For the Noir fan on your Christmas list, Turner Class Movies and Universal have just released this wonderful box set of three crime thrillers from the 1940s. The Glass Key (1942), The Phantom Lady (1944), and The Blue Dahlia (1946) have never before been on DVD. For some unknown reason, this box set is NOT available on AMAZON, but you can buy it here. As most of you know, I am firmly in the Blu-ray world. But I’ve found that the higher definition format doesn’t make a big difference with these older Black & White films. So, of course, I’ve ordered this as a Christmas present for me!

I like Colbie Caillat’s pop music so when I saw this Christmas music CD on sale at BEST BUY for $9.99 I couldn’t resist. After listening to Colbie and friends sing these songs a few times, I’d have to rate Christmas in the Sand a mixed bag. “Merry Christmas Baby” is good, but “Silver Bells” not so much. My favorite song on this CD is “Mistletoe” (check it out below). If you’re a Colbie Caillat fan, you already have this CD. For the rest of you, this is not an essential purchase. GRADE: C+
TRACK LIST:

1. Merry Christmas Baby (Feat. Brad Paisley) 3:41

2. Santa Baby – 2:57

3. Christmas in the Sand 3:48

4. Baby It’s Cold Outside (Feat. Gavin Degraw)3:20

5. The Christmas Song (Feat. Justin Young) 3:18

6. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town 3:10

7. Every Day is Christmas (Feat. Jason Reeves) 4:25

8. Sliver Bells 3:43

9. Winter Wonderland – 2:50

10. Mistletoe – 3:51

11. Happy Christmas – 3:46

12. Auld Lang Syne 3:46

Today, two NFL teams who are just playing out the season meet in a nearly meaningless game. The Bills have a number of their starters injured so it will be interesting to see who plays in today’s game. St. Louis defeated the mighty San Francisco Forty-niners last week, but somehow the bookies aren’t impressed because the Bills are 3-point favorites. How is your favorite NFL team going to fare today?

For the Star Wars fan on your Christmas list, here are two sets of Star Wars movies on Blu-ray. AMAZON has the Complete set for $84 and these two volumes for $36 each. Yet BJ’s Warehouse has these Blu-ray sets for $29.99 each. Volume One includes Episodes 1-3, Volume Two includes Episodes 4-6. But this $29.99 price will go up on December 16 so you’re going to have to hustle to get these bargain prices. May the Force be with you!

Ray Bradbury’s best work appeared in the 1950s, but his writing career spans decades. I found The Stories of Ray Bradbury to be the best collection of Bradbury’s work. All the key stories are here. This Everyman’s edition is a delight to hold and peruse. Christopher Buckley provides an informative Introduction on Bradbury’s life and work. This fine book belongs in everyone’s library!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Night
Homecoming
Uncle Einar
The Traveler
The Lake
The Coffin
The Crowd
The Scythe
There Was an Old Woman
There Will Come Soft Rains
Mars Is Heaven
The Silent Towns
The Earth Men
The Off Season
The Million-Year Picnic
The Fox and the Forest
Kaleidoscope
The Rocket Man
Marionettes, Inc.
No Particular Night or Morning
The City
The Fire Balloons
The Last Night of the World
The Veldt
The Long Rain
The Great Fire
The Wilderness
A Sound of Thunder
The Murderer
The April Witch
Invisible Boy
The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind
The Fog Horn
The Big Black and White Game
Embroidery
The Golden Apples of the Sun
Powerhouse
Hail and Farewell
The Great Wide World Over There
The Playground
Skeleton
The Man Upstairs
Touched with Fire
The Emissary
The Jar
The Small Assassin
The Next in Line
Jack-in-the-Box
The Leave-Taking
Exorcism
The Happiness Machine
Calling Mexico
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed
The Strawberry Window
A Scent of Sarsaparilla
The Picasso Summer
The Day It Rained Forever
A Medicine for Melancholy
The Shore at Sunset
Fever Dream
The Town Where No One Got Off
All Summer in a Day
Frost and Fire
The Anthem Sprinters
And So Died Riabouchinska
Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!
The Vacation
The Illustrated Woman
Some Live Like Lazarus
The Best of All Possible Worlds
The One Who Waits
Tyrannosaurus Rex
The Screaming Woman
The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place
Night Call, Collect
The Tombling Day
The Haunting of the New
Tomorrow’s Child
I Sing the Body Electric!
The Women
The Inspiried Chicken Motel
Yes, We’ll Gather at the River
Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!
A Story of Love
The Parrot Who Met Papa
The October Game
Punishment Without Crime
A Piece of Wood
The Blue Bottle
Long After Midnight
The Utterly Perfect Murder
The Better Part of Wisdom
Interval in Sunlight
The Black Ferris
Farewell Summer
McGillahee’s Brat
The Aqueduct
Gotcha!
The End of the Beginning

