Waye's World

The Ten: Classic Video Games

2012-01-07T23:10:00.003-05:00

I suck at video games. Always have. But I love playing the damn things, especially the really old games that were popular when I was a kid. And the more bizarre the game, the better. Here are some of my favorites:

OUTLAW - Two gunslingers shooting each other. That's about it. Hey, it was 1979. Not exactly the most high tech of times.

PAC MAN - Yellow pie with a piece missing eats little dots while avoiding ghosts. He can eat special dots to turn the ghosts blue and eat them. Whatever they were smoking in Japan in the early 1980s, I want some.

DONKEY KONG - Plumber saves girl from big ape who throws barrels to distract him from his mission. Big ape also inexplicably throws springs. Plumber can grab a magic hammer and pound away at all the barrels and springs in his way. At the end of each level, big ape takes away the girl. Big ape is a dick.

DIG DUG - Man digs underground and has to avoid fire-breathing dragons and some other creature that looks like a Tilt-A-Whirl car wearing a belt. Man can use his air pump to blow up these creatures. And I mean that literally. He has to blow them up until they explode. Why is the man digging around in the ground? Hell if I know.

CENTIPEDE - Little ship fires at a centipede. This game is kind of boring, but you don't understand! The arcade version had a spinning ball thing instead of a joystick. A SPINNING BALL THING INSTEAD OF A JOYSTICK!!!! It didn't take much to impress us in 1982.

BURGERTIME - You have to create some hamburgers by walking over the parts of the burger, like the bun and the lettuce and the patty. But the pickles and the ketchup are chasing you! Basically you're playing the video game version of a chef's worst nightmare.

ROOT BEER TAPPER - You are a bartender at a very seedy bar and people want their root beer NOW! Apparently people get belligerent when they don't get their A&W.

PITFALL - It was a very pixelated version of Indiana Jones, but those crocodiles were always a bitch to get around. Plus, apparently Baby Jack Black liked to play it as well.

ELEVATOR ACTION - It's retarded, I know, but I always found it fun.

PAPERBOY - It's about a paperboy who has to deliver papers on the route from hell. Between all the road construction, breakdancers, robbers, dogs, hearses, and skateboarders, it's a wonder this paperboy hasn't quit in a fit of disgust. Or been killed.

Since then games have gotten bigger and more complex. I have a friend who spends upwards of 20 hours solving each current game that he plays. Could you imagine playing Paperboy for 20 hours? Nah, give me these three minute games over the current crop any day of the week.

Six Months of Updates

2011-11-14T15:38:00.003-05:00

Wow. May 7. That's a long time for me not to update this thing.

What's been happening that has kept me from blogging? Well, pretty much everything under the sun. Let's face it, it's kind of pointless to update this thing when no one is reading it. That's not your fault, dear stranger or friend who is checking his links to see if Waye's World is finally dead. It's mine. Content is king on the Internet, and I haven't provided it on a regular basis. My bad.

Instead of beating the I-promise-I-will-update-more-often dead horse, I will say this: I intend to keep this thing active, mainly because it's like a journal of my life from 2003 onward. And as long as Blogger or Blogspot or whoever the hell controls this account allows it to remain alive, I will post here occasionally. Might be tomorrow, might be in May of 2013. But I will never stop posting.

Now, what has happened in my life since May 7th? Let me open my calendar:

May 30-June 3 - Staycation at my house. Loved it. Needed it. Did very little during it. I did manage to watch some old-school movies I'd never seen, though. There's nothing like a vacation to give you an excuse to tackle The Seventh Seal. (Which was excellent, by the way.)

June 14 - Saw Ray LaMontagne at The Lawn at White River State Park. Great show. The vibe was laid-back and peaceful. And, yeah, I probably got a contact high while I was there. I'd see him again for sure.

July 5 - Took a trip to Chicago to see U2. I'm not going to lie: I expected more. I've only seen them one other time, in 2001, and they kicked ass. This time their stage was huge and the grandness of it overbalanced the band themselves. Plus, Bono is a jackass. Great night for an outdoor show, though.

July 7 - I turned 38. Yay for me.

July 24-25 - I held auditions for the next show I was directing, Steel Magnolias. Lots of talented people turned out. It was difficult honing it down to six women, but I did it.

July 31 - Steel Magnolias rehearsals began. I loved the women, but they drove each other crazy. And me, at times. Let's just say it was a positive but frustrating experience.

August 7 - Saw Neko Case and My Morning Jacket at The Lawn. Yet another great show, although this is the third time I've seen Neko and I'm getting a bit tired of hearing all the same tunes over and over again. MMJ was fantastic. I will be seeing them again in the future for sure.

September 13 - I was supposed to see Wilco, but I had to skip it thanks to the state of Steel Magnolias. Lesson learned: Never buy concert tickets during the rehearsal process. Even if you think you'll be able to get the night off, you probably won't. C'est la vie.

September 16 - Steel Magnolias opened. About 150 people saw it the first weekend, 180 saw it the second. A lot of people raved about it. I consider that a hit.

September 20 - I started rehearsals for my next show, Lying in State, which a friend asked me to do at Epilogue Players in Indianapolis. It had been awhile since I had been onstage, so why not? Breaks are for whimps.

September 26 - Saw Elvis Costello at The Murat. Best show of the year. He did a great mix of new and old, including one of my all-time EC favorites, "Mystery Dance." Love that song.

September 30 - Saw Stuffed and Unstrung, the Jim Henson Company's puppet improvisation group, at Clowes Memorial Hall. The show was like any other improv show: There were some hilarious bits and some bits that just fell flat. Still, Muppets. Swearing ones, at that. (Plus, it made me think: I could do that...)

September 3-7 - Another staycation, all though this time I helped my Dad paint my house. OK, he painted 94% of it, but I still helped.

September 22 - My Mom was seeing Huey Lewis and the News with some friends. One of my Mom's friends dropped out. I got to see Huey Lewis for free. And I've been listening to "Heart and Soul" a lot ever since. What a great, underrated song.

September 24 - I attended my first Encore Awards, the annual local community theatre awards show. The Christmas show I was in last December - Every Chrstmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some) - was up for five awards, including one for Best Comedy and Best Ensemble. We performed at the show to a lot of laughs...and we lost every award we were nominated for, further proving my theory that award shows for artistic endeavors are a waste of time. I'm a sore loser, I guess.

November 4 - Lying in State opened. Audiences were quiet the first weekend, but this past weekend they were loud and raucous. We got a mediocre review on a local community theatre website - although I was praised as one of the stronger elements of the show - which has been a bone of contention among the cast. A review's a review. It didn't really bother me. (Of course, I was prasied in it, which might have helped.)

And that brings us up to date. I lead a busy life. Now can you understand why I haven't posted on here in six months?

Shuffle Off, Buffalo

2011-05-07T17:08:00.003-04:00

I've reached the end of another show: Moon over Buffalo closes tonight. It's been a great run and audiences have really enjoyed it, so I'm calling it a great success. Everything came together: The show is perfectly cast, with each actor fitting their part to a "t." The set looks like I envisioned it in my head, like the backstage area of The Muppet Show. The costumes are fantastic and look great on everyone. The production aspect has been smooth with very few bumps or conflicts. And the directing...well, the directing is flawless.

That said, I will be glad when it is all over. Participating in shows is my hobby and it's an all-consuming one. Between work and Moon over Buffalo, I feel like I haven't spent any major time at home in weeks. Things like laundry and house cleaning have been neglected. I've managed to see about one new film a week, not an average I like. And my yard...oh, my poor yard. Every night I've had free it's been raining, so my yard has been especially neglected. I finally mowed the whole thing this afternoon - up to now I've only had the chance to do it in chunks - so now it finally doesn't look like an eyesore. I will do shows until the day I die, but I won't lie and say that the time off between shows is just as nice. There will be some sadness tonight at the final cast party, but I guarantee you as I'm driving home it will be like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

And then I can start planning on the next one: Steel Magnolias, which I'm also directing and which debuts in September.

So I will miss you after the show closes tonight, Moon over Buffalo. You've given me a lot of laughs over the past seven weeks. And the people I met - and the friends I got to spend more time with - while in your presence makes me happy. But I will also be glad that if we need to visit each other sometime in the future, we'll have to do it on DVD. And I'm OK with that.

Buffalo Stance

2011-04-21T13:12:00.003-04:00

I seem to only update this blog to promote the latest show I'm working on. Guess what this update is about? Yeah, another month, another show. So, without further ado, here's the information on my next production. I'm directing this one.

MOON OVER BUFFALO
Off Main Street Players
Zionsville Town Hall
1100 West Oak Street
Zionsville, IN 46077
Friday, April 29, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 30, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 1, 2:30 p.m.
Friday, May 6, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 7, 8:00 p.m.

Tickets are $15 each and that includes all the laughs you can handle. Here's the plot taken from the Off Main Street Players website:

It's 1953 and George and Charlotte Hay are on tour with a reparatory theatre in Buffalo when news arrives that Frank Capra is enroute to catch their matinee. Fate has given these thespians one last shot at stardom. Filled with madcap misunderstandings and misadventures, this delightful comedy is a love letter to live theatre.

The cast is:

Paul Gootee - George Hay
Patsy See - Charlotte Hay
Whitney Shouse - Rosalind Hay
Dave Charles - Paul
Byron Hodges - Howard
Jean Adams - Ethel
Susan McClelland - Eileen
Jon Weed - Richard Maynard

They're all very talented and are doing a great job. I've seen it about 20 times now and they make me laugh every time, which is hard to do. (You become desensitized after you've watched the same play 20+ times in a row.) We open in eight days and I'm looking forward to listening to a fresh audience react to it. I think it's going to be a big hit. Come see it if you get a chance. You won't be disappointed.

Regular updates coming soon. Maybe. If I feel like it.

Almost, Maine

2011-02-09T17:01:00.002-05:00

The top ten lists will resume soon, but I just wanted to pop on here and promote my latest theatrical endeavor. I will be performing in Off Main Street Players' production of Almost, Maine at the Zionsville Lions Club on February 11, 12, 18 and 19. The show starts at 8:00 and tickets are $25. Pricey, I know, but that ticket also includes dessert and an adult beverage. So, not a bad deal when all is said and done. Here's the description of the show from the OMSP website:

"In the mythical town of Almost, Maine, the northern lights appear in the sky on a cold Friday night. As the sky lights up, the residents of this remote town fall in and out of love in surprising ways as they navigate their relationships. Love is lost and found in this remote, chilly town. You’ll laugh and cry and sigh and laugh again as the denizens of Almost find their hearts’ desires—almost."

It's a cute show starring 11 wonderful actors (and me) and I hope people come support it. Tickets are still available, so make your reservations today!

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts...

Remembering 2010: Top 10 Concerts

2010-12-30T17:55:00.003-05:00

Well, it's the end of the year, which means I'm compiling all my favorites across a wide variety of genres. (As we listmakers are wont to do.) My plan over the course of the next few weeks is to share my top 10 in each of these categories. We'll start with one of my biggest expenditures for 2010, concerts:

10. THE DOOBIE BROTHERS / CHICAGO (Verizon Wireless Music Center) - This was a last-minute kind of thing, where a friend of mine scored very cheap tickets a few days before the show and invited me to go along. Having never seen either band, I went expecting very little since both groups peaked in the mid 80s. The less said about the Doobie Brothers set, the better. (Quick rundown: It was a bunch of album tracks and b-sides, precisely what I didn't want to see from them.) But Chicago gave the crowd what they wanted, nothing but the hits performed in an energetic manner. Sure, it was a bit staged, and I could have done without a local contest winner stumbling her way through the lead vocals for "If You Leave Me Now," but overall I had a lot of fun revisiting their catalog. I don't think I'd ever pay to see them again, but for what it was it was perfect.

09. THE BLACK CROWES (The Murat Theatre) - Earlier this year the Crowes announced they were taking a hiatus after they wrapped up their current tour. Having seen them in 2009, I wasn't going to go until, again, my friend scored some cheap tickets a few days before the show. While the show was a bit different than the other times I've seen them - the first act was acoustic, the second act electric and it totaled three hours - I was happy they performed songs from their entire catalog, concentrating on their early stuff. I'd be lying if I said I would miss them during their hiatus, but this show was a nice stop-gap until they eventually tour again.

08. BILLY BRAGG (The Vogue) - It's nice that Bragg veered into red state territory to bring his one-man liberal act to The Vogue. While I'm not a passionate fan of his music - I own his two disc retrospective, and that's enough for me - I will admit that I walked away a bigger fan than when I entered. Some of that was me realizing his songs are extremely well constructed, but most of that was because he was just so damn entertaining. Between each song he would rant and rave and talk to the audience about whatever was on his mind which, this being Bragg, was mainly politics. It was a fascinating, intimate show that both entertained and educated.

07. TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS (Verizon Wireless Music Center) - I love me some Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. If you want a sturdy, catchy rock song, you should look no further than Mr. Petty. Every time I've seen him live - and I've seen him a lot - he always puts on a great concert, showcasing his treasure trove of songs and always inviting the audience to join him for a great time. And this show was no different...except for one thing: For the first time, I noticed that it seemed the band was sick and tired of playing the really old songs. The tempos were down a bit, the interaction with the audience during these songs was limited, and everyone onstage seemed to have their eye on the setlist, hoping to get to the newer stuff soon. It was an off night to be sure, but it was still a worthy concert.

06. ROGER WATERS (The Schottenstein Center) - When news broke that Waters would be touring a full-fledged performance of Pink Floyd's 1980 masterpiece The Wall, I knew I had to get tickets. Sadly, he didn't come to Indianapolis, but he did make a stop in Columbus, Ohio, only three and a half short hours away. The show itself was visually amazing, a piece of theatre that rivals any theatrical show I saw this year. And, for once, the message of The Wall came in loud and clear as opposed to on the record, where I think it's muddled at best. My only complaint about the show was that there was no spontaneity in the performances, that the musicians had to play to the stuff going on all around them instead of getting lost in the music. So it was a bit canned, but, man, was it a trip to watch.

05. JOHN MELLENCAMP (Hinkle Fieldhouse) - Mellencamp released the album No Better Than This in 2010, which he recorded at various historical sites around the country using old 1950s equipment. The record has a long-lost sound because of that and almost sounds like some kind of weird time capsule. To mimic the disc, Mellencamp basically reconfigured his stage show into a 1950s concert, the effect being that if he were around at that time, this is what he would look and sound like. That's a huge gambit, but the shocking thing is the entire thing worked: This is easily the best Mellencamp show I've ever seen. A lot of his hits had been reworked to emulate the sounds of the 50s - "Authority Song" was performed as a rockabilly hit, for example - and while that was jarring at times, once you got over the fact that you were watching a musician stretch and grow instead of perform the same version of "Small Town" for the 3,000th time, it was riveting to watch.

04. THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS (The Vogue) - This show was fierce. That's the best word I can use to describe it. They came onstage, said hello, plugged in their guitars, turned on their amps, and proceeded to tear the roof off the joint. I'm not exaggerating when I say they put on one of the most highly energetic shows I've ever seen. They tore it up. Even the songs I didn't know - and there were many, since I only own their most recent disc - blew me away. I walked into the concert a casual fan of the Drive-By Truckers, but I walked out a devotee. I can't wait to see them again.

03. DEVO (The Vogue) - Devo has never really gotten their due for the paths they trailed in the late 70s and early 80s. Their songs are catchy as hell, but if you listen closer you'll hear the subversiveness in them that makes them the punks that they are. In other words, they are much more than "Whip It." I have been dying to see them for years and immediately jumped at the chance to buy tickets when it was announced they'd be playing The Vogue, a tiny nightclub. We got there early so we could be near the stage. And when they came out, dressed in modified versions of their classic yellow jumpsuits - don't worry, those made an appearance later - it was easily my favorite concert moment of the year. The show was short but sweet, a quick run-through of all the songs they're known for as well as two tracks off their latest album. Even Booji Boy made an appearance. It wasn't cheap - $60 per ticket - but it was so, so worth it.

02. CAKE (The Vogue) - While I admire other bands on the list more, the Cake show was easily the most fun concert I saw all year. I knew from the second song ("Comfort Eagle") that this was going to be a great one. Everyone in the audience was singing along and dancing to the music, like it was one big house party. For me, it also made me realize that I love the band and have never given them the credit that they deserve. My only complaint was when the lead singer, a devout environmentalist, took way too long to give away a tree toward the end of the show. I've been listening to their stuff pretty solidly since then, and I can't wait to buy their new album in a few weeks.

01. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS (Buskirk-Chumley Theatre) - I have been in love with this band since I heard the first few notes of their Twin Cinema album and have been wanting to see them live since then. They finally made a stop in Indiana - not in Indianapolis, of course, but in Bloomington - so a road trip was made so I could cross another band off my Concert Bucket List. The venue was an old theatre that had been converted into a concert hall, which worked perfectly for the band and their retro pop music. They played nearly every song of theirs that I love, always a plus. And Neko Case, who records with them and sometimes joins them at shows, was in attendance, and it's always nice to see Neko. I had high expectations for the show, and they were more than met. I would see them again in a heartbeat.

All in all, it was a great - and expensive - year for concerts. But I wouldn't trade a penny.

Up next: My top 10 theatre shows of the year.

Holiday Road

2010-10-24T09:45:00.003-04:00

I've been on vacation this past week. Not having the money to go anywhere, I decided to stay in town and get things done. At the beginning of the week I put together a list of stuff I wanted to accomplish. Here's how it went:

GOAL #1 - Finish CD Ripping Project

Background: A year ago I bought a new 160gb iPod. Having lost all my music in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2007, I had to start from scratch last year and rerip my entire collection. I didn't really mind; this way I could rip everything as high quality mp3s so anyone who wanted to "borrow" my music could. It's been a year since I started this project and I was only up to Led Zeppelin. I wanted to get to at least Bruce Springsteen by the end of my vacation.

Result: Yeah, that didn't happen. For one thing, it takes a lot of time to rip music. And when you're talking about an average of five minutes per disc, I just didn't have the time to sit there and continue switching out CDs. I did make a solid dent though, ripping about 100 discs throughout the week. I'm currently midway through my John Mellencamp collection.

GOAL #2 - Spend Time with Friends

Background: Not much explanation here. I wanted to spend time with a few people I hadn't seen in awhile.

Result: This was pretty much a success. I saw a play with one friend, met two separate friends for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday, had dinner with another friend on Monday, and went to Columbus, Ohio, on Friday to see Roger Waters with yet another group of friends. In other words, it was fun, but I'm broke now. (But it was all worth it.)

GOAL #3 - Clean the House

Background: While I keep my house picked up, just a cursory look at all the cobwebs tips you off to the fact that in reality my house is pretty filthy.

Result: This didn't happen at all. In my defense, I was on vacation. Who wants to clean their house when they're supposed to be relaxing? The cobwebs can wait.

GOAL #4 - Naps

Background: I'm tired.

Result: This goal was met with resounding success.

GOAL #5 - See Films at the Heartland Film Festival

Background: Last week was the annual Heartland Film Festival. I had at least four films I wanted to catch throughout the week.

Result: Didn't go to any of them. Meeting my friends interfered with some of the scheduled show times. That was fine with me, since I preferred seeing my friends. Also, the films I wanted to go to all got mediocre or terrible reviews, so the idea of spending $10 just to see something bad turned me off. The films are now on my massive "To See" list, so I'll get to them eventually.

GOAL #6 - Update the Resume

Background: It's time.

Result: Didn't do it. Thought hard about it, but decided to wait. I'm on the fence about where I want to take my career next and I don't want to update my resume unless I'm really serious about looking for a new job. And in this economy, that's not a great idea.

All in all, it was a pretty decent vacation and I'm already dreading going back to work tomorrow. Oh, well, I have another week off in mid-December, so the things I didn't get done can wait until then.

The Big, The Tall, The Ugly

2010-10-21T20:06:00.001-04:00

I've been on vacation all week long and one of my goals was to buy new work shoes. I know that doesn't sound very exciting, but when you wear a size 14 like I do, buying new shoes is always a chore.

Until now.

For whatever reason, I thought I'd try the big and tall store this time. They cater to the big. Why wouldn't they have big shoes?

And they did! No longer will I have to cram my feet into size 13 shoes, compromising comfort while telling myself, "They'll stretch out eventually." I'm happy with my new shoes, even if they're Hush Puppies, a brand I have always associated with my grandfather and being old.

Now, here's where the story turns dark. Look, I'm not a thin guy. I know this. But I used to be bigger. And I used to have to shop for clothes at stores like this one and each time I did, a piece of me died. Thank God I started going to the gym years ago and have since been able to buy all my clothes - sans shoes - at regular retail stores. Because I always get pissed off whenever I see the clothes that large guys get to choose from.

Lots of loud prints. T-shirts with phrases like "Big Dog" and "Extra Wide" printed on them. Polo shirts with horizontal stripes. Shirts that look like they have been sitting on the shelf since 1972. Shirts made of that weird stretchy fabric that supposedly breathes but instead looks like a large dish cloth. Elastic. Lots and lots of elastic. It's downright embarrassing.

