The everybody-loves-Jeff Bridges home base is, of course, The Big Lebowski. For the two of you who haven’t seen it, Bridges’s Jeffrey Lebowski, a.k.a. the Dude, is a bowler stoner. He has a big heart, no job, and an omnipresent White Russian. He is hapless and well-intentioned, much like Bridges would be without his wife, daughters, sidemen, and manager. “The Coen brothers told me they were writing a script for me,” recalls Bridges. “I thought, ‘That’s cool.’ Then I read the script and I was like, ‘Have you been following me around to parties?’ It’s a lot like a younger version of me.” I vowed to be the first magazine writer not to write about Bridges’s Dude-like qualities. Such a cliché, I thought. And then you meet him and he is, well, the goddamned Dude in all his fuzzy-headed, non sequitur goodness. If anything, Bridges’s cinematic Dude understates things. — from Stephen Rodrick’s Secrets of a Contented Man

“Let’s just come out and say it: The women here are beautiful. There’s an offhanded understanding of the possibility of sex that permeates the town. Maybe it’s the heat and the fact that everyone wears so few clothes; maybe it’s because nature so clearly dominates the rhythms of life here. Maybe it’s just Brazil.” — from Andrew McCarthy’s The Last Real Beach Town.

The next time you’ve got a crowd to feed, take a break from the grill and serve a Frogmore stew — red potatoes, fresh corn on the cob, unpeeled shrimp, and sausage, all thrown together in a big pot.

Wanna get away? Discover Chile’s Tierra del Fuego by land and sea with Turismo Yamana, who offer 9-day trips featuring horseback rides through the mountains, kayaking around glaciers, and fishing pristine waterways.

“At 80 and past concealing that fact, Clint Eastwood looks like the wise old blue-eyed patriarch of an alternative-history America that has never lost a war or run a deficit. He comes off like a man with few worries and few regrets who lives by the Spartan motto “Get on with it” and has learned to dismiss his animal needs.” — from Walter Kirn’s The Gunslinger and the Apprentice

Tired? Achy? Can’t remember where you put your keys? You may be low in ­vitamin B12, ­essential for proper blood-cell and nerve function. Men over age 40 are more likely to become deficient in the vitamin, even if they eat foods high in B12 like salmon, steak, and eggs, due to age-related loss of the stomach acid needed to absorb nutrients. Talk to your doc about taking a daily 1,000-mcg B12 supp.

Microsoft’s Would-Be iPhone — Circa 1991

In our May 2012 issue, contributing editor Joe Hagan profiled Microsoft veteran Nathan Myhrvold, who retired in 1999 after serving 14-years as Bill Gates’ personal tech visionary.  Since leaving Microsoft, Myhrvold has lived a nerd fantasy, digging up T. rexes and producing a cookbook only a mad scientist could love.

During his years at the computing giant’s Redmond, Washington headquarters, Myhrvold described in precise terms what the future of computing would look like. More often that not, he was pretty damned accurate: In 1991, while serving as the company’s chief visionary, Myhrvold predicted the emergence of an iPhone-like device down to the smallest detail, describing a “digital wallet” that would consolidate personal communication — telephone, schedule manager, notepad, contacts, and a library of music and books — all in one.

Rarely seen outside of Myhrvold’s inner circle, this sketch of Microsoft’s would-be iPhone portrayed a gadget that could record and archive everything you asked it to, he surmised. “The cost will not be very high,” wrote Myhrvold. “It is pretty easy to imagine a $400 to $1,000 retail price.” Microsoft, however, was too cost conscious and risk averse to execute his vision. “Hey, it was better than predicting the wrong thing,” Myhrvold says now.

For more information about Myhrvold, his tenure at Microsoft, and his newfound passion for molecular gastronomy, read Joe Hagan’s “How a Geek Grills a Burger” here.

Hey NHL fans — it’s playoff time! Tonight, the top-ranked New York Rangers begin their cup campaign against the visiting Ottawa Senators. If the boys in blue find success this postseason, it will be largely due to the stellar goaltending of netminder Henrik Lundqvist, who ranks third in the league this season in wins, save percentage, and shut outs. In 2008, the Swedish-born Lundqvist shared discussed the art of the save with MJ: “Some scorers love to go top shelf, over the glove, but as a goalie you can never really be sure a guy is going to do the move he usually does. These guys are so skilled you have to be prepared for anything. It’s all about being patient, seeing who’ll make the first move. The five-hole — the area between a goalie’s leg pads — is considered a weak spot, but I get pretty low and actually try to make the guy go there because it’s easier to close up.”

When robot vacuums debuted, early adopters bought into the idea that they could let the devices loose in the morning and return home to spotless floors. That was not the case. Now improved tech has made robot vacs worth buying, and the best we’ve tested is the iRobot Roomba 780. It works surprisingly well, navigating multiple rooms and attacking piles of popcorn and cereal with dogged, mechanical patience. It’s even intelligent enough to sense and target extra-filthy areas for multiple passes, recleaning until all crumbs are accounted for.

In the not-so-distant past, sake in the U.S. was served piping hot at the local sushi bar and ranged in flavor from mildly pleasing to potentially flammable. That was industrial-­quality brew, made on a mass scale. The good stuff, handmade in Japan in small batches for centuries, has been much harder to find here — until now. This spring, sake-philes are touting Kamikokoro “Toukagen Shiboritate” (“Sound of the Seashore”). Hailing from a prefecture famous for peaches, it is made with yeast that occurs naturally on peach skin. The result is an easy-drinking sake with flavors of stone fruit and herbs.