As a diabetic, I’m always looking for ways to control my glucose levels. Recent studies have show that eating a cup of beans per day can reduce glucose levels and make control easier. So I tried it myself: for a month I ate a cup of beans per day. One of my favorites was Paisley Farm All Natural Five Bean Salad – 64oz for a pittance at Sam’s Club. Sure enough, my glucose levels fell. But, I felt I needed more variety. I was listing to NPR and Tom Ashbrook’s fine program “On Point” on Thanksgiving and Crescent Dragonwagon was talking about her new bean cookbook. I listened to the interview and immediately got a copy of Bean by Bean. I’m working my way through it. Delicious recipes! You don’t have to be a diabetic to love this food. GRADE: A
BEAN FACTS:
1. Beans are the only cultivated plants that actually enrich, rather than deplete, the soil during the growing process. How is this possible? Legumes have nodules on their roots that add nitrogen to the soil instead of using it up.
2. Cooked beans can be frozen for up to six months. Thaw them overnight in the fridge before reheating.
3. Bean carbohydrates have been proven to drastically improve the stability of blood sugar levels in diabetics. Many adult-onset diabetics have been able to greatly reduce or eliminate their dependence on insulin through diets containing substantial amounts of beans.
4. In ancient Rome, so esteemed were legumes that the four leading families took their names from them: Lentullus (lentil), Piso (pea), Cicero (chickpea), and Fabius (fava).
5. Some ancient cults who believed in reincarnation, most notably the monastic followers of Pythagoras, thought human souls traveled through the stems of bean plants to Hades, where they were then transmogrified for their next lives; it was therefore a sin to eat beans or even walk among bean plants.
6. The mischief-maker behind the bean’s reputation as a musical fruit is a group of complex sugars called oligosaccharides. Oligosaccharides cannot be broken down by our digestive enzymes; instead, our intestinal bacteria ferment them during digestion, causing most of the gas attributable to beans. Luckily, it’s possible to mitigate the gas-making effects of beans through controlling factors such as cooking method and duration, complementary ingredients, and the variety of bean used. (The least “flatulating” legumes are said to be lentils, split peas, adzuki beans, mung beans, and black-eyed peas.)
7. In terms of sheer numbers and staggering diversity, no part of the world comes close to matching the abundance and variety of beans available in America: kidney and black beans, navy and cranberry, lima, white runner, scarlet runner, brown tepary and white tepary, calico, eye-of-the-goat, nightfall, fresh green beans, and more!

Many of you will recognize Russell Kirk as the author of Old House of Fear (1961), The Surly Sullen Bell (1962), A Creature of the Twilight: His Memorials (1966), The Princess of All Lands (1979), Lord of the Hollow Dark (1979), Watchers at the Strait Gate (1984), Off the Sand Road: Ghost Stories, Volume One (2002), What Shadows We Pursue: Ghost Stories, Volume Two (2003) and Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (2004). But Russell Kirk was also a major figure in the conservative movement. No, this is not a Tea Party nutcase. Kirk believed in the power of ideas. He was an expert on Edmund Burke’s philosophies. I found Enemies of Permanent Things a bit dated (it was published in 1969) but stimulating in its defense of considering the implications of change before we make them. In a section of “Norms of Literature,” Kirk provides a masterful analysis of the work of Ray Bradbury. If you’re interested in ideas, Enemies of Permanent Things will make you think. GRADE: A-

Storage Wars is one of my Guilty Pleasures. I have no idea why I’m so entertained by Dave, Darrell, Brandi & Jerrod, and Barry bidding on other people’s abandoned property. But apparently plenty of other people share the same fascination I have with the drama because Storage Wars is the highest rated program on A&E. Tonight our intrepid entrepreneurs will be bidding on abandoned storage lockers and finding trash and treasure. Check your local listings for the broadcast time in your area.

Several radio stations in our area started playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. That’s too soon for me. I prefer listening to Christmas music after Thanksgiving. Each year, Diane and I buy one or two new Christmas music CDs (we have about 50 in our CD collection). This year, it was Katherine Jenkins’ This is Christmas. I’ve been a fan of Katherine Jenkins for years. She gained a whole new audience with her appearances on Dancing With the Stars. If you’re looking for a delightful Christmas CD, I recommend this one. Take a listen below:

Track List:
1. O Come O Come Emmanuel
2. Ding Dong Merrily On High
3. Away In A Manger
4. In Dulci Jubilo
5. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)
6. Santa Baby
7. The Little Road To Bethlehem
8. Deck The Halls
9. Angels From The Realms Of Glory
10. Sleep Quietly My Jesus
11. I Wish You Christmas
12. Hark The Herald Angels Sing
13. Come What May (with Placido Domingo)

This game didn’t sell out–in fact the die-hard fans who attend will be sitting in the rain–so radio coverage will be the order of the day. The Bills haven’t been mathematically eliminated, but their chances of making the Playoffs are very, very slim. Bills fans already talk about the 2013 NFL Draft. Is your favorite NFL team still in contention?