With the Super Bowl looming, three questions are buzzing around America: Who are you pulling for; who's singing at halftime; and where are you watching the game? And if you're hosting a party, you're also asking yourself: What am I going to feed these people?

So it's a good time to highlight a basic lesson of hosting: Nothing classes up a party — even one that's focused on watching football on TV — like good cheese.

And as I learned recently, nothing tastes better with cheese than beer. That's the word from Garrett Oliver, author of The Brewmaster's Table, an influential book about how to make beer-food relationships work.

When I called Oliver to ask which cheeses and beers are simpatico, he was traveling around to support his more recent work: the encyclopedic Oxford Companion to Beer, which he edited. In what may be the most enviable book tour I've ever heard of, Oliver hosts "tasting dinners" for audiences at craft breweries and restaurants around the U.S.

Oliver's beer and cheese pairings have been honed by numerous competitions, in which he faces off with wine experts to see who can pick the best beverage to go with a variety of cheeses.

"I've done a lot of competitions against sommeliers," he says. "And I always win. In fact, there are a number of wine books that actually mention that beer is easier to pair with cheese than wine is. And I think it's undoubtedly true."

We started talking about why that might be. I asked Oliver whether beer's carbonation might help cleanse the palate after you've eaten a hunk of creamy cheese.

"That's definitely true," he says. "It's got a cutting power. I mean, it's a physical scrubbing action. I call it 'scrubbing bubbles' — you know, literally, lift some of that fat off your palate. Whereas, famously, cheese is quite mouth-coating, and often doesn't even allow you to taste the wine."

And then there are the essential ingredients. Beer can be made from a wide range of malted grains, hops, and yeast, along with other add-ins, such as fruits and spices. That's where it can pull ahead of wine, says Oliver, who is also the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery.

"For example, if we want to take the malt and smoke it, we can make a smoked beer," Oliver says. "We can caramelize the malts; we can roast them like coffee beans, and make a beer that tastes like coffee, or chocolate. Or, you can make a beer that's 3 percent (alcohol), and slightly acidic, and is much lighter and delicate than any wine, and tastes completely different. Brewing is more like cooking; it can taste like almost anything."

By contrast, wine relies on a single ingredient — grapes, as either a single breed or a blend of several breeds — for its basic flavor profile. Other qualities are derived from how it's stored and aged — in oak barrels, for instance.

"That's not to say there's not a big difference between gewürztraminer and chardonnay," Oliver says. "But it's not as broad as the difference between IPA and stout."

Still, Oliver notes that an individual wine can be very complex. And he stresses that he's not trying to say you can't pair cheese with wine — just that it's not as easy as it looks.

"It's less about harmony than about contrast. Wine is very good at doing contrast. Beer is very good at doing harmony with food, including cheeses," Oliver says. "If you really do it well, with the beer, you can have the harmony and the contrast at the same time. And that's what gives some of those pairings a great lift."

Here's a guide to some of his favorites:

Or, if you prefer a quick short-hand list, here you are:

• Fresh Goat Cheese and Saison
• Sheep's Milk Cheese and Brown Ale
• Stilton Blue Cheese and Stout
• Farmhouse Cheddar and IPA
• Epoisses or Taleggio and "Brett" beers (sour or wild ales)

We used Oliver's suggestions to set up an informal taste test here at NPR — well, it was a photo shoot, and then people realized we had beer and cheese in the office, and things just kind of went that way.

Oliver didn't name specific brands for his pairings, so I took the opportunity to get together some of my favorite beers, and to try others for the first time.

People loved a pairing of taleggio and Mikkeller Nelson Sauvin Brut, a craft beer that includes subtle New Zealand hops along with Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that imparts musty, grassy notes that are often referred to as "barnyard."

"Those funky, earthy flavors tend to be very nice with washed-rind cheeses, like Epoisses, Taleggio, and cheeses like that," Oliver says.

Another favorite was the Stillwater Stateside Saison, along with Capriole's Sofia goat cheese.