Sad thing is, it's easy to fix this. There's no need for the plus-size men in our society to look terrible. First of all, shirts: There needs to be a lot of cotton button-down options in solid colors and in patterns that don't look like Miami exploded. Also, the whole fat-men-in-polo-shirt stand-by needs to go. No one looks good in a polo shirt. No one. If you want to be comfortable, wear a t-shirt. Oh, and get rid of those degrading slogans on the t-shirts they do sell. Fat people don't like to wear signs indirectly calling them fat.

Now, pants: Get rid of anything elastic. Pretty much all khaki pant makers have figured out a way to elongate the waistline without using elastic. Why not use this technique on jeans and shorts as well? Also, I used to have to wear bigger pants and absolutely none of them fit right, always sagging down. Fat men don't have waists. But there has to be a way to make it look like every single person wearing a pants size higher than 46 didn't just drop a load in their shorts. It's embarrassing.

Finally, suits. A classic black or blue sport jacket will do just fine. The only person who should wear a printed sport jacket is Herb Tarlek at WKRP.

And get a load at how much these items cost: The degrading t-shirts: $35. The horrible work shirts: $60. The polo shirts: $40. Khaki pants: $65. Jeans: $50. I know it takes more material to make these items, but damn.

Look, I'm no fashion expert. As I'm writing this I'm wearing blue jeans that are ripped to shreds and a button-down shirt that barely covers my slowly-expanding gut. (Note to self: Get back on a regular gym schedule or else you'll be shopping at the big and tall again.) But at least these items didn't make me look foolish the day I bought them. Oh, sure, now they probably do, but when they were new they didn't. I just think that because you're plus-sized doesn't mean you should look like a doofus.

I'd open up my own big and tall store just to give these guys options, but I know nothing about the business and it would ultimately fail. Plus I'm afraid I'd turn into Thorton Mellon, Rodney Dangerfield's character from Back to School. And no one wants that.

Is This Thing On?

2010-09-24T13:17:00.004-04:00

It has been seven months to the day since I last updated this thing. Seven months. That's a record, even for me. So, in order to get us back to normal, let's play catch up, shall we? Here's what I've been up to for the past 212 days.

Note: I am purposely leaving out all concert/theatre reviews. I'll try cover those at the end of the year. For the record, though, here's what I've seen:

THEATRE
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, Lafayette Civic, March 19
Oklahoma!, Footlite Musicals, March 26
Seussical, Guerin Catholic High School, April 29
Oliver!, Footlite Musicals, May 7
The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Center Stage Productions, May 28
Guys and Dolls, The Belfry, June 19
Jersey Boys, The Murat Theatre, June 30
Calamity Jane, The Belfry, July 30
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Carmel Community Players, August 1
The Producers, Footlite Musicals, September 18

CONCERTS
David Copperfield, Emens Auditorium, May 9
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Verizon Wireless Music Center, July 10
Cake, The Vogue, July 11
Devo, The Vogue, July 26
Rick Springfield, Indiana State Fair, August 12
Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Lawn at White River State Park, August 23
The Black Crowes, The Murat Theatre, August 25
Billy Bragg, The Vogue, September 14
Jackson Browne, The Lawn at White River State Park, September 21

And now, on to the highlights:

February 28 - Odd Couple rehearsals began with a standard read-through of the script. There was massive road construction on I-69, so I was an hour late. Thankfully the majority of the cast knew me, so I didn't come across as an idiot. Still, it pissed me off.

March 2 - I left for Disney World. No, I didn't go on vacation, I went there for a conference. Let me tell you, it sucks to go to a library automation conference on the grounds of Walt Disney World. You're this close to fun all day long! Thankfully, the conference didn't start until the next day, so I spent March 2 playing in the Magic Kingdom. By myself, unfortunately, since my friends attending the conference didn't arrive until later in the day. After getting over the weird feeling of being at Disney World alone, I was able to ride all the rides I wanted because, for whatever reason, there was absolutely nobody there. I think the most I waited to get into a ride was five minutes, and that was only because there was a show going on in the Country Bear Jamboree theatre at that time.

March 3 - First day of the conference. Blah blah blah new check-in module blah blah blah. Really, we were all waiting for the annual conference party that evening, the one being held after hours at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park. Cool, another visit to a park where I don't have to wait in line for anything! Except the party planners were too cheap to pony up the money to pay for the rides, which means we were stuck there with nothing to do but eat, drink, and dance to the world's lamest and most predictable DJ. (That didn't stop Chrissy and I from crossing over into no-man's land and breaking into the Muppet movie theater. Sadly, we couldn't figure out how to turn the damn thing on.) Afterward they provided us with our very own showing (read: cast and tech dress rehearsal) of Phantasmagoriumatron or whatever that show is called. We were all too drunk to care. The evening continued at the hotel bar afterward, where all of us did some more drinking. Party!

March 4 - Yeah, it was a bad idea to drink that much the night before. This day's conference sessions were a struggle to get through. But I made it, and three of us went to the Magic Kingdom afterward as a reward to hang out and ride the best ride ever - the Carousel of Progress. This "ride" is a show about electricity and all the wonderful gadgets that come with it. Except - here's the gimmick - when the scene changes the stage doesn't move, the theatre does! Wow, man! As if watching outdated robots explaining the benefits of owning a refrigerator wasn't hilarious enough, the show kept throwing in painfully bad jokes that fell flat every time. (To the robot's dog after his daughter worried about her electric hairdryer: "Oh, Rover, you're lucky. You don't have to date!") Here's the entire ride, in case you have 21 minutes to kill and want to see the best ride ever:

March 5 - Final day of the conference. We were going to drink our way around Epcot that evening but, seeing as how I had a 5 a.m. flight the next morning, decided that would be unwise. Instead we had dinner at Techno Planet Hollywood, where aparently it's all deafening techno music, all the time.

March 6 - Flying at 5 a.m. is fun! Especially when you wind up sitting on a plane for two hours only to be moved to another one because of some mechanical problem. I got home about three hours late and immediately crashed. I was supposed to go to a party that night, but since I'd been partying for the past three days, I skipped it.

April 23 - Odd Couple opened. I'm so numb by the time a show opens that I have no idea if it's good or not. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I even had several people tell me I was the best Oscar ever, better even than Walter Matthau and Jack Klugman. Which I seriously doubted, but I still took the compliment.

May 1 - And Odd Couple closes. Just FYI: I'm taking the rest of the year off from theatre. I'll still see shows, I just don't want to be in them. I've been involved with 23 productions over the past six year and I'm tired. I'm slated to direct Moon Over Buffalo for the Off Main Street Players in Zionsville next April, so that will be my next gig.

May 8-14 - Babysitting Lizzie Part I. Basically, I sat around and did nothing all week. And it was heavenly. I did manage to watch all four Christopher Reeve Superman movies this week. Quick run-down: Superman I - Excellent. Superman II (Theatrical) - Terrible. Superman II (Donner Cut) - Good. Superman III - Enjoyable, although a mess. Superman IV - God-awful.

June 24-27 - Babysitting Lizzie Part II. Again, I sat around and did nothing. Again, I didn't mind.

July 7 - I turned 37. Yay, only three years until I'm 40!

July 31 - My parents came over to help me not get evicted from my own house. Apparently my yard was in such disaray that my Homeowner's Association threatened to have me fined, never mind the fact that half of my neighbors have worse looking yards than my own. I blame the asshole across the street, Mr. I Work In My Yard 40 Hours Every Weekend. Fuck that guy.

And not much has really happened since then other than a lot of concerts and a lot of the usual stuff. Until my next post seven months from now...

The Next Project

2010-02-24T23:32:00.001-05:00

Got it. Rehearsals start Sunday...

This Rabbit Is More Qualified Than 72% of Our Politicians

2010-02-23T22:29:00.002-05:00

This picture made my day. Thanks, Unrelated Captions!

Jaywalking Sucks

2010-02-22T22:43:00.003-05:00

Stuff from today:

1) I have not heard whether or not I have a part in The Odd Couple. Believe me, if and when I find out, I will let all two of you who read this know.

2) I hate Jay Leno. Not only is the man a comedy black hole - he's where jokes go to die! - but he's also been an insufferable pig during this whole NBC/Conan O'Brien thing. And while he earned a bit of goodwill from me for his pretty damn funny Superbowl ad with David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey, he's back on my shitlist for starring in a commercial for The Stealing of The Tonight Show - whoops, I simply mean The Tonight Show - that is basically a big "Fuck You" to Conan. A shot of Jay driving one of his super-expensive cars down a California road while The Beatles' "Get Back" plays, all it does is make me want to punch him in his smirking face. Thank God for clever people on Youtube. Someone pulled "Get Back" out and replaced it with Radiohead's "Creep," a more suitable and appropriate song choice.

3) I just read a DVD review of Mr. Belvedere: The Complete Fourth Season. Yes, they've released all four seasons of Mr. Belvedere. Meanwhile the remaining three seasons of WKRP in Cincinnati remain unreleased. (Granted, I'm guessing there's no Pink Floyd musical clearance challenges to hurdle with a Mr. Belvedere release, but still.) Not to mention Ishtar and Scavenger Hunt, two movies that need to be put on DVD pronto. Apparently there are a lot of Mr. Belvedere fans out there. I'm just amazed that people are actually buying that crap.

4) Quick Julie and Julia review: The Julia portions were great. Both Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci were phenomenal. The Julie portions were stick-a-fork-in-my-eye bad featuring a grating performance by Amy Adams as the world's most self-involved blogger. Streep more than deserves her Best Actress nomination. She was a joy to watch.

4) I had a fitness evaluation this morning and epically failed it. I'm thinking of hiring a personal trainer again, although on a much less intense scale than I did with Jen in the early aughts. (Back then I didn't have a Fishers mortgage.) I'm thinking 30 minutes a week, mainly to keep me motivated. (And to hold me personally accountable to someone other than myself.) The guy was nice but as the machines were spitting out my body mass index and my fat percentage I couldn't help but laugh. I blame...well, myself. And the Totino's corporation.

The Next Jack Klugman?

2010-02-21T23:15:00.003-05:00

I auditioned for The Odd Couple tonight in Zionsville. Some pretty stiff competition was there, but overall I think it went well. We'll see...

In other news, I joined a new gym last week. Lifestyle Family Fitness in Fishers, about five minutes from my house. Thank God, because Cardinal Fitness - while cheap - was just too damn far away and was giving me too many excuses not to go. Lifestyle is more like Lifetime was, a big, huge facility with thousands of pieces of equipment, but I'm alright with that. I kind of missed the grandness of Lifetime.

Oh, and I started a new diet today as well, because I'm just too damn fat. So if I turn down cookies or cake, don't take it personally.

Ten Reasons My Ears Are On Fire

2010-02-13T00:10:00.004-05:00

Before I begin, let me just say that I was never a big fan of the original "We are the World." I always found it inane and repetitive and extremely self-serving for the artists. (Look! Huey Lewis cares about Ethiopians! His heart of rock and roll does beat...in Cleveland.) That said, I did think it was better than the snide "Do You Think It's Christmas?" that the Brits released around the same time. (As many famous comics have said, "No, Bono, I don't think those kids know its Christmas...because they're fucking starving to death!") "We are the World" exists today as some sort of bizarre time capsule, a kind of greatest-artists-of-the-decade boiled down to seven minutes.

And now, twenty five years nearly to the date, co-writer Lionel Richie has reassembled a bunch of superstars just like he did in 1985. He did this after the Grammy Awards just like in 1985. And he still invited actors for no reason, just like in 1985. Behold the 2010 version of "We are the World":

We Are The World 25 For Haiti @ Yahoo! Video

And, for posterity, the 1985 clip:

Now, comparing this clip to the 1985 one, here are some thoughts:

1) Apparently no one can sing now. It's obvious that a lot of those artists used pitch control to alter their voices after the fact, making it seem like 70% of this song is being sung by robots. Mock the '85 clip all you want, every single one of those voices - from Bruce Springsteen to Bob Dylan to Cyndi Lauper to Tina Turner to Willie Nelson - had distinctive voices that could sing notes without the aid of computers. Sadly, none of those artists would make it in today's music industry. I'm sure if he was 25 today, Sony execs would force The Boss to use pitch-control on "Born to Run."

2) Both Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones were adamant that no repeats from the first "We are the World" would appear again. So color me surprised when 1985 Michael Jackson showed up. Look, I get it, the guy's dead now and his death was the death of our childhood and he never lost the magic and blah blah blah. Remember after 9/11 when Michael tried to do this very same thing, gather a bunch of people together to record a charity single and no one wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole? Other than his death, what's changed?

3) The '85 version was all about the hip artists of the day. The new clip is all about the people soccer moms think are hip. Celine Dion? The Jonas Brothers? Justin Bieber? T-Pain? If this is popular music today, man, this generation is seriously going to be messed up when they get older.

4) Before the new clip even started I thought, "I bet they use computerized faux beat-box drums on this." Sure enough...

5) I don't condone terrorism, but if a bomb had wiped out the studio during the big sing-along chorus at the end, the music industry - and the country - would have been much better for it. We would have lost Jeff Bridges, but that's a small price to pay.

6) Jeff Bridges is the Dan Aykroyd of 2009.

7) I don't know where that rap at the end came from, but it was obviously shoehorned in there by people who don't understand rap or how to properly use it. My guess is Quincy Jones spent the entire evening thinking, "Who the fuck are all these people?"

8) Jaime Fox. Go away. No one likes your smug intro and everyone is tired of your Ray Charles impression.

9) Brian Wilson was there, standing around looking like a zombie, which is his M.O. But he's a genius! The dude added sleigh bells to a pop song in 1964! Al Jardine was there as well. No Mike Love, however. He's probably still feeling the aftershocks from his awesome bridge-burning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech from 1988.

10) Watching this thing was like seeing a visual aid documenting why the music industry is dying. Of course, a lot of people probably said the same thing in 1985...

One reason I did like the new version: Jennifer Nettles. She's a cutie.

And She Changed Her Name To Carol...

2010-01-15T14:00:00.005-05:00

Welcome back, Waye's World readers! A long time ago I said I would answer the question posed to The AV Club every Friday, something I may have done once, if that. Well, let's start it up again, shall we? This week's question is:

What’s your personal pop-culture cause, the thing people always scoff at you for liking and that you always try to convince naysayers to give a first (or second or third) chance to anyway?

This one's pretty easy, actually: Ishtar. Yes, I know it's not a great movie - the narrative is a mess and the leads are woefully miscast - but it never fails to entertain. The story of two inept songwriters so terrible that they can only find work in the Middle East, the film goes for broke many times and succeeds. The first ten minutes alone, with stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman composing many of their terrible songs, contain more laughs than many modern-day comedies have during their entire run-time. When it was released in 1987 many condemned the film before even seeing it, blaming its inflated budget for everything that was wrong with moviemaking at the time. In short order Ishtar became synonymous with crap, so much so that if you wanted to criticize a film that had gone over-budget or was out of control, all you had to do was name-drop Ishtar and everyone automatically knew what you were talking about. (Both Titanic and Waterworld were labeled Fishtar at one point.) Sony has never released the film on DVD, which has only furthered its reputation as the worst movie ever made. If only they would release it, then maybe people can judge it for themselves instead of assuming the movie is nothing but 100 minutes of wasted celluloid.

Also in this category I'd put the movie Xanadu which has to be one of the best bad movies of all-time. Yes, there's roller skating and bad acting, but the music more than makes up for it. The 80s band Men at Work would qualify as well. Remembered now by many people as a bland carbon copy of The Police, their music actually sounds nothing like Sting's band. And some of those songs on those first two records are actually better than anything Sting and company ever released. (And their videos are hilarious, too.) And, finally, let me give a shout-out to Dig Dug, the video game that, whenever I bring it up, always gets ridiculed. Call me crazy, but there is nothing more fun than blowing up a dragon with an air pump.

I Wanna Be A Producer

2009-09-02T23:37:00.002-04:00

I haven't been updating lately because I'm currently in rehearsals for the Indianapolis area community theatre premiere of Mel Brooks' hit show The Producers. I'm in the chorus, but, don't worry, I have more than enough to keep me busy. Nine roles in all, a couple of solos and some really funny bits. Come out and see it if you can. It's at The Belfry in Noblesville. (10690 State Road 238 E to be exact.) Here's show dates, times, etc.:

Friday, September 18, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, September 19, 8:00 p.m.
Friday, September 25, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, September 26, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 27, 2:00 p.m.
Friday, October 2, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 3, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 4, 2:00 p.m.

Tickets are $15 and can be reserved by calling (317) 773-1085. Trust me, this will be well worth it. The cast is extraordinary talented and bits I've already seen performed dozens of times still makes me laugh. If you do come, let me know what night you'll be there so I can look for you after the show.

Of course, we're still working out the kinks, what with two weeks left before we open. Tonight we ran Act I and it took over three hours. We'll get it down, though. I promise you, this will not be the Ben Hur version of The Producers.

Indianapolis International Film Festival: Day Four

2009-07-21T23:10:00.004-04:00

My friend Andie and I have a tradition: Usually when we get together, we carve out some time to watch a notoriously bad movie solely for the purpose of mocking it. The films we've watched have pretty much fallen into two categories: awful movies with rock/pop stars in them (Purple Rain, Give My Regards to Broad Street, Glitter) or misfires from the 80s (Stroker Ace, Purple Rain*). We've never watched Troll 2. Although, after seeing the documentary Best Worst Movie, I think it needs to be at the top of our list. Because it looks awful.

In the late 80s Italian filmmaker Claudio Fragasso and his wife Rossella Drudi wrote a film about vegetarian goblins who turn people into plants so they could eat them. Or something. The film was shot in 1989 in Utah with a very low budget and an amateur cast. Troll 2, as it came to be called because a successful film named Troll had been released just before it, never saw a theatrical release, instead going straight to video. Twenty years later the film has become a cult phenomenon, inspiring midnight screenings across the country. Michael Stephenson, who had the lead in Troll 2 as a young boy, decided to investigate the surprise success of the film, as well as find out what all the actors were doing twenty years later.

First, let me say that if you get a chance to see this documentary, please see it apart from fans of Troll 2. The audience I saw the film with were rabid fans of the '89 film, so much so that everything - every clip, every cast member, every sound cue - was laughed at uproariously, drowning out some of the dialogue. There are serious moments in the film - not all the actors from Troll 2 are operating at 100% mental capacity, sadly - but you wouldn't know it from this audience's laughter over these people's problems. I don't know if they were trying to compete with their friends or what, but it was goddamn annoying.

Not that the film doesn't have some hilarious moments. George Hardy, who played the dad in Troll 2, is now a dentist who clings to his one shot at fame. His office is covered with Troll 2 posters and he's even shown telling patients that he was in the film as he's cleaning their teeth. Hardy currently lives in Alabama and he's got the stereotypical "Aw, shucks" demeanor you associate with that area. He's shown in the film doing anything and everything he can to remind people that he was in Troll 2, even going so far as staging a screening in his hometown and having his dental hygenists call his patients to remind them about it. He's a lot of fun to watch and provides the majority of the levity in the film.

But there are also sad, depressing moments in the film as well. The woman who played the mother in Troll 2 is sadly losing her grip on reality. When Stephenson and Hardy track her down they find her in a tiny apartment living with her elderly mother. She's obviously both overjoyed and annoyed at her visitors, and for every moment of clarity there's a moment where she makes an inappropriate comment under her breath. A second visit to her apartment to convince her to take part in a cast reunion is even more depressing, as she claims she can't go because the sounds will get to her. The woman is now elderly herself, and it's clear she's in the beginning stages of senility. Sad. (But not to the audience I was with. You'd think this development was hilarious!)

A few of the other actors have fallen on hard times as well. The grandpa from the film lives in a house in Salt Lake City but is saddened that he never made it professionally as an actor. And the man who played a villain speaks about his trips to various mental hospitals both before and after the '89 film was shot. As you can see, this is not your typical DVD making-of featurette.

Things get interesting when Fragasso comes to the states to see for himself how popular his movie is. Fragrasso is an Italian, and it's obvious when you see him interacting with the actors that there was a serious language barrier on the set. His reaction to how his film is being viewed now - at midnight screenings promoted as "THE WORST MOVIE OF ALL-TIME!!!" - is poignant. On the one hand, he's pissed that people are openly mocking his film, laughing at dialogue that isn't funny. On the other, he's smart enough to realize that people have made a lasting emotional attachment to the film, which makes him extremely proud. And if people love it because they think it's bad, so be it.

There's a wonderful moment late in the film where Fragrasso sees the film reels of his movie sitting in a truck before a screening and he becomes overwhelmed with joy. Having gone straight to video, he's never seen his baby projected from film onto a big screen before. It's a quick moment, but you can see that even though his movie didn't amount to much, you can tell he still loves it with all his heart.

