The first in our summer grillmaster series

Warm weather finally upon New England, I fired up the grill yesterday. But first I sought advice from the grillmaster under whom I apprenticed (you might know him as "Anonymous," which is the name he uses when he comments).

I suggested that he give me a pep talk, like what Bear Bryant might have told the Alabama football team before the start of the season.

The answer was equal parts measured and sage: "Win one for the griller."

I would be remiss if I did not give a shoutout to Bean Stringfellow, Mrs. Stringfellow, Some Guy, and some other guy who doesn't have a N-B handle. Their largess brought me my new grill, and they are always welcome for some or all of the cuts of meat below.

Remiss

I've been in New York for a couple days, so you'll have to forgive me for posting a day late and a dollar short on Vanity Fair's mighty get: the first public pictures of Suri Cruise.

Typing that now is the first time I realized that all the letters in her first name are contained within her last. That's a cute baby, though that shouldn't be much of a surprise, since her parents are both movie stars. And it's actually not all that unusual to be cute and crazy.

Anyway, here's the cover, which is nice but not as nice as one from a few months back:

Call him Aaron Burr/From the way he's dropping Whittingtons

When I write the definitive book on effective public sector public relations, I will cite the second Bush Presidency as the height of message management and control.

We'll set aside for a moment the success the administration has seen when starting sentences with "The world changed on 9/11," and instead focus on the fallout from Dick Cheney shooting a man in the face.

Take a look at how Dick answered Brit Hume's question on Fox News (What, was Larry King not available?) about whether he had hung White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan out to dry by not telling the press about the story earlier.

Cheney: I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it was about them - they didn't like the idea that we called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times instead of The New York Times. But it strikes me that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is, especially for covering a major story in south Texas.

Hume: Well, perhaps so, but isn't there an institution here present at the White House that has long established itself as the vehicle through which White House news gets out, and that's the pool?

Cheney: I had no press person with me, no coverage with me, no White House reporters with me. I'm comfortable with the way we did it, obviously. You can disagree with that, and some of the White House press corps clearly do....

Cheney deflects criticism by blaming the selfish petulant Washington media, while giving a tacit compliment to the good people in the middle of the country. It's a master stroke. Truly a master stroke.

But don't say the Brit didn't ask the tough questions.

Hume: Was anybody drinking in this party?

Cheney: No. You don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea. We had ...

Hume: So he wasn't, and you weren't?

Cheney: We'd taken a break at lunch - go down under an old - ancient oak tree there on the place, and have a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch.... We didn't go back into the field to hunt quail until about, oh, sometime after 3:00 p.m.

So you weren't drinking, once you had stopped drinking at lunch. Careful. People who say stuff like that get labeled flip-floppers.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn't share this little gem from last night's sit-down.

Hume: Well, what - you must have recognized, though, with all your experience in Washington, that this was going to be a big story.

Cheney: Well, true, it was unprecedented. I've been in the business for a long time and never seen a situation quite like this. We've had experiences where the President has been shot; we've never had a situation where the Vice President shot somebody.

Hume: Not since Aaron Burr.

Cheney: Not since Aaron Burr....

Nice.

This week in the news

It's been quite a week for news and news-like occurences.

William Shatner, TV's Captain James T. Kirk, passed a kidney stone recently and sold it GoldenPalace.com, a garbage collector that moonlights as a gambling website. This is the same outfit that bought a "Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese" from ebay. You know how much Shatner overacts when he's got a hangnail. Can you imagine him passing a kidney stone? I searched the Internet for a tape of this, but to no avail.

McDonald's has brought back the McRib, which not coincidentally looks like a piece of quasi-meat run over with a tank tread, and is trying to build a little buzz with a clever marketing campaign that treats the McRib like it's a music tour. This idea is the rock bottom of ads. Didn't Burget King already try it, and didn't it fail?

The winners of this year's World Series of Beer Pong look, oh I don't know, 100 percent like you thought they would.

And I would be remiss if I didn't signal approval of Isaac Mizrahi's groping of Scarlett Johansson's golden globes at the Golden Globes:

Blog. James Blog.

Spike Television has carried on the mantle of its predecessor TNN, and is broadcasting a Bond-a-thon over the holiday weekend. It's back-to-back Bond for four days, save a few Three Stooges episodes and the standard litany of overnight infomercials.

All this TV left me shaken, not stirred, but not so much that I couldn't put together a list of Bond superlatives.

Best Bond. Any discussion about Bond begins with who was the best. I choose Roger Moore, anathema to Sean Connery fans I know, but Moore was helped by having the best scripts (Octopussy and the bayou tour de force Live and Let Die come to mind right away.) So it's Moore, Connery, then Pierce Brosnan. George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton bring up the rear. I can give Dalton a pass, though, because he was the first post-Cold War Bond, and didn't really have anybody to fight.

Best Villian. Speaking of which, Bond is only as good as his villian, and nobody did it better than Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill. Far scarier than the Ernst Blofeld character on which Dr. Evil is based, creepy crazy Chris Walken still gives NaturalBlog the heebie jeebies when I think about his plot to flood a fault line and trigger a massive earthquake in San Francisco. Walken's Zorin character, by the way, died in a tragic dirigible accident.

Walken had the help of Grace Jones in A View to a Kill, though she doesn't even crack the Top 10 of Best sidekicks. This is a tossup between Odd Job from Goldfinger and the recurring Jaws character. I can't pick between them, so you'll have to imagine a fight between the two to determine who's best.

Best Bond Girl. I believe I'm partial to Jill St. John as Tiffany Case in the forgettable Diamonds are Forver. Honorable mention to Jane Seymour. (As Solitaire in Live and Let Die, for providing an "I didn't realize she was a Bond girl moment.") Rounding out the top three is Denise Richards as Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.

That's a nice segway to Best Pun. Bond has a million, but I think I have to cite the love scene at the end of The World is Not Enough when he tells Dr. Jones, "I thought Christmas only came once a year." Classic.

Just a few more. Best stunt. Probably the boat chase in Live and Let Die, though the ski chase scenes in Living Daylights and For Your Eyes Only are up there.

Worst Special Effect. I think I have to nominate Moonraker, not one special effect, but the whole freaking movie. Just awful.

Best theme. You may not realize many Bond themes met some modicum of commercial success, most of them eponymous with the movie. Wings's Live and Let Die , Carly Simon's Nobody Does it Better, View to a Kill by Duran Duran. Madonna was in on the action in the last Bond movie, Die Another Day. But the best, by far, is Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger. "Golden words he will pour in your ear, But his lies can't disguise what you fear, For a golden girl knows when he's kissed her, It's the kiss of death from Mister Goldfinger." Nice.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Homer Simpson's spoof of the Goldfinger theme when he changes his name to Max Power:

Max Power, he's the man who's name you'd love to touch! But you mustn't touch! His name sounds good in your ear, but when you say it, you mustn't fear! 'Cause his name can be said by anyone!