"With fresh goat cheeses, as opposed to aged goat cheeses, saisons work very well," Oliver says. "They're bright; they're citrusy, they're super dry; they're slightly tangy."

The dry Stateside and delicate Sofia both drew raves as people went back and forth between the two. And the cheese got bonus points because it was made in Indiana, where the Super Bowl will be played.

If all this fancy-cheese talk sounds a little high-brow to you, think of it this way: Super Bowl XLVI will be an expensive spectacle, in which millionaires compete on a field enclosed by a stadium named for an oil company. The broadcast will include Madonna, in a halftime show that has ties to Cirque du Soleil.

So if you're hoping to preserve the grass-roots simplicity of football, my friend, not only has that horse left the barn — it's voguing its way down Main Street.

And if you're hosting a party, you must confront a few essential truths: Some of your guests only want to see the commercials and the halftime show; others are bored by the idea of a rematch of the 2008 game; still others, I recently learned, only want to see guys running around in tight pants.

Taken together, all this means that this is the year for your Super Bowl spread to really shine, for you to show that you've put some thought into your menu — even if it just gives people more reasons to eat good cheese and have a nice beer.

The best part is that cheese takes almost no preparation time. If your repertoire of culinary skills includes unwrapping a block and placing it on a plate next to some crackers, you're good to go.

If you'd like to round out your menu with foods specific to Indiana, Michele Kayal has written up how to do that, for our Kitchen Window recipe series.

Mike O'Brien's online talk show 7 Minutes In Heaven is so polite that it's edgy.

In every segment, O'Brien, a writer for Saturday Night Live, interviews a celebrity in a closet. (No, an actual closet, with clothes and stuff.)

He asks random questions, he plays games, and most of the time, he hints that something provocative is going to happen. He might say he wants to play a game called "Bad Touch," or he might tell a guest he wants to read the comments he found about them on YouTube. And then, at the end of every episode, he leans in for a kiss. No matter the guest, male or female, he always goes for the lip action.

That setup might be funny in any context, but it's outstanding on 7 Minutes In Heaven because O'Brien keeps promising provocation without actually delivering. The humor comes from his guest's nervous anticipation and their tittering relief when things don't go as planned.

A hobbit, a supermodel and Ellen, after the jump.

So. How does your weather look?

Those of us on and near the East coast are anticipating a tough weekend encounter with Hurricane Irene. For some, it's genuinely frightening, for others, it's potentially a very big headache, and for still others, it's just going to be inconvenient and plan-disrupting. Most of this is nowhere near my beat, but NPR's tireless and essential news blog, The Two-Way, will be keeping an eye on it, as I'm sure stories from our shows will. For everybody, please think about preparedness, keep up on evacuation information as appropriate to your situation, and be careful. (I, for one, am going to take it easy at my Saturday night parasailing lesson.) (Just kidding, Mom! A little dark humor to break the tension! I'm fine!)

The tiny piece of this that touches my (work-related) world is that many of us — the lucky ones, really — will wind up worrying mostly about extended power outages, about which warnings are already going out. When you've got a lot to worry about, the last thing you need to grapple with is the boredom and cabin fever that can set in when you're in the dark, particularly with kids. So this seemed like as good a time as any to open up a discussion about good ways to stay calm and contented when there's no power and you can't necessarily go out much, either.

A few suggestions and a call for your thoughts, after the jump.

Reviving a 1990s Hong Kong softcore-porn/action-comedy series, 3-D Sex & Zen: Extreme Ecstasy adds comin'-at-ya visuals to a campy tale of an erotic quest. Anyone with a dirty mind — and you can hardly imagine the movie without one — will anticipate a certain part of the male anatomy seeming to jut from the screen.

Yet that never happens during the film, which broke box-office records in Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, topping the per-screen averages of such imports as Scream 4 and Fast Five. (It opens in limited release in the U.S. on Aug. 12.) In fact the objects the movie propels toward the viewer — daggers, bullets, blood — are by and large the sort of thing you get in much of Hollywood's 3-D fare; with the exception of one brief (and humorous) shot, Sex & Zen doesn't show human genitalia, though there are assorted marital aids, several prop penises, a gigantic stone phallus and a writhing, snake-like appendage attached to an androgynous creature who's played by a woman but voiced by a man.

