from Nickelback is a blessed thing.

Carhartt coveralls
To our more rural audience, we say, Give us a subfreezing temperature, some of these tiptop coveralls—more than overalls—and any length of time you want, and we guarantee warmth. They’re the real deal.

Declining by Degrees
It’s a documentary about the shifting ethic of American higher education since World War II. Crisp, tight, provocative, compelling. Watch it, talk it up, others will be interested.

Freedarko.com
The best NBA commentary available (except maybe Wizznutzz, depending on your priorities). Like Bill Walton meets Stephen A. Smith, except without either of them.

Frog ovaries
Not quite a Recommendation, but we ate these last night and they weren’t as bad as you would expect.

“Downtown Train”
Tom Waits, Rod Stewart, Everything But the Girl—this song must be unbreakable.

Mission to America by Walter Kirn
Sort of on the sly, Kirn has been churning out very sharp, very humane satirical novels. Up in the Air was great and Mission to America is even better.

Vault soda drink
Frankly, we’ve never had such a pleasant high, including that time in ‘67 when we were hanging out with Jerry and rest of the Dead at their pad in Mendocino. Maybe it’s just that caffeine, but we suspect that this stuff was whipped up in the forest by some high-level druids. Seems to be available in individual servings only at this point. Stick with the 12-ounce can. The 16-ounce bottle is probably more than anyone could handle.

Fanny May Mint Meltaways
In a crowded small-chocolate-morsel field, this little classic is a standout.

Barry Lyndon
This astonishingly beautiful film is time-machine-like in its re-creation of the 18th century. Though it won four Academy Awards, it remains Stanley Kubrick’s most underappreciated film.

Music From the Heartland
Everybody knows dirtbags and nerds rock harder than academics and dilettantes, and yet we keep allowing Brooklyn bands to claim their ’home’town as a measure of credibility. I recommend a 180. Turn, coast; peer inward. Forget, even, Detroit, valedictorians of NME Charm School. Check out Akron, Cleveland, Youngstown. Gil Mantera Party Dream slips you a sexy mickey. Machine Go Boom sounds like the way Romper Room felt. Houseguest is simply the best pop band in the country. That’s where you should be.

Oliver Platt
I have a good feeling about this guy.

The Impostors
This is a movie, a small fun one. Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, Lili Taylor, Steve Buscemi, etc. Best if you don’t know anything in advance.

Frank Zappa
Go ahead and see where, like, 92.3 percent of Phish’s music comes from. With the “Mothers” more highly recommended than without.

Kicking Television − Wilco Live in Chicago
If possible, the Ghost Is Born songs sound even better on this live CD.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent
The television ads for this installment indicate that some critic called this “the best of the Law & Order franchise,” and we’re inclined to agree. Even better now with the tradeoff of leads between Vincent D’Onofrio/Kathryn Erbe and Chris Noth/Annabella Sciorra.

Making “The Shining”
When Vivian Kubrick was 17, she made a documentary about the making of the film her dad was then shooting. The result is fascinating, full of candid moments and illuminating details. Plus, the interviews with little Danny are supremely charming. (This documentary is an extra on the Stanley Kubrick Collection DVD of The Shining.)

Taking stock
We’re talking physically and mentally. Every so often it helps to know the exact quantity of SpaghettiOs Sliced Franks in the cupboard as well as the state of your psyche.

Brad Mehldau Trio, Day Is Done
OK, third time we’re recommending Brad Mehldau and his piano trio, and it would be logical to wonder if we’re just going to recommend everything he does. The answer is yes, as long as the music is this good. There’s a new drummer who rocks, or swings, or whatever jazz drummers are supposed to do. When the rhythm section kicks back in after the piano break during “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” your heart will skip a beat.

Shea butter
It’s a hand-soap flavor. Surprisingly pleasing. No joke.

The Who’s “Boris the Spider” as a children’s song
You can kick “Free to Be You and Me” to the curb. “Boris the Spider”? That’s the gig. Fun deep bass, catchy refrain − the kids go nuts with it.

Fire of Love by the Gun Club
When you add a lot of records to iTunes all at once, it’s easy to forget you even have many of them. Months later you discover one and listen to it 11 times in two days. It’s like an inheritance that you left to yourself.

Not driving
Granted, it wasn’t until I elicited a hippie lady’s ardent gratitude by wearing—disingenuously, I guess—a Cars-R-Coffins T-shirt that I was really shamed into giving it up entirely, but even driving infrequently can feel great, like not eating meat for a week.

“Willie Deadwilder”
This is an 18-minute Cat Power song, which does not bode well. And the music basically repeats itself 20 or so times. But somehow this is my very favorite song of the moment.

Gilbert Arenas, Washington Wizards
I don’t even have to mention this to anyone who’s been paying attention, but this guy is a tremendous player, and a uniquely strange individual, and seemingly a sweet guy as well. And he’s only a week older than Dwyane Wade.

Laguna Beach
Kristin visited old flame Stephen in San Francisco a few episodes ago; she stayed, chastely, in a hotel. He responded, while dropping her off, by handing her an empty Chinese-takeout container found (planted?) on the floor of his truck and gruffly suggesting that she throw it away. Ineffable gestures like this one abound. Why watch The O.C., really?

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
Every chapter includes an absurd tour de force of some sort, as when the narrator circumvents his reluctance to disparage a man’s face by brazenly slapping a weird mask on the guy for several pages—a great idea and a nested recommendation to writers everywhere.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
Granted, by now I can believe it. But still, this is by far my favorite margarine-type product of all time.

The TV spots for Jarhead
Haven’t seen the movie, haven’t read the book, but this trailer is so good it needs to be taken on its own as a freestanding work of art. Highlights include the bumping military-gospel-hip-hop cut, Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard’s chilling talking heads, Jamie Foxx diving into the fray with supertitles announcing his Oscar nomination hovering over him, and several subliminally brief shots of women screaming or laughing. A+

Refrigerating Fresh Grapes
The crunch of a good crisp grape is made more delightful by the cool temperature of the juice inside. Get them out of there before they lose their freshness, however. Because a cold squishy grape is the saddest grape of all.

