Each Thursday (or Friday, since some weeks we seem to be running behind on everything), Needcoffee.com's staff of whackos will wrack our brains to give you interesting and new things to do over the weekend. Books, movies, whatever. We'll throw them out, you do with them what you will. And hey...if you have something you want to recommend--whatever it is--drop us a line.

Incidentally, we've provided links where we can for you to buy the stuff or find out more if you're interested, courtesy of those Amazon types. Hey, come on, we can't be totally selfless in this, can we?

August 8, 2002

Book of the Week: The Blue Planet by Byatt, Fothergill & Holmes. From the people who brought you the kickass BBC series comes this massive hardcover wonder that contains not only the stuff from the show--but a lot more. Chocked full of hundreds of photos, diagrams and even more wild examples of sea life--it's a coffee table book that's worth reading from end to end. Sweet.

Graphic Novel of the Week: Animal Man, Vol. 1 by Grant Morrison & Steve Dillon. Morrison was turning out amazing mind-blowing stuff long before he became a self-appointed God's Gift to Comics. This was his introduction to DC, and he was given the chance to grab a literally "Forgotten Hero" and do something different with him. The "something different" became an incredible twenty-five issue run that did everything from revisit Crisis to questioning the relationship between comic book character, reader and creator.

DVD of the Week: Murder By Death. Most people aren't aware of this little gem, a completely whacked send-up of the detective genre from the mind of Neil Simon. But get a load of this cast: Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, David Niven, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness...and Truman Capote? Oh yeah. They don't make ensemble sickness like this anymore.

CD of the Week: Moby's Animal Rights. Moby completely destroyed the Best Of Lists when he released Everything is Wrong, establishing himself as a purveyor of techno music that did not suck. Then with his followup he did the unthinkable--he rocked out. A lot of people were taken by surprise and reacted negatively to this album, and the rest of the world merely assume that Play was his sophomore big label effort--but either way, it's a tremendous disc.

Ice Cream of the Week: White Chocolate Latte by Starbucks. Sweet mother of God. When you put white chocolate fudge into white chocolate latte ice cream--and it's done by the madmen at Starbucks...what happens? That's right, your head caves in. Five points. I always use it for that last thirty-minute push necessary to finish a page of content. This stuff is so choice it's ridiculous.

Must Have Laundry Item of the Week: Dark Woolite. This is what happens when fabric wash is manipulated by the Hellfire Club.