Although it's closer to Fellini Satyricon than to a typical Jackie Chan vehicle, Sex & Zen includes many elements of the Hong Kong period action film. It's based, however loosely, on a classic Chinese text (The Carnal Prayer Mat, published in 1657), and it features an earnest hero, a noble monk, an irredeemable villain and lots of fight scenes. Indeed, the movie's second half makes more war than love, notwithstanding the near-nude babes throughout.

The protagonist is young scholar Yangsheng (Hiro Hayama), who loses his resolve to stay single as soon as he glimpses lovely Yuxiang (Leni Lan). There's no happily-ever-after for the attractive couple, however. In the bedroom, their ardor fizzles. It seems that Yangsheng is not blessed with carnal knowledge, to say nothing of other endowments.

So he pursues an education with the cruel Prince of Ning (Tony Ho), a debauched connoisseur of art and pleasure. Beautiful women surround the prince, but it's not because he's witty, charming and thoughtful.

After he demonstrates his discernment about ancient scroll paintings, Yangsheng is accepted into the prince's pleasure palace, a sort of Ming Dynasty Playboy Mansion housed in a grotto that looks like a Lord of the Rings location. The young man eventually undergoes a penis transplant, a sequence played for gruesome laughs; alas, the medical miracle won't lead to an improved sex life for Yuxiang, who's suffering her own travails while her absent husband strives to improve himself. In the final scene, Yangsheng and Yuxiang chastely announce that sex is not essential to wedded bliss — but it's not as if they have any choice in the matter.

Although 3-D Sex & Zen is in Cantonese, it owes much to Japan, perhaps East Asia's most sexually open country; in addition to Hayama, the male lead, the cast includes Japanese "adult" stars Saori Hara and Yukiko Suho. But in a time when the Hong Kong and Beijing film industries are increasingly intertwined, the movie is not set for release in mainland China. That country bans all sex flicks, even those whose major set-pieces seem more likely to deflate than engorge.

One year ago this week, a small gaggle of yappy writer-editor types converged on a tiny production room at NPR headquarters to record the first-ever episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour. The resulting program was giggly and loose and a little formless, as well as a shade too long — and, come to think of it, it's still all of those things. PCHH is, as NPR shows go, not a very big deal, but it's meant a lot to those of us who've worked on it. For a wide variety of reasons, it came along at the perfect time.

In the weeks leading up to the July 16 anniversary of our first episode's launch, the core PCHH gang — host Linda Holmes, NPR.org movies editor Trey Graham, books/comics blogger Glen Weldon, esteemed producer Mike Katzif, and me — speculated on how we'd mark the occasion. Most of the discussion focused on what we wouldn't do: no clip show, as little self-indulgence as possible, and so on. We mentioned to Mike the idea of dredging up an outtakes reel, and he politely noted the care he puts into taking out the things we say that might get us in trouble. (See, for example, my impromptu casting of "The Fratty & Farty Show," an imagined NPR Morning Zoo for which I couldn't immediately conjure an appropriate co-host.)

What made the most sense for our anniversary was an episode focusing on various forms of appreciation, seeing as how PCHH is already built largely around the people and stuff making us happy on any given day. I proposed — and hereby propose again — the creation of a new holiday I'm calling "Appreciation Day," on which each and every world citizen takes the time to say the nicest possible thing to each of the treasured people who surround us.

The idea isn't to fish for compliments, or to damn the little-liked with faint praise, or to fall back on the joke-cracking that's etched into each individual strand of our DNA; it's to simply say the nicest thing you can truthfully say to each person you know. It's a perfect project to carry out on social media such as Twitter, where the 140-character limit — combined with the username of the person you're praising and the hashtag #appreciationday — enforces the kind of concise sincerity that can be crafted quickly. After all, you've got a lot of people to praise on our makeshift holiday (incidentally, we'd rather you skip us, as we'll derive far more pleasure if you simply extend kindness to others and spread the word), and we want you to get to all of them.