I'll give Stephenson credit: This film is not 92 minutes of him and his fellow castmates mocking the movie. Everyone involved with the film did make it with the best of intentions, even though it didn't turn out well.# And they all seem to have a soft spot in their heart for the movie, even though a lot of them acknowledge it's garbage. It's this aspect that made me enjoy the documentary, not the film clips or the trashing of Troll 2. It speaks a lot about the reception of art - good and bad - and I didn't expect that.

Trailer:

GRADE: B+

Tomorrow: Lo, a horror comedy movie I know very little about but sounds oddly intriguing.

* Yeah, it's so bad you have to see it twice.

# My thoughts on this is that you have a classically trained Italian director who couldn't just make a cheap movie and let it die. Instead he injected a lot of European imagery and themes into the film which doesn't make any sense to Joe Sixpack who just wants to see some trolls kill people. It's like if Fellini had helmed one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Indianapolis International Film Festival: Day Three

2009-07-20T23:42:00.003-04:00

The IMA needs to do something about their escalators. As you're walking up to them, getting ready to enter the museum from the parking garage, it sounds like a gaggle of geese are being strangled. I don't think animal torture is really what they want their patrons to think about as they're being elevated to classic works of art.

But, then again, those sounds were appropriate for tonight's film, The Tiger Next Door, a documentary about Dennis Hill, a man in Flat Rock, Indiana, who keeps 24 tigers as pets in his backyard. (As well as numerous bears, cougars and leopards.) The DNR* hears about this and gives him thirty days to find homes for all but three of the tigers and the film deals with his struggles to find someone to take the animals. At the same time, he's under attack in the community for his hobby, since many of the people in the town fear what would happen if one of the animals would escape.

I was highly impressed with this film. For one thing, I love it when issue documentaries present both sides of the story, allowing the viewer to make up his or her mind on the subject matter without any obvious bias. Director Camilla Calamandrei does this in spades, showing Hill trying to comply with the sanctions places upon him by the DNR as well as the flaws in the way he cages and treats his animals. Hill is defiinitely a character, a long-bearded former meth addict who resembles Edward "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers. He actually comes across in the film as a competent man, someone who knows what he's doing is crazy but does it anyhow. And he doesn't shy away from his past or hide anything from anyone who is curious. He comes across as truthful and a bit insane. Other than fighting off a surprise court order that threatens to take away his animals, he is shown as a law-abiding citizen who is doing his best to comply with what the state wants him to do. His love for his pets, while misguided, is genuine.

But the problem is, should he be keeping full-grown tigers as pets? In small 600 square-foot cages, no less? Calamandrei doesn't do much editorializing on this point, instead letting her images speak for her. And it doesn't get more painful than seeing a beautiful creature like a tiger living in an area where he can barely turn around. It's sad, and it makes you wonder what would drive a person to want to cage a tiger like that.

There are some dynamite moments in the film, such as when one of the tigers gets spooked and nearly destorys her cage by leaping into the air and banging against it repeatedly. There's also a confrontation between Hill and the operator of a tiger rescue society in Indiana that gets pretty heated. It's an electric moment that had the audience in attendance cheering#.

If I have doubts about the movie, it's that it goes to the well of "Why, these pets can kill people!" a bit too often. That seems to be the main argument of the townspeople against Hill, which, duh, they're freaking tigers. Of course they're going to kill people. It's what they do.^ And I didn't like Calamandrei's editing of the big town hall meeting confrontation. She kept cutting back and forth between the meeting and Hill loading up some of his tigers, giving the illusion that both were happening at the same time. Obviously they were not, since Hill was at both places. It was clumsy editing and should have just been done straight instead of trying to ratchet up the tension.

I have no idea if this film will get a wide distribution or not. I wish it would, but I believe its future is on constant rotation on Animal Planet once it gets done making the rounds at all the film festivals. Too bad, because it deserves more.

GRADE: A-

Tomorrow: The documentary Best Worst Movie, about a man who looks back at his starring role in Troll 2, widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made, when he was a child. This one has good buzz, so I'm curious if it lives up to the hype.

* Headed by Kyle Hupfer at the time, a former classmate of mine at PHHS. He even makes an appearance in the film. Class of '91 represent!

# But not for Hill. The audience was definitely against keeping tigers as pets. Which makes me wonder what Hill, who was there, thought when they cheered loudly against him several times during the film. At the very least it probably explains why he wasn't that vocal during the Q&A after the show.

^ None of the people in Flat Rock who are against Hill cite possible animal cruelty as a reason to get rid of the tigers. Instead they spew conspiracy theories that a tornado might come through the area and knock the cages down, setting the tigers free, where, of course, they'll immediately head for their children. They come across as bigger ignorant hicks than Hill does.

Indianapolis International Film Festival: Day Two

2009-07-19T23:21:00.004-04:00

OK, first off, I was a bit eager when putting together the schedule last night. Originally I was going to try to squeeze in eleven movies before next Saturday but, after looking at it again today, I realized I was too ambitious. So I've scaled it down...to nine. I'm one crazy mo-fo.

Today I saw my first film in the Indianapolis Museum of Art's Toby Theater, a supposed state of the art venue that used to be the home of Indianapolis Civic Theatre. I say "supposed" because the sound of the film I saw in there today sounded horrible. Remember how sound in movie theaters used to sound before the Dolby Stereo revolution of the 80s? That's what it sounded like this afternoon in the Toby Theater. I'm hoping the film is to blame for this, but it was a pretty professional documentary, so I doubt that was the case. I'm seeing something in there tomorrow, so hopefully this was just a bad transfer or something.

Anyway, I saw two films today, both documentaries and both marginal. Here are my thoughts:

THE WAY WE GET BY

Over 750,000 U.S. troops have stopped by the Bangor, Maine, airport either on their way to war or on their way home. Seeing them off when they leave and greeting them when they return is a dedicated group of senior citizens who hug them, thank them and make them feel appreciated for what they do for this country. The film focuses on three of the members of this group: Bill, a former farmer who has cancer and feels he has nothing to live for besides his work at the airport; Joan, an elderly grandmother who doesn't support the war but loves the troops, especially her two grandchildren who will be deploying soon; and Jerry, a prankster of a man who is suffering from heart issues as well as the loss of a good friend.

This film should have tugged at my heartstrings more, but it didn't. Yeah, individual scenes of troops coming home and hugging their families, calling their moms, etc. are moving, but the filmmakers keep showing them over and over again, diluting the point. Also, the film erred by concentrating only on three members of this group. It's not that they're boring individuals - far from it, as each has interesting things to say - it's just that the film gets stuck in this mortality cycle for at least 50% of its running time, reminding us that no one lives forever. All three subjects talk for long periods about death. I know they're in the twilight of their lives, but the movie should have been solely about the service they give to the troops instead of about how they feel about dying. There have been other documentaries that have covered this ground before. (For example, it's one of the main themes of Young at Heart.) We also never get to know the other members of this volunteer organization, which is a shame. I just wish director Aron Gaudet would have concentrated on the whole puzzle rather than a few individual pieces.

It's a shame, because what they do for the troops is a small gesture but it means a lot. You can tell the majority of the troops are a bit overwhelmed by the attention but they appreciate the effort. And there are a few fun scenes in the film, such as a group of Marines from the East playing in the fresh Maine snow and making snow angels. It's not a bad film, just not a slam dunk.

Trailer:

GRADE: B-

HOMEGROWN

In the 90s, Jules Dervaes decided to turn his small plot of land in Pasadena, California, into an organic farm. A divorced dad raising three children at the time, today the Dervaes family makes a living and gets the majority of their food from the items they grow.

This is an interesting subject for a documentary, but at 52 minutes its way too short. I walked away feeling like I wasn't getting the whole story, especially when all three children - who are 34, 32 and 26 - started talking about the personal cost of running an organic farm with their father. All three expressed regret that they're not married, but the film makes no attempt to show their lives away from the farm or their other interests. There's also more to the story of Jules' divorce that we're not getting. Did the wife leave because she didn't want to live on a farm in southern California? The film hints that he was a bit of a drifter before he started the farm. Was that her reason for leaving? Ideas like this are raised periodically throughout the film and then are quickly dropped without much explanation.

That said, what they've managed to achieve on a small plot of land mere eet from a major highway is astounding. And all those shots of vegetables made even this meatatarian long for a nice salad. Plus all four members of the family are personable, funny and humble, which makes listening to their story a delight. I just wish it was longer and a bit more in-depth. (Plus, Indianapolis International Film Festival, charging me $10 for a 52 minute documentary is kind of a rip-off. At least throw some shorts before it or something to justify the cost.)

For more information about what they're doing, visit their website. Be wary of their blog, however. The food pictures on there will make you immediately run to the kitchen for a snack. Trust me on that one.

Trailer:

GRADE: B

Tomorrow I'm seeing The Tiger Next Door, a documentary about an Indiana man's fight to keep his 24 pet tigers. Look for it tomorrow...

Indianapolis International Film Festival: Day One

2009-07-18T23:38:00.006-04:00

There are two main film festivals in Indianapolis, the Heartland Film Festival and the Indianapolis International Film Festival. Every year I say I'm going to go to both and every year I don't. Until last year. Last year I won ten free passes to Heartland in a trivia contest so I dipped my toes in that pool a bit. Didn't use all ten passes, but that was because I didn't have a plan.

This week the Indianapolis International Film Festival is in town. And now I have a plan.

If all goes well, I will see twelve films over the next seven days. Crazy? Yeah, a bit. But for a lot of these movies, this is a one-shot deal. They'll never receive a wide release and if they make it to DVD it's not exactly going to be well-publicized when they come out. So I figure while it might be a bit of overkill, it will be worth it in the long run.

Today I saw one movie*. Well, it wasn't a movie, it was a collection of shorts, each one dealing with animation somehow. The program was called Not Your Normal Saturday Morning Cartoons: Animated and Out-There Shorts. Here are my thoughts on each one:

CHICKEN COWBOY

This is basically what the title says it is, a chicken who just so happens to be a cowboy. Mean guys try to take him down, he fights them off, the end. Not a lot of depth here.

But what it lacks in depth it makes up for in humor. Harold Teitelman gives the chicken a nasally unsure voice that is perfectly matched with Stephen P. Neary's animation of the lead character. Neary gives a lot of the other characters angular features that work well with the style of the piece. It's kind of like a cross between an old Cartoon Network spoof and a spaghetti western. Hey, it made me laugh for seven minutes, so it worked for me. And the entire thing is on Youtube!

GRADE: B+

A GLIMPSE

I'm not sure how this one can be considered animated. It's a black and white film that has pieces of it colored, like a man's jacket or the sky. I wouldn't consider it either animated or "out there," so I have no idea why it was included in this program.

It's about an old man wandering around while a narrator spews pretentious garbage about the meaning of life. To be honest, after about thirty seconds of this ponderous narration I tuned her out and just watched the images. It's beautifully shot, this short, but it's trying way too hard to mean something. It was only four minutes, though, so it wasn't painful to sit through.

GRADE: C

SILENT TREATMENT

This one was a lot of fun. A bum wakes up one morning and tries to steal a woman's purse...only to discover he's in a silent movie. After the brief initial shock wears off, he figures he can make a decent living in crime if no one can hear his victims scream.

This one was definitely out-there, but in a good way. I was laughing out loud repeatedly, both because of the gags - the bum removing the title cards of the woman's pleas for help was priceless - but because the set-up itself was so enjoyable. This was easily my favorite short of the day.

GRADE: A

THE REALM OF POSSIBILTY

These guys in masks wander around and mutter bad S.A.T. questions for about ten minutes, then they hop into byplanes and make letters. Or something.

The director was in attendance and did a brief Q&A afterward, and his answers and descriptions of the work he did to make this thing happened elevated it a bit in my eyes. But not by much. I'm a big plot-with-dialogue fan, and just having random dudes spouting nonsense for ten minutes is pointless to me. Still, props for the guy admitting what his short's weaknesses are. At least he's not some pretentious dimwit who thinks his movie's the second coming of Citizen Kane.

GRADE: C-

MARSHY

A marshmallow escapes from his bag on the kitchen counter, is quickly captured by a human and stuffed into a microwave where he expands. The End.

No, I'm not kidding, that's the entire short. It's two minutes long, it looked terrible, it wasn't funny and it made no sense. Too bad, because the world could use an animated film starring a marshmallow.

GRADE: D-

THE VEILED COMMODITY

I get the point of this non-fiction short - basically, it wants us to stop slavery now - but the way it was constructed killed it for me. It stops and starts erratically and isn't consistent in tone. Had directors Dickson Chow and Vinh Chung chosen one idea and stuck with it, they could have made one powerful film because I loved the way it looked. But it was trying so hard to make its point seven different ways that it wound up suffocating it in the process.

But maybe I'm wrong. Thank God for Youtube!

GRADE: C

CAPES#

This one was bizarre. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. A young man living in a city in the sky is given a cape during a glorious ceremony. He tries to fly but fails miserably, falling to a rocky planet with no life on it. Then some skeletons show up and convince him to visit a mystical tree...

It was beautiful, this movie. It had the look of classic hand-drawn animation and the score by Tchaikovsky was appropriately moving. But the sequence with the skeletons dragged on for far too long and ultimately the film became a muddled mess. Had the story been trimmed and clarified a bit, director Bryan Cohen would have had a winner. As it was, it was an intriguing misfire.

GRADE: C

THE STORYMAKER

Speaking of misfires...

An old lady is bed-ridden but when she's awake she speaks in tongues that people dressed like the women in the "Addicted to Love" video write down in some secret code. But then her cuckoo clock emits a long black cloth that ties itself around the her neck and little wooden soldiers march out of the clock and strangle her.

That's basically the entire film and, yeah, I just spoiled it for you. (Although I left out the man in the wheelchair and the Robert Palmer woman whose clothes morph on her as she looks longingly into the woman's eyes.) Now you don't have to suffer through it like I did. This played like a bad student film. The only thing I can recommend about it is the cinematography, which is well-done. The rest of it is idiotic nonsense.

GRADE: D

ANIMATED AMERICAN

Hilarious. Eric Moeberg, one of the Hollywood executives responsible for killing off traditional 2-D animated cartoons, is looking at a house for sale with his girlfriend. His realtor is late and sends Max Rabbit in his place. Problem is, Max is a former actor in animated films and still hasn't forgiven Moeberg for what he did to his people, putting them out of work.

This was a clever film that made a timely point that 2D animation shouldn't be dead just because it's quicker and easier to produce a film using a computer. (A sentiment I totally agree with, by the way.) The physical performances aren't the strongest, a problem I attribute to the directors probably not being used to working with actual living actors. For example, they tipped it off way too early that there was something different about Eric's girlfriend and Jason Marsden was hamming it up a bit too much as Moeberg. I will give the filmmakers this: Even though they dropped the ball with the actors, the live-action footage looked wonderful. While it was shot in black and white, it had this contemporary look that was rooted in 40s film noir. The vocal performances for the animated characters were spot-on, especially by Jon Polito^ who voiced Max Rabbit. I was taken with this film almost immediately and, judging by the audience's reaction to it, so was everyone else. A winner.

GRADE: A-

Tomorrow the plan is to see The Way We Get By, a documentary about elderly people in Bangor, Maine, greeting servicemen as they come back from war, and Homegrown, a documentary about a family in Pasadena that owns a prosperous organic farm. Hopefully I'll have those thoughts for you tomorrow night.

* With Samantha, my fellow animation fan. Her grades somewhat synced up with mine.

# Except for Capes. She hated Capes.

^ Polito was in one of the best gangster movies of all-time, Miller's Crossing. "I'm talkin' 'bout ethics." "Awwww, did someone hit you?"

Defying Updates: June 11-19

2009-06-19T11:17:00.006-04:00

I'm digging this new format. It lets me update once a week or so and allows me to focus on a variety of topics. Hope y'all enjoy it, because this is the way the blog is going to look for now.

WICKED AWESOME

After hearing about how terrific Wicked is from nearly everyone I've done a show with over the past five years, I finally got my chance to see it June 11 at the Murat. And you know what? All those people were right. Mostly.

I'll admit, the show was very entertaining. The plot - basically an origin story about how the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz came to be - was very clever. Inside jokes to the film abounded, almost to the point where it was too much. (More on this in the spoiler section below.)

The acting was stellar. Sure, the woman playing Glinda was channeling Kristin Chenoweth, but who wouldn't in that role? Chenoweth put such a stamp on that character that it would be difficult to perform it any other way. And according to my friend Brenna - who I saw the show with and who's now seen it three times - the woman playing Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch, was the best she'd ever seen. All the supporting roles were fine, as was the chorus. You could tell everyone was having a ball.

That's not to say the show was perfect. I'm still on the fence about the score. It's filled with mostly forgettable up-tempo numbers and over-stuffed dramatic ballads that pitch the lyrics and ideas to the rafters. The music was saved by both the performances and the staging. "Popular" is a stupid song but the woman playing Glinda (sorry, I don't have my Playbill in front of me so I don't know the actors' names) hilariously interpreted it and made it worth watching. And while "Defying Gravity" was visually stunning, the song was pretty bland. Even the message of the song was cliche-ridden. I can see why the music is a favorite among 14 year-olds everywhere.

My other main complaint has to do with all the references to The Wizard of Oz film. At first, like I said, it's mainly winks and nods toward the movie. But the second act takes it in a weird direction where it's referencing the movie but getting it all wrong.

(Note: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!)

First of all, the Wicked Witch comes from Munchkinland. And she's normal height. Brenna tried to tell me that she's only from Munchkinland, not an actual Munchkin, but I don't buy that. In fact, none of the people playing Munchkins are short. Which makes it even odder when someone references Munchkins later in the show and makes a hand gesture to indicate that they're midgets. The show is so in love with referencing the film that screwing up this aspect of it puzzled me. If they didn't want to hire little people, then why even have Munchkins in the show at all? Why not make them from some other part of Oz?

We also see, for example, how that the witch cast a spell to save a character but, in the process, turned him into the Tin Man. She also did the same thing to another character - one she was deeply in love with - creating the Scarecrow. Later in the show, the Tin Man is trying to stage a revolt against the witch, yelling, "See what she did to me? She created me!!!!" Around the same time, the Scarecrow and the Wicked Witch fake her death and head off into a magical forest or some such shit to be together forever. But here's the thing: In the movie the Witch set the Scarecrow on fire! On purpose! And laughed while she was doing it! Surely someone so in love with him wouldn't have done that, even if she knew she had to be convincing. Also, the Tin Man was found rusted on the side of the road and, if memory serves, even says he's been there for years. So how could he have been in Munchkinland being turned into the Tin Man? I don't get it.

It's been about 28 years since I read the Wizard of Oz series, so maybe these aspects of the show reference the books rather than the movie. But the show's so proud of all these sly winks and nods to the 1939 movie that going off the rails and not following the film in the second act is just bizarre and off-putting. They needed to decide which piece they were going to reference - the film or the book - and stick with that. Because sometimes following one and then (I'm assuming) switching gears and following the other can get confusing.

(END SPOILERS)

All that said, I whole-heartedly recommend the show. It's probably one of the most theatrical productions I've ever seen and it's enjoyable for that alone. And I'll admit that the ending brought a tear to this cynic's eye. If you get a chance, see it.

I still think Avenue Q rightly won the Best Musical Tony that year, though.

BIRTHDAY PARTY, PART II

My nephew turned four on the 10th, so we had a party for him last Saturday. I bought him a They Might Be Giants CD since they're now making music for kids. (Anything to survive the music business, I guess.) My nephew, he's a little sensitive. When he heard it was a They Might Be Giants CD, he became afraid. Because, you know, giants. We reassured him it would be alright and that he would love it, which I'm sure by now he does. There's many reasons to be afraid of that band - some of their music can be extremely annoying - but their name is not one of them.

The CD I'm buying him next year? Something by the Grateful Dead. Either that or the Zombies.

SMOKED BACON AND HA-A-A-A-A-A-A-AM UPDATE

Charlotte's Web debuts tonight. I think the kids are ready. I have no idea. I haven't been to their final week of rehearsals. They made this week something of a theatre camp for the kids during the day and, since I have to work, I was unable to attend. The report I'm getting is that it's going to be a cute show. If you have a chance and want to come, I'm sure they'd love your support. Showtimes:

Friday, June 19, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, June 20, 10:00 a.m.
Saturday, June 20, 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, June 20, 7:00 p.m.

Tickets are $10 for anyone over 10 and $5 for anyone under 10. It will be held in the older theatre at Zionsville High School. If you come to the 7:00 show on Saturday, you'll get the added bonus of seeing me completely fried after having a) seen Charlotte's Web three times in one day and b) spent the day with 80 hyperactive children. Nothing but good times.

JON AND KATE PLUS WHO FUCKING GIVES A SHIT

Enough, media, with Jon and Kate. Please.

