I’m not a sociologist or historian, and the only subject I know anything about is movies, so take this with a grain of salt. But it seems to me that this blog, Seriously So Blessed, is hilarious. It’s a near-perfect satire of a certain subculture of Mormon life in the Provo/SLC area: the 20-year-old life-long-Provo girls who marry newly returned missionaries and write blogs about their fabulous lives. If you’ve never been a Mormon living in Provo you might not fully appreciate the nuances of the character, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s funny.

Note: The blog has an irritating music player that begins playing irritating music the moment the page loads. So be ready for that. It’s irritating.

You know how sometimes when you’re bored you’ll find a photo of a man holding a baby and use Photoshop to put the man’s head on the baby’s body and the baby’s head on the man’s body? Or how sometimes you’ll do the same thing with a picture of a lady and a cat? I think we’ve all been there. And in that gray area between “funny” and “creepy” lie these sites: Man Babies and Cat Ladies. Enjoy and/or get the heebie-jeebies!

Do you enjoy listening to movie geeks talk about movies and TV and video games and movies? Me too! And the nice folks at Always Watching were kind enough to invite me on as a guest geek for this week’s podcast (which is entitled The Watchers). You can view a rundown of what we discuss, and also listen to the podcast itself, and also subscribe to the podcast, here. (A mild warning: I think there’s some naughty language at one point, though I don’t remember when or how much.)

We recorded it Tuesday night, at which time it also was being streamed live for whoever happened to be listening. The regular crew is David Chen (who’s a big fan of mine, inexplicably), Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley; guests were me, Myles McNutt of Cultural Learnings, and Alex Billington of First Showing. A good time was had by all. I think they talked more than I did, though, because I’m nervous around strangers, especially when I can only hear the strangers and not see them.

I’ve occasionally mentioned my friend Dawn Taylor, a fellow Portland film critic and one of my best pals here in the Northwest. Before she became a writer, she was a pastry chef, and she retains those skills to this day. She has made me birthday cakes the last two years that were the most delicious things I have ever put in my mouth.

So it is with great delight that I tell you she is starting a homemade-candy business called Polidori Chocolates, and that she’s offering some early sales before the official launch. She has the details on her personal blog. The main offering is a box of eight truffles, seven of them correlating to the Seven Deadly Sins, and then an extra one just for fun, I guess. She also does hand-crafted chocolate-covered marshmallows — she makes marshmallows! I didn’t even know you could do that!

The Seven Deadly Sins (Plus One) collection costs $15. Dawn gave me a sampler box today, and I can personally attest to their extraordinary taste and quality. She has mouth-watering descriptions of them on her blog. A couple of them, I wasn’t sure about. Like the Envy truffle (pictured above): key-lime flavored white chocolate ganache truffle, enhanced with the hot, sweet chewiness of candied ginger.” Lime? Ginger? White chocolate? Hmm. Then I tasted it and repented of my skepticism. It’s my personal favorite of the eight. It made my mouth dance and sing.

These are luxury items, obviously. Fifteen bucks plus shipping for eight chocolates is more than, say, a bag of Hershey’s Kisses would cost. But I can tell you it’s worth it. If you like fancy chocolates and can appreciate the homemade, hand-crafted quality, you simply must take advantage of this offer. Your taste buds will thank you for it!

Richard Wagner’s four operas known as the “Ring Cycle” or simply “The Ring” are the subject of a book with the ill-conceived title “Penetrating Wagner’s Ring.” Inevitably, some smart-alecks have posted entendre-laden reviews of the book on Amazon.com, which our old friend Luscious Malone was kind of enough to bring to our attention. Some of the sophomoric highlights:

“Before reading this book, the thought of penetrating Wagner’s ‘Ring’ left me cold.”

“When I initially came across Wagner’s Ring it was like a revelation. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it — but I wanted to.”

“I found Wagner’s Ring accommodating, even if it had the texture of Bach’s last movement.”

Tee-hee!

Everyone thinks their friends are funny. That’s usually part of why you’re friends, because your senses of humor match. But some of my friends’ blogs make me think, “I bet other people would laugh at this, too.” So here are some posts that I believe you will enjoy, as penance for not having a “Snide Remarks” column this week (or next week, or the week after).

Chris Clark is very funny. He will pretend not to care that I said that, but secretly he is delighted and wants more people to tell him he is funny. You might enjoy his recommendations for making church Christmas parties more fun, and his feelings about his wife about to have a baby (key line: “WE ARE NOT VIETNAMESE”), and his not-at-all-bitter thoughts on some negative reviews he recently received. Oh, and DO NOT MISS “Eventide Masquerade,” which is his answer to the vampire novel “Twilight.” Actually, you will not go amiss if you just start at the beginning of his archives and work your way forward.

