This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day.
We all know that Mother’s Day might not be applicable to the woman who gave birth to you, but to any woman (or even man) who provided a maternal emotional connection in your life, Mother’s Day is a nice opportunity to acknowledge them and the influence and support they’ve provided in your life.
They’re always in your corner, backing you up, encouraging you and providing tough love when you need it most.
And while cards, flowers, brunch, candles, and perfumes are nice, here are some of our suggestions.
Word to your mother.
Paramount Presents: Love Story Blu-ray
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Newly restored from a 4K film transfer for its 50th Anniversary, Love Story, one of the most romantic movies of all time is, still as impactful as ever. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and based on Erich Segal’s bestselling novel that defined a generation, it’s a timeless, unmatched tale from the heart. Harvard students Oliver (Ryan O’Neal) and Jennifer (Ali MacGraw) come from opposite backgrounds, but they share a chemistry they cannot deny—and a love they can’t ignore. Despite Oliver’s wealthy father threatening to disown him, the young couple marries and begins to build their new life together. But fate has other plans, and soon Oliver and Jennifer face a crisis only the strongest of loves can endure.
Add a box of tissues for the perfect gift.
Two-time Emmy winner David Page changed the world of food television by creating, developing, and executive-producing the groundbreaking show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Now comes the book Food Americana, an entertaining mix of food culture, pop culture, nostalgia, and everything new on the American plate.
What is American cuisine? What national menu do we share? What dishes have we chosen, how did they become “American,” and how are they likely to evolve from here? In Food Americana, David Page answers all these questions and more.
The inside story of how Americans have formed a national cuisine from a world of flavors. Sushi, pizza, tacos, bagels, barbecue, dim sum―even fried chicken, burgers, ice cream, and many more―were born elsewhere and transformed into a unique American cuisine.
Food Americana is a riveting ride into every aspect of what we eat and why. From a lobster boat off the coast of Maine to the Memphis in May barbecue competition. From the century-old Russ & Daughters lox and bagels shop in lower Manhattan to the Buffalo Chicken Wing Festival. From a thousand-dollar Chinese meal in San Francisco to birria tacos from a food truck in South Philly. Meet incredibly engaging characters and legends including: The owner of a great sushi bar in an Oklahoma gas station, The New Englander introducing Utah to lobster rolls, Alice Waters, Daniel Boulud, Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s, Mel Brooks, and more in this engaging, insightful, and often humorous look into the untold backstories of American food.
Upright GO 2 Posture Corrector
Improve your posture naturally with the Upright GO 2 smart posture trainer. Designed for all day use, this tiny device sits comfortably on your upper back and uses biofeedback to track your posture. If you slouch, it gently vibrates, and you straighten up. All of your posture stats and progress are synced to the FREE Upright App (available for iOS and Android). 8 out of 10 Upright users report a posture improvement of 92% in less than 2 weeks!
The Upright GO 2 is a smaller, lighter, comfortable strapless posture corrector that you place on your upper back with an easy to use adhesive. It reminds you to sit or stand up straight with a real-time gentle vibration reminder. The Upright app syncs to your smartphone with 1 touch and generates a personalized training program of daily goals to improve your posture. These daily goals will help strengthen your back and train your brain to be aware of slouching. Long-term habit formation for a healthy body! The Upright GO 2 wearable device attaches directly to your back, using 6 precision-enhanced sensors for the most exact measurements and feedback. Use the Upright app for tracking and monitoring your upright vs. slouched posture. Plus, get a daily upright score and see your progress over time. Be the best version of yourself!
The Upright GO can be switched to a mode with no vibration and is recommended once you complete your daily training session. That way, you can keep track of your posture throughout the day with 30 hours of battery life per charge, and improve over time. In the box you will find the Upright GO posture device, a travel case, USB charging cable, 9 reusable hypoallergenic medical grade adhesives and a user manual.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar Blu-ray
From the gals who brought you Bridesmaids (co-stars and co-writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo) comes Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar. The story of best friends Barb and Star, who leave their small Midwestern town for the first time to go on vacation in Vista Del Mar, Florida, where they soon find themselves tangled up in adventure, love, and a villain’s evil plot to kill everyone in town.
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar is the kind of movie your mom and her friends would write after a few bottles of Rose and a whole lotta day-drunk banter in your parent’s sunroom. A candy-colored, musical, comedy farce filled with middle-age sexcapades, a plethora of high-fashion culottes, the glorious eye candy of Jamie Dornan, an evil genius hellbent on destroying a seafood festival and enough best friend love that will fill the depths of your wine-soaked soul. The ensemble also includes Damon Wayans Jr., Michael Hitchcock, Kwame Patterson, Reyn Doi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Vanessa Bayer, Rose Abdoo, and Andy Garcia.
It’s the perfect weird-as-hell-throw-in-
Accidentally Wes Anderson by Wally Koval
A visual adventure of Wes Anderson proportions, authorized by the legendary filmmaker himself: stunning photographs of real-life places that seem plucked from the just-so world of his films, presented with fascinating human stories behind each façade.