Naturally, as Appreciation Day marches inevitably toward status as a federal paid holiday — replacing the little-loved likes of Presidents Day or Columbus Day — disadvantages will emerge. Instead of getting to grouse that the Post Office is closed for observance of Appreciation Day, you'll feel obligated to leave a nice note thanking your letter carrier for his or her promptness and courtesy, and who needs that? Besides, positivity will inevitably give way to treacle, which will inevitably give way to backlash, which will inevitably give way to a shadow holiday in which smart-alecks on Twitter introduce a special day on which they tell everyone to cram it.

But not you, for you are a beacon of joy unto the world. You're here to shine a light. Come appreciate with us!

Dear CNN,

Thank you for telling us, in a recent story, when to send a thank-you note by email and when to send one by snail mail. You snarkfully instructed us to send a handwritten card when we get a present in the mail; an email when we receive a gift in person. And both — an email, then a card — after a job interview. And thank you, thank you for reminding us to never offer personal thanks in a public Facebook message. Nobody "likes" that.

Dear New York Times,

Thank you for your list of "Don'ts for June Brides" in a story that appeared in the spring of 1912 — 99 years ago. For a century or more you have been a sentinel of cultural certitude. The exhortations could well have been posted on your website today. "Don't fail to write your own notes," you told brides back then. "The habit some girls have of shifting this responsibility to their bridesmaids is rude." And "Don't gauge your gratitude by the value of the gift sent. Nothing more quickly shows lack of breeding. Besides, it is stupid..."

Dear Leah Dieterich,

Thank you for writing your ThxThxThx blog. You have taken the rumpled old thank-you note and removed the wrinkles with a piping hot irony. You said you write thank-you notes because your mother taught you to. You should write your mother a thank-you note for helping you stumble on a clever way to comment on contemporary life.

Congratulations also on your new book, derived from your blog. And on the many thank-you notes inside, like this one:

Dear Printed Reading Material, Thanks for having an end. The internet doesn't have one, so I never know when to stop. All the best, Leah.

UPDATE: At about 11:15 p.m. Eastern time, roughly an hour and 15 minutes after the spelling bee was scheduled to end, a winner finally took the trophy: eighth-grader Sukanya Roy, who spelled "cymotrichous" correctly to take the title.

It's the final day of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and the kids still standing are competing in the remaining rounds heading into the finals, which will be broadcast tonight on ESPN beginning at 8:30. (The early rounds are on until 1:00 p.m.)

The Bee, as we've discussed in the past, is a genuinely unique and addictive thing for its devoted fans. If you watch the Bee (as I do), you probably don't understand why anyone wouldn't watch the Bee, but if you don't, you may well find the very idea of its airing on ESPN somewhere between baffling and downright offensive.

Mostly, it's an opportunity to see a lot of interesting, hard-working kids and cheer for them. If you need a reminder to treat them as the kids they are, read this essay from repeat participant Samir Patel, who talks about going from a kid mostly having a good time to a kid eating nothing but Doritos who had to be sheltered from the media. Over the Spelling Bee! So please, if you're going to watch it, I encourage you to watch it with a warm heart and a generous spirit, because snarking on ten-year-olds is maybe not, as Oprah would say, living your best life.

Last year, we live-blogged the Bee on a Friday night — a Friday night! — and while it started quiet, it turned into quite the rollicking good time. So, egged on by some of those who shared my shock when the word "gnocchi" showed up in a late round along with really hard words (it was a SCANDAL!), we're going to do it all again tonight. Come on — it's Thursday night. TV is in reruns. If you're in the same part of the world I am, it's SUPER hot outside.

Let's cheer on some incredibly lovable, awesome nerds who will run us all one day. I'll see you back here tonight at 8:30.

