I used to watch Siskel & Ebert pretty regularly, and found their discussions to often be as entertaining as the movies they reviewed, or even more so ... especially when they disagreed. I wouldn't say either of them particularly swayed me individually, but sometimes if I was trying to decide whether or not to see a giv...more

For a better 'imported' beer, try one of the Canadian brews; they tend to be more like the German beers, but don't have to travel nearly as far, thus aging better. It's one of the things Canada does better than the U.S. (Molson is sort of the Budweiser of Canada, but I think it beats Bud hands down).

The problem with German beers here in America is that those which are actually brewed IN Germany are what the German breweries refer to as 'Export', which isn't allowed to age naturally in the vat, but is skimmed out and bottled prematurely so that it will supposedly age while being transported to North America by ship...more

Kind of a shame about Michelob's decline ... I always preferred it to Budweiser, even though, as a former tavern bartender, I've known for years that Michelob is just Bud scooped off the top of the vat, and was marketed by Annhauser-Busch as their "premium" brew. I don't really know the difference between Michelob Ultr...more

One would think giving a baby girl a not-too-common name inspired by a famous song written by a well-known composer wouldn't cause her or her parents a lot of grief. We named our daughter "Elise" after the musical piece that Beethoven wrote, thinking it would be distinctive without being too outlandish. Today it seems ...more

By reading a sampling of the comments already posted, I see that I'm not the only one to immediately notice that all of the "10 worst" states are in the south, and 5 out of 6 of the "best states" (by the same limited set of criteria) are in the north, the one somewhat sensible suggestion for a "best" state being Hawaii...more

Forget the Twinkies - what I'm going to miss are their chocolate cupcakes & Ding Dongs. More seriously, though, this is clearly a sad day for the 18,500 workers, who, between their employer and their union, are going to suffer for the failure of management & labor leaders to work out a solution that benefits everybo...more

To DieHardCentrist: If you interpreted my first remark in my posting as saying that audiences don't know what a good movie is, I can see how you missed my point. "My bad", as some would say; I phrased it poorly. Truth is, I agree with what you said in response. Making a judgement about any movie, book, song, or other w...more

One of the biggest problems with movie audiences these days is that they have conflicting expectations, and no clear definition of what constitutes a "good movie". This isn't actually a new problem, of course; it's been a problem for film producers since the beginning of 'moving pictures'. But it's made worse by the fa...more