Top-5 Mac Musings – August 7, 2025

TAKE COMFORT WHEREVER AND WHENEVER YOU CAN

I’m not sure if you’ve watched the news or doomscrolled social media or read a newspaper lately, but these are challenging times. Assaults on senses and sensibilities seem to be at all-time highs which prompted me to think of comfort foods and comfort movies.

Spoiler alert! Pasta plays a big role in my comfort food menu. But now, I want to discuss comfort movies and how they play a role in helping me reduce the noise and infuse optimism.

So let’s dive into it. Warning: none of the movies detailed below are ever going to be considered “important” or “award-winning” or “thoughtful”. I watched “Million Dollar Baby” once, agreed that it was exceptional and Oscar-worthy and then made a note to myself to never, under any circumstances, watch it again.

Before I forget, here are my top-5 comfort foods as of August 2025

1. Mac & Cheese
2. McDonald’s French Fries
3. Cinnamon graham crackers
4. Sour patch kids
5. Taquitos 

Some of the below movies may spark debate, all are flawed and I do not care.

Here are my top-5 comfort movies, as of August 2025 with a one sentence review.

1. The Intern
   • The Intern is the heartwarming tale of a retired grandpa who joins a startup and somehow becomes the only employee who knows how to properly use a briefcase and basic human decency. – Robert De Niro & Anne Hathaway
     
2. Larry Crowne
   • Larry Crowne is the inspiring story of a middle-aged man who loses his job, buys a scooter, goes back to college, and somehow makes Tom Hanks riding a moped seem like a midlife crisis worth having. – Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston & Rami Malek
3. She’s Out of My League
   • She’s Out of My League is the highly realistic story of a TSA agent dating a perfect 10, proving that love conquers all—especially when the script says so. – Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, T.J. Miller, Krysten Ritter
4. Can’t Hardly Wait
   • Can’t Hardly Wait is a nostalgic teen fever dream where every high school stereotype collides at one epic party, and somehow no one ends up grounded or mildly concussed. – Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green
5. Singles
   • Singles is the ultimate ’90s time capsule where flannel, angst, and answering machines collide in a Seattle dating scene so grungy it makes commitment issues look charming. – Bridget Fonda, Matt Dillon, Kyra Sedgwick, Eddie Vedder

Honorable Mentions: All Star Wars movies, especially Empire Strikes Back and Top Gun.

And now onto my Top-5 Musings for Thursday, August 7 , 2025.

1. Just a nutty day in the wacky world of job searching yesterday. I cleared the first two hurdles on the way to landing an interview with an aerospace giant… while an hour later I got a rejection letter from, wait for it… Target. 
2. Until recently, I have always been drawn to Target stores and spent a ton of time in them growing up. Then I saw Career Opportunities and, well… young Jennifer Connelly was straight magic!
3. Screw it… my top five favorite Jennifer Connelly roles in no particular order
   • Career Opportunities
   • Top Gun Maverick
   • Inventing the Abbotts
   • Mulholland Falls
   • He’s Just Not That Into You
4. One of my favorite comfort movies listed above is Larry Crowne. A thoroughly unremarkable movie in almost every way except for the fact it features four Oscar nominees and three Oscar winners… so there’s that.
5. Those winners are: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston (nominee) and Rami Malek. 

QUOTABLE
“I’m divorcing a professor-turned-writer-turned-blogger with the libido of a 13 year-old and two published books to his credit.”
– Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts) in Larry Crowne