Holding a Soft Baby Chick
Form a ball with your hands and leave a hole in the top for the chick’s head to pop through. That makes them feel secure and makes you feel wonderful. Try to arrange this if you can. If you have a connection with a farm or a preschool, see if they can set you up. The hen won’t mind, but don’t let the rooster see you.

Nina Simone
Just listen to her sometime, will you?

Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torment of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems by David Rakoff
So, so funny, wise, and humane. Buy this book in traditional form, but also get the audio version, in order to enjoy Mr. Rakoff’s unique delivery.

Jen Wood
As a guest vocalist on the Postal Service song “Nothing Better,” she makes admonishment sound both alluring and convincing while she discusses the charts and graphs she’s prepared to demonstrate why a romance must end. “Don’t you feed me lies about some idealistic future,” she warns, with both empathy and firmness. “Your heart won’t heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures.” On her own records, she sounds like a highly sensible ghost.

Shaving without shaving cream when you first get out of the shower
Few men are aware of this option, which, if broadly implemented, could bring Big Shaving Cream to its knees. Right out of a hot shower, your face is warm and soft. Wrap a towel around your waist, grab a razor, and go to work. No cream means you can see exactly where the whiskers are. No shirt means you stay clean. And, most important, it ends up being a better shave anyway.

BoDeans
The pride of Milwaukee, these guys still write and perform some of the solidest rock-and-roll music out there. Their live show is highly recommended. The recently released live CD, Homebrewed, is an acceptable substitute.

Buster Keaton
By far the funniest of the silent-film comedians. Nearly all of his pre-MGM feature films are brilliant. Our personal favorites are Sherlock, Jr. (1924), Seven Chances (1925), and his epic Civil War comedy, The General (1927). This guy makes Charlie Chaplin look like Jeff Foxworthy.

Wolfgang Puck canned soup
I’m predisposed to feel guilty about canned soup, and probably for good reason. And somehow Wolfgang Puck seems like something to be ashamed of, too. But this soup is extremely decent, far better than Chunky.

Spaniel Rage by Vanessa Davis
I could have also recommended Destined for Dizziness by Souther Salazar—everything from Buenaventura Press so far has been real good.

David Patrick Kelly
This guy brought majestic, twitchy, repulsive energy to the role of Luther in The Warriors. Apparently, he recently played Unger in the remake of The Longest Yard—anyone see this?

“All These Things That I’ve Done” by the Killers
Frankly, we thought a lot of the talk about “Mr. Brightside” was hype, but this song has lodged in our brain and made a happy home. “I’ve got soul / but I’m not a soldier.” An incredible lyric.

Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
Admittedly, we’re a sucker for this kind of nonfiction: a true yet incredible story about recreational wreck divers trying to identify a World War II U-boat sunk off the New Jersey coast. It’s out in paperback now, but would’ve been worth a pickup in hardcover if we’d been more on the ball.

Owning your own washer/dryer
After countless years of coin-op laundry, we’ve discovered that the newer generation of in-home washers have dozens of settings, including one for smaller loads where you don’t have to use gallons of water just to wash a few unmentionables. The soft whirring of the dryer while you watch TV in the living room is oddly soothing as well.

Illinois by Sufjan Stevens
Can you feel the glockenspiel and vibraphone? We can and it feels good. An enjoyable tribute to one of the backbone states of the country, including a lovely song on the creepiest birthday-clown serial killer of all time, John Wayne Gacy.

Mr. Clean Magic Sponge
Magic indeed, because only some form of necromancy could have possibly removed those marks from the walls using only a magic sponge and water, not to mention how it obliterated the soap scum from the shower. Let’s just hope the Russians don’t get wind of this.

Beauty and the Geek
A third-tier reality game show co-produced by Ashton Kutcher makes good. Some of the beauties aren’t all that beautiful and the geeks aren’t all geeky and the “competitions” are ludicrously stupid, but the human “drama” got us big time. This show is actually sort of life-affirming, believe it or not.

“Superhero” by Jane’s Addiction
This is the theme song to HBO’s Entourage (also recommended). We think the guitar riff in the verse could be accurately described as “muscular.”

What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain
The very readable result of many years of research into what makes good college teachers good. Teachers, administrators, students, parents, and even woodland creatures could learn something from this book.

Banker’s boxes
Sturdy. That’s it, just sturdy.

Baseball on the radio
A rich experience exceeded only by baseball at the park, in which case, we also recommend listening to the radio broadcast with an earpiece in the left ear as you watch from mid-lower level, left field. Funny, too, that the rise of radio and the rise of baseball were concurrent. Timely then, timeless thereafter.

The Criterion Collection
You’re looking for a 1960s Italian documentary about the paparazzi and Brigitte Bardot? Commentary on the politics of postwar French cinema? An intern’s view of a Wes Anderson production? The best of Kurosawa, Peckinpah, Bergman? You go here. (Bloopers from Jackass? Go elsewhere.)

Triple dub
We’re going on a decade with people still blathering about “double-you double-you double-you,” while the ease and patter of “triple dub” is out there. It’s available. We realize other countries are already working on this—“treb” and whatnot—so come on already, America. WWW is pronounced “triple dub.”

Cape Cod Morning by Edward Hopper
There’s just something fulfilling about this otherwise unremarkable 1950 portrait. Claiming the least smidgen of art-historical cred, we’re nonetheless enchanted by this one.

Frontline
Bar none, the best television journalism in existence. Are we exaggerating? Nope. TiVo it if you’re not there. That’ll learn ‘em. (If you’re TiVoless, don’t panic. Most of the Frontline programs from the past few years can be seen for free online.)

