Food is a good thing. That is my profound post-Thanksgiving pronouncement. My mother is an extraordinary, amazing cook — a fact I remember acutely when I visit my parents. By virtue of having grown up in a home with good food, I've continued to appreciate good food all my life. And it's still a connection I share with my mother: I call her when I've had a great meal, when I've cooked something interesting and when I've seen a good food movie.

So, in the spirit of the overeating I've been doing at my parents' home for the past few days, I've been thinking about some of my favorite food movies. These are not all great movies, and they are not necessarily the greatest food movies, but they're all food movies that I've enjoyed, and that came to mind recently.

1. What's Cooking? (2000)

What's Cooking? is the no-brainer. First, we have gay-friendly director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham). Then there's the mouthwatering multi-ethnic Thanksgiving food prepared by Joan Chen, Mercedes Ruehl, Alfre Woodard, Julianna Margulies and Kyra Sedgwick, among others. Last, and most important, we have Julianna Margulies and Kyra Sedgwick as perhaps the most attractive and appealing lesbian couple in the history of movie lesbians.

Yes, the movie has its flaws. (Every time I watch, I cannot believe the Vietnamese college student tells his parents he's not coming home for Thanksgiving and then goes to his girlfriend's house. Across the street from his parents' house.) But then Julianna Margulies flexes her perfect arms, and she and Kyra Sedgwick giggle over the turkey baster. And all is well in the world. … continue reading

One of the joys of home ownership is that you and you alone are responsible for fixing things. This means that when the roof leaks, you either have to get up there and fix it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you. When the leak is the result of hail damage, you get to call your insurance company and get a rather large check in order to pay someone else to come out and fix the roof. When they fix the roof, they take all the old stuff off and put new stuff on. This includes removing and re-installing your satellite dish.

Why am I boring you with all these details? Well, when the roof people re-install your satellite dish, they may or may not get it lined up correctly. If it's not lined up correctly, you spend days watching a blank television screen. While watching a blank screen, you may learn something about yourself. Here's what I have learned. I want my, I want my, I want my HDTV. Apparently, I have become addicted to television. I was blissfully unaware of my addiction until my dish went dead.

My television is almost always on, whether I am watching it or not. It provides the background noise to my life — the soundtrack, if you will. Well, without a dish providing a signal, my television has become a large box in the corner staring blankly outward to mock me. In order to get the television to stop its mocking and provide me with picture and sound, I'm relegated to "rabbit ears." For all you youngsters out there, that's how we old folk used to watch television when we had four channels and our youngest sibling was the remote. … continue reading

I was just browsing IMDb and happened to notice that two Fried Green Tomatoes stars are celebrating a birthday today: Mary Stuart Masterson is 41, and Kathy Bates is 59.

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