Accidentally Wes Anderson began as a personal travel bucket list, a catalog of visually striking and historically unique destinations that capture the imagined worlds of Wes Anderson.
Now, inspired by a community of more than one million Adventurers, Accidentally Wes Anderson tells the stories behind more than 200 of the most beautiful, idiosyncratic, and interesting places on Earth. This book, authorized by Wes Anderson himself, travels to every continent and into your own backyard to identify quirky landmarks and undiscovered gems: places you may have passed by, some you always wanted to explore, and many you never knew existed.
Fueled by a vision for distinctive design, stunning photography, and unexpected narratives, Accidentally Wes Anderson is a passport to inspiration and adventure. Perfect for modern travelers and fans of Wes Anderson’s distinctive aesthetic, this is an invitation to look at your world through a different lens.
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In: The Complete Series DVD
The ’60s gave us “in-crowds,” “be-ins” and “love-ins,” and starting in 1968, the happening place for free-form comedy was Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, broadcast from beautiful downtown Burbank. Straight man Dan Rowan and wisecracking co-host Dick Martin led a gaggle of goofballs including Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Judy Carne, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Gary Owens, Jo Anne Worley and Alan Sues through a rapid-fire assault of one-liners, skits, bits and non sequiturs that left viewers in hysterics and disbelief. Anything and anyone in the public eye was a target. Political correctness? Forget it! The off-the-wall groundbreaking, Emmy Award–winning show would go on to anchor the Monday 8 p.m. time slot on NBC until March 12, 1973, transforming both pop culture and the medium of television.
Women Discoverers by Christelle Pecout and Marie Moinard
The latest entry in the growing NBM Comics Biographies series focuses on twenty top women in all sciences from chemistry to aerospace.
From Ada Lovelace (computing) to Marie Curie (Physics and Chemistry) these exceptional women enabled the world to advance in all fields of science including space exploration (Mae Jemison), telecommunications (the actress also genius discoverer Hedy Lamarr) and Biology (Rosalind Franklin).
An inspiration going counter to preconceived notions about women and science, presenting a diverse group from around the world. This is done in a mix of comics chapters and full page illustrated portrayals in text.
This certainly doesn’t purport to be a top twenty but a sample of women who can inspire girls and young women to careers in science and not be intimidated!
Nöthin’ But a Good Time by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock
If your mom grew up in the eighties and used more enough hairspray to actually have contributed to the erosion of the ozone layer, this book was for you. Nothin’ But a Good Time is the definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal, told by the musicians and industry insiders who lived it.
Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated―and maybe even helped to define―a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and E.T.
From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock’s Nothin’ But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it.
Featuring an impassioned foreword by Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist and avowed glam metal fanatic Corey Taylor, and drawn from over 200 new interviews with members of Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Winger, Warrant, Cinderella, Quiet Riot and others, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford and many more, this is the ultimate, uncensored, and often unhinged chronicle of a time where excess and success walked hand in hand, told by the men and women who created a sound and style that came to define a musical era―one in which the bands and their fans went looking for nothin’ but a good time…and found it.
Trots and Bonnie by Shary Flenniken
In the 1970s and 1980s, National Lampoon was home not only to some of the funniest humor writing in America but also to many of its best cartoons. One of the greatest was Trots and Bonnie by Shary Flenniken, a comic strip that followed the adventures and mishaps of the guileless teenager Bonnie and her wisecracking dog, Trots.
Bonnie stumbles through the mysteries of adulthood, as Flenniken—one of the few female contributors to National Lampoon—dissects the harsh realities of American life. Dating, sex, politics, and violence are all confronted with fearlessness and outrageous humor, rendered in Flenniken’s timeless, gorgeous artwork. After all these years, they have lost none of their power to shock and amuse.
This collection, handpicked by Flenniken and with an introduction by the New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake, is the first book of Trots and Bonnie ever published in America, a long-overdue introduction to some of the most stunning and provocative comics of the twentieth century.
So overdue in fact, I’ve been waiting for it most of my life. Growing up in the 70s, my father was a faithful Lampoon fan and as my burgeoning interest in comics formed, I’d read anything I could get my hands on; including the massively inappropriate Trots and Bonnie. To be honest, I didn’t comprehend much of the material, but liked the art and the Greek chorus that Trots provided.
With the release of this edition, I was even more impressed by the art and storytelling than remembered. Certainly full of sexual content, there is both a genuine tone of positivity, as well as a pushback toward social and gender taboos of the time.
Flenniken captures the innocence of youth and the female perspective of the transition from girl to woman with charm and humor.
Plus, it has a talking dog.
Skywalker: A Family At War by Kristin Baver
This revelatory biography explores every twist and turn of the Skywalker dynasty: the slow seduction to the dark side of Anakin; his doomed marriage to Padmé Amidala; the heroics of Luke and Leia; the fall and redemption of Han Solo and Princess Leia’s son, Ben; and the struggles of his dyad in the Force, Rey.
Leaving no stone unturned in tracing the dynasty’s trials and tribulations, this definitive biography of Star Wars’ first family explores and explains the deeper, more personal story of the Skywalkers, their characters, motivations, and, against seemingly impossible odds, their ultimate triumph.