Opening Up a National Dialogue on Garrison Keillor’s Singing
We say this with not a shred of disrespect for the guy. The Wobegoner’s been around for a real long while, singing throughout. We just want to ask, why? Our point is, we should be talking about this more openly.

“B.Y.O.B.” by System of a Down
The first single of their new album. The lazy funk-shuffle breakdown parts are impossible not to start grooving to. Plus, the band looks legitimately scary in the music video.

Sportskids Moms and Dads on Bravo
A sequel to last year’s Showbiz Moms and Dads with almost identical parent/child relationship archetypes, including the mother of an 8-year-old cheerleader/dancer/Britney Spears wannabe who must be seen to be believed.

Mike Doughty, Haughty Melodic
We’ve been waiting for this album for a long time, and we’re very happy that it has arrived. These songs are clever, fun, joyful. Particular favorites are “Unsingable Name,” “American Car,” “Tremendous Brunettes,” and “Madeline and Nine.” Oh, who are we kidding, they’re all great.

Michael Bérubé (michaelberube.com)
A professor of literature and cultural studies at Penn State, Bérubé maintains an addictive blog where he comments and riffs on current events in culture, politics, academia, and the Nittany Lions intramural hockey league.

Tom Dowd & the Language of Music
Quick, name a legendary musical artist. Aretha Franklin? Eric Clapton? Ray Charles? John Coltrane? Allman Brothers? Black Oak Arkansas? Tom Dowd either produced or engineered their records. Fascinating documentary on the man who pioneered eight-track recording.

Dead Kennedys, “Holiday in Cambodia”
Every now and again we need to refresh ourselves, and this is the kind of thing that refreshes ourselves. Those DKs pack a lot into this song. You probably already knew that.

Swimming to Cambodia
Spalding Gray’s 1987 movie-ish thing about experiences making The Killing Fields. Worth a watch, rewatch, or an “Oh, yeah, that was fine.”

Swimming
Have you done this lately? It’s just like jogging, except in water, basically horizontal, arguably more refreshing, more tiring, wetter, there’s that, often requiring eye protection, and leading to the possibility of Marco Polo. You can’t listen to your iPod, but you can lean on the side when you’re finished and look up at the sky and shake the water off your face and float. Different density than air. That’s nice.

Ben Gordon
Rookie guard for the Chicago Bulls. Cool, fearless, born in England. Everything you look for in a sixth man.

Ben Folds, Songs for Silverman
A few weeks ago a kind correspondent wrote in to our letters inbox remarking that our music recommendations tended to not rock and were, frankly, kind of wussy. Maybe so, maybe so. Still, don’t let the absence of guitar steer you away from this album, because it’s great. It rocks, in its own way.

Ben Kingsley (Sir)
I know we’re not the only ones who figured he was done after Gandhi, shooting his acting wad on a sprawling historical drama (F. Murray Abraham anyone?). But have you seen Sexy Beast or The House of Sand and Fog? We have. He’s really good.

Project Greenlight
Sure, these movies never seem to turn out all that well, but the show is great. This year, they’re trying to make a horror film, only the studio wants to spend about a 10th of what it would take to film the script they chose. Also, the director wants to cast his family members in all the major roles. It’s on Bravo now.

Jorge Drexler, Eco
Drexler won the Oscar for best original song for “Al otro lado del ra­o” (from The Motorcycle Diaries). Eco is his most recent album, available only as an import and totally in Spanish, so we only catch, like, every fifth word. One of the songs is either about shirt buttons or bottle caps, as far as we can tell. Doesn’t matter. This stuff grooves. Extra props to Drexler for managing not to hurl during the sacrilege that was Antonio Banderas’s performance at the Oscars.

Signing That Petition to Ban Anthropomorphized TV-Commercial Characters
So yeah, where is that petition? Isn’t it enough already with the talking bears, and the talking used cars, and the talking furniture, and the talking oven mitts? We’re uncomfortable with it.

Annie Dillard
The classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek goes without saying, but really nearly any nugget from Dillard is worth a read. They come, with varying degrees, as poetic, profound, and palatable.

Italicized Garamond Ampersand [&]
This is absolute brilliance. And it’s like a process, a delightful process: you have to make the style (italic), the font (Garamond), the character (ampersand). The queen of conjunctions, rendered with a perfect harmony of power & elegance (see?!), and henceforth shall be referred to as such.

Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting
There is nothing dull about this book. It is fascinating. She contributed part of it to the Quarterly Concern a few years back (Issue 4), so we might be suspected of bias, but the whole book, all told, is too interesting to neglect just because we had forewarning of it.

Binder Clips
When you were flailing about, you used paper clips. Now that you’ve made it, you use binder clips. They signify maturity and skill. Paper clips are j.v.; binder clips, varsity.

Mini Penne
Who among us does not have a preferred pasta style/shape? We favor the mini penne because, with its fluted grandeur, it has enough bulk to hold the sauce, spinach, and Gorgonzola, while still allowing a good four to five pieces per forkload.

G. Love
With or without Special Sauce, G. Love, or “Glove,” for the unknowing, is above reproach. We can’t think of a bad G. Love album. We can think of lots of good ones—Yeah, It’s That Easy may be tops—but no all-out bad ones.

Root Beer
Very tasty stuff. Good in any variety, but best in the glass bottle varieties from IBC or Stewart’s. On occasion, we’ll tell people to close their eyes and that we’re going to give them a soda and ask them if they can tell whether or not it’s Coke or Pepsi and then slip them the root beer. Often, they say, “Mmmmm,” afterward. Caffeine free.

Karaoke Revolution for Xbox
We didn’t know how hard it was to sing “Tracks of My Tears” until trying out this interactive karaoke game, but trust us, it’s really hard. On the other hand, we nailed Norah Jones’s “Don’t Know Why,” and the animated crowd went wild.

