If you missed it, there’s been substantial disagreement with my parsing of Rachael Ray’s Triscuit blurb yesterday. Many folks seem to think recipes can, indeed, be entertaining. I tried to counter with a list of other packaged-food websites where “entertaining recipes” is used as a stock phrase for “recipes for guests,” but many remain unconvinced. I’ll let you know if I hear back on my email to Nabisco. (I tried asking the frozen-faced Rachael Ray mannequin I keep posed in my kitchen, but she doesn’t answer.)

As far I’ve seen, this is the first of the ten thousand Evangelicals-won’t-vote-for-Romney pieces to moot me as a candidate. So let me make this very clear: if nominated I will not run; if elected I will take long Reagan-like naps my entire term rather than serve. (Mouse over the graphic of the LDS missionaries for some funny advice. Actually, “No thanks” is usually sufficient. We don’t usually brow-beat you like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.)

If you didn’t see the Tuesday Trivia mailing this week, congrats to Cannon Alsobrook, Carter Young, Jacob Sayward, Joshua W. Davey, and game show gajillionaire David Legler, who didn’t miss a single Question Seven during our last ten-week contest. (Email your mailing address to the site, folks, so I can send you a signed copy of Brainiac.) Final scores are here; new contest starts this week.

Speaking of Question Sevens, last week I asked what these eight movies had in common: The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Exorcist, Five Easy Pieces, Forrest Gump, Lolita, Match Point, A Matter of Life and Death, and Two for the Road. This turned out to be a pretty hard question: only 38 respondents knew that table tennis features prominently in each movie. Here’s the rundown, for the curious:

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Uh, if you’ve seen this movie, you probably remember the scene.
The Exorcist: When we meet Regan, she only begins to play with a Ouija board because she can’t find anyone to play Ping-Pong with. Ping-Pong can save you from the devil!
Five Easy Pieces: Nicholson taunts his brother (The Waltons’ Ralph Waite!) for his funny walk over a game of Ping-Pong.
Forrest Gump: Forrest becomes an international table tennis whiz, of course.
Lolita: Quilty keeps serving up “Roman Ping-Pong” balls in the opening scene, right before (spoilers!) Humbert kills him.
Match Point: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlet Johanssen “meet cute” over table tennis, not long before (spoilers!) he winds up shooting her.
A Matter of Life and Death: Roger Livesey’s table tennis ball is frozen in the air as the heavenly messenger makes another one of his time-stops appearances.
Two for the Road: Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn quarrel over who’s going to fish the Ping-Pong ball out of the pool, right before (spoilers!) she kills him with an axe. No, not really.