I saw an episode of this show last summer while spending a week at my parent's house babysitting the dog and I couldn't stand it then. Kate is nothing but mean to her husband, putting him down at every opportunity. To be fair, he earns some of those disses, since he's the very definition of a do-nothing idiot. He even looks like a frat boy gone to seed, all puffy and hair plugs and shit. The show was your typical "reality" show where they tried to create a plotline around a bunch of random footage. The one I watched spent 30 minutes detailing Jon setting up the kiddie pool, with Kate and the kids nagging him all the way. It wasn't fun, it wasn't funny and I found no real reason to continue to watch it.

And then the tabloids hit. Apparently, Jon's been having an affair. And so has she. And she's evil. And he's evil. And they're vacationing apart. And they're showing up in bars without wedding rings. And he's banging a teacher. And she's banging her bodyguard. And...well, you get the idea. They're the new superstars of the tabloid world. And tabloids suck.

Jon or Kate made a statement recently saying they didn't sign on for this kind of attention. Um, yeah, you did. The minute you let cameras into your house you begged for people to pay attention to you. And, from all reports, you've savored every minute of it. After all, how much free shit have you gotten from your show? I read somewhere you were given a free van. Free! Do you think other families with eight kids and no television show got a free van? No, no they didn't. Suck it up, Jon and Kate. You sign a contract with the devil, the devil wants his pay.

This whole rant was brought on by a news story - if you can call it that - saying there was going to be a life-changing announcement for Jon and Kate on the show this Monday. First of all, this isn't a news story, it's a press release. Second, duh, they're getting a divorce. Which means the Learning Channel is about to reap the benefits. Think of it, they could each have their own show! Who cares that a family has been ripped apart when there are ratings to be had?

As has been said elsewhere, the true victims in this has been those eight kids. It's not normal to have your every move followed when you're four. And now we get to watch those kids go through living hell as their parents split up. Wow, what a fun show that will be! "Parents getting divorced, tonight at 8 on TLC!!!" Give me a break.

I know I'm writing about them here, giving them exactly the attention they desire, but really, America's fascination with these kinds of celebutards has to stop. I'm not saying we have to be fascinated with physicists or brain surgeons, but can't our celebrities actually have some talent instead of being known for starring in a reality television show? Please, for the love of God, we need to make this happen. Boycott US Weekly!

SPEIDI

And while we're at it, can Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag get their comeuppance already? Karma's a bitch and when it comes to cash in on those two it ain't going to be pretty.

THE BIG SHOE

Episode three of The Cinema Show is now ready for download. You know the drill: Either go here or visit iTunes.

That's it for the past week. Next update coming soon!

I Don't Care What You Say Anymore This Is My Life (Since May 13th)

2009-06-10T12:02:00.008-04:00

So, it's been nearly a month. Which means it's time for another massive update! Lots of music stuff to report in this one. But first...

SCREW YOU, MALTIN!

I'm an idiot. I've started a new movie blog, one that mainly concentrates on what I've seen recently. In order to give it a hook, I've decided to challenge that wise sage Leonard Maltin to see if his opinions are correct or not. Check it out here. The first ten movies I chose to review were the first ten in his book that I wanted to see (or see again). I have no idea if I'll continue alphabetically or not, but that just seemed to be a good way to start. I'm a few reviews behind but they'll be up soon. They're extremely easy to write.

Oh, and I know Leonard Maltin didn't write every review in that massive book of his. But it's his name on the cover, so I'm holding him accountable.

JUST CALL ME SCORSESE

I have become the resident video creator at work, which is both good - my college degree is finally getting some use! - and bad. But it's only bad because so many people have asked me to create videos. In May I had six of them due all around the same time, which meant all my other duties at work fell by the wayside. (But don't cry too hard for me, since I was loving every minute of it.) You can check out some of my work here, here and here. It's pretty awkward at times, but I think they turned out OK.

THE CINEMA SHOW

Episodes three and four of The Cinema Show have been recorded and are now in the post-production phase. Look for June's episode, where Jeff and I discuss our favorite films of the 80s as well as some of our "guilty pleasure" movies, soon. Episodes one and two are still available. You can either directly download them here or go to iTunes and do a search on either "The Cinema Show" or "Marcus Waye" to download or subscribe.

We've heard great things so far about the show. If you listen, please let us know what you think.

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

My friend Samantha K. graduated from high school last Friday and I was lucky enough to attend her graduation open house. It brought back fond memories of my own graduation and open house from good old 1991. I count that day - June 9, to be exact - as one of the best of my life. I literally felt like I was closing one book and opening another, all the while surrounded by everyone I loved. And then, to cap it off, I saw City Slickers that night with some friends. Great movie, that one. Sadly, it's now probably considered a "classic" since it's nearly 20 (!) years old now.

I did not feel the same way at my college graduation and open house. That was more of an "OH SHIT NOW I CAN'T HIDE BEHIND SCHOOL!!!!!!" kind of feeling.

TAKE ME TO ANOTHER PLACE...

I spent five days earlier this month with my mother and sister in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. It was like an old-school family vacation since Dad always used to use the dog as an excuse not to travel back then, too. This was definitely not a sightseeing kind of trip. Fairfield Glade is a resort located exactly in the middle of nowhere. And the average age of a person at the resort was a healthy 72. Let's just say it wasn't hopping. But that's fine, because after the craziness I've had the past month, sitting on my ass for five days was just what the doctor ordered. Some highlights:

*Playing miniature golf in the middle of the woods. Chipmunks and squirrels all around. As well as those fucking windmills with the rotating walls that block your shot. I think I won. I might have tied with my sister, but it's my blog so I'm saying I won.

*Visiting the resort's - and the town's - library, which would best be described as a musty-smelling room. They didn't even take Val's information when she went to check out a book. All they required was a $2.50 deposit. Basically it was a glorified book store. I'm very spoiled when it comes to libraries.

*Visiting the Food King and signing up for their equivalent of a Kroger Plus Card so we could save big bucks on food even though I will never visit a Food King ever again.

*Buying nothing but junk food at the Food King.

*Eating nothing but junk food the entire time I was in Tennessee.

*Discovering a Cancun Mexican Restaurant right off the Interstate. I thought that was an Indianapolis-only chain, but I guess I'm wrong on that one.

*We went to the resort's weekly outdoor concert Monday night. The Saloonatics were playing both kinds of music: country and western. They did try their hand at "Rock Around the Clock" but the lead singer screwed it up royally. I'm still confused about that one: That song has one of the easiest sets of lyrics ever. We left soon after. There's only so many Charlie Pride covers one can take.

*Apparently the world's smallest and blandest outlet mall is located in Crossville, TN. It was all indoors under harsh flourescent lights. The stores were fine, it was the presentation that was lacking. We booked through that thing in a few hours.

*We played a lot of Wii. You haven't lived until you've challenged your mother to a virtual Dance Off tset o "Jungle Boogie" in the game Raving Rabbids TV Party.

*Naps. You can't go wrong with naps. Lots and lots of naps.

There's more to tell but I'll stop before this turns into the blog equivalent of a vacation slide show. Good times were had by all.

SMOKED BACON AND HA-A-A-A-A-A-A-M UPDATE

Charlotte's Web is coming along. The kids are off-book theoretically, although many of them are still struggling with lines. Next week is Theatre Boot Camp for them, though - three hours of rehearsal for each cast during the day - so they'll get it. Plus their brains are like sponges. I'm not worried. It's going to be a cute show. I don't know how entertaining it will be as a piece of theatre, but watching those kids will at least be cute. Show information:

Friday, June 19, 7:00 p.m. (Cast #1)
Saturday, June 20, 10:00 a.m. (Cast #2)
Saturday, June 20, 2:00 p.m. (Cast #1)
Saturday, June 20, 7:00 p.m. (Cast #2)

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children under 10. This one's going to be at the Zionsville High School since we have 80 kids between the two casts. Too many parents for our tiny little space. More information can be found here.

SPINNING PIANOS DO NOT JUSTIFY A $117 NOSE BLEED SEAT

I saw Billy Joel and Elton John at Conseco Fieldhouse on May 19th. Sadly, I thought the show was merely OK. Elton was in fine form. His setlist was interesting, full of semi-obscure 70s songs that people can't exactly sing along to. Too bad his backing band was awful. Billy was hamming it up way too much. Plus he dropped the keys of many of his songs down - I'm guessing so he could hit the high notes - which made them sound off-kilter. And there was absolutely no energy in his set. Plus, Mr. Joel, I don't appreciate hardy "Oh, aren't ticket prices way too high?" jokes when you're charging $500 for the top seats and forcing us in the rafters to pay over $100. If you're going to ask us to pay that much, I suggest you bring your "A" game. Here's the setlist:

Billy/Elton Together: Your Song / Just the Way You Are / Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me / My Life
Elton's Set: Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding / Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting / Burn Down the Mission / Madman Across the Water / Tiny Dancer / Goodbye Yellow Brick Road / Daniel / Rocket Man / Levon / I'm Still Standing / Crocodile Rock
Billy's Set: Prelude/Angry Young Man / Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) / Allentown / Zanzibar / Don't Ask Me Why / She's Always a Woman / Scenes from an Italian Restaurant / The River of Dreams / We Didn't Start the Fire / It's Still Rock and Roll To Me / Only the Good Die Young
Billy and Elton Together: I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues / Uptown Girl / The Bitch is Back / You May Be Right / Bennie and the Jets / Birthday / Back in the U.S.S.R. / Candle in the Wind / Piano Man

Yes, it was three hours, and, to be fair, it succeeded on a greatest hits level, but I left wanting something more. At least "Zanzibar" was a nice surprise.

IN MY PLACE

The Coldplay concert was a better example of how to pull off a stadium show. Ticket prices were high - $100 for the pavilion, $45 for the lawn - but Chris Martin and company came out swinging. It was basically a hits show as well, even though it still baffles me that Coldplay has been around long enough to put on a hits show. But there was a lot of energy behind those songs and they gave their all performing them. Even "Yellow", their first hit that's almost a decade old, was performed with gusto. It was just a fun concert, although I felt very, very old sitting there on the lawn surrounded by thousands of drunk teenagers. The set:

Main Set: Life in Technicolor (Instrumental) / Violet Hill / Clocks / In My Place / Yellow / Glass of Water / Cemeteries of London / 42 / Fix You / Strawberry Swing / The Hardest Part / Postcards from Far Away / Viva La Vida / Lost! / Green Eyes / Death Will Never Conquer / I'm a Believer / Politik / Lovers in Japan / Death and All His Friends
Encore: The Scientist / Life in Technicolor II

Yes, that's the Monkees/Neil Diamond "I'm a Believer". It was done acoustically. And it wasn't the train wreck you'd imagine.

CAR WHEELS ON A BROAD RIPPLE ROAD

And, to save the best for last, last night I saw Lucinda Williams at The Vogue. This show was jaw-droppingly awesome, if I may mangle the English language to describe it. Seriously. I was shocked by how phenomenal it was.

Her band made the show. They were on fire. Just pure adrenaline up there on stage, from the moment the lights went down until they came up at the end. And Lucinda was in fine form, too. Just a lot of fun. Here's what she played:

Main Set: I Just Wanted To See You So Bad / Big Red Sun Blues / Can't Let Go / Concrete and Barbed Wire / Circles and Xs / Learning How To Live / Tears of Joy / Are You Alright / Ventura / Jackson / I Lost It / Pineola / Drunken Angel / Little Rock Star / Out of Touch / Real Love / Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings / Come On / Honey Bee / Joy / Righteously
Encore: Are You Down / Atonement / It's a Long Way to the Top

This one is a definite contender for concert of the year.

EIGHT DISCS OF SHAKEY

Last week finally saw the release of Neil Young's first archives set. Available in either CD, DVD or Blu-Ray forms, the set is a massive clearing house of both rarities and remastered hits from the first portion (1963-1972) of his career. I went with the CD version because, simply put, I couldn't justify spending the money for either the DVD or Blu-Ray portions. ($250 for ten Blu-Ray discs that, let's be honest, I'd probably watch once.) The CDs are fine with me, since it's all about the music, anyway. Plus I get more repeat value out of my CDs. I have to say, I'm mighty impressed with this set. It has pretty much everything you'd want. Songs from his high school band? Check. Complete concerts? Check. All the hits? Check. Studio outtakes? Check. B-Sides? Check. It's all there. It was well worth the $70 I paid for it. It could be akin to torture if you're not a Neil Young fan, but if you are it's like opening up a present on Christmas morning. A present that takes eight hours to listen to, that is.

DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO ME WHINE?

I liked Green Day better when they were stoned slackers sitting on their couch instead of the ones chosen to empower the masses. Now that they're a message band they're trying way too hard to impact people's lives. American Idiot was a great disc but their new one (21st Century Breakdown) is so concerned with topping it that it forgets about what makes them such a great band in the first place. I don't hate the new disc, I just wish they weren't trying so hard.

And why the hell can't they pose for a photograph like normal people? Every single picture of Green Day is all about making the funny faces.

ANOTHER NEW ADDITION

Congratulations to my friends Luke and Rebecca McConnell. They are now the proud parents of a son, James, who was born May 20th. My friends keep having kids. It's like we're all growing up or something.

So, that's been my life since May 13th. Hopefully the next update will come sooner so I won't have to write - and you won't have to read - these mega-posts all the time.

My Life: May 5-13

2009-05-14T12:27:00.002-04:00

I know I said every three days I’d update, but there’s no way that that was going to happen since I last wrote. Too much going on, as you’ll soon see. And now, the updates:

SMOKED BACON AND HA-A-A-A-A-A-A-M

Last Tuesday and Wednesday night I was asked to help cast Off Main Street Players’ children’s production of Charlotte’s Web since the two main people involved, Katrina and Lynne, had kids auditioning. I agreed, thinking it would be fun to revisit a show I once did (for The Artist’s Studio in 2004). I also thought it would be a challenge to cast a show knowing very few of the people auditioning. Could I do it based on talent alone? I was interested to see how it would go.

And then 80 kids showed up. For 30 roles.

Thank God they took headshots of everyone as they walked through the door, because I would have been lost if I had had to rely on my memory alone. It was daunting, to say the least. Katrina and I cast the show and then looked at the 40+ audition sheets of kids who would be turned down…and then we decided to do two full casts, meaning we had to start from scratch again. I was there until 2:30 in the morning on Wednesday (Thursday?) trying to figure out who would make a good Fern, Wilbur, Charlotte, fair judge, etc. We managed to put it all together well, I think.

SMOKED BACON AND HA-A-A-A-A-A-A-M, PART 2

And then I received a phone call. Since we had to split the casts, the show’s original assistant director was promoted to one of the director slots. (She’s now directing the “chickens” cast. Katrina, the show’s original sole director, is herding the “cows” cast.) I was then asked to assistant direct the show, because both of them are new directors and want my help with blocking, character, etc. At least that’s what they told me. I have some pretty major conflicts during their rehearsal process but they were fine with that. So now I’ll be assisting with 80 kids over the next six weeks. I’m reluctant, but I think it’ll work out fine. Then again, that’s a lot of noise I’m going to have to deal with.

WANTED FOR THE ROLE OF BESSIE

Just to clarify that we’re not mocking kids by calling them “cows”: A lot of the kids, for whatever reason, specified on their audition form that they wanted to play a cow. Charlotte’s Web does not have a cow in it. I have no idea, either.

WELCOME TO THE CINEMA SHOW

Jeff A. and I recorded our second episode of The Cinema Show, our podcast about movies, last Thursday night. It ran longer that the first one, so for all you people who thought we were too long-winded the first time, you better prepare yourselves now. We covered several topics, but the show was mainly a run-down of our favorite films of the 90s. It’s being mixed now and should be up within a week.

AUDIENCE SUGGESTION: A MAN WITH A DUCK ON THE MOON

Friday night I saw my friend Samantha K. perform in her final high school Comedy Sportz competition. Added bonus: It was senior night, which really equated to Sam Night since she was the only senior on their team. Her team got her a bizarre Lion King book as well as Transformers stuff – Samantha is the world’s foremost female Transformers expert – during a pre-show ceremony. The match itself was pretty damn hilarious. A lot of talent was up there on that stage.

Everytime I see an improv performance I have to resist the urge to climb up there and start performing with them. Someday I’ll pursue improv classes. Someday.

“M” IS FOR THE WAY YOU MAKE MAC AND CHEESE

Sunday was Mother’s Day, so, as any good son would do, I headed to my parent’s house to spend the day with my mother. A lot of Wii was played, a lot of homemade macaroni and cheese was eaten, and a lot of laughs were had. The whole fam damnily was there since Val and co. are now Hoosiers again. I’m pretty sure Mom enjoyed her day. The rest of us did.

IN THE JUNGLE

I bought a new lawn mower Friday afternoon. After some initial trouble getting it into my car – it was a huge box for a tiny Jetta – I got it home, hooked it up and started mowing. Well, kind of. It’s an electric mower, the second one like that I have owned. The first one had a rechargeable battery. This one…doesn’t. I assumed it was a rechargeable so, when I went to mow the lawn, the only extension cord I could use was a small 20 footer. Only the portions around outside outlets are mowed right now, but the plan is to stop by Target before the weekend and pick up a longer one so I can finish the job.

The mower? It’s kick ass. Easily the best mower I’ve ever had. Now I just have to avoid electrocuting myself by running over the power cord and all will be fine.

"LASER"*

I also bought a Lightscribe DVD burner last week on a whim. Lightscribe discs allow you to create your own face art for your CDs/DVDs, burning them into the disc with a laser. Kind of hard to explain, but it’s really cool. Now I just have to figure out how to copy DVDs and we’ll be in business.

DA-DA-DUM!!!

Although he was probably best known for making Burt Reynolds laugh, it’s still sad to learn of Dom Deluise’s passing last week at the age of 75. Yeah, he relied too much on lazy comedy during the last 30 years of his career, but the man gets a pass from me due to his extremely funny work in Blazing Saddles. ("Not the face!") I also remember him fondly from The End, although I haven’t seen that film in ages. I’ll mostly remember him from his Ziploc commercials from the mid-80s. “So we have to say goodbye to the summer…”+

THERE’S A NEW HUFF IN TOWN

My friend Michelle Huff – who you may remember as my wife/assistant Vanna from the year Follies was a game show – gave birth to her third child last week, a boy. Noah Thomas Huff was born on May 6 at 7:51 a.m. in Danville. Welcome to the world, Noah.

DO YOU HAVE ANY GREY POUPON?

Apparently, last week President Obama ordered a hamburger at a diner during a photo op and had the audacity to ask for some dijon mustard. Sean Hannity was quick to label him an out-of-touch liberal because of his choice of condiments. I think it’s kind of nice our president likes dijon mustard. It beats having a president who enjoys, say, torturing people and starting unnecessary wars.

SHUT UP AND WRITE

Former golfer David Fehrety made the following comment in an article written for D Magazine last month: "From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

He also made the following statement about his politics: “As for me, my politics are somewhere in the middle—and then way outside both wings. I believe in the death penalty, especially for pro-lifers, child molesters, those opposed to gay marriage, and for stupid dancing in the end zone. I believe in the abolition of estate taxes and the Pickens Plan. I’d lower the legal drinking age and raise the driving age to 18 nationwide, make Kinky Friedman governor of Texas, and make all schools, public and private, start earlier with one hour of physical exercise.”

He’s taken a lot of flack for these statements and has been threatened with his job because of them. A lot of talking heads have jumped on this, claiming that it’s unfair, he’s a victim, blah blah blah. (With the underlying subtext being that Pelosi, Reid and pro-lifers should be killed, of course.) They also think the left has it out for him now, that we want to see him taken down. But here’s the thing: We left-leaning people believe in free speech. The right? Not so much. For proof of that, witness what happened to the Dixie Chicks when they exercised their right to free speech. ‘Nuff said.

BEAM ME UP

I saw the new Star Trek movie this week and enjoyed it. Was it the second coming of Citizen Kane, which is what word of mouth would have you believe? No, no it’s not.

It is a fun little movie that plays around with the Star Trek characters a bit, but for every moment that works (everything Simon Pegg does as Scotty) there’s an equally painful moment that doesn’t (Chekov’s Russian accent isn’t understood by the computer, oh ha ha!). The film is very time-travel heavy which, like director J.J. Abrams’ series Lost, can feel like kind of a cheat. I did like the way the time-travel angle basically rewrote the rules of the series, meaning they can take the stories any direction they want now without feeling beholden to the past chronology, but it still felt too easy. And that opening prologue with lil’ Kirk stealing a car and driving like a madman while “Sabotage” plays on the soundtrack was awful. But the effects were good and the nods to the original series were fun, so I’d recommend it. It’s not a slam dunk like The Dark Knight was, but you could do a lot worse choosing a movie to see now.

I GET LOST IN YOUR EYES

The Lost finale did not disappoint. The final moment, with a nearly-dead Juliette banging on a bomb with a rock to make it explode, the screen going white when she did, was breathtaking. Seeing her fall down a well to her death was heartbreaking, especially since she’s one of my favorite characters. And seeing Bernard and Rose – and Vincent! – again made for a nice closure for their characters.

