Trader Joe’s grocery store sells wines on the cheap. For the same price as a bottle of “Mad Dog” 20/20, or the dreaded Night Train Express, you can get wine made from real grapes, that won’t even make you go blind.

The most well-known is the Charles Shaw vineyard, called “two-buck-chuck” (or in Minneapolis, “three-buck-chuck,” since a bottle sells for $2.99 here). Chuck is actually made by Mr. Franzia, a California vintner-type person, well-known, at least to my college friends, as the man who brought us fine varietals like . . .

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Culled from blogs much cooler than this one, I recently stumbled upon a few (free!) Flash games to while away the hours between getting to work and lunch, and between lunch and quitting time.

Boomshine (http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine):

In this game, little colorful dots float aimlessly across the screen at different speeds and rebound off the walls. A mouse-click creates a small, expanding “explosion” that causes any dots it touches to also explode. The goal is to explode increasing numbers of dots, and the only way to do it at higher . . .

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Ridley Scott must have seen Pearl Harbor and said, “That’s what I want to do!”  And William Monahan, who had split a jumbo carton of Raisinets with Scott, said, “I’ll get you a script by Monday.”  What other explanation is there?  Since Pearl Harbor, no one can claim ignorance of the historical epic’s cinematic follies; Scott & Co. must have meant to employ them.  Judged by those standards, Kingdom of Heaven acquits itself admirably.  It nails the trifecta of overblown-period-piece suck.

1. Writing.  William Monahan won an Oscar for writing the departed.  He sure . . .

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I guess at this point I have to start justifying my Netflix queue, so here goes. I liked Ben Kingsley in Dave and thought he was impressive in Sexy Beast (although I couldn’t get through the movie as a whole), plus HBO Films has a reputation for quality. That’s how I came to see Mrs. Harris. Based on a true story, it stars Annette Bening as the title character, a headmistress who attaches herself to Kingsley’s self-professed “country doctor” Herman Tarnower. Tarnower is less rural sawbones and more egocentric, womanizing publicity hound, and Harris soon finds herself taking a backseat . . .

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I’ve been hearing for a while that the latest in party-game crazes is Apples to Apples, and I’m happy to report that after a single night’s shennanigans, I can declare myself a big fan.

See, my two favorite games so far have been Taboo and Drinking Jenga and Apples to Apples provides a combination of both those games. (I feel legally obligated to tell you that drinking apparently isn’t really a requirement– but, like I’ve been telling my writing students for years, there are just some things you shouldn’t try without being drunk.)

. . .

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