Zero 7
We’re told they’re part of the “chill” music movement. We don’t know who else belongs to this movement, but these guys are good. They don’t rock in the slightest, but the music for sure rolls. On a very turbulent flight where drinks were launched through the air and the flight attendant hit the deck, we put these guys on and felt instantly calmer.

The Philadelphia Independent
Perhaps the best local newspaper in the country.

Wizznutzz.com
Perhaps the best Bullets/Wizards bblogg in the country. (Perhaps the best website, period, but only if you know/care who Phil Chenier is.)

Swordsman II
A young Jet Li, actively strange gender-bending, the Essence Absorbing Stance—truly one of the classics.

Plays, 1996-2000 by Richard Maxwell
A little like David Mamet, except without the cursing or the action, and with occasional songs. Realist surrealism, or maybe vice versa.

Askew Chair Placement
When away from your desk, for five minutes or two weeks, leave the chair askew to suggest a merely temporary absence. Sally and Tim walk by, see your computer on, papers about to fall from the desk and, the clincher—which is the key, which seals the deal—your chair slightly askew. It’s like a shadow, that negative space in front of the chair, where you must’ve departed, but the departing, by all appearances, couldn’t’ve been more than, like, three minutes ago. That space is saying, “Hey, Sally, I’ll be right back. Tim, hold me a seat at the quarterly safety meeting?” Time-honored techniques are honored by time for a reason. In France, they’d call this la perruque.

Running into Peter Noone at the Las Vegas Airport
You know, the Herman’s Hermits guy. He’s charming, and it’s bowls more fun than if you’d run into, say, Donovan. Apparently, and maybe this is the best part of it since he clearly doesn’t care, he still has lackeys advising him on how to leverage his fame.

Clementines
The season has passed for most of us, but these suckers, basically mini-oranges, are easier to peel than their larger citric brethren, easier to manage as a snack, and easier to store in your pocket without fear of oozage. And, needless to say, their taste is superb.

Chocolate cake with vanilla butter-cream frosting
Is it frosting or icing? Are they the same thing? Either way, this shit’s good. We tend to only see it trotted out for office birthday parties, but let’s not forget that chocolate cake with vanilla butter-cream frosting needs no occasion, and it really isn’t that disgusting for one or two people to exist entirely on a 13-by-9 sheet cake for a few days.

University of Illinois basketball team
We wrestled over this one, not wanting to jinx their brilliance, but a team built on tough defense and sharing the ball needs less luck than most. No matter what happens the rest of the way, they should be the model for other college basketball teams, and perhaps high-school and middle-school basketball teams as well. They are the poster children for why college hoops is so superior to the pro game. Plus, because they are Midwestern, they are significantly less hateful than Duke.

You Are a Dog by Terry Bain
We’ve been remiss in not recommending this book earlier, because it is awesome and made us laugh many times, and even cry once or twice. (OK, several times.) We recommend reading it in the presence of your dog or dogs, because you will read a passage and then look at your dog or dogs and say to them, “So that’s what you’ve been thinking,” and, if possible, you will love them even more.

The Columnist by Jeffrey Frank
We went to a David Sedaris reading where he recommended this book, so we bought it and read it and saw that it was short, brilliant, and hilarious, just like he said. We thought about not recommending it because many people will already know that he’s recommending it, but then we began to think about recommendations and that the point is to keep passing them on. Just so it’s clear, though, he was first. All credit to Mr. Sedaris on this one.

Rachael Ray, from The Food Network
Oftentimes spunkiness is just straight irritating. But in this case it’s endearing. And in this case we forgo skepticism of false TV-personality genuineness and believe that she’d be equally joyful playing Scrabble or a character in an Ionesco play. Verve is good, right? She’s got verve. She’s a clear star on the rise. She makes great salads.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
We suppose this is from the “classics revisited” department. Now 35 years old, it can be at once unbearable for the brutality it documents and enlightening for the sense of who we have been. Not academic, not needless, not on as many of the must-read lists as it used to be. But maybe it should be.

“The Monster in the Mirror,” sung by Grover
In the pantheon of Sesame Street musicology, this one stands alone. “Wubba wubba wubba wubba woo woo woo.” It’s not like we’re saying go get some kids, watch PBS, and then buy the soundtrack. But we are saying this is the best of its class.

Privacy by Charles Pfahl
This is a painting. Pfahl is an artist. It’s beautiful. Try to find it.

Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling
Those public intellectuals can’t make it into today’s “media”-mediated world. We are sensitized and cranky about them. Trilling was one. This collection of lectures is refreshing, even if clearly from a moment long gone. Or maybe because of that. Oh, what the hell do we know, just saying it’s interesting.

The Hard Way by Owsley
Akin to Jellyfish or Jason Falkner. Poppish rock with hooks that are airy instead of leaden. (I’m looking at you and your ilk, Yellowcard.) Fun to sing along to in your car, but remember, when you are singing along to music in your car, those things are called windows and people can see you.

American Idiot by Green Day
We resisted this album for some time. Sure, the title song was a catchy little ditty, but we managed to tire of it after a few listens, and come on, we’re talking about Green Day! But this album is really pretty brilliant, just like so many people have told us. Especially recommended is “Jesus of Suburbia,” a mini rock opera within the rock opera, which is the greatest song of its kind since The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away.”

Cheap Seats
Like Mystery Science Theater meets vintage ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Hosted by the Sklar twins, whom we previously thought of as not that funny. Turns out they’re funny, as is this show.

Air travel during the holidays
Yeah, not really. This shit really sucks if you had to do it. Let’s move Christmas to May and New Year’s to September so we never have to do this ever again.

Stephen A. Smith
Sports columnist and ESPN talking head. Some people find him annoying. We can see their point, but we find him entertaining. You know how all of the current era of Sports Center anchors are basically imitating Dan Patrick, Keith Olberman, and Chris Berman, and not always well? Someday, all of the ESPN commentators will talk like Stephen A. That will be annoying.