I wasn’t that crazy about the Jacob-heavy flashbacks, mainly because they weren’t that interesting nor were they that compelling. Actually, the whole Jacob angle of the show was disappointing. You spend five years waiting to meet the guy and he’s a wimpy dude who likes to weave? They could have done better. Of course, Ben kills him before we know much about him. That whole thing felt rushed to me, although I am intrigued by whether this ghost version of Locke is good or evil. Season six will hopefully flesh that out for me.

Also, where the fuck is Claire? She wanders off into the jungle at the end of season four, leaving her baby behind, and is never heard from again? What’s up with that?

So, there’s some updates. This was quick and easy to write, so I might pursue this angle from now on. We’ll see.

*This is an Austin Powers reference. You have to do the air quote thing with your hands to make it work.

+I looked for a Youtube clip of this, but it doesn't exist. I thought Youtube had everything?

This Is (Not) The End, Beautiful Friends

2009-05-04T16:32:00.002-04:00

Note: This is not a farewell letter, although it reads like one.

As many of you know, this blog has been both a treasure and a curse to me. I’ve had fun posting my thoughts from time-to-time on a variety of topics and it’s been nice to have my own little corner of the Internet to call my own. But it’s also been a major pain in my ass. I think I’m down to about five regular readers, and I’m sure at least three of you get frustrated with me more often than not because of my blog outages. I do try to post on a regular basis, but life always gets in the way. It’s no secret to anyone who’s read this that since 2003 I’ve become extremely busy, more than I’ve ever been in my life. Theatre, to use one example, has become like a second career to me. Who knew when I auditioned for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 2004 that within a short time span I would not only be in 20 shows but would also write and direct some as well? Had you said that to me after that first audition – one I thought I bombed, by the way – I would have laughed at you.

I’ve also recently begun a podcast called The Cinema Show with my friend Jeff Adkins that we’re trying to launch. (Note: Go here to download the first episode, or go to iTunes and search for “The Cinema Show”. We should pop up immediately and you can subscribe and/or download us from there.) We’re hoping it takes off, but, in order to make sure that happens, we’ll have to spend some time getting the word out about it. In other words, less time for blogging.

Other areas of my life have taken a toll on me as well. I recently closed a show and, while looking at stills that were taken at dress rehearsal, I became sick at my appearance. (Not literally, although I did gag a bit when I saw my pale white arms in that muscle shirt. Thank God that fit the character.) I haven’t been keeping up with a regular gym schedule for a few years now and all those off-and-on workouts have allowed me to put some weight back on. And while I’m nowhere near where I was at my heaviest – believe it or not, I would have to add 40 pounds to my frame to make that happen – a lot of the work I did in ’00 has been erased. So, in an effort to get back to where I want to be and finally get rid of all my fat completely, I’m going to hit the gym more often.

Here’s another project I’m thinking about: moving. I’m seriously contemplating leaving Indiana altogether and trying my hand at living in a big city somewhere, either Los Angeles, New York or D.C. I’m currently leaning towards L.A. because I would love to get some work in the film industry. (Behind the scenes, not on camera.) Also, the weather in NYC and DC is pretty similar to the weather here, one of the main reasons I want to leave. (I’m sick and tired of long winters.) Nothing much has been done with this project yet, but it is something I’m seriously considering.

My blog has also been supplanted by both Facebook and Twitter. The benefit of those two sites is that I can post quick Status Updates, alerting people to what I’m doing or have done recently without going into lengthy detail. I do this several times a day and it’s a great and easy way to let people know what I’m up to without having to write an essay to back it up. People have a love/hate relationship with these sites and while both of them have their limitations, I think they’re both great communication tools. I love reading all my friend’s updates online. It lets me know what they’re doing without the hassles of e-mail or calling them on the phone.

There’s also the matter of my new Wii. Post a blog update or knock over some virtual blocks? It’s a tough decision, and the latter usually wins.

So, as you can see, my life is kind of like my plate at Thanksgiving dinner: Overflowing with various items. I’m going to keep up with the blog, but only sporadically. I’m also going to change the feel of the writing a bit. Instead of lengthy posts on a certain topic, my plan is to do one big post that basically summarizes what I’ve been up to/thinking about over the past few days. Think of it as more in-depth status updates and not a journal-like feel, which is what the site has been up until now. I’d like to do one of these updates at least every three days, but, as we all know, that’s probably too ambitious for me. We’ll see.

Waye’s World is not dead, although if these new posts don’t take off, I will probably just go ahead and kill it. I’d rather have it resting peacefully in Internet heaven than sitting there, not being updated for months at a time. I will try my best to make sure the updates happen. Promise.

I Love L.A. Day Two: March 6, 2009

2009-03-23T23:45:00.000-04:00

The time change was really messing with our heads. We woke up later than expected, around 9:00. We barely made it to the breakfast bar on time. And, believe me, what a breakfast bar it was. Coffee, bagels, cereal and toast. They were missing the required waffle maker that I thought all breakfast bars were forced to include. I wanted waffles, dammit! I was on vacation!

Our day started with a little walk to the Reseda Post Office so my friend could mail his kids some postcards. I felt some shame, thinking maybe I should do the same for my niece and nephew, but then I realized that a) they probably had no idea I was even in Los Angeles, and b) by the time they would get the postcards I’d be long home. Sorry, kids, just seemed pointless to me.

(Side note: My friend did get the smackdown from a Reseda Post Office employee. Apparently he put the wrong stamps on his postcards, causing all kinds of chaos. I’m surprised she didn’t go…wait for it…postal on him.)

After that we hopped in the car and headed to Hollywood. We started walking down Hollywood Boulevard, staring at our feet the entire time to look at the dumbest tourist attraction known to man: The Hollywood Walk of Fame. It’s a sidewalk. With stars in it. And each star has a name on it. And it goes on forever. And it’s really lame.

(Side note: My friend is a big-time monster fan. It’s an overly-obsessive and embarrassing hobby, but he wears his monster badge with pride. Everytime we saw a star with the name of a person even remotely related to monster-dom, he had to take a picture. Or, worse, he made me take a picture of him kneeling next to the star. Not too many people born after 1940 have their photograph next to Lon Chaney’s star, I’m guessing.)

Our first stop was this awesome bookstore that sold only books related to entertainment. In library speak, it was like being in the world’s largest 790s section. I didn’t even know where to begin. So I began nowhere and bought nothing. Although a book on the making of A Streetcar Named Desire did catch my eye.

After that we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. You know, the place with all the famous people’s footprints in the cement outside. What’s with Hollywood and their placement of cheesy shit on the ground?

Imagine my surprise when I saw Chris Walker’s footprints there. Chris Walker? That guy in my high school class? Cool!

Oh, Christopher Walken! My bad. I’ll cut Mr. Walken some slack. I can barely write my name on paper with a pen. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to write in cement with a stick.

(Side note: You’ll notice that my foot is only a bit larger than Christopher Walken’s. I have no idea why that’s cool, but it is.)

A lot of current stars had their handprints and footprints there, along with a lot of legends:

A lot of cool people who happened to be great actors:

A lot of where-are-they-now stars:

And Donald Duck:

For those who have never been to the Chinese Theater, it’s basically the world’s largest tourist trap. And all the crazies know it. There are actually people who make a living by dressing up in costumes and posing for photographs with unsuspecting visitors, then demanding $1 from them after the picture has been taken. It’s kind of creepy and is pretty laughable when you see some of these costumes. I saw the world’s oldest Superman there as well a woman attempting to look like Marilyn Monroe but instead looking more like a train wreck. I also saw Catwoman take a call on her cell, which was kind of awesome. I didn’t take a picture – even though I wanted to – because if they catch you taking a picture from afar they march up and demand a dollar from you. Again, it’s a weird profession.

Our next stop was a thirty minute tour of the Kodak Theatre. You know, the place where they hold the Oscars every year:

It was kind of interesting, this tour, although the information was a bit on the stupid side. (“Brad and Angelina walked right through those doors a few weeks ago. Yes, folks, the same doors you just walked through! Isn’t that amazing?!?!?!?”) Still, it was nice to see the actual theatre where the show is shot, and our tour guide pointed out some cool areas, like where Kate Winslet’s dad was sitting when he whistled to her during the Oscars. We didn’t get to go on the stage or on the main floor of the house because the theatre is currently being converted into yet another home for the Cirque du Solei. I don’t understand that group. Why do people really love to see other people tumble that much?

(Side note: On the tour, our guide asked us to guess how long the Oscars have called the Kodak Theatre their home. Before anyone could venture an answer, she pointed at me and said, “You, sir, how long do you think it’s been?” I had no freaking idea. So I just said the first number that came into my head: “30.” Immediately I saw others in the tour begin to shake their heads in a that-man-is-an-idiot kind of way. Our guide let me know it’s only been eight years. So I was off by 22 years, so what?)

For lunch we ate at Mel’s Diner. My friend thought he was eating at the actual Mel’s Diner, the one featured in American Graffiti. He was crushed when I told him that not only was Mel’s an outside diner in the film but it was located in Marin, CA, not downtown Hollywood.

(Side note: I have watched American Graffiti about 10 times in my life, always hoping to like it, and never succeeding. I’ve given up.)

My friend knows a guy – a fellow monster guy – who runs a poster shop in downtown Hollywood, so we stopped there next. Dusty was in monster heaven. Me, I looked at the guy’s original posters and marveled at how much he was charging for them. $125 for an original Back to the Future poster? Are you serious?

(Side note: The guy did tell me that some of the posters I own are worth at least $100 each, if not more, which was nice. That’s some valuable paper I have.)

After Dusty finished looking at movie stills he’d seen a thousand times before, we got in the car and headed to Warner Brothers Studio for a V.I.P tour I had booked for us. It was easily the highlight of my trip.

First of all, our guide, Alyssa, was awesome. She asked us up front what our favorite Warner Bros. movies and TV shows were – we saw a quick film beforehand that refreshed our memories – and then modified the tour to show us stuff we’d like to see. Sadly, there are no Goodfellas sets in existence since it was shot on location in New York.

(Side note: I forgot to mention National Lampoon’s Vacation and Spies Like Us, both Warner films I adore. I was trying too hard to play Stump the Guide, but even that backfired because I couldn’t think of any obscure Warner movies to trick her with. Now, after some thought, I would have asked her to show me some Fearless and Hot to Trot sets.)

Alyssa drove the six of us all around in her little cart, showing us buildings where they shot famous movies. For example, want to see the orphanage from Annie?

Mayor Shin’s house from The Music Man?

The shack where Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank got some pie in Million Dollar Baby?

Some gazebo from The Gilmore Girls?

The (drained) pond where some kind of creature swum up Anne Heche’s pants in Six Days Seven Nights?

And on and on. It was pretty impressive. The tour was not without its cheesy moments, though. Witness the car museum, where the General Lee – but from the movie, not the TV show – was on full display:

Or the coffee house set from Friends which was still set up even though the show’s been off the air for 5+ years:

And fun with green screen!:

There was also a museum that housed a lot of costumes and props – the actual Maltese Falcon! – but we couldn’t take pictures in there. The second story of the museum was all Harry Potter stuff. There was a creepy guy in charge of the area putting a sorting hat on people’s heads, but I steered clear of him. My friend was sorted into the evil house, which explains a lot.

Oh, and we saw a bit of the E/R finale being filmed, which was cool. Didn’t see any famous people, though, unless you could some random doctors from E/R as famous.

If you’re in L.A. and are looking for a nice studio tour, Warner Bros. is the place you need to go. It’s 2 ½ hours long, but it’s extremely entertaining.

(Side note: I fell in love with Burbank while I was there. All I’m gonna say is Burbank looks like a very nice place to live.)

Once the tour was finished, we were left with nothing to do. I saw an ad in Santa Monica the night before announcing a double feature of The Man with Two Brains and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid followed by a discussion with director Carl Reiner afterward, but my friend vetoed it. (I don’t understand that one, either.) Instead, we went to Universal City Walk and had dinner at the Hard Rock Café. Guitars, guitars, everywhere!

It was still early, so we drove to Griffith Park and headed up a mountain to get to the observatory. And the winner for picture of the day is:

After that, we went back to the hotel and crashed. We had to, because we were getting up early the next day. Why, you ask?

Day Three Preview: Disneyland.

I Love L.A. Day One: Thursday, March 5, 2009

2009-03-15T22:29:00.005-04:00

I was in L.A. for five days last week, so my next five posts are going to be about my vacation. Let’s start with day one, Thursday, March 5, 2009.

This was the first flight I took out of the new Indianapolis airport. That place is pretty spiffy. Bonus points for a) easy parking access and b) absolutely no lines anywhere. I know that flying out of town on a Thursday morning in early March isn’t exactly a peak travel time, but I’ve always encountered lines no matter when I’ve been to the airport. This morning, though, there was nothing. Of course, the country’s economic collapse could have something to do with it.

The flight left Indy on time and took us to Minneapolis for a two hour layover. (Sorry, Andie , Shane and Deanna, not enough time to see you guys.) That flight left on time and we spent four and a half long hours in a plane to get to Los Angeles. Thank God for my iPod.

(Side note: Midway through the flight I had to pee. It was a weird feeling, urinating while moving. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.)

So we arrived at L.A.X. a bit late because we were flying into the wind or something. It was around 2:00 in the afternoon. My friend Dusty – it was his idea to go on this trip – and I got our luggage and headed out to catch the Avis shuttle. Here was the first thing I saw when I went outside:

That’s right, suckers, palm trees! Eat that! Let me take a special moment to mention what the weather was like the entire time I was there: Sunny. 65 degrees. Yeah, Indiana in March it was not.

Avis loaned us a bitching Ford Focus and we took off towards Reseda, the land of our hotel. Reseda, for those of you who might be Paul Thomas Anderson freaks like me, is where he shot the majority of both Boogie Nights and Magnolia. I don’t have any pictures, but we stayed about three seconds from the disco at the beginning of Boogie Nights. I quoted that film everytime we drove by it. I’m gonna be a star!

Dusty agreed to drive during the entire time we were out there. That was one of the concessions of the trip, that I’d go if he’d drive. This is one of my favorite pictures I took while I was out there:

(Side note: I should have driven. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, plus I’m a back-seat driver who wants to be in control of the wheel. We had some words.)

Our hotel was a Howard Johnson’s, or HoJo for those of you who love the slang. We went with this hotel because it was cheap, had free parking and provided a continental breakfast. All that was missing was a workout center. The hotel was heartily recommended by pretty much everyone who reviewed it online, so we took a gamble and stayed there. It was a good call; the place was pretty nice. No orange roof or anything, though, dammit.

(Side note: For whatever reason, I seem to remember being about five years old and getting salt water taffy from a Howard Johnson’s. It came in an orange box. I have no idea if this is an actual memory or if I stole it from a movie. Either way, it’s pretty damn bizarre.)

Both of us hadn’t eaten for about twelve hours, so we stopped by a fast food Greek place near our hotel and had some dinner. It was about 4:00 L.A. time. There was nobody there.

(Side note: My friend is, for lack of a better word, sheltered. The guy grew up in Pendle Hill, for crying out loud, the sub-division where all the Pendleton snobs lived. He was pretty terrified of Reseda. For example, this Greek restaurant had bars on the door that they locked at night. Plus, there were Mexicans walking around on the streets all the time! In broad daylight! Oh my God!!!!!)

Now, the big question: What in the hell are we going to do that night? I was pretty wiped – after all, I had been up since 5:00 a.m. Indiana time – and wouldn’t have argued with crashing at the hotel. But even I admit that was a stupid idea, so we went to Santa Monica instead. There’s an outdoor mall there that Dusty had been to before and wanted to check out again. Which we did. And it was a mall.

At least the mall had street performers, including this huge black guy who had painted himself silver and was doing the Robot to inappropriate tunes like “Shop Around” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. There were also a lot of Once-like couples, singing love songs on acoustic guitars and harmonizing. It was also the only mall I’ve ever been to that had a high homeless population.

After we spent ten minutes at the mall and saw everything we needed to see, we decided to walk to Santa Monica Pier to see the ocean. It was pitch black by this point, so we more heard the ocean than saw it, but whatever. We did not go down on the sand and stick our feet in the surf. The thought of walking the mile back to the parking garage with sand between my toes didn’t sit well with me.

There’s a mini-amusement park at Santa Monica Pier called Pacific Park:

It was closed due to a private event. Something about kids getting good grades or something. Thank God all their lights were on, because I got this cool picture of a ferris wheel:

We made it back to the car and drove back to the hotel. It was about midnight L.A. time, which meant I was quickly approaching a 24-hour day. I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the cheap Howard Johnson’s pillow.

Day Two Preview: Hollywood!

Nuggets o' Stuff

2009-02-27T23:37:00.003-05:00

I had a big Oscar wrap-up post written but, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, it’s now gone. So, to sum up my post that was written and has now turned into a series of bizarre symbols and incoherent words, let me say that this year’s Oscar ceremony was pretty damn entertaining. I just wish it was shorter, but that’s never going to happen. Those people in California must love it; out there the show ends at 9:00.

Stephen Page says he quit Barenaked Ladies this week, although, if you read between the lines of the press release, it’s pretty clear he was fired. As you might remember, Mr. Page was arrested for cocaine possession in 2008, right after Barenaked Ladies released a children’s CD. Whoopsie! Firing Page is an odd move for a band that’s relies so heavily on his writing and performing to survive. I’m guessing BNL won’t be around much longer.

I’m probably going to buy a Wii this weekend. Because I need another silly toy, I guess. You’d think I’d want to save money since our country is rapidly approaching a depression, but I need to play Mario Kart, dammit!*

Speaking of the economy, last night I sat down and wrote up a budget to see if I could afford the Wii. Thanks to the Netflix-like game rental service Gamefly, I can. Cable, however, is going to have to wait.

I love this Napster service. I’m listening to all sorts of indie rock albums that I’ve read reviews of on the A.V. Club but have never had a way to hear before. Sure, the majority of them are twee pieces of crap, but it’s still nice to be informed. Plus I can listen to cheesy 70s music without having to explain to others what “I Love You” by the Climax Blues Band is doing on my iPod.#

Guess who’s finally seeing Ben Folds in March? That’s right, me. He better do “Song for the Dumped.” Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I’m also more than likely seeing The Eagles. For the third time. No, I don’t know why.

My new contacts are super-powered. I can’t see through walls or anything, I can just see. I guess my eye doctor was right when he told me I needed new contacts. I spent half the day today looking around the office, wondering in amazement at the textures and colors I hadn’t seen in years. Maybe now I can drive around at night without nearly killing myself.

My new glasses aren’t too shabby, either. The little glasses girl at the eye doctor squealed when I put them on and said, “Cute!” which I’m taking as a good sign.

I start working on the ten-minute play festival Sunday night. I am directing two of them and starring in three, not to mention I wrote one of the entries. My play has been selected to close the evening, which is an honor. The show has been cast with Off Main Street Players’ Greatest Hits. I’m looking forward to working onstage with a lot of these people again. More updates on it as it happens.

*Mario Kart = Money. Mr. Nintendo has got to be filthy rich.

#Although, to be honest, “I Love You” by the Climax Blues Band is a hell of a good song. I wouldn’t be embarrassed if it was on my ‘pod.

A Few Days of Oscar, Day Something: Best Director

2009-02-20T23:55:00.004-05:00

Tonight I’m only covering one category, Best Director. Here are the nominees:

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Let’s work backwards. I loved the choices Van Sant made during the first half of Milk, goosing the conventions of the biopic a bit and adding some visual flair to the proceedings. Unfortunately, he stopped doing that midway through the film, turning it into another life story. A very interesting life story, but predictable nonetheless. Ron Howard is always a sturdy film director, and nearly every film he makes is enjoyable, fun and ultimately pointless. Frost/Nixon is no exception. While I enjoyed it as I was watching it, I’m hard pressed to remember anything that wasn’t in the trailer. (Although I do remember those “modern day” interviews with the characters, something Howard should have cut early in preproduction.) David Fincher has made some brilliant movies – last year’s Zodiac was criminally ignored at last year’s Oscar ceremony – but Benjamin Button isn’t one of them. The whole thing came across as a means to get Fincher an Oscar instead of a film that came from his heart. And the less said about Stephen Daldry’s The Reader the better. I have no idea why it’s even here since there was nothing unique or exciting about it. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire is the true winner of this category. It’s no secret that I found the film to be ludicrous, but you have to give credit to Boyle for what he accomplished here. He gave the film a feel that totally belied its fairy tale story. He also kept the movie running at a quick pace, never once lingering too long or overstaying his welcome in a scene. My problems with the movie ultimately don’t matter, and I’m fine with him winning this award Sunday night.

SHOULD WIN: Danny Boyle.

WILL WIN: Danny Boyle. I wonder if the people who loved Slumdog saw Trainspotting? Both of them featured their main characters diving into a toilet, after all.