Yes, I was cold and my feet got wet, and I have certainly had happier days. On the other hand, I remain largely pro-world-around-me, and I thank all of you for indulging my need to wallow in such thoughts all day.

Special thanks to Bulletin Board, the St. Paul Pioneer Press column where I first learned to regularly pay attention to simple pleasures.

We'll be back tomorrow on a normal schedule, with a podcast and lots of other nifty stuff. Keep tapping, splashing and twirling till then.

Do you like John Hodgman? Do you like great podcasts? Do you like stories about people who went to Oberlin? Me too!

In this episode of the podcast Judge John Hodgman, Hodgman judges a dispute between friends about whether potlucks are an acceptable way to hold social events once everyone is an adult. As it happens, this episode concerns a young woman who not only went to Oberlin, but was a member of the a cappella ensemble Nothing But Treble, which — as many of you know — I was also. (QUIET. A cappella is cool.) (The group was not in debt while I was there, though. And did not sing "Billie Jean." What has happened?)

(There is also an awesome shout-out to Quaker weddings. What could be better?)

When podcasting was first getting underway, it was tough for people to find the right approach, but podcasts in general are really finding their feet, and Judge John Hodgman is a great example. Listen and enjoy, and subscribe! (You have to follow the link at the top of the post; their embeddable player is not working for me. Boo.)

The romantic comedies of the mid-'80s are embarrassingly influential in the development of my entire approach to bantering. But I did avoid becoming a compulsive rhymer, despite this Moonlighting scene starring a charmingly gauzy-looking Cybill Shepherd and a suspiciously coiffed Bruce Willis.

Again, something I mentioned on a recent podcast, but it's really, really worth seeing it yourself. Recorded, according to the video, in Sydney in 1990. Sweet Honey In The Rock released this song on the album "All For Freedom," which came out in 1992.

Okay, look. Most of these are good-hearted, totally positive, totally upbeat, non-snarky things. I don't want you to take spite as a simple pleasure, not really.

But when there are absolutely no stakes of any real importance — like on Survivor — watching a mean person get all upset and flustered, as one did last night, can be a tiny bit fun. And satisfying. Just for a minute! Strictly because you hope it helps him be a little less mean in the future! And then we all go back to being adults.

You might not even remember that there was a Megan Mullally Show, but there was. It's mostly forgotten, except for this appearance by the cast of How I Met Your Mother (then a much younger show), which resulted in ... well, just watch. It's the reactions of Josh Radnor and Alyson Hannigan that always make me laugh, just as much as the main event.

(You didn't really think I could get through an entire day of simple pleasures without NPH singing, did you?)

This was my first favorite movie.

In it, Gib (John Cusack) tries to get the very studious Alison (Daphne Zuniga) to help him with his English paper. This is a ruse, of course, because he thinks she's cute. She knows this. But here, he attempts to stress the importance of her help in saving him from the terrible life that might await him.

Okay, we'll have to have two clips. Here, after she relents and agrees to help with his paper, he interrupts their study session to go exploring on the library roof. Unfortunately, at one point — you'll know it when you see it — he decides to try out a speech his roommate taught him earlier, and it doesn't go too well.

You know, romantic comedies — especially ones aimed at younger audiences — weren't always as bad as they are now. This one, for instance, is still utterly charming, and it was 26 years old on March 1. (That's right. It was 26 years old on March 1.)

In the 1996 film That Thing You Do!, the band The Oneders (suuuuuch a bad name) finds sudden fame with an infectious pop hit, only to fall on various sorts of hard times. As Monkey See's Marc Hirsh explained in this post about fictional works of genius, the pop hit (actually written by Adam Schlesinger, well qualified to write infectious music, coming as he does from Fountains Of Wayne) is actually a pretty great — and, yes, incredibly infectious — song. If you hear it for the rest of the day, don't blame me: that's the entire point of the song in the movie.

Special bonus: It was covered live by N*SYNC back when Justin Timberlake was sometimes just that guy playing a guitar up by the drummer.