50 First Dates
Lots of strikes against this movie. Oldest premise in the book, Rob Schneider in a supporting role wearing too-tight clothes, and that God-awful version of The Cure’s “Love Song” by 311. Still, this movie is very charming. Seriously. And Drew Barrymore is cute!

Waking the Dead
This flick from 2000 stars Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly, who, wow, besides actors making a really great movie, make a good-looking pair. Two ideals of public service, wrapped in a flashback to tragedy, with overtures to the future inside the present, and all that. Really, Jennifer Connelly is recommended in general.

Marimba as the background layer
Basically, take any solid music (devoid of electronics), lay a marimba line behind it, and you’ve got yourself good listening. Not talking Herb Alpert stuff, and it doesn’t just have to be Cuban or Latin or whatever kind of jazz or Violent Femmes. Nothing specific. Just a nod to the pleasures of marimba accompaniment.

Your local library
They have almost all the books you want anyway. And they’re getting lots of DVDs these days too. And remember how it’s free? This is one of those things that was a good idea when they hatched it (thank you, Benjamin Franklin) and is still a good idea today.

Steely Dan
We remembered these guys as sterile ‘70s studio wonks, and who could really bear another spinning of "Rikki Don’t Lose that Number" on the classic-rock station? A fresh look reveals plenty of grit and soul beneath the lock-tight arrangements. Dig past the usual suspects for “The Boston Rag” and “Any Major Dude …”

Corkboard
Durable, versatile, inexpensive, and doesn’t show the thumbtack holes. A friend of ours had his whole basement paneled in this stuff and it was really cool.

Tavis Smiley, weeknights on PBS
Now that Tavis has somewhat inexplicably folded up the Tavis Smiley NPR program, the late-night PBS show is the best source of his delightfully edifying positainment.

An East Texas pasture
Among the herd of grazing cattle, you may see a donkey. Do not be confused; it is a sentinel donkey. The rancher has put it there to spook area wolves. Watch this donkey as you go about filling your basket with delicious wild blackberries.

Penny Hardaway, New York Knicks
He comes off the bench. It’s dynamism.

Kankazine
This is the best zine to come out of the Kankakee River region. Edited by the enigmatic C. Shoup.

Beets
Turns out they don’t have to be gross.

Southern Comfort
Says Believer webmaster Max Fenton: “A bottle of Southern Comfort, some ice, some friends—you’ve got yourself a party.”

Hang On Little Tomato by Pink Martini
Intoxicating songs of romance in French, Italian, Japanese, Croatian, Spanish, and English. As passionate as a thunderstorm. As precise and delicate as a porcelain teacup. China Forbes’s voice is the audio equivalent of honey. Do your ears a favor and listen to this album.

The Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA
Startling by day, Santiago Calatrava’s new searingly white, 217-foot “sundial” bridge is positively, gorgeously alien at night, with its glass, granite, and steel all glowing up in spotlights. There is also a full bar.

Bags Unlimited
Bags Unlimited sells “Polyethylene Sleeves, Mylar Sleeves, Polypropylene Sleeves, Archival Storage, Corrugated Backing Boards, Archival Supplies, Collector Storage Boxes, Mat Board, Shrink Film Machines, Archival Shrink Film, and much more.” Forget collecting comic books, vinyl, or century-old figurines, the mere existence of this company makes us want to become collectors of the accoutrements of collection itself.

Destroyer, Your Blues
Some people probably hate this album. The song titles include “Notorious Lightning” and “The Music Lovers” and that’s pretty much how it sounds too. But I’m eating it up. John Darnielle meets Todd Rundgren?

Blowing gently on the face of a baby
Some babies, not all, but some, seem to enjoy the sensation of gentle breezes flowing across the fluff of their soft heads. If it is that kind of baby, you’ll know instantly by the fluttering eyelashes and the light-bulb smile. Weeping or reddening, however, are signs of an entirely different sort of infant, one you should stop blowing on at once.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, out on DVD
Some people kind of hated this movie, citing its lack of sex-chemistry or disappointing ending, but those in an accepting and well-fed state of mind might just find it inspirational, insightful, and pretty. Plus, Jim Carrey’s face looks almost normal for full minutes at a stretch.

The Arcade Fire, Funeral
Pitchfork loves it. We like it. One hit after another. Canada just won’t quit with the rock-and-roll music.

The parking-spot pull-through
You see the spot, you pull your car in. Then you see the pull-through opportunity. The spot in front of you, usually already occupied by someone who parked facing you, is open. It’s not just sensible logistically to go right through and park facing out. It’s plain good karma. A sign of good things to come.

Dick Gordon, Host of WBUR’s The Connection
Gordon is not only a superior—insightful, curious, generous, balanced—radio-talk-show host, but he’s great to share a kebab with, trade stories about your days on the range with, or practice skeet shooting with. He’s highly recommendable.

Pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins or cookies
That’s right, we’re recommending muffins. Or cookies. Seriously, these are it. This is a run-don’t-walk situation. And now they’re seasonal, which reminded us.

Devil in the Details: A Memoir of an Obsessive Girlhood by Jennifer Traig
We are, admittedly, biased when it comes to Ms. Traig, one half of our Shut-In Detective duo, but this book is really quite wonderful and deserves much attention. Out-loud laughs are available on every page. Please buy two copies and give one to a friend.

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West
In this book, which is billed as a sequel to West’s Race Matters, West exposes the diseased parts of the current state of the Union. Just read it, brothers and sisters.

Edamame
Green vegetable soybean. Comes either in or out of the husk. Boil, salt, enjoy.

Band of Brothers—HBO miniseries
OK, we’re what?—three, four years late on this, but we caught a marathon over Labor Day weekend on the History Channel and canceled the barbecue so we could watch the whole thing. Should be out on DVD, we imagine.

You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon
Gripping from the first line to the last. Sad, hopeful, deeply satisfying. Read this novel.

