"Eating sushi has become the new Russian roulette."

*

So recently I got wind of the illness that Jeremy Piven, the actor who plays Ari Gold in Entourage, acquired. He got mercury poisoning from eating sushi twice a day for two years. He had six times the allowable amount of mercury as advised by the FDA!

Now I had known about the carcinogens and pollutants that accumulated in the flesh and fat of deep-sea fish and bottom-feeders for many years, but I had pushed it to the back of my mind for the sake of my palate and out of negligence. However, the news of one of my favorite characters on one of my favorite television shows being stricken by such an unusual and serious injury abruptly pushed that knowledge back to the fore.

I just did a quick Google search and numerous studies and articles highlight the dangers of eating seafood nowadays, particularly sushi/sashimi.

While I don't plan on giving up on eating sushi or all seafood, it does make me much more wary. For instance instead of getting that tuna sub for lunch, I'll probably get a smoked chicken or beef instead. It's just a crying shame that seafood is so damn tasty!

(Does eating raw seafood as opposed to cooked seafood somehow make mercury, PCBs, etc. more toxic? Can someone post an answer to this because I don't see how cooking it would get rid of the mercury, PCBs, or other toxic chemicals present, but most articles only point out the dangers of eating raw seafood.)

Here's a handy, compact list for the cautious eaters out there.

I had been eating red snapper, farmed U.S. salmon, and orange roughy for years! Who would have known?

It's official. Man-made pollution is encroaching on my state of well-being and happiness!

*(Photo belongs to 'joonelovesfood.blogspot')

Empire's Greatest Movies of All Time

Empire Magazine compiled a list of 500 of the greatest movies of all time. Now I usually abhor these types of lists by authoritative organizations/magazines/whatnot because they usually comprise of black and white movies by Bergman, Frtiz Lang, Godard, etc. For instance, AMC's list placed "Citizen Kane" as the most important movie ever made. While we were all forced to watch CK in high school and I found it to be decent, in no way would I place it in the top ten list of my favorite movies. The problem I have with lists that put movies like "Casablanca," "The Third Man," "Maltese Falcon," and "Chinatown" at the top of their list is that they are extremely pretentious and completely disregard crowd-pleasing favorites that are masterpieces in their own right. I'm referring to films like "Aliens," "Indiana Jones," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Godfather," and "Scarface." Beloved classics for the masses but too 'mainstream' for the critics.

What I like about Empire's 500 list is that it combines art-house, foreign flicks with blockbuster, nostalgic favorites. It also does a good job of incorporating great films from abroad into the list as well like "Cache," "Old Boy," "Layer Cake," and "Yojimbo." Instead of the traditional Godard, Truffant, etc. they also include well-known directors of my generation like Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Ang Lee, David Lynch, Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Sidney Lumet, etc. This list even has populist favorites like "The Goonies," "Lord of the Rings," "The Matrix," "Donnie Darko," "Network," "Kill Bill," "Transformers," 300," "Lost in Translation," "Fight Club," "Dazed and Confused," "28 Days Later," "Batman Returns," and "The Breakfast Club."


While, a lot of my favorite movies are in the 300-500 range, I'm just glad they even made it on the list. One of these days I will have to compile my own list, which I think will be more representative of our generation. For starters, I was pleased with the plethora of Kurosawa films sprinkled throughout the list but I would definitely include more of Alfonso Cuaron's, Park Chan Wook's, Danny Boyle's, Zhang Yimou's, Luc Besson's, and Federico Fellini's works.