Wes Phillips

Make mine a Venti? Give me a break! I once asked a Starbucks counterperson why they called their humongous-sized hot-milk drinks "ventis." "That's Italian for twenty," the barrista said. Riiiight, like any Italian I've ever met would slam down 20 oz. of coffee at a time.

Jon Carroll has a fine columnhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/…; this morning (no surprise there) that meanders from his thoughts on Die Hard (very Aristotlian) to the making of the Jeep and how the humvee influences our presence in Iraq.

You've got to love people with too much spare time on their hands. At least, I love this.

A (very) short history. You mean it wasn't just a John Hartford song?

I love this stuff. If I was rich beyond dreams of avarice, I would so collect it.

Now that the dust has settled on The Deathly Hallows, Stephen King weighs in on the series and on J. K. Rowling. King, of course, is one of the few fiction authors who can write about Rowling's success without bitterness, and his thoughts on Rowling's craft are sharp. He also knows just a little bit about toiling in the genre-novel wilderness.

The best rock songs ever, according to the prince of darkness—whose band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, I am so going to see June 1.