Avoiding intersections
Because, if there’s ever a problem, it’s at an intersection. We’re mostly smart adults, right? We can find the back alleys, the side streets. We don’t even need the freakin’ intersections.

Stephen Fry
Actor, director, comedian, novelist, screenwriter, aviator … Talentwise, Stephen Fry is like a one-man Cirque du Soleil. Known both for his big brain, which is roughly the size of Saskatchewan, and for his kindness (also Saskatchewan-sized), Fry is a top-notch human being. Hugely famous in England, he is almost unknown here in the States, which is a shame, because it means that A Bit of Fry and Laurie—the hilarious sketch show he did with his pal Hugh Laurie—is not widely available here. Fortunately, Fry’s memoir, Moab Is My Washpot, is available here. Read it. It is brilliantly funny, achingly sad, and wise.

The Man Without a Past
We may be on a Scandinavian kick (see Show Me Love, below). Probably not. But this is a good flick. It’s Finnish, being the second of a trilogy by Aki Kaurismäki. We laughed. Interesting soundtrack too, strangely enough.

Hot tea with honey
Any type will do, but what you have is a spoon, some honey, and hot tea. The real deal is, it’s a double delight: not just that honey is a fine, fine additive, but that the spoon used to stir the honey is removed with the slightest layer of residual sugar, and that Darjeeling-basted sweetness is pert near joyous. And that thing about local honey being good for allergies? Seems legit.

Small pads of paper, maybe 4 inches by 4 inches
Lots of times, there are things we want to write down. These do the trick.

Not moving
Because have you ever had to pack your stuff? As if there were ever a more obvious recommendation. We’re embarrassed we had to say it.

A Ghost Is Born by Wilco
Sure, no risk here, recommending Wilco. It’s cool to recommend Wilco, right? Wait, maybe it’s uncool to recommend Wilco. Is it time to break bad on Wilco? You’ll let us know, right? We’ve heard this album described as “weird,” that some of the songs are “indulgent.” Whatever. Listen to the album. It’s a motherfucker, beginning to end.

The sound a large book makes when snapped shut
Satisfying to those who know it’s coming, scary to those who do not.

Hershey’s Sundae Pie
So far, we’ve only seen these available at Burger King, but if someone sees them somewhere else, please let us know. A bed of chocolate graham crust layered with a chocolate-mousse pie filling, topped with whipped cream, and drizzled with chocolate. Comes in a perfectly pie-shaped container with a reusable fork. (Spoons available upon request.)

King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents the Steve Miller Band
Yeah, you read that title correctly, we’re recommending the Steve Miller Band. A pair of recently unearthed recordings of early Steve Miller Band live shows, one from 1973, the other from 1976. Sure, today we think of him as that guy who wrote slick ’70s rock like “Rockin’ Me,” or “Take the Money and Run,” or—one of the more annoying songs of the ’80s—“Abracadabra,” but these recordings (the ’73 one, specifically) showcase why, during the early part of his career, Miller was known as Stevie Guitar. The eighteen-minute jam of “Livin’ in the U.S.A.” into “Fly Like an Eagle” is worth the price all by itself. Sounds like live albums should, with amplifier hiss, screwups, and everything else intact.

Many hours of daylight
These longer late-spring and summer days make us think that maybe having a home in each hemisphere might be a champion idea.

iPod
Have you seen these things? It’s like the introduction of the Walkman all over again. Very exciting.

Made on MTV
Low self-esteem solved through dedication, hard work, and professional guidance/support. The complete inverse of the really gruesome I Want a Famous Face.

Punching it in
When something good happens or someone says something you firmly agree with, invite them to bump fists with you, knuckle to knuckle. All the fun of giving five, but less dorky. Addictive.

Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? by the Unicorns
Official McSwys Band of the Month for February, March, and probably April too. The awesomeness of this album should not be underestimated.

They Live
Directed by John Carpenter, starring Rowdy Roddy Piper. Most famous for a legendary line involving ass-kicking and bubblegum, but even beyond that this movie is actually really good, for real.

Anything Goes by The Brad Mehldau Trio
We’ve recommended Brad Mehldau once before, but it’s really time to get on the stick and start buying some of his records. This is the brand-new release from this jazz trio, a studio album of covers ranging from standards like Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” to “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead. Drummer Jorge Rossy blows minds on the latter track.

House of Dreams on A&E Television
A sleeper reality series where contestants work in the south Florida swamps to build a house together, with the last man or woman standing (one contestant is evicted Survivor-style each week) taking possession of the house. Until recently, the show featured an adulterous coupling between contestants. Hosted by George Wendt.

PaperMate Clickster .5 mm mechanical pencil
Comfortable in the hand, with excellent lead advancement via index-finger clicking. Very little wasted lead. Top notch.

Derrida, the Movie
First, we were thinking, this is a little fawning. But then we were thinking, this guy’s really approachable; it’s the filmmakers who are fawning. He says the same things he writes, but when he says them they are nearly comprehensible. At least, we’re made to think we understood.

Kashi Seven Whole Grains & Sesame Cereal
But not in isolation. Mix like two or three kinds together. They’ve got ones that are Cheerios-esque, ones that are like trail mix, and some that are clearly from the rabbit-food outlet store. But, if properly mixed, it somehow works. Synergy, right?

The Scottish Enlightenment
Big shout out to those Scots who usually get subordinated to the Frenchmen. Who cares if we agree with them or not? We’d put Hume and Smith against Diderot, D’Alembert, and Condorcet any day of the week. Bonus, too: none of them lost their heads (wink, wink, Mr. Four-Egg Omelet Condorcet?).

Bands Reunited on VH1
We didn’t know we cared this much about whether or not Kajagoogoo would reunite. Ditto for Dramarama, whom we didn’t remember in the first place. For those of you who have seen the show, Nuno Bettencourt is a fun-ruining punk, is he not?

