Yikes!

Beer in a Cone

I'm in Austin, Texas right now. They have an ice cream place called Amy's that's pretty top-notch.

So in addition to having some top-notch BBQ while I was here (Iron Works and Salt Lick), I partook in some ice cream.

Guiness-flavored ice cream.

Like the beer. The sign even warned that it has alcohol.

And it just may be the tastiest ice cream I've ever had. It smelled like Guiness and tasted like Guiness. All that was missing was the frothy head. It was a little sweet, but the flavor combination (beer and sweet cream, I presume) totally worked.Joel Grishaver

The Presses Are Rolling

This is a picture of the printing press at my office. It's a press that prints books. If I was better at taking pictures with my blackberry, you'd be able to see that right now, the press is printing my book.

It's called God: Jewish Choices for Struggling with the Ultimate. It's a book on theology for teenagers. I edited it and wrote all the educational pieces. A group of 17 other people wrote the rest of it.

And it will be out in a matter of days.

I Hated "No Country For Old Men"

It's getting lots of Oscar buzz and all that, but I hated it.

I saw it several weeks ago, and at the time I didn't quite have the words to describe what I didn't like about it.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is a movie critic, so he gets paid to be able to articulate what he doesn't like about movies. So he has the words to describe what's crappy about it. Basically, it's a narrative that doesn't really go anywhere. The story has no natural trajectory. And it has no redeeming message, either. Just lots of gratuitous violence.

Is it well acted and beautifully shot? Sure. But it's kind of hard to sit through a movie for a couple of hours and walk out totally unmoved, unchanged, and without anything real to show for your two hours.

So, no, it's not a good movie.