IGNORED: Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler. The screenplay is pretty awful, when you think about it. A washed-up wrestler looking for one more chance. The stripper with a heart of gold that he loves. His daughter who hates him because he was never around. And then there are the stock situations you’d expect in a movie like this, like the main character being locked out of his trailer because he can't pay his rent. And yet, Aronofsky made it all seem fresh and original. He also invented some cool sequences, like when the main character got a job in a supermarket deli and Aronofsky’s camera followed him from behind, into the battle of slicing meat. He also managed to get a realistic performance from Mickey Rourke who, let’s face it, isn’t exactly subtle. Aronofsky’s achievement is even more amazing when you look at the other films he’s directed: Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain. Each of those films are excellent in their own way, but they’re also examples of epic moviemaking. The Wrestler is the complete opposite: small, quiet and profound. I’m sad he wasn’t nominated because he would have won the damn thing.

Nine - I Mean Eight - Days of Oscar, Day 3, er, 5, um...

2009-02-20T16:40:00.004-05:00

(Note: I spent my lunch hour at work Thursday writing this post. It wasn’t finished, so I put it on my flash drive to work on it at home last night. My flash drive decided to jump out of my gym bag, however, because it didn’t make it home with me. Which is why the post is happening now instead of yesterday. If it reads weird, that's why.)

Yeah, I’m behind already. I know. I’ve been pretty lazy the past few days with this blog thing. So, let’s catch up. For one thing, I’m dropping the bottom ten movies of the year. I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you that unless you want to drive to Warsaw, Indiana, to kick the crap out of some horribly self-involved teenagers, I’d stay away from watching the “documentary” American Teen. A modern-day Breakfast Club it was not.

To catch up, let’s just combine the four acting awards in this post. Here are my thoughts one each:

BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Poor Frank Langella. In another year he would have taken this prize, hands down. His portrayal of Richard Nixon humanizes the man and doesn’t play into our usual Nixon stereotypes. It’s a great performance and easily makes the film better. (Although he doesn’t hold a candle to my favorite onscreen Richard Nixon, Dan Hedaya in Dick.) Richard Jenkins is always a reliable actor and it was nice to finally see him land a lead role after watching him steal scenes as a supporting actor in other films for decades. Too bad The Visitor was a bland movie, a message film that took a weird turn midway through and became a love story. I liked Brad Pitt’s performance in Benjamin Button more than others, but I still didn’t think it was award-worthy. That leaves Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke. Both of these performances are jaw-dropping in how great they are and it’s tough to choose between them. In the end, though, I have to go with Sean Penn since his is more of a performance. Watching The Wrestler you get the impression that the character – a washed-up wrestler who gets a second chance at fame – is very close to Mickey Rourke’s actual life. He is acting, of course, but I don’t think he’s acting very much. Penn, on the other hand, becomes Harvey Milk. Midway through the film you forget you’re even watching Penn. Instead, you think it’s Milk. That’s great acting, right there.

SHOULD WIN: Sean Penn.

WILL WIN: Sean Penn. The Academy loves Sean Penn and they’re frightened of Mickey Rourke. (The man spent the majority of his Golden Globes acceptance speech thanking his dogs. The Academy really, really hates weirdness of any kind.) Plus Penn’s performance allows them to feel like they’re making a timely statement, what with all that Proposition 8 stuff going on in California right now.

IGNORED: Robert Downey, Jr., Iron Man. Sure, he got a nomination for Tropic Thunder, but I thought Downey’s crowning 2008 achievement was his work in this early summer blockbuster. He alone made the movie fun, giving the film a sarcastic, light feel. Downey kept the movie on its toes, so much so that you didn’t mind watching lengthy scenes of him playing around in his lab, testing out his superpowers. I wish the film had had more of a point – even with his performance a superhero movie should still have, you know, conflicts and stuff – but watching him work was a lot of fun.

BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader

I haven’t seen Leo’s performance yet – although I’m going to try to do that before Sunday night – so I can’t comment on it. But she doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning. Same goes for Angelina Jolie. I liked her performance more than most, but you could easily boil her character down to one line: “I want my son!” Anne Hathaway had a lot of buzz a few months ago, but then I’m guessing people actually saw the pretentiously awful Rachel Getting Married and changed their minds about giving her an award for it. She was good, yeah, but she wasn’t amazing. Plus, that movie…ugh. Kate Winslet’s nomination for The Reader is curious, since her work in Revolutionary Road was stronger and more deserving of recognition. Not that she was bad in The Reader – Winslet’s never bad – she just wasn’t as good as she was in Revolutionary Road. Of these four performances that I’ve seen, though, Meryl Streep was the one that moved me the most. As a nun on a manhunt for a presumed pedophile, she starts the movie as a caricature and ends it as a tragic, devastated human. There’s a reason people continually praise Streep and shower her with awards. It’s time to give her another one.

SHOULD WIN: Meryl Streep.

WILL WIN: Kate Winslet. The Academy really, really, really wants to give Winslet an award, having nominated her many times before. And I would normally be fine with that, except her role in The Reader isn’t her best work. But it’s pretty much a given she’s taking home the award that night.

IGNORED: Naomi Watts, Funny Games. The movie is very unpleasant, basically an art-house version of those torture porn movies that crop up in multiplexes every other week. It is a smart film, but it’s made especially tolerable thanks to Watts’ naked emotions on display throughout pretty much the entire running time. One of the reasons I love Naomi Watts is that, unlike many of her peers, she has no problem looking ugly onscreen if the film needs her to. She spends a lot of this movie suffering in fear, mascara running, tears streaming down her face, snot running from her nose, etc. Could you imagine Nicole Kidman or Halle Berry doing that? The movie came and went in the spring of ’08 and she’s received nothing for it. Which is too bad, because it’s easily one of the most haunting performances I’ve ever seen.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin, Milk
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Here’s the weird thing: I loved Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight until I recently rewatched Some Like It Hot and realized he stole about 90% of his performance from what Jack Lemmon was doing in that movie. The smile, the hand movements, the hair, pretty much everything came from Lemmon’s Daphne. That said, it’s still a great performance and I’m glad to see him included. At the very least he’s made Jack Nicholson’s campy, over-the-top performance in the 1989 Batman film moot. Michael Shannon was decent in Revolutionary Road, but his character existed solely to verbalize what the main characters were thinking. He was shoehorned into the story and his dialogue made no sense, but the guy did what he could with it. I’m still surprised to see him nominated, though. Josh Brolin has had a hell of a ride the past few years, giving excellent performances in a wide variety of films. His work here was fine but the film had no idea what to do with his character. He felt stranded to me, and his director and writer weren’t exactly helping him out. (What the hell was with that drunk party scene? Talk about random.) Robert Downey, Jr., was funny in Tropic Thunder and I’ll always be grateful for his character adding the phrase “Don’t go full retard” into my lexicon, but other than a few moments – and a killer Russell Crowe impression – I didn’t think he was as good as he was in Iron Man. Philip Seymour Hoffman, on the other hand, was pretty much perfect in Doubt. You’re not supposed to know if his character is guilty or not and Hoffman plays it perfectly. At one moment he makes you think he is…and the next he convinces you he’s not. It’s a tricky role, and he nailed it.

SHOULD WIN: Philip Seymour Hoffman.

WILL WIN: Heath Ledger. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Heath Ledger is dead. And apparently now he’s the best actor of all-time, even though he’s only given one other excellent performance in Brokeback Mountain. Ledger has won every single supporting actor award this year, so look for him to take one here as well. Also look forward to a ten-minute standing ovation when he does win, as Hollywood’s elite will want to show their affection for the man who starred in A Knight’s Tale and The Four Feathers.

IGNORED: Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading. The movie was a mess, but Pitt’s performance was hilarious. As a clueless gym rat involved in a blackmailing scheme, Pitt hit all the right goofy notes to make his character hilarious and oddly sweet at the same time. The rest of the actors – save for Richard Jenkins – decided to pitch their interpretations to the highest level possible, making the film the equivalent of watching someone scrape their nails on a chalkboard for 90 minutes. But Pitt, man, he was funny. It almost rivals the funniest performance he’s ever given, in 1993’s True Romance. Almost.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marissa Tomei, The Wrestler

I have another one I’ve yet to see, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, so I can’t comment on whether Penelope Cruz’s performance is award-worthy or not. And while I loved The Wrestler, Marissa Tomei’s character was right out of the Stock Film Characters 101: Stripper with a Heart of Gold chapter. I am curious what scene they’ll use as her film clip, since she pretty much spent the entire movie naked. I liked Taraji P. Henson’s performance in Benjamin Button, but I liked it more when Sally Field gave it originally in Forrest Gump. That leaves the Doubt ladies. Amy Adams was miscast in her role as a skeptical nun. Any film that covers up her natural spunkiness is criminal and you could tell she was trying way too hard to suppress it. That leaves Viola Davis. I’d never heard of Davis before this film, which is surprising because she’s incredible. She doesn’t have much screen time in the film, but she definitely leaves an impression. This is the weakest category of the four acting awards, but I would have no problem giving Davis the Oscar.

SHOULD WIN: Viola Davis.

WILL WIN: Penelope Cruz. She seems to have the momentum at this point and people do like her. Since she’ll never win for one of her native Spanish films, winning one for a Woody Allen film will have to do.

IGNORED: Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married. As the titular character, DeWitt had to put up with all her drug-addicted sister’s antics in this movie. What I loved about her performance was how she never hid the fact that she despised the Anne Hathaway character. You’d think that would make her unlikeable but, in a film filled with insufferable characters and situations, she actually came across as the most sensible and level-headed of them all. Even late in the film, when she came to care for Hathaway, she played it very realistically. I hated the movie, but I loved her performance.

There you go. Up next: The screenplay awards.*

*Well, they would have been next, had I brought my flash drive home with me last night.

Nine - I Mean Eight - Days of Oscar, Day 4 (I Think) - Best Screenplays

2009-02-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

I swear to you, I have been working on this project. For example, I spent my lunch hour today combining the acting awards into one long post. But it wasn’t finished – I wanted to proofread it some more before I sent it out into the world – so I saved it to a flash drive and threw it in my gym bag to work on it later. At least I thought I threw it in my gym bag. When I got home, no flash drive. Hopefully it’s still at work, because I really don’t want to have to recreate it. It was looooooong.

So let’s get this thing back on schedule. Today I’ll go over my thoughts on the two screenwriting awards.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk
Wall-E

I haven’t seen Frozen River or Happy-Go-Lucky yet, even though I’m very interested in both. I didn’t think Milk was very unique at all – it was your standard biopic screenplay, which isn’t necessarily original – and I find it kind of suspect that anyone could craft an original screenplay that purports to be the story of someone’s life. The guy obviously did a lot of research on the real Harvey Milk. And it wasn't some fictionalized version of Harvey Milk we were watching, that was clearly his story. It just didn’t feel right, nominating it in this category. And while I love Wall-E, it’s more of a visual story than a wordy one, so I’m hard-pressed to root for it here. That leaves In Bruges, a film that was a lot better than it should have been. While the trailer made it look like yet another Pulp Fiction retread, the script itself dealt with some pretty unique issues for its gangster characters. Plus it was damn funny. And it found a clever use for what I like to call the Independent Cinema Dwarf. (Indie films do like their dwarves.)

SHOULD WIN: In Bruges.

WILL WIN: Milk. The zero-to-hero aspect of the screenwriter’s real life story is too hard to resist. Plus there’s that whole Proposition 8 thing again.*

IGNORED: The Band’s Visit. This Israeli film packs a lot of punch into its 87 minutes. You’d think with a premise as cheesy as the plot to this film – an Egyptian band is stranded in an Israeli town and all kinds of hijinks occur! – that it would be unbearable. But the film is less concerned with fish-out-of-water jokes and more concerned with healing lost souls. OK, there are some fish-out-of-water jokes, but they’re a bit more subtle than, say, Crocodile Dundee. Apparently this film was ruled ineligible for all awards due to some bizarre Academy rule, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t praise it.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

None of these scripts do much for me. Benjamin Button was written by the man who wrote Forrest Gump and it shows. The movie may as well have been called Forrest Gump 2: This Time a Hummingbird Symbolizes Life Instead of a Feather. Both Doubt and Frost/Nixon are adapted from plays and, while I’ve read neither play, both felt too opened-up to me. There were too many characters in each film, characters that were there simply there to elongate the running time. (This was especially true with Doubt.) The Reader was a bland movie and its inclusion here baffles me. That leaves Slumdog Millionaire, a film I had severe issues with, but a film I can respect for the way it told its story. It’s already shaping up to be Slumdog’s year, and if I had to give it an Oscar, I would give it one for its screenplay.

SHOULD WIN: Slumdog Millionaire.

WILL WIN: Slumdog Millionaire. Again, it’s going to be a Slumdog night.

IGNORED: The Dark Knight. Are you kidding me? The best superhero movie script ever – one that actually challenges its characters and makes them agonize over their decisions – and it gets ignored? That’s a crime right there. I’m not sure why the Academy had it in for The Dark Knight, but their snubs once again prove that they’re clueless when it comes to rewarding the movies that genuinely deserve it.

Tomorrow: Best Director. (And, possibly, the acting awards, if I can find them.)

*This will make more sense when you read the acting post.

Nine Days of Oscar, Day 1: Top 10 of 2008

2009-02-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

So, here’s the plan: Over the next nine days I want to talk about the films of 2008. While some of that will be personal favorites, mainly I’m going to post my Oscar picks for the year. The schedule, if I can stick to it, will look like this:

2/15 – Top Ten Movies of 2008
2/16 – Bottom Ten Movies of 2008
2/17 – Best Actor/Actress
2/18 – Best Supporting Actor/Actress
2/19 – Best Original Screenplay/Best Adapted Screenplay
2/20 – Best Director
2/21 – The Remaining Categories, Except For…
2/22 – Best Picture
2/23 – Oscar Thoughts

Usually I take care of this in one big post, but I need daily content, so I’m spreading it out. Let’s just call it suspenseful instead of a cop-out.

Anyway, before I can give my thoughts on the various Oscar categories, I have to tell you what I really liked this year and what I really despised. 2008 was a weird year for films. For the first time ever, I enjoyed more multiplex movies that art-house films. The majority of the art-house movies fell flat for me. None of them were particularly bad, they just weren’t that great. It’s a weird phenomenon, that’s for sure. Anyway, without further ado, here’s my list for the best ten movies of ’08:

01. WALL-E. The plot to this movie sounds atrocious – two robots fall in love – so credit must be given to director Andrew Stanton and his crew for making it anything but. Not only is it moving and packed full of great messages for the kiddies, but it’s also hilarious. The timing on some of the gags is spot-on perfect, even more incredible when you consider the damn thing is animated and that each frame had hundreds of people working on it. Pixar has only released a couple of mediocre movies in my opinion – Cars and Finding Nemo are my least favorite, although I’m in the extreme minority on the latter – and they’ve easily done it again with this film. A treasure.

02. THE WRESTLER. Mickey Rourke gives a phenomenal and lived-in performance as the title character, an over-the-hill wrestler who has to decide whether to risk his life by continuing to do what he loves. Director Darren Aronofsky usually makes huge spectacles with his movies (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Pi) and it’s amazing the restraint he employed. I think professional wrestling is a crock of shit and I was very moved by the film. Plus it has a kick-ass mix of late 80s heavy metal hits as its soundtrack.

03. MILK. Sean Penn disappears in this film, a biography on legendary gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk. He’s amazing. The film benefits from some timely headlines, what with the whole Proposition 8 thing going on in California right now, but after you look past that you see a masterful biography of a man whose story needed to be told. The film’s not perfect – it bungles the handling of Milk’s killer Dan White – but it comes close. It’s a moving story and masterfully directed by Gus Van Sant.

04. FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, it’s predictable. But, damn, is it hilarious. Hands down, this is the most I’ve laughed at any movie in the past year. There were times I was laughing so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes. We’re talking stomach-hurting laughter here. A total surprise, but a good one. I just wish it was a little shorter. And that they had excised that entire Dracula musical at the end, which everyone in the world seemed to love but me.

05. THE DARK KNIGHT. Never in my wildest dreams did I think a Batman movie would crack my top ten. Especially when I thought Batman Begins, the film preceding this one, was ponderous and extremely overrated. But director Chris Nolan delivered a crackerjack film here, one with some pretty heavy themes (personal responsibility, good and evil residing in the same person, etc.) and excellent, clear action scenes. Much has been written about Heath Ledger’s performance, most of it true. He’s a revelation here, full of uncomfortable energy and creepy mannerisms. Jack Nicholson’s version of the Joker – once lauded for pretty much the same reasons – has officially been rendered moot. As has the 1989 film that started it all.

06. YOUNG AT HEART. A documentary about a chorus of elderly people who sing primarily rock and roll songs, this film was a lot more moving than I expected it to be. The trailer was funny in a let’s-poke-fun-at-the-old-codgers kind of way, but the movie deals with these chorus members as human beings, never looking down on them or condescending towards their love of singing. Being elderly, of course there are some health issues and some deaths involved, and each feels like a tragic blow. There’s also a tender performance of Coldplay’s “Miss You” that will make you sob. Hearing them sing various Talking Heads songs is a treat as well.

07. THE CHANGELING. Popular consensus is that Clint Eastwood’s other 2008 film Gran Torino was the better movie, but I strongly disagree. That film had some great scenes, don’t get me wrong, but The Changeling is strong from pretty much top to bottom. It’s also one of the most intense films I’ve ever seen. It’s brutal, this movie, and not for the squeamish. Eastwood handles the mixture of suspense and drama expertly, and he’s ably supported by his cast of (largely unknown) actors, all of whom perfectly fit their roles. And even though it’s not the most uplifting of movies, you still leave feeling satisfied and not depressed, an enormous feat given the plot of the film.

08. I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG. This French film contains an excellent performance from Kristen Scott Thomas as a woman recently released from prison after serving fifteen years for murdering her son. Usually movies like this go one of two routes: They either become shrill screaming fests where the characters shout their motivations to one another or they get bogged down in the reason why the ex-con did what she did. While there is some screaming towards the end, this film is mostly about a woman rediscovering her family after a long absence. It’s a quiet, believable film, and while it’s too concerned with wrapping everything up neatly, for the most part it’s a joy to watch. At the very least it makes me wish Thomas would act more. I rarely dislike her in anything she does.

09. FROST/NIXON. This film is worth seeing for the acting alone. Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon and Sam Rockwell are all fantastic with their respective roles. It’s a shame that only Langella was nominated for an Oscar, since I feel that any of the above listed actors deserved a nod. The film is opened up from a play and, while the seams show at times, it never strays too far from its source material. I could have done without director Ron Howard’s “present-day” interviews with the characters, but other than that the movie’s a breezy, interesting look at a bizarre moment in presidential history.

10. BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER. Another documentary, this one dealing with steroids. Filmmaker Chris Bell never takes sides on the issue, instead laying out the facts both pro and con on steroid use. What makes the film unique is that Bell has two brothers, both of whom actively use steroids and have no problems discussing their usage of them on camera. This personal, human touch invests you into the film, especially when Bell’s parents get involved and learn about their sons’ steroids use. While it isn’t as successful when it dives into Michael Moore territory – really, there was no point to witnessing him create his own line of supplements – at least those moments are few and far between. It’s also one of the best films to use clips from other movies to hilarious benefit. It makes a great companion to The Wrestler, that’s for sure.

Other films I saw in 2008 that I enjoyed were (in alphabetical order) Gran Torino, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Pineapple Express, U2 3D, W. and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It wasn’t a terribly strong year for movies, but at least that means it won’t be hard to come up with ten films I didn’t like for tomorrow’s list. Stay tuned for that.

Party Time! Excellent!

2009-02-13T22:50:00.004-05:00

What do you think of the new logo? Pretty cool, huh? It’s amazing what you can do with a DVD-ROM drive, a copy of Wayne’s World, and Microsoft Paint.

I wish I could get it to fit within that box, but I think it looks fine for now. Gives me something to fix later.

While I was uploading the image, I also upgraded my Blogger software to give me more control behind-the-scenes. I dabbled with changing the layout as well, but all the standard blogging templates just made my site look so…gay. Like “Oh, look at all the pretty green colors!” kind of gay. I know white-text-on-black-background is so 1997, but I like the look of it. Call it old school.

If you look on the archives list, you can now see how many times I posted each year. For example, it looks like I only updated 25 times in 2008. That’s twice a month. Pathetic.

I’m going to add a blog role soon. I figure since some of my friends have featured me on their blog roles – Andie, Samantha – I may as well repay the favor. Hopefully that will be done this weekend.

Big changes at Waye’s World. See, I’m trying to keep my promise.

Favorite Wayne’s World lines:

“Stacy, I don’t even own a gun, let alone many to necessitate a rack. What am I going to do with a gun rack?”

“Why do they come to me to die? Why do they come to me to die?!?!?!?”

“Hey there, Mr. Donut Head Man.”

“Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he dressed up as a girl bunny?”

“She will be mine. Oh, yes, she will be mine.”

It’s been ages since I’ve seen that film. May need to watch it again soon.