Theater of the Unheard by Darrell Scott
Darrell Scott is best known as the songwriter behind mainstream Country hits, including the Dixie Chicks’s “Long Time Gone.” Here, Scott performs a set of songs recently released from a more-than-a-decade-long purgatory of record-label contract bullshit. Awesome.

Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard
Let’s just come out and say that there will not be a better short story collection published this year. This is the most alive and red-blooded collection you will find in this decade, in this country. In these stories, people actually do things—they run and fly and do things, and things happen. These are great stories and you will love them.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Written as letters from a woman to her estranged husband after their teenaged child has committed a Columbine-like act of violence, this novel makes your breath short.

Austin City Limits
The coolest music-performance television show, and it’s on PBS, and they don’t just feature country music. Beck w/ the Flaming Lips, Gillian Welch, Neko Case, and the Jayhawks are all recent guests.

Television Shows That Are Primarily the Product of a Single Person’s Creative Vision
West Wing doesn’t exactly suck now, but it sure seems like it was better when Aaron Sorkin was pulling most of the strings. We also cite Curb Your Enthusiasm, Alias, Angel/Buffy, The Sopranos, The Office, and all kinds of other things as proof of our little theory here.

Funhouse
This is a pinball game from the early eighties. You try to shoot balls into the mouth of a ventriloquist dummy, who taunts you when you miss. When you get three balls in there, his eyes roll back and he vomits it all up and multiball madness ensues.

The Wall-Rebound Counterattack in Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time
It’s the most effective way to deal with the Blue Ogres. You can’t jump over their heads, so don’t even try. Also, stick next to the woman. There is safety in numbers.

Pasties
Not the kind you wear. The kind with meat, potatoes, and onions. You know, gold-mining food.

Made beds
Heidi never thought it mattered, but now she knows: it really brings a room together. 2004 is the year of made beds.

SamSloan.com
Hands down the best personal home page ever created. From the bumping MIDI tracks to the photos of Sam with his “wild Icelandic girls” at an after-party for the 1972 Fischer – Spassky chess match in Reykjavik, this is why the Internet was invented. Sam Sloan is more fun to follow than sports and more fun to watch than television.

Zach Randolph
Power forward for the Portland Trailblazers. Already the best player on the team (hear that, Rasheed?), and he’s only 22.

A1 sauce, Tabasco, and vegan Parmesan on aglio olio
Make some standard aglio olio pasta. Set it aside. In an empty pasta bowl, combine the A1 sauce, the Tabasco, and the vegan Parmesan cheese. Pour in the pasta. Stir, adding more A1 and Tabasco, depending how mad at your stepdad you are. Enjoy. SERVES 1.

Sam Cooke, Live at the Harlem Square Club
Cooke without the slick sheen. Ecstatic, desperate, and driving the ladies wild. One of the greatest soul albums of all time.

Chilling the fuck out
Chilling the fuck out is the way to go, actually. Just take a couple of deep breaths and go for a walk. Exercising is a good idea, too.

Hey Ya, Andre3000
We say this only for the six of you who don’t already know: this is the song of the year, if not the decade.

www.discountmagazinesolutions.com
Hard-hitting solutions for all your discount magazine needs. “Beauty may be only in the eye of the beholder. But magazine print can be read by nearly everyone’s eyes!”

Storm Stories on The Weather Channel
These are prime-time, predictable, chilling, and a tad underproduced. But that’s just right. Oftentimes someone dies, but always a lot of people get rescued. T4 tornadoes from the sixties? Floods in Appalachia from the nineties? Runs the gamut, and never patronizing or disrespectful.

The Master of Go, by Yasunari Kawabata
We’re ubernovice Go players ourselves, but this book transcends the mere game it describes. A sort of report on a classic six-month match, it has the changing of the guard between old and new, patience, austerity, suspense, all the elements of twentieth-century tension.

These Are the Vistas by The Bad Plus
Yes, once again we are recommending contemporary jazz (see Brad Mehldau below). Frankly, we’d been closed-minded about this stuff, but no more.

Hot chocolate
It really is the season for this timeless treat.

Live video of Matchbox 20’s “Bright Lights”
(Insert caveat so audience makes sure that we would never actually “like” a band that’s so earnest and cheesy here.) It’s hard to articulate why we, honest to god, find this video emotionally moving, but there’s something very cool and genuine about the way the band is filmed performing together for an audience that clearly loves them.

Brad Mehldau
We suspect we’re late to the game on this guy, but for those who don’t know, he’s a contemporary jazz pianist who makes very interesting and engaging music. He even covers Radiohead!

Bill Evans
Another jazz pianist, though this one died in 1980.

Zatarain’s Jambalaya Mix
Makes Tony Chachere look like an impotent little punk. Use turkey sausage to save some calories, but beware the high sodium content. You’ll need to drink like a gallon of water to rehydrate.

Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line by David Kirp
A balanced, fascinating, and even frightening look at the influence of corporations and corporate thinking on higher education.

The Office
This BBC show has gotten a lot of press, but we still know people who haven’t yet seen it. It’s easily the best and smartest British comedy since Monty Python.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Specifically, Bob Dylan’s can-label-reading scene. Check out the several minutes of Dylan’s character (named "Alias"—how cool is that?) reading the labels off cans at the General Store (offscreen, mostly) while Pat does some sheriff-ing at the table (center screen). Say “high qua-li-ty to-ma-toes” phonetically, and you’ve got the spirit. Beans. Red beans. Succotash. Beans. Beans.

Cumin
This spice is accessible, feels good if you get it on your hands, and is perfectly fulfilling. We recently walked into a kitchen after a cumin recipe had been prepared, and it just hit home. Almost better than recently-baked-chocolate-chip-cookie scent.

Fables of the Reconstruction by REM
We know that REM has a greatest hits album out, but really, their best work demands that you listen to a whole album straight through. And remember when “albums” were less than forty minutes long? This is one of those.

