THURSDAY RECOMMENDATIONS

Chili:

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints – Trailer - This movie is in the same vein as other New York coming-of-age stories like Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale and, like that film, is a true story. IMDb describes it as “a coming-of-age drama about a boy growing up in Astoria, N.Y., during the 1980s. As his friends end up dead, on drugs or in prison, he comes to believe he has been saved from their fate by various so-called saints.” The movie stars Robert Downey Jr, Chazz Palminteri, Rosario Dawson, Eric Roberts, and Shia LaBeouf, among others.

Wallstrip Podcast – Website - This is a great video podcast that the New York Times described as “Squawk Box meets Saturday Night Live.” While that might not necessarily be a compliment, Wallstrip has become a favorite addition to my iPod. Each day, blogger chick Lindsay Campbell presents a new stock and tells us why it’s trending and accompanies the stock profile with a bit of humor and interviews with experts and CEOs. Some sort of wacky skit usually follows the analysis. While they rarely hit on stocks before they are on the national radar, they cover stocks whose long-term future is bright and provide some solid advice.

Gladys Knight and Ron Winan's Chicken & Waffles - Website - Great southern cooking, a great place to take visitors while in Atlanta (If they don't want to spring for Bone's, that is). The Midnight Train: 4 chicken wings and a Belgian waffle, enough said. The fried green tomatoes are the jams. Don't miss the sweet potato cheesecake, either. Open till 4 AM most nights, if you dare go downtown at that hour. And, yes, I dare.

Waffles: great side dish or greatest side dish?

Willy Mac:

Sorry to throw two Apple products on you, but...

Video iPod - Website - It's everything all the other iPods are, except one extra thing. Yeah, it plays movies, TV shows, and music videos that you download from iTunes. This thing is so addicting I would need a support group and twelve steps to stop using it. It has 20 hours of battery life for audio use only and six and a half for video use. The downsides to it are that you can only really put movies and stuff that you buy directly from iTunes on it. Nothing else really works, I tried and it wouldn't let me do it, but I'm sure there is someway to do it. More downsides to it are that it scratches easily (probably another ploy to get you to buy a protective casing for it) and, of course like most other iPod products when they first come out, it's only available in black or white. It comes in 30 GB and 80 GB.

MacService - Website - If you own a Mac and damage your computer, it's ok. These guys can save the day. They're relatively cheaper than all the others I checked out and they offer 24 hour shipping. The only downside is that the place is in California so you have to ship it out, wait for it to be fixed, and get it shipped back. So, you're wondering what I did? I set my MacBook down on the table go get a drink from the fridge and return to find it on the ground (I don't know how it happened) with a crack on the top right of the screen. It basically made the last for inches of the right side of my display a big jumble of rainbow colors. It turned my 17 inch MacBook into a 13ish inch MacBook with a rainbow plaid accent. Oh well, when I finally get the money saved up, I get to flush about eight $800 down the toilet.