Pinned Between A Bank And A Hard Place

2009-02-12T23:30:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason, my bank cancelled my credit/debit card a few weeks ago because of a perceived threat to their database or something. The letter provided with my new card was pretty slim on the details. All I know is that my old card was immediately voided, putting me in the awful position of having to re-send my account information to everyone who needs it. Getting a new credit card ten years ago wasn’t a big deal. Now, with all the paperless accounts I have, it’s a freaking nightmare.

Anyway, as I said, the card functions as both a debit and a credit card. I use the debit card whenever I need to pull money out of the A.T.M., which I had to do today. I put the card in the machine and punched in my pin. DENIED! Thinking I typed it incorrectly, I put the card in the machine and tried again. DOUBLE DENIED! It was then I realized the fuckers had reset my pin when they issued me a new card. Would have been nice if they had told me.

So I went inside the one branch of my bank within a 50 mile radius of my house. (Note: This does not make going to the A.T.M. convenient. But everything is totally free due to a work benefit, so I don’t really complain. Although it is a bitch when I run out of cash on the weekend.) The teller was on the phone with a customer who was experiencing the same exact problem I was having. Thank God I wasn’t alone in this nightmare. Once she got off the phone, I explained to her that I was also having problems with my new card and pin…and she proceeded to not help me at all. Apparently, the bank can’t reset a pin number for their own bank-issued credit/debit card. No, instead I have to call some pin activation number. She did warn me that I might have to jump through a lot of hoops because I gave the incorrect pin twice in the A.T.M. Never mind the fact that I didn’t know my pin had been reset in the first place. Oh, and I have to call the pin activation center from my home phone or else they, you got it, stop my credit card. Thanks, bank!

Look, I’m all for protecting people from identity theft, but this is crazy. At least the credit portion of the card still works…for now. I’m sure they’ll find a way to block it soon, too, rendering me hopeless when I need to pay for something this weekend.

I’m hoping my bank gets some of that bailout money so they can buy some common sense.

On the plus side, I met with my deferred comp representative today and put more money into my 401(k). Only 30 years until I retire!

Bronchitis In Pocket

2009-02-11T23:54:00.004-05:00

My plan was to write about the Pretenders concert I was going to tonight at the Murat Theatre. I spent all day psyching myself up for the show, going over many Pretenders songs in my head. I also wondered how Chrissie Hynde would try to provoke the audience like she always does. (The first time I saw them she went on a five minute tirade against George W. Bush. Kind of an odd thing to do in Indiana and hardly anyone appreciated it. I thought it was hilarious.) I changed into more rock-show-appropriate attire after work - jeans, my Sketchers, a blue sweater I like that says, "I might be old, but at least I'm comfortable" - and went to grab some food at Moe's before heading to my friend's house to pick her up. When I was five minutes from her house, my phone rang. It was my mother.

"Did you know the Pretenders concert has been cancelled?"

Shit.

Apparently, Chrissie Hynde has bronchitis. She must have just contracted bronchitis here in Indianapolis, because had my mother not called I would have driven all the way to the Murat. Sure, when I got home I had many e-mails and automated phone messages from Live Nation telling me that the show had been cancelled (or postponed), but as of 5:00 I had heard nothing. You'd think if she was so sick that a cancellation might be neccessary they'd know a bit sooner, like, say this morning. I've never had bronchitis, but I don't think it suddenly appears, like the stomach flu.

As of right now they're saying the show will be rescheduled. It's a 50/50 crapshoot if that will actually happen. Looking at their tour schedule the earliest they could add dates would be mid-March. It's all going to depend on how many shows they shut down. Just our show? Not a chance they'll make it up. 5-10 shows? Maybe, but doubtful. With this economy, it'll cost them a small fortune to wind their way back here just to make up the missed date(s). I'm guessing I'll be getting a refund for those tickets.

At least I've seen them before, so I'm not terribly disappointed. Still, "Middle of the Road" kicks ass live and I was looking forward to hearing it tonight.

The night was not a total loss. Jeff, Aggie and I hung out at their place all night long. Having lived in Los Angeles for a few years, Jeff gave me many tips on where to find some cool sites off the beaten path. He also informed me that where I'm staying - Reseda - is where they shot many of the outdoor scenes from various Paul Thomas Anderson films. He gave me explicit directions on how to get to both the disco from Boogie Nights and the bar from Magnolia. There's a good possiblity I'm going to geek out a lot while I'm there.

Jeff and I are also thinking of starting a monthly film podcast since we're both extreme movie geeks. More on that later, if it happens.

A Change Will Do Me Good

2009-02-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

I've officially made 2009 a year of change. Hell, I figure if we can elect a president who promises to change this country for the better, the least I can do is make a difference in my own damn life. So I've made a list - with the help of the really cool site 43 Things - of goals I want to accomplish.

Let's start with why you're here: I want to update this blog more often. I feel like I keep jerking you guys around, posting like crazy for a week or two and then abruptly disappearing for months without a trace. And I know people read this thing, because I'll usually get 1-2 e-mails begging me to update when I stop. That's flattering, and the least I can do is oblige. So I'm really going to try to write more. Seriously. Even if it's just one paragraph, I'll try to keep it current. And if not, I'm electing my sister to keep me on my toes. Val, if I don't update after five days, you are now to harass me until I do. Remember those e-mails you used to send me in college, the ones that I never replied to? Remember how you would write stuff like, "Oh, I guess I don't have a brother anymore?" Yeah, start that up again if I vanish.

(Oh, and for whatever reason I had disabled the RSS link in the configuration settings, making Waye's World ineligible from being looked at in an RSS reader. That's since been fixed. All of you with Google Reader or Bloglines or whatever should now be able to add it as a subscription.)

I also want to travel more. I get four weeks of vacation each year and I always say, "I want to travel more." And then I use those four weeks to sit on my ass in Fishers. No more. I've already planned my first trip of the year, to Los Angeles in March. Even though I've been to L.A. twice in my life, it's been ten years since I was last there and, to be honest, I didn't really explore the city much at that time.# Hopefully I'll be able to update while I'm there, helping me tackle two goals at once. Synergy!

And then there's the money thing. This is kind of tricky, since, of course, setting a goal to travel more means spending money, but I think I have it figured out. My main "pleasurable" expenses^ are DVDs and CDs. I've decided that from now on I'll be buying - and selling - used DVDs on Amazon, saving me tons of cash in the process. And today I signed up for Napster. For $13 a month I'll have access to 7,000,000 songs that I can stream whenever and wherever I want. I figure I'll start doing that more than buying, although I'll still pick up discs from my favorite artists the day they go on sale.+

Of course, I still have the usual goals, like losing weight and learning how to play the guitar and all that. I've been working on the weight thing since the beginning of the year.* And even though I go to bed starving most nights, it's been worth it. I moved another notch on the belt this morning, so I must be doing something right.

Learning how to play the guitar...yeah. Haven't really worked on that yet. Hey, change is gradual! It doesn't happen all at once!

So, there you go. See you next update...in six weeks. I kid, I kid. Hopefully you'll hear from me tomorrow. Next day at the latest.

And, no, I don't know how that picture fits this post. It just makes me laugh. It also makes me hungry.

# I went to visit a friend who was living in Orange County at the time. We went to L.A. but our main destination was Vegas, baby, Vegas. Oh, and we also played that N64 Goldeneye game for hours on end.

^ Or, wastes of money.

+ No one's going to stop me from buying a new Bruce Springsteen CD the day it comes out, not even Mother Nature. I drove through a snow storm a few weeks ago to pick up Working on a Dream.

* I was forced into this after seeing some backstage Follies pictures from November. Christ, I looked like a beached whale. Never again.

Chet's Nuts Roasting On An Open Fire

2008-12-22T23:33:00.004-05:00

Most Christmas music makes me want to poke my eyes out. Seriously, anyone who thinks the words “Mannheim Steamroller” and “good” belong together should be shot. That said, I do have a soft spot in my heart for the following Christmas songs:

“JINGLE BELLS” by The Singing Dogs

Dogs. Barking “Jingle Bells.” You can’t go wrong! I’m not sure why there’s a lengthy jazz guitar solo in the middle of it, but whatever. It’s dogs. Barking “Jingle Bells!”

“THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS” by Bob and Doug McKenzie

Everyone’s favorite Canadian drunks, Bob and Doug McKenzie, tweak the traditional carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to reflect what they really want. They always a bit behind the beat, which makes the song even funnier. And, for the record, I would love a beer in a tree for Christmas.

“WE’RE A COUPLE OF MISFITS” by Rudolph and that Elf Who Wants To Be a Dentist

Man, those Rankin/Bass Christmas programs were fucked up. Consider this song, taken from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special. Rudolph, having been shunned by his own kind because he’s a freak, runs into an elf who wants to be a dentist. A dentist. I didn’t understand it when I was 10 and I still don’t understand it now that I’m 35.

“WONDERFUL CHRISTMASTIME” by Paul McCartney

Simplistic, but damn it’s catchy. Too bad they layered the synthesizer with so much echo that you can never find the beat during the chorus, but I defy you not to bob your head back and forth during the verses.

“CHRISTMAS ALL OVER AGAIN” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

This is what Tom Petty would have sounded like if he were recorded by Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. This song cracks me up. About his relatives: “Yeah, I kinda missed ‘em. I just don’t wanna kiss ‘em.” True, Tom, true. To end the song on a bizarre note, he asks for a xylophone as the tune is fading out.

“YOU’RE A MEAN ONE, MR. GRINCH” by Tony the Tiger

There’s nothing better than gathering the family around the tree on Christmas eve and singing a song about bananas with black peels, not touching people with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole, and seasick crocodiles. Don’t all families do that?

“CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS DANCE” by Various Peanuts Characters

This song is like the soundtrack to every kid’s Christmas since 1965. And look at those kids bust a move! I wish I had dance moves like that. My favorite is the kid in the brown shirt in the bottom right corner. He’s grooving, man!

“THE CHRISTMAS SONG” by Nat “King” Cole

This song is beautiful. There will be no mocking of this song^.

“CHRISTMAS DON’T BE LATE” by The Chipmunks

I love how, like many families, this song is filled with dysfunction. Alvin just wants his hula hoop but that dick Dave keeps yelling at him. And yelling at him. And yelling at him. It’s a wonder Alvin doesn’t snap sooner, especially after Dave singles him out for being a little flat. God, Dave’s an asshole.

“THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS” by John Denver and The Muppets

Another “Twelve Days of Christmas,” this time wrecked by a hippie and a bunch of creatures made out of felt. It features my favorite Muppet of all-time, Animal, “singing.” That alone makes it classic. (On a side note, this special is awesome and never seems to air anymore. Bring it back!) Speaking of Muppets…

“RIVERBOTTOM NIGHTMARE BAND” by Riverbottom Nightmare Band

You’re supposed to find these guys awful, a bunch of punks that make loud, annoying music. However, even when I was a kid, this was my favorite song of the entire Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas special. It foreshadowed my love of punk music, I guess. It sure as hell beat those sweet, sentimental songs that comprised the rest of the special. Plus, any song that sounds like Cookie Monster is singing it is alright with me.

Those are some of my favorites. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good Riverbottom Nightmare Band!

^With the exception of this posts's title, of course.

Rockin' The Vote

2008-11-04T16:23:00.002-05:00

Today is an historic day for this country. We’re going to elect a new President and, for once, people actually care who it’s going to be. Now, I don’t tend to get political on this blog. Reading through posts from the past five years you can see that I tend to concentrate on movies, music and interesting stories from my life. In other words, bullshit. My opinion on a David Byrne concert isn’t going to change the world.

However, I feel we’re at a critical point in our nation’s history. I remember being at a used clothing store* and watching George W. Bush being sworn in as President in 2000. Many of us in the group were dismayed that this idiot was going to lead us over the next four years. We also felt bitter toward him and his “associates”# hijacking the election and installing him in power. I was no fan of Al Gore – I felt then, as I do now, that he’s a pompous windbag who only ran for President because he was Vice President for eight years and felt like that was the next logical step – but that didn’t mean I thought he should lose to a man who couldn’t pronounce the word “nuclear.” However, I couldn’t complain loudly, because I did not vote in that election.

Yes, I never voted. I’m not proud of that fact. In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running, there was a surge among people my age to vote for him. And he was an exciting candidate and I would have voted for him if I had bothered to get off my fat ass and register. But I didn’t, for reasons that are both believable (How do you vote when you’re at college? Remember, this was pre-Internet and the information just wasn’t easily available.) and idiotic (Why should I vote for anyone when I can go to Best Buy instead?). I remember my girlfriend at the time and I getting into a fight because I wouldn’t register. Now I agree with her. I was an idiot.

After 2000, I swore never to miss a Presidential election again. As I was watching the inauguration, I realized it was too damn important to skip. So I registered. And in 2004, I voted for the first time. Of course, the candidates were awful. On the Republican side we had Alfred E. Newman running for his second term, on the Democratic side, we had John Kerry. Could there have been a worse choice in 2004 than John Kerry? The man didn’t even seem that interested in running. He always looked sleepy to me, like he had just woken up from a nap and still wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. Still, he was loads better than the alternative. So I voted for John Kerry.

John Kerry didn’t win.

Instead, running on a platform of fear (Gay marriage!! Terrorism!!! Taxes!!!!!!!) Bush won again. Thankfully, his Presidency was doomed from the start, only receiving 51% of the vote or some close margin like that. Of course, this didn’t stop him from declaring that the American public had issued a mandate saying that we wanted him in office. 51% is not a mandate, it’s a photo-finish. But then came Katrina. And the never-ending Iraq War. And the economy collapse. And all of a sudden people realized, hey, maybe George Bush isn’t such a great leader after all. It took them eight years, but they finally realized it.

Which brings us to today. This morning I awoke at 6:30 and, after a shower, drove to my polling place. And I waited in line for 45 minutes to cast my vote. And I cast my vote for Barack Obama.

Obama’s campaign has not been a perfect one. His ideas seem somewhat vague to me, but at least he’s thinking outside the box. I’m sick to death of his e-mails begging me for campaign money. And this week I’ve received at least six calls a day from his volunteers, reminding me to get out and vote. Team Obama, I get it. There’s no need to beat it into my skull.

I tend to lean left and I don’t disguise that fact. I believe that gay people should have equal rights and the right to get married if they would like. I believe that people should be helped every once in awhile from their government if they truly need it. I believe in paying taxes because I like things like roads and schools and a military that has the funds to defend us. I believe in a woman’s right to choose whether or not she can have an abortion. And I believe that religion is a personal choice that people have the freedom to pursue and that it does not belong anywhere near anything government-related.

That being said, I also believe that strictly voting Democrat is a mistake. There are some moderate Republicans I’ve followed in the past and even some I wholeheartedly endorsed this morning^. I vote for the candidate I believe can best do the job, not by some strict party line. But I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for John McCain.

McCain ran in 2000 and looked to be a pretty good choice, even better than Al Gore. But then he was basically assassinated by Bush and his bullies and had to withdraw from the race. Had that John McCain ran this year, I might have even voted for him. But something happened to McCain in the past eight years. He turned into a mean, old man. A mean, old man who had no clue what he wanted and was terribly out of touch with the people of America.

What the hell was that “Anyone who makes $250,000 a year is middle class” crap about? And the whole “I think I have eight houses, I need to check with my accountant” stuff? And what was with saying America’s economy was alright only to turn around hours later and attempt to suspend his campaign because he felt the American economy was in trouble? (And where were all those people who said Kerry was a notorious flip-flopper when all this was going down?) If the past eight years have taught us anything, it’s that electing someone who comes from money is not a good idea, because they’ll put their interests ahead of yours.

McCain also lost me on his choice of a running mate. Choosing Sarah Palin was a calculated, stupid move that never worked for him, especially once she opened her mouth and began making foolish statements. The woman seriously frightens me. She likes to shoot animals for fun. She believes that firing her former brother-in-law from his police position is OK because, you know, he divorced her sister. She believes in censorship. She also apparently believes that winking and waving can get you out of any mess. Sadly, a lot of people fell for her cuteness. The other day at the gym, I overheard two women talking about her and that they planned to vote for McCain simply because they thought Palin was “adorable.” I bit my tongue.

Choosing Palin also highlighted McCain’s weakness in decision making. Before selecting her as his running mate, he kept hammering away at Obama’s (perceived) lack of experience. So I’m concerned that he chose someone who has even less experience than Obama to be his running mate on the ticket. We’re talking about a person who could potentially become the leader of our country. This is not something you do on a whim. (Again, those people calling for Kerry’s flip-flopping head were nowhere in sight.) What happens when he has to make a decision on whether to, say, invade Iran? Will he think it though or just go with the first idea that comes into his head?

And what was with McCain trying to tear Obama down by continually referencing Bill Ayers? McCain’s not exactly Mr. Squeaky Clean. Anyone remember the Keating Five? They’re both politicians; I’m sure they’ve both had to work with associates that aren’t the nicest of people. Sadly, that’s how you get elected to the presidency these days. It just seemed like a big “Pot Meet Kettle” moment for me and the fact that McCain wouldn’t drop it just seemed desperate. If that’s the only thing he can use to tear Obama down, then that’s pretty sad.

There’s also a stupid superficial reason I don’t want McCain as President. For the past twenty years, we’ve had either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. It’s time for some new blood and, sorry, but McCain’s 72 year-old platelets just aren’t going to cut it. He feels like the old regime and we need some freshness.

So that’s why I couldn’t vote for McCain. Those are my personal reasons and they’re reasons I thought long and hard about. And whether or not you agree with what I’ve written, please, get out there and vote today. You still have a few hours left. And if you’re not registered, then do that the next chance you get. Because what makes this country great is that everyone has a voice+ and we all have an opportunity to use it. So think about who you want to see in power and vote. It’s your civic duty.

I’m off my soapbox now. The next post will probably be about movies or music.

*I was volunteering at the time through a group called Indiana Ambassadors. It was an interesting year of volunteering, but it was all pre-blog so there’s not really a document of it.

#I’m being nice.

^Mitch Daniels, I’m looking at you. You did a great job the past four years. And I like Daylight Savings Time!

+Well, until the Electoral College comes into play, that is.

A Band in Heaven, They Play My Favorite Song

2008-10-25T23:10:00.002-04:00

I literally just got back from the David Byrne concert at Clowes Memorial Hall. Wow. Just…wow. Here’s what he played:

Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody
Houses In Motion
My Big Nurse
My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)
Heaven
Never Thought
The River
Crosseyed and Painless
Life Is Long
Once In A Lifetime
Life During Wartime
I Feel My Stuff

Encore 1:
Take Me To The River
The Great Curve

Encore 2:
Air
Burning Down the House

Encore 3:
Everything That Happens

This tour is in support of Byrne’s latest collaboration with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Before the tour began, Byrne promised that the shows would be a mix of old and new songs, so long as they were worked on by both him and Eno. Some of my favorite Talking Heads material came out of that partnership, so, to combat any disappointment, I looked at the setlist right after he began the tour. I was bummed that he wasn’t doing songs such as “Artists Only” and “Air.” You can imagine how surprised I was when he added both “Air” and “Burning Down the House” to the show. When he began playing “Air” I was so taken aback that I just stood there. And then when he strapped on the acoustic guitar and started “Burning Down the House”… I was in heaven. (Even if it was a cheat; Eno did not work with Byrne on that song.) Those two songs were easily the highlight of the evening for me.

As is customary with David Byrne, the show was very theatrical. Everyone was dressed totally in white and occasionally dancers would come out and bust some choreographed moves. Here’s a clip from a different show:

It was pretty cool, although he mainly used the dancers during old Talking Heads songs. He’s gone on record before saying those songs are too old for him to relate to, so my guess is he’s using the dancers to revitalize them for him. It’s a win-win situation for both the audience and the performer.

Unfortunately, all this professional dancing made the audience feel comfortable to bust a move. People began springing up all over the place, waving their hands in the air and trying to do their best to imitate the “Once in a Lifetime” video. They did not succeed. As I told my friend Aggie, it was like attending the largest, whitest wedding reception ever.

There was a very young little girl there with her parents, though, and she was having the time of her life dancing to the music. Little kids are allowed to dance like that, so I gave her a pass. Plus, any kid that likes David Byrne at that age is freaking awesome.

The song arrangements for the TH stuff wasn’t that radically different from the Stop Making Sense era. In fact, there were a lot of moments that came verbatim from that film/album during a few of the songs. I should have minded, but I never got to see Talking Heads live and I’m guessing tonight was the closest I will ever come to that. So I didn’t mind him doing some of the songs exactly as he did in 1984.

This show far eclipsed his 2001 show at the Murat Egyptian Room. The setlist was better and Byrne just seemed more into it. Plus there wasn’t a national tragedy lingering in everyone’s minds. (Last time I saw him was September 16, 2001. Life during wartime, indeed.) Yeah, I could have used more old Talking Heads songs, but, as I kept telling myself, I wasn’t at a Talking Heads concert. Maybe someday they’ll reunite, but I doubt that will ever happen. Besides, tonight came close enough for me. A great, great show. If he comes to your town, see him!

