Allow me to close the week with yet another excerpt from the NYTimes. A. O. Scott, in his review of “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”, complains that the actors playing H&K don’t man up for a scene taking place at a “bottomless party.” Dudes, if the dude in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” could put [...]

This is from a few days ago, but it came up in conversation last night and I thought I should post it: Freakanomics blog contributor Stephen J. Dubner hosted a Q&A with poker pro Phil Gordon. Gordon takes the “pro” part seriously — if you’re truly a pro, that means poker is not a sport or [...]

I don’t normally read NYTimes op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, but her latest piece on Obama v. Clinton contains a few gems, like these opening paragraphs: The very fact that he can’t shake her off has become her best argument against him. “Why can’t he close the deal?” Hillary taunted at a polling place on Tuesday. [...]

BMW’s 1-series is not new to the worldwide market, where a five-door Mazda 3-lookalike has been selling since 2004. In the U.S., however, 2008 is “Year One of The One.” BMW has finally brought the 1-series to our shores in coupé and convertible form. On paper, this is a perplexing model. It’s only a few [...]

Sauza or Hornitos are what you usually see in a “top shelf” margarita, but with all of that lime juice in the glass, I like the bite of José Cuervo’s 1800 tequila. Now I have an excuse to go buy some: limited edition, artist-designed bottles. (It’s like colored-vinyl, but booze.) More designs for bottles and [...]

From Design Sponge’s guest, Matt Armendariz. This is one of my favorite kinds of recipes: simple ingredients, beautiful color. It doesn’t hurt that Matt’s a food stylist. Beets are in season, now, too. In the Kitchen with: Matt Armendariz Via Design*Sponge

Selected phrases from Calvin Trillin’s coverage of the mayoral race in London, in this week’s New Yorker: “toff” “cheeky chappie” “flag-waving piccaninnies” “pathetic namby-pambies” “inverted pyramid of piffle” Oh, and I can’t not include this exchange between the author and a cabbie: “Then you’re going to vote against [Johnson]?” I asked. “Oh, no,” he said. [...]

Jason Kottke recently referenced an article by Grant Barret that classifies intentionally mispronounced words: …one fell swoop, an idiom that means “an action that happens fast and all at once,” is often rendered as in one swell foop. That’s a spoonerism, where the first sounds of several words are swapped around to create a nonsensical [...]

New York Times writer Jerry Garrett’s review of the not-sold-in-the-US Fiat 500 is a sort of remake of one written by John Steinbeck, in 1953, for Harper’s Bazaar. Steinbeck hired a driver to take him and his wife on the famed Amalfi Coast road: Flaming like a meteor we hit the coast, a road high, [...]