No small thanks go to our man, Ted Berg:

A Good Combination:

Guest Writer: Ted Berg

I might be the wrong guy for this assignment because I don’t harbor any guilt over any of the movies I enjoy. Movies are made for entertainment, and pleasure is pleasure. Sure, a thought-provoking film might hold my attention after the credits stop rolling — entertaining me over a longer period of time — but a good blockbuster full of high-speed chases and tremendous explosions can provide a thorough and enrapturing aesthetic experience like few others.

I know a lot of European cinema supposedly developed in reaction to the escapism of Hollywood, but I don’t really understand the beef with escapism. I’ve seen a bunch of Italian Neorealist films, and nearly all of them bored me to sleep and not one featured a giant ape wrestling dinosaurs. Sure, Peter Jackson’s King Kong was a bit heavy-handed and hardly provoked introspection, but it held me in a vice grip throughout because, well, apes wrestling dinosaurs. And yeah, it might have lacked the subtleties of L’Avventura, but subtlety is for suckers. Give me movies that fully exploit the medium.

xXx opens with a suave dude in a tuxedo doing some spy stuff at an obvious bad-guy party featuring a Rammstein performance. His presence is too obvious and inexplicable in a mosh pit full off tattooed and pierced fire-breathers, and the leader-guy bad guys spot him swiftly and kill him handily. Then they light some drinks on fire to celebrate.

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The great Ted Berg talks Red Sox:

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Bad break for the Sox today, as they’ve lost Kevin Youkilis for the rest of the season.

Steve Lombardi thinks the Red Sox might thrive despite the loss because Josh Beckett is back; over at the Boston Globe, however, Bob Ryan says there is no way the Sox can overcome this one:

Is Ted Berg the new Ted Baxter?

And is Johnny Damon a rootin’, tootin’, pop-gun shootin’ chickenhawk?

Wait, did I bury the lede?

Ted Berg’s blog always has something for me every time I stop over. Yesterday, he posted a classic AP Photo of Hideki Irabu who was arrested for Second-Degree Awesomeness earlier this week (I don’t usually take delight in another person’s misery, even a public figure, but I’ve always felt warm-and-fuzzy for Irabu’s misadventures–he was the one true degenerate on a Yankee team filled with boy scouts).

Then came  a post about some of the craziest–nasty or delicious, you decide–food I’ve ever seen.

Check this out, from a joint called Ditch Plains:

Whoa, Daddy. That’s hectic, man. Or “Mad hectic,” as my wife would say.

Oy and vey.

[Photo Credit: Always Hungry]