And I do love the pig indiscriminately.  You can cook a pig on a spit, in the ground, on a barbecue, in the oven, in a crock pot.  You can braise it, roast it, barbecue it, slow cook it, fry it, bake it.  Anyway you do it, its a beautiful thing.   I am happy to enjoy any part of him, weather it be his fatback (literally, the fat from a pig’s back, usually with the skin), his face, or his ribs, I eat them all.  However, nobody can deny that there is one special part of the pig that makes anyone’s mouth water simply at its mention; Bacon.  The food that is known to break vegetarians, cause vegans to chase after defenseless porkers with cleavers in their hands, and, yes, create “Reformed Judaism” (code for Jews that don’t keep kosher).

Bacon is the real breakfast of champions (it is also the lunch of lovers, and the dinner of dynamos – really, the saying should go, “winner, winner, bacon dinner!”).  Bacon is so good, in fact, that one glorious week during my senior year of college I ate bacon at every single meal.  It was Christmas Break and I decided to visit some friends in New York City.  We were all poor college kids, so going out in NYC for every meal for a week was out of the question, and the cafeteria, thank god, was also not an option.

Columbia, their alma mater, had apartments for their upperclassmen with full kitchens, though, so cooking was an option.  We were not the most well versed chefs at the time, but being able to cook bacon is a prerequisite for having testicles (well, at least the kind with hair on them).  Much of that week is a haze to me, but the taste of bacon is still on my lips.

My love affair with bacon can be traced further back then that, though.  Even when I was just a little guy I loved all things pork, calling it “the pink meat.”  Of course, I didn’t know then how a small child with a love of the “pink meat” could be misconstrued, but I do attribute those days to future proclivities.

Over the past few years I’ve learned of new pork products.  Pancetta and its glorious fatty drippings just perfect filling for gourmet macaroni-and-cheese; steamed (or baked) pork buns each a little present waiting to be unwrapped that will always delight; fatback flowing like manna from heaven; bacon grease is the nectar of the gods.  It always comes back to bacon, though, and I feel like the rest of the world is finally catching on!  There is even a bacon blog and I’ve already posted baconaisse.

I look forward to the future of bacon.  I’m sure that the molecular gastronomists will have new and unusual surprises for us at regular intervals.  Not to mention the greasy spoon owners that will keep building bigger and better sandwiches, and the mad scientists that won’t stop at the bacon explosion.  I’ll be there every step of the way, clogging one artery at a time.

You may not think you have fallen under the spell of bacon, but ask yourself this question, when you hear the phrase, “bacon wrapped…”  does it really need to go any further?

Pork: so good pigs eat it!

I kind of want to get a good supply of doors and just see how it feels to do this and, of course, find out exactly what it takes…

Then the movie begins, and if anyone makes any noise it pisses me off; I especially don’t want to hear the crunching of any popcorn. Its a good thing I made sure to go with a troupe of 18 people.

Why do we do it, then? Why do we force ourselves to “make plans,” to see a movie that we could see at our own convenience far easier and then actually talk to people when we did make an effort to see them? The reason, I think, is because we hope for a shared experience when we go to the movies.

When we cry, we want to hear the sobs and sniffles around us. We want to feel the gentle trickle of warm tears falling on our shoulder when our wives and girlfriends lean on us.

When we laugh, we want to hear the echo of knee slaps and cackles. We want to look into the eyes of our buddies and shake our heads in agreement.  Our look silently says, “Imagine if that happened to us,” or “Remember when that happened to us,” or simply, “Holy Shit!”

When we see our dreams come true on the silver screen, we want to feel the comfort of the realization that our dream is a collective dream.

Lately, the movies seem less inspiring than they once were.  Perhaps I’m more jaded, or perhaps the Hollywood dollar is too scarce to be risking on the types of projects that might turn out to be great or even revolutionary but might also turn out to be money pits.  Maybe its just that the movie theaters have trouble competing with my 50″ HD TV with surround sound, reasonably priced popcorn, pause buttons, and Netflix.

If you search for it, though, you can still see some brilliance amongst the rehashed perfunctory dreck.  I’m a fan of IMAX and 3D, for example.  Both mediums seem fresh and still give me a reason to see a movie at the movies.  I still feel like a child with my wide open gaping jaw reaching out for the images that seem to fly at my face just out of my grasp.

UP in 3D was just such a movie.  In fact, Pixar, in general, seems to be a studio a movie fan can rely upon (Wall-E could take the place of UP in most of what I am about to write…).  I saw UP with my parents and wife, and it was the only choice that actually somehow appealed to all of us even though it was also the only movie out at the time that wasn’t directly aimed at any of us.  We were not disappointed.  Sure, its a cartoon (something I generally enjoy, but not the favorite of either of my parents) but it never seemed phony.  Sure, its a “kids” movie, but it never talked down (with the possible exception of the talking dog, but nothing’s perfect).  The first few minutes of the movie restored my faith in humanity by telling a complete story, involving crucial plot points that most any adult would assume a child couldn’t understand – both the events and the emotional underpinnings – and it did this without a single word.  If the movie had ended there I might have walked away crying, but it went on, and it continued along its brilliant path.  When I go see a movie, be it a drama, comedy, action, or horror, that is aimed at me it almost always assumes I am dumb.  However, this “children’s cartoon” assumed that an audience made up largely of people under the age of ten could appreciate death, love, growing old, and life long dreams.

Today a new movie came out, and I am hoping that it, too, will make me glad I stepped out with friends instead of watching it in my underwear on my couch.  This Is It, Michael Jackson’s new movie about the concert that could never be, should remind me of my college years.  I have been known to do some strange things to MJ tunes, and if you see a strange shadowy figure dancing in the aisles, it just might be me.

No wonder sales are down.

That must be how Hollywood was born, or at least how it became what it is today. All those people there to entertain others as a defense mechanism. Sure, Hollywood has its Russell Crowe’s and its Colin Ferralls, but its got a lot more Jerry Seinfelds and Will Ferrels.

However, I am referring to the larger picture, Hollywood as a whole as a defense mechanism. My tribe (the Hebrew tribe) is represented in Hollywood in abundance. All of those Jews gathering in one place to form a huge defense mechanism. Sure, go ahead, have another Holocaust – but say goodbye to your beloved movies, stand-up comedy, sit-coms (Tyler Perry, I suspect, did not have a Bar Mitvah so TBS sitcoms might go on, which is even scarier than a second Holocaust), and basically any form of non-sports related entertainment. We have our sports heroes, Sandy Kofax, but the only sport that might miss us is living through a Jewish mother.

Israel, as we know, went the other way. Thats where we Jews keep our big guns (literally). Over there, we beat people up, over here, we make funny faces. Either way, its hard to mess with us these days.

So it has come to pass that the Schneider family has been swept up by this tsunami of Jewish entertainment. I try to be entertaining here, and my brother tries on stage. Its disconcerting when you google your own name and the word “boner” and your brother pops up. I’m not sure what would be good to pop up, but definitely not your brother.

This video, though, isn’t the one where he talks about boners – you can find that for yourself. No, in this one he is the first Schneider ever to “get sexy.”

Matt, its not pretty at times, but there are some bits of corn in that crap.

Embrace Reality is his youtube channel (along with some fellow comedian friends of his).