“Heyday,”

Most appealing to me, however, is the way Andersen completely immerses the reader in the world of 1848. He only uses vocabulary that would have been common then, with characters remarking on new words or usages (”OK” was just coming into vogue at the time). America-inspired democracy is starting to spring up around Europe, and America itself is in the midst of a remarkable era of progress and change. It’s easy to see parallels to modern life, particularly of the “the more things change, the more they stay the same” variety. Someone sends a telegraph, receives a reply almost instantly, sends his own response back, and marvels at how he’s able to have an actual conversation with someone hundreds of miles away — which is exactly what modern instant messaging is. Andersen lets us notice these little parallels without commenting on them.

As a fan of history, I’m also amazed and delighted by how much detail Andersen includes. Sometimes it’s not relevant to the story, but it’s always interesting nonetheless. (Did you know that in New York City, May 1 was a semi-official “moving day”? That’s when leases would run out, resulting in thousands of people changes residences all on the same morning. Thanks, “Heyday”!) He covers every elements of life — religion, politics, courtship, entertainment, etc. — to create a very vivid sense of what it was like to be American in 1848. And it’s in the service of an enjoyable, intelligent story with memorable characters. It’s just out in paperback, and I heartily recommend it.

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!

It works essentially like iTunes: You can download an entire album for $9.99, or individual tracks for 99 cents. You can hear a 30-second sample for free. (For some reason it’s the first 30 seconds of each track on one album, but a random from-the-middle 30-second chunk for the songs on the other album.) Click the + sign next to the album titles to reveal the full track list, and pick ‘n’ choose whatever you want. I’ve noted the songs that deal with Utah and/or Mormon culture specifically, in case you want to only choose (or only avoid) those.

Liner notes for the songs can be found here for “Will Make Jokes for Food” (2003) and here for “Monkeys and Pirates Are Funny” (2006).

I’m going to try to the get the old Garrens Comedy Troupe CDs on here, too, once I’ve cleared it with the various other people involved. Figuring out who gets what percentage of the 99 cents per track is going to be a b-word. Maybe I just won’t tell some of the performers what I’m doing and keep the dozens of dollars I get all for myself.

Let me know if there are any bugs in the system. Snocap seems to have a pretty good set-up, but it’s all new to me, so I don’t know what problems there might be.

(My Snocap store should appear in the space below. If it doesn’t, try reloading the page. You might have to wait several seconds for the store to load.)

A friend of mine said he wanted to subscribe to the “Snide Remarks” podcast but didn’t know how to do it with iTunes. I realized I didn’t know either, since I, um, don’t subscribe to any podcasts. (Just not my thing.) So here’s how you do it, in case anyone else didn’t know: In iTunes, one of the drop-down menus is “Advanced,” and under that is an option that says “Subscribe to Podcast.” Select that, then paste in the URL for the podcast’s feed — which for “Snide Remarks” is http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog/?feed=rss2&cat=25. (There’s always a link to it at the end of these “Snide Remarks” blog entries, too.) And there you go.

Some of you are rolling your eyes, but I guarantee my friend was not the only regular reader of this site who didn’t know how to do it. And yeah, five seconds of searching in iTunes’ “Help” menu would reveal the answer, but I’ve found that a lot of people would rather go without whatever it is they’re trying to do than spend five seconds figuring out how to do it.

This week’s “Snide Remarks,” including the audio version, is here.
The audio version (i.e., the podcast) is also here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.

What? Not the “lightly liberal but still funny” part (though I am amused by the implication that usually liberals aren’t funny). I mean the subject line: “Anybody Recall Eric D Snyder’s ‘Snyde Remarks’?” Really? Snyder and Snyde Remarks? You’d expect the link to read http://www.ericdsnyder.com, but somehow he got that right.

Here’s the “What Happens in Vegas” review (at Film.com)!

I watched them both Thursday night — “Vegas” at 7 p.m., “Speed” at midnight — and now I am tired. “Speed Racer” screened earlier in the week, when I was in New York, and maybe you’re thinking, “Couldn’t Eric have found out where the NYC press screening was and seen it there?” And I thought the same thing. But as it turns out, getting your local publicists to find out information from their NYC counterparts is difficult, especially when your local publicists don’t even try. (At least, you assume they didn’t even try, since they ignored your follow-up e-mails.) But again, I’m tired now. Goodnight!

Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.

My review of it is now posted at Film.com. We figured since it’s only in a few theaters now, it could use all the publicity it can get to help it expand. Keep an eye out for it. It’s a funny, sweet, charming, crowd-pleasing (i.e., not just a “critics movie”) little gem.

For counter-programming, the womenfolk get a big ol’ piece of crap called “Made of Honor.” It has a pun title, and it’s the worst kind of pun title: the kind that doesn’t actually mean anything. Y’all know I don’t exactly go into romantic comedies expecting the moon, but this one is bad even by the terribly low standards of romantic comedies. Also, despite being marketed exclusively to women, all the female characters are shallow imbeciles. My review is at Film.com.

In limited release, there are a few films worth checking out: David Mamet’s “Redbelt,” David Gordon Green’s “Snow Angels,” and foreign-language Oscar winner “The Counterfeiters” (which, yes, I’ve just barely gotten around to seeing).

Finally, the podcast has a review of “Son of Rambow,” which is terrific, one of the best films of the year, and it opens in limited release today. But ignore the podcast, because the review’s not actually going up until next week. Sorry about that.

Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.

I’m in New York now until Wednesday, taking a little vacation and seein’ shows and crap. There will be no “Snide Remarks” on Monday, but tomorrow’s (tonight’s?) “In the Dark” should be on its regular schedule. Other blogging will be at a minimum.