Boy meets grill

Pass the ketchup: While two-thirds of U.S. households will fire up the backyard grill for the Labor Day weekend, barbecuing may have reached its peak. The percentage of families using their outdoor grill has slipped about 5 points to 35 percent since 2009. The increasing cost of beef and a preference for bolder tastes were cited for the decline.

Bolder tastes? How could you get any bolder than biting into a blackened, still-smoking, dry-as-a-mouthful-of-sawdust hamburger with hints of lighter fluid and charcoal ash.

How about a field trip to Cupertino? Microsoft is considering a sweeping remodel of its Redmond headquarters and has hired the architects who designed the world’s tallest building in Dubai.

Our suggestions: Equip every desk with a surplus Zune. Skip the ninth floor and go right to 10. Move and don’t give Steve Ballmer the forwarding address.

Channel-surfing the vast cultural wasteland: Jamie and Adam explore “Star Wars” myths on Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters,” like whether you could dodge laser blasts from a Stormtrooper’s gun.

But both come to regret doubting the existence of midi-chlorians when Darth Vader uses the Force to throw them across the room, telling them, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

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