Celebrating the commencement of baseball’s epic trudge to October with entertainments both down the middle and in the dirt:

Strikes

Let the Right One In.  If Twilight had a brain (and it doesn’t), it might look something like this Swedish import, which tells the touching, yet deeply disturbing tale of bullied 12 year-old Oskar and his friendship with the strange, pale new girl next door.  By turns gory, funny, and quietly devastating, this is the vampire flick you should have seen.

The Promotion. A desert dry comedy starring Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly as dueling supermarket employees angling for a move up the middle management chain. It’s not the pratfall-laden yukfest one might expect given the track records of its leads, but there’s an oddball charm that sticks with you.  Bonus points for co-star Jenna Fischer’s particularly awesome use of the phrase, “banjo-fuckers.”

Long, long ago, in a galaxy 2,000 miles away, I was once a nice Midwest girl. I said, “please” and “thank you,” and I said, “pop” instead of “soda.” Soon, the two merged and I began to say, “Soda (sans please)” no longer recognizing myself.

Isn’t it funny how Hollywood taints us? I mean, I think I am still the nice girl I once was. You can take the nice girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the nice girl, right? That is, until you move to L.A…

I notice his attractiveness before I realize who he is.  His boyish dark hair, his sturdy jaw line and his twinkling eyes tease me from across the gate at the Monterey Airport.  Dressed in a navy blue v-necked sweater and exquisitely-fitting jeans, he is practically perfect in every way.  It takes me a moment for the recognition to hit.

He isn’t just practically perfect; he is perfect -- he’s Patrick Dempsey.  At my gate.  On my flight back to LAX.

Dear Reason,

I am an assistant at a company where the assistants rarely take lunch or leave the office at any time during the day. This means I sit at my desk for about 10hours a day. I am gaining weight and feel frustrated that even if I ate less, I’d still gain the weight because I do not really exert my body in ANY way besides walking to the car or picking up my hand to answer the phone.

HELP!!