His wife is Lisa Valentine Clark, who has been one of my best friends since we were in the Garrens Comedy Troupe together way back in ‘96. Lisa and I are very close. While she was pregnant this last time, I helped her by gaining as much sympathy weight as I could. We joke about me being the father of at least one of their children, but secretly we all wish it were true. I liked her story about seeing Maroon 5 in Las Vegas (her brother is the guitarist), and her charming thoughts on parent-teacher conferences, and an amusing story involving their daughter Phoebe. (Please note: Despite having been an actual English teacher at one point, Lisa doesn’t always spell words the right way. This, and the fact that she doesn’t give a rat’s arse, is part of her charm.)

I’ve known Craig Bates since high school. I believe I am partially responsible for getting him into acting, so if his wife is reading this, I apologize. Craig can rant and rave like nobody’s business, and he is not afraid to use a swear word here and there if necessary. Enjoy “What’s Wrong with Corporate America” and “Life Takes Visa.”

Then there is Emmie. Ah, Emmie. A “graceful beauty,” I once called her in a review of a stage production she was in. So true, so true. She is married to a guy named Steve that none of us have ever met, but we’ve seen pictures so we know he exists. Anyway, just as with Chris Clark’s blog, you would do well to just peruse Emmie’s archives (if you know what I mean). Among recent posts, I laughed at this one and this one and this one.

Ken Craig is another friend from the Garrens Comedy Troupe days. He lives with his wife and innumerable children in Las Vegas, where it is too hot to go outside eight months out of the year. He doesn’t blog very often, but when he does it’s because he has a topic that needs addressing. See “Dr. Schulze, I Presume” and “A Very Merry Christmas Movie.”

Here is a very level-headed, insightful article by David Wong called “10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On.” (It contains some PG-13 language and images.) At a time when there is increasing animosity between those groups, I find this attitude of “Can’t we all get along?” very refreshing.

Naturally, since the article is about finding common ground and respecting one another, most of the comments that people have posted in response to it are full of hostility and anger — merely proving one of Wong’s points, which is that there are a-holes in both camps who simply don’t want to understand how other people think.

What do Wayne Newton, Tony Curtis, and Clay Aiken have in common? Behold: Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians.

And below, fictional presidential candidate Kim McFriendly, a former Republican senator from the state of Heartland, offers her defense of Sen. Larry Craig in a CNN parody. (If you watch it and don’t get the joke, that means you somehow missed seeing this video a couple months ago.)

My friend Mike Russell couldn’t fulfill his normal duties as movie critic on KUFO’s Cort and Fatboy program Friday night, so I stepped in for the assist. The guys were broadcasting live from Portland’s Bagdad Theater in conjunction with their 11 p.m. screening of “Goodfellas,” and I joined them there on the scene to discuss “The Heartbreak Kid” (which is not nearly as good a movie as “Goodfellas”). A fine time was had by all. You can listen to the broadcast here. My appearance starts only a couple minutes into it, so you might as well just listen from the beginning.

I’ve joined Mike a few times in the past to cover films he hadn’t seen (the last time was in February), but this was the first time I’d gone solo, without Mike even there. I was alone with Cort and Fatboy! But it was OK. They were nice to me. I pointed out to Fatboy that he’s really not fat anymore, and he said he’s been losing weight, getting in shape, etc. He said his goal is to get so thin that “Fatboy” becomes an ironic nickname, like when giant guys are called Little John. Also, I finally learned his real first name. (It’s Susan. No wonder he prefers Fatboy!)

I am pleased to announce that, as part of my goal to write for every website on the Internet, I’m now on the blogging team at Cinematical!

Cinematical is an excellent source for movie news, with a couple dozen entries a day covering all manner of film-related items. I’m working specifically for the Cinematical Indie sub-section, focusing on independent films. Some of these articles show up on the main Cinematical page, but most stay in the indie section, with the cool kids.

Most of what I write for Cinematical Indie will be news-oriented, though the bloggers are encouraged to put a personal spin on it to liven it up. If you’re not interested in movie news, don’t feel like you’re obligated to read it just because it was written by me, is what I’m saying.

If you do want to keep tabs on me, you can bookmark my blogger page. It lists all the articles I’ve written for Cinematical.

(Likewise, for my stuff at Film.com, bookmark this link.)

For daily updates from the movie world, Cinematical really is a useful site, and I’m not just saying that because I write for them now. There are a lot of good writers there, and they save you the trouble of monitoring lots of different movie sites because they cull from them and report the best stuff anyway.

Hooray for fun new writing gigs! And hooray for having seen the last of stuff like this!