Weekend Update

The applewood smoked bacon from Trader Joe's was terrible, just chewy and gross. Is wood-smoked bacon different in texture from regular bacon? I didn't think so, but the resulting bacon had very little flavor and even less appealing crispiness to it. Too bad I have another package of it in my kitchen at home -- I'd much rather have a couple packages of the pre-cooked kind, no matter how happy the pigs that produced the Trader Joe's kind.

In other news, I *hated* "Inglourious Basterds," Tarantino's newest bloodbath. It felt so offensive that the bad guys were Nazis, so manipulative and unearned. Why should Tarantino capitalize on the senseless real deaths of millions of people in order to cheerfully "slaughter" his entire cast? He really is vile.

A movie I loved, though, was "Extract," which was a ridiculously funny treatment of small businesses and the travails of small business owners. The whole cast pulled no punches, and if the set-ups were not the most novel I've ever seen, the conclusion was one of the most satisfying I've seen in a long while.

The third movie we saw this weekend was "Taking Woodstock," which was long and forgettable, except for adorable Liev Schreiber as Vilma. He was almost as cute as he was in "Mixed Nuts."

Today my Living Language (tm) Italian word-a-day calendar says "Questa sera beviamo una buona bottiglia" [Tonight we'll drink a good bottle of wine] and I agree with it. After a day of labor on Labor Day, I'm headed back to Santa Monica to enjoy a nice bottle of wine and a little quiet contemplation of my ceiling.