ER
Well past its prime, formulaic, and missing all but one of its original stars. Maybe it’s the whole life and death thing, but the show remains very compelling television, features some excellent acting, and Maura Tierney (Nurse Abby) might be the most beautiful woman on television.

The Photography of Richard Misrach
His landscapes were the first ones that we were able to believe. We are usually suspicious of people who shoot photos of deserts, but his have a special purpose.

“Los Angeles, I’m Yours” by The Decemberists
Yes, Jeff Johnson already recommended this band during his week one picks. And sure, last time we recommended a single song rather than a whole album or even something wholly different and new like a certain neighborhood pool or specific type of vinyl. But, seriously, this song is just fantastic.

“Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine
This song is either nearly perfect and pleasing in its near perfection, or completely perfect and we are too dumb to know it.

Glarkware T-shirts
There is a T-shirt designer out there who has reimagined Che Guevara as a London bobby. That pretty much says it all.

Il Posto
It’s not that we have a thing for Italy, or for films in which Italy is featured, but… we do. For those who think Italian film begins and ends with Fellini, please, do yourself the hugest favor and watch Il Posto tonight.

Alexa.com
A friend sent us an e-mail with little more than this URL. We are now hooked on searching. So far, we have received more recommendations for the Anna Kournikova Moulded Multiway Sports Bra than any other item.

The Minnesota Timberwolves
Garnett, Sprewell, Cassell, Szczerbiak, Olowokandi, with Troy Hudson off the bench. Sure, Olowokandi is a big question mark, and nobody likes Szczerbiak, but this will be a team to watch.

Any of the Various Flavored Potato Chips Available in Canada and Not in the U.S. (Specifically Ketchup and Dill Pickle, and Trust Us, the Various Ones Available in the U.S. Do Not Compare)
When will these make it over the border? We’re dying here.

Roman Holiday
Recently, we were moved to watch this movie again, in memory of Gregory Peck. We found it, as always, supremely charming.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star
Just when it seemed like hip-hop was going to be all about ice and women in thongs, Mos Def and Talib Kweli helped restore our faith in the form.

Brined Pork Chops from Bi-Rite
Dave Kneebone introduced us to these, and by golly if he wasn’t right on the mark. Slowly grilled along the edge of the grill rack, these are the finest cuts of pork we’ve ever eaten.

Rainy Day Music by The Jayhawks
We heard that this band was once in debt for a million dollars to their record company which is a shame, if true, because this album, like all of their albums is simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking and should be listened to by everyone with ears.

Champion Brand Gray Sweatshirts
We know it’s summer for most of our readers, but because of that, this winter favorite is likely to be on sale. Warm, comfortable, incredibly durable, we have one of these with “Duke” emblazoned across the chest that dates to 1986 and still is acceptable for wearing in public.

Show Me Love
The cutest Swedish teenage lesbo movie you’ll ever see. And there’s a lot of competition for that title.

Anagram Madness!!!
Too lazy to sit through a two-hour game of Scrabble? Ditch the board, flip all the tiles upside down and take turns with one or more friends turning over tiles. Whenever you can make a word of three letters or more using the available tiles, call out the word and form it in front of you. Steal your friends’ words (or fortify your own) by adding at least one letter to existing words to make a new word (example: add an “S” to PAN to make SPAN or SNAP, but not PANS because it is a form of the original word). Okay nerdy nerds, have fun!

Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Surgical Pediatric Unit by Michael Ruhlman
Before the invention of the heart-lung bypass machine, the earliest open heart surgeries were performed by hooking the patient up to another person whose heart and lungs would pump and cleanse blood for the both of them.

Diva by Annie Lennox
We haven’t heard her new album, but this one, better than ten years old now, surprises at every listening.

Diet Dr. Pepper
Hands down the best diet soft drink available. In the ads, where they say it tastes like real Dr. Pepper, that’s no lie. Not recommended if you don’t like Dr. Pepper, though.

Spellbound
The best word-nerd movie ever. April DeGideo, we love you.

The Winter Zoo by John Beckman
This book is frightening, intense, sorrowful, and totally awesome.

Stella
The State was also awesome. We loved The State. When The State went off the air, we sobbed, and cursed in public. And then came Stella. Now, life is good again.

Autumn in Southern Indiana
As usual, you have to trust Dave Kneebone on this one. He says, “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

“Rush” by Big Audio Dynamite II
Just thinking of it got us dancing.

Maniac Mansion
You can put a hamster in a microwave, publish a paper written by a meteor, and appease a green tentacle with a bottle of Pepsi.

Soul Rush by Nicolai Dunger
The easy comparison is a Swedish Van Morrison. He is a handsome man, with a great voice, though weak album titles.

Rivers and Tides
A documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, an artist who does amazing things with ice and twigs and the like. Simple and hypnotic.

Settlers of Catan
Apparently, this is a board game combining Risk with Monopoly. You get to build your own little village. Dave Kneebone says it’s great. We’ll just have to trust him.

Make Up the Breakdown by Hot Hot Heat
Is this the Next Big Thing or the Current Big Thing? Either way. Doesn’t matter. “Oh Goddammit” is Song of the Year.

Tuba City Truck Stop
A restaurant on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. When I was there, the waitress got locked in the bathroom, but it was fantastic even without that.

The Beginning Stages Of… by The Polyphonic Spree
Twenty-three Texans in white robes. We are going to see them on April 24 and we are already about to pee in our pants. (Because we are excited.)

Brushing Your Teeth in the Shower
Saves time and water if you do it right.

American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore
Some of it’s like “Wow! That’s a thirty-foot-tall whirligig!” and some of it’s like, “Oh, that’s a self-portrait carved from an single apple tree,” and some of it is food like no other.

Unplugged by Jay-Z
The Roots, some rock, and a complete lack of reggae. We’ve yet to meet somebody who can resist the charms of this MTV production.

Honey-Nut Chex
Nothing fancy, but gets the job done in all directions: sweet but not too sweet.