In the Fifth, Your Ass Goes Down

2008-10-24T16:40:00.002-04:00

I spent a large chunk of this week sitting in movie theaters. I had free passes to the Heartland Film Festival and I used them with a vengeance. OK, I used three of the tickets. But that’s three free movies!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17 – Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains (2007). Remember the movie Alive? The one about the 1972 plane crash in the Andes Mountains? The one with the survivors who had to eat the flesh of the dead in order to survive for 72 days? Yeah, this is that story, only told by the people who lived through it and not actors-of-the-moment like Ethan Hawke. Hearing the survivors talk about their ordeal was powerful and very moving. All sixteen survivors are still alive and agreed to participate in the movie, so there’s not one voice missing. The director pretty much let them do all the talking and kept his visual flashes to a minimum. Other than some cheesy silent re-enactments and visual goofiness, he mainly just concentrates on their story. (Since we're complaining, he could have used a new score. What he went with was basically one chord held indefinitely.) As a bonus, the director and one of the survivors fielded questions after the film. Unfortunately, neither one spoke English very well so it wasn’t that in-depth. But at least they tried. Very well done, this documentary. GRADE: A-.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 – Paper or Plastic? (2008). Another Heartland documentary, this one about the 2006 National Bagging Championship in Las Vegas. The film started off on the wrong note for me, making fun of some of the contestants for having funny accents or for being middle-aged and working in a grocery store. But after the initial making-fun period ended the film actually became a nice human-interest piece. By the time everyone got to Vegas you were rooting for each one of them to win. While it was probably the least surprising documentary I’ve ever seen, it was still damn entertaining. GRADE: B+.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19 – W. (2008). While I am no fan of our current president, I was worried that director Oliver Stone would spend the entire movie mocking Bush. There’s not much more comedy to be wrung from that washcloth. Stone thankfully played it straight, showing how the Iraq war debacle came to be and how Bush’s advisors had a knack of slyly convincing the president to do whatever they wanted. Nearly all of the actors in the film playing his figureheads – Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, etc. – were excellent, which led to some credibility to the film. (The only person who totally blew it was Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. She hammed it up a bit too much, making her feel like a refugee from a bad Saturday Night Live skit.) Josh Brolin was phenomenal as George Bush, adopting his mannerisms while not crossing the line into parody. Brolin’s come a long way from The Goonies. The themes of the movie were pretty heavy-handed, but I have to hand it to Stone: He managed to make a disastrous presidency entertaining. I was surprised to like it. And it still has the best trailer of the year. GRADE: B.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 – Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes (2008). Another Heartland documentary. (There must be a rule that all titles at the Heartland Film Festival must be awkwardly-worded. “The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes”?!?!? There had to be something better to call this film.) I was no fan of Robert Altman’s fictional film A Prairie Home Companion. I thought it was a strange mix of music and black comedy, neither one being that strong or interesting to carry the film. So I went into this movie with a bit of trepidation. I admit that the fake folksy NPR vibe of Prairie Home Companion is like nails on a chalkboard for me. (As is most of NPR. I’m probably the only liberal in the country who can’t stand it.) But this movie wisely avoided being a documentary about that show, instead concentrating on the man in charge of it. That was a wise move. Keillor is a man built on contradictions. He loves living in St. Paul but admits that he would prefer to live in New York. Yet when he’s in New York, he misses St. Paul. He prefers to be alone yet can’t stand not having the company of others around him. He says he doesn’t like fame yet he seems to feed off of people automatically knowing who he is. The best thing about Keillor is that he knows this about himself, a point he readily makes in the documentary. The film works both as a portrait of the man and as a historical docudrama about the creation of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. (The creation of the film gets some screen time as well.) And while it has a tendency to drag and make the same point over and over again – we get it, he likes New York City – it’s never boring or false. And it’s much better than Altman’s Prairie Home Companion. GRADE: B.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22 – Pulp Fiction (1994). Another Wednesday, another Flashback Feature. This time it’s one of my favorite movies of all-time, Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 gangster epic. The film has aged extremely well, although the flaws that were apparent in 1994 are still there today. Tarantino as a director is phenomenal, but as an actor he’s wooden and unbelievable. Some of the dialogue is way too out-there to work (“Warm…warmer…disco!”). And the whole Bruce Willis/Maria de Medeiros section of the film is long and pointless. But those are minor complaints. The film is probably the most alive movie I’ve ever seen, living and breathing with every new moment. John Travolta sinks his teeth into his role as Vincent Vega, giving the best performance of his career. Samuel L. Jackson matches him note-for-note as his partner Jules. Tarantino’s career since Pulp Fiction has been hit-or-miss, but you can’t deny the electric jolt this film gives you when you see it. It’s his masterpiece. Plus it’s funny as hell. GRADE: A.

That’s it for this week. Next week we’re back to the chronological viewing project. (On tap for tonight: All About Eve.) I’m also going to try to see Appaloosa in the theater, although that might not happen. It’s currently playing in only one theater in town and is only showing at night. But it’s an Ed Harris film, so it’s worth a look…

Five Videos: Pulp Fiction

2008-10-23T16:35:00.001-04:00

I saw Pulp Fiction last night* as part of United Artists’s Flashback Features program. Not only was it cool to see one of my favorite movies on the big screen again but before the film they played two vintage 1994 trailers for Clerks and Bullets Over Broadway#. It was like taking a trip back to the fall of 1994. Here’s the well-done Clerks trailer.

I couldn’t find a trailer for Bullets over Broadway on Youtube. Apparently, though, there’s an all-girl metal band out there called Bullets over Broadway because that site is littered with their clips. I wonder if they’re fans of Woody Allen? Or Dianne Wiest?

Too bad they didn’t show the trailer for Pulp Fiction before the movie, because it’s one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen.

Here’s a bizzare alternate-universe trailer for the film if it starred the Muppets. And Eric Stoltz.

1994 in film could easily be summed up as Forrest Gump vs. Pulp Fiction. Here’s MadTV’s spoof/mash-up of the two called Gump Fiction^.

If you haven’t seen Pulp Fiction, please do so soon. You’re missing out. And it’s not even that violent! OK, it’s violent, but it’s not Saw for crying out loud.

*Review tomorrow!

#Don’t speak. Don’t speak!

^Not as funny as I remembered it being, but it still makes me chuckle.

Caught In A Trap

2008-10-22T16:06:00.004-04:00

The A.V. Club is one of my favorite Internet sites. Using a combination of smart, informed writing with a skewered sense of humor, they write about all things pop culture. One of their new features is called AVQ&A, a weekly question posed to the staff that is, of course, pop culture related. Since I’m all about the pop culture, I figured I could play along. And what better place than this blog?

This week’s question was “What’s the best live music show you’ve ever been to?” I’ve been to a lot of live shows, but this one turned out to be pretty easy. The answer is R.E.M. at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on August 9, 1999.

In 1999, I knew two people living in southern California: my sister and my friend Jeff, he of the 98% terrible CD collection. (He has a few R.E.M. discs, so it isn’t all bad. Of course, those discs are located next to R.E.O. Speedwagon…) Val lived in San Diego, Jeff in Orange County. I’d been trying to come up with a reason to visit both of them, and, thanks to the concert, I finally had one. We all agreed to go, Jeff bought the tickets, and I made plans to get myself out there.

I was out there for an entire week, Saturday to Saturday. I spent the weekends with my sister and Tuesday-Thursday with Jeff. Monday was the concert. My sister, my future brother-in-law, and I drove to Orange County Monday morning and met Jeff. The four of us spent the entire day looking at the Hollywood sites – that walk of fame is pretty damn stupid, if you ask me, although the handprints in front of the Chinese Theater were pretty cool – before heading to the concert. My future brother-in-law had no desire to see the show, so we deposited him at a movie theatre and wished him well. This was before everyone had cell phones, so we just hoped to see him alive after the show.*

The only thing I knew about the Greek Theatre was that Neil Diamond had recorded a live album there in the 70s. The venue was gorgeous, nestled into the hillside of a park. Trees surrounded us. It was kind of what I pictured Red Rocks to look like, although I’m guessing Red Rocks is even more beautiful. The weather was typical So-Cal: sunny, calm, 72 degrees. A perfect evening.

1999 was a strange time in R.E.M.’s life. They had just lost their drummer and, instead of calling it quits, decided to continue on with his blessing. The album they were touring behind, Up, was mediocre. Some decent songs, but all of them sounded so sedate. That happens when you don’t have a drummer. I had no idea what to expect, if they’d just come out and play an acoustic show or if they would have a full band behind them. Thankfully the latter turned out to be the case. The extra musicians punched up their sound and kicked them into high gear. All of the songs rocked. Well, all of them except for “Everybody Hurts.”

Before the final song, Michael Stipe broke into “Suspicious Minds.” The band played along for a bit but then forced him into “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” with that famous snare intro. At the end of that song, Stipe began “Suspicious Minds” again and this time the band ripped into a full-length version of it. It was spontaneous and one of the coolest concert moments I’ve ever witnessed.

I have a bootleg of the show which confirms my memory of it being a hell of a good time. When I saw them this summer they came close to topping it, but I knew they were going to be great so the surprise element was gone.

The day after the concert Jeff and I went to Vegas. That’s another story for another time.

Runner-ups in the best concert sweepstakes:

The Pixies, The Murat Theatre, June 7, 2005
The Finn Brothers, The Vogue Theatre, February 22, 2005
Peter Gabriel, Deer Creek#, July 2, 2003
Fleetwood Mac, Conseco Fieldhouse, June 24, 2003
The Pretenders, The Murat Theatre, February 13, 2003
Bob Dylan, The Murat Egyptian Room, November 5, 2002
Elvis Costello, The Murat Theatre, October 13, 2002^
David Byrne, The Murat Egyptian Room, September 16, 2001
U2, Conseco Fieldhouse, May 10, 2001
Bruce Springsteen, Firstar Center (Cincinnati), April 30, 2000
Vixen, Pendleton Heights High School, sometime in 1990-1991

Just kidding on that last one. It would rank as the worst concert I’ve ever seen if it hadn’t been held in my high school gymnasium. Come on, you have to admit that that’s pretty cool. Also, it was a “Say No to Drugs!” concert even though I’m pretty sure Vixen was baked out of their minds during the entire thing.

*Yes, he was alive and well. And sitting outside the theater waiting for us to pick him up like some poor kid waiting on his parents.

#I know it’s now called “Verizon Wireless Music Center,” but it’ll always be Deer Creek to me.

^Memorable because a fire alarm happened during the show. The band left the stage but the rest of us stayed in the theatre like a bunch of dumbasses. (A water line burst or something, which set off the fire alarm.) When Costello came back he launched into “Accidents Will Happen.” Awesome.

Simply The Best...Movies

2008-10-21T11:44:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I posted my favorite album for every year that I’ve been alive. I thought it would be interesting to see the results if I did the same thing for movies. So, here’s that list:

1973 – The Sting
1974 – The Godfather Part II
1975 – Dog Day Afternoon
1976 – Network
1977 – Star Wars
1978 – The Last Waltz
1979 – All That Jazz
1980 – Airplane!
1981 – Raiders Of The Lost Ark
1982 – Tootsie
1983 – National Lampoon’s Vacation
1984 – This Is Spinal Tap*
1985 – Back To The Future
1986 – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
1987 – The Untouchables
1988 – A Fish Called Wanda
1989 – Do The Right Thing
1990 – Goodfellas#
1991 – The Silence Of The Lambs
1992 – Reservoir Dogs
1993 – In The Name Of The Father
1994 – Pulp Fiction
1995 – Dead Man Walking
1996 – Fargo
1997 – Boogie Nights
1998 – A Simple Plan
1999 – Election
2000 – You Can Count On Me
2001 – The Royal Tenebaums
2002 – Adaptation
2003 – Mystic River
2004 – The Incredibles
2005 – Murderball
2006 – Pan’s Labyrinth
2007 – The Darjeeling Limited
2008 – Wall-E^

You can see that the 80s are mainly built of sentimental favorites instead of well-regarded films. I don't care what all the movie snobs think. National Lampoon’s Vacation and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are the best films those years had to offer me. And there was nothing else to choose from in 1977, hence the inclusion of Star Wars on this list. That movie is fun but it’s nowhere near that super-duper classic that nearly everyone in my generation makes it out to be.

This will be the end of this list thing, unless I follow my sister’s suggestion and make one based on what I really liked the actual year I was living. To be honest, this list wouldn’t change much after 1985. Pre-1985 would look a lot different. I wasn’t exactly enjoying The Godfather Part II in 1974.

*This list goes to 11!

#My favorite movie.

^So far. This year’s good movies haven’t really come out yet.

Simply The Best

2008-10-20T16:27:00.002-04:00

There was a game making the blog rounds a few months ago. The rules were simple: You were to choose your favorite album for every year you’ve been alive and post it for others to look at. OK, it wasn’t really a game, more of a list, but it was a heck of a lot of fun to play. Here are my results:

1973 – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John
1974 – Sheer Heart Attack – Queen*
1975 – Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac
1976 – Modern Lovers – Modern Lovers
1977 – Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
1978 – This Year’s Model – Elvis Costello
1979 – Tusk – Fleetwood Mac
1980 – Pretenders – Pretenders
1981 – Business As Usual – Men At Work^
1982 – The Nylon Curtain – Billy Joel
1983 – Synchronicity – Police
1984 – Stop Making Sense – Talking Heads
1985 – Scarecrow – John Mellencamp#
1986 – Graceland – Paul Simon
1987 – The Joshua Tree – U2
1988 – Green – R.E.M.
1989 – Doolittle – Pixies
1990 – No Depression – Uncle Tupelo
1991 – Nevermind – Nirvana
1992 – Automatic For The People – R.E.M.
1993 – In Utero – Nirvana
1994 – Monster – R.E.M.
1995 – Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters
1996 – New Adventures In Hi-Fi – R.E.M.
1997 – The Dance – Fleetwood Mac
1998 – Mermaid Avenue – Billy Bragg And Wilco
1999 – Magnolia – Soundtrack
2000 – MP4 – Michael Penn
2001 – Satellite Rides – Old 97’s
2002 – The Rising – Bruce Springsteen
2003 – Elephant – White Stripes
2004 – American Idiot – Green Day
2005 – Extraordinary Machine – Fiona Apple
2006 – Rabbit Fur Coat – Jenny Lewis
2007 – Bluefinger – Frank Black
2008 – Accelerate – R.E.M.+

Yes, I apparently love Fleetwood Mac. 1979 was a tough year. Fear of Music, Tusk and Armed Forces all could have held that spot and I wouldn’t have complained. But Tusk won out because of the sheer originality and chutzpah of it. I mean, have you heard some of those songs? They are fucked up. The rest of the years Fleetwood Mac won hands down, no contest.

Using this list as a template, I can now determine my favorite album that’s been released since I was born. Ready? Drumroll, please…

This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello. It’s a hell of a disc. From start to finish, nothing but winners.

I expect everyone who reads this blog to post their answers in the comments section. All two of you!

*1974 was a shitty year for albums.

^Laugh all you want. This album is excellent.

#I can’t help it. I’m from Indiana.

+So far.

Iraqi, With Your Gun In The Moonlight...

2008-10-19T23:39:00.005-04:00

According to the movie W.*, George W. Bush's favorite musical is Cats.

Somehow that just seems appropriate.

*Review Friday!

Plastic. Always Plastic.

2008-10-18T23:18:00.013-04:00

I've seen two films at the Heartland Film Festival this weekend - gotta love those free passes! - one of which was a documentary about the 2006 National Grocery Bagger's Competition, Paper or Plastic. I'll save my thoughts on the movie until Friday, but I had to comment about bagging in general.

As you all know, I spent four long years in college working in the Kroger video department. I was fine there in my little corner of the store, renting movies to customers who also needed to buy some milk, being left alone by every other employee who wasn't a non-foods worker. Unless the store was busy. That's when the jackass store manager Mr. Bonehead* would come to our department, find me, and say, "Hey, there, ol' buddy, ol' pal, I need you to help us with some bagging! Would you give it the college try?"^ And then I would have to bag groceries until the fuss died down. I might be out there ten minutes. I might be out there eight hours.

I hated bagging groceries. And I was terrible at it.

I know I was terrible at bagging because a customer once called the store and complained about me. Here's what happened: She had a pie. Not a frozen pie, one of those fresh-baked ones from the bakery. It was big, bulky and could easily not have been bagged. Of course, she wanted it bagged. So I put it in a plastic bag - per her request - and set it in her cart, telling her to not pick the bag up by the handles because it would tilt the pie sideways and destroy it. She told me that was fine, she understood. Of course, she then goes home, picks up the handles and, in the process, decimates her pie. This was my fault somehow. She called the store to complain about me and to try to get me fired. Mr. Bonehead said he wouldn't fire me, but that he would give me a stern talking to. Which he did, in his office as soon as he hung up the phone. I apologized to him and said it wouldn't happen again and that, to be honest, I had never been trained to bag properly anyway. That was a huge mistake: I spent the rest of the day watching bagging training videos because some dumb lady couldn't follow my instructions.

I had a coworker who hated bagging even more than I did. Kroger was a union store and, after being asked to bag on a busy Saturday afternoon, he called the union to complain about the manager. The union blew him off. He didn't last much longer at Kroger. (Yes, I've been a member of a union. Local Non-Food Handlers 166, baby!)

My last day they asked me to bag and I told them I refused. They started to give me shit about it, so I took off my Kroger smock# and told them to find someone else to close the video department. They bought it. I didn't have to bag.

The irony of all this? Now every time I go to Kroger I have to bag my own groceries in the self-check lane. And I don't mind it one bit.

*His name has been changed to protect his innocence. But it hasn't been changed that much.

^Yes, he really did talk this way. Right, Val?

#And I looked incredibly sexy in that smock, I might add.

The Name Was Lime, Harry Lime.

2008-10-17T16:36:00.002-04:00

I’ve decided that Fridays should be the day when I recap all the movies I saw during the past week. Since new movies tend to start on Fridays, it just made sense for me to do it then. Plus, you know, that way I won’t spend every other day talking about movies. That is, if I continue to update the blog. Keep those fingers crossed.

Anyway, here’s what I watched this week:

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11 – Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008). I’m sure this movie would have been a lot of fun…if I were sixteen years old. I went because I thought the plot sounded interesting and because Michael Cera has earned a lot of goodwill from his work on Arrested Development. Unfortunately, watching the movie just confirmed that I’m old. I kept thinking things like, “You damn kids shouldn’t be out so late! Where are your parents?” It didn’t help that I knew none of the so-called “hip” music that the movie was featuring. I went thinking it could be another Juno, a modern film about teens and love. I left feeling like I needed to check into a nursing home. GRADE: C-.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12 – The Third Man (1949). I love, love, love this movie. It’s usually classified as a “film noir,” but it has a little bit of everything: mystery, comedy, scares, and, yes, love. And the cinematography…damn. Shadows are so prominent that they should have received second billing. And that score. And Orson Welles! And…you get the picture. (Seriously, get this picture!) Easily the movie of the week, and one of my favorites of all-time. GRADE: A.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 13 – The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Sadly, not all film noirs are good. I’m not sure what I saw in this the first time around, because watching it again proved to be a tedious experience. The photography is excellent, I’ll give it that, but the plot is a boring crime-gone-wrong whodunit. I liked some of the actors – Sterling Hayden is great and it was weird to see Disney’s favorite villain Keenan Wynn in a creepy role – but overall it was pretty blasé. I pulled it from my collection and you can now find my copy onsale at Amazon. Gotta love Amazon. GRADE: C.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14 – Spaceballs (1987). For some reason, my local United Artists theater is showing old movies on Wednesday nights for only $5. And they’re not DVDs projected onto the screen; they’re actual film prints. This program is due to end in a few weeks – but not before I see Pulp Fiction on the big screen again! – and I hope they decide to continue it once its over. This week’s “Flashback Feature” was Mel Brooks’s Star Wars parody Spaceballs. I’ve never been a huge fan of Spaceballs – it’s a dumb movie concerned more with idiotic crotch jokes than smartly parodying science-fiction – but I never saw it on the big screen in ’87. Plus a friend asked me to go and I had nothing else to do, so I went. Rick Moranis is the sole reason to see it. His comedic chops are on full display here, further proving my theory that he should have been a bigger star than he was. Other than that, the movie is terribly dated. The soundtrack in particular screams 1987 – Van Hagar! Bon Jovi! “Spaceballs…watch out!!!” – and the effects are laughable, even for their time. Still, Moranis is inspired and there are far worse ways to spend 90 minutes. GRADE: C.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 – Sunset Boulevard (1950). Damn, this movie has some balls. Kicking every facet of the film industry in the ass, director Billy Wilder created a classic that has aged extremely well. (Sad to say that some of the problems that plagued Hollywood back in 1950 are still evident today, from concentrating on big-budget pictures to tossing away actresses when they reach a certain age.) The framing device of the movie is inspired and Gloria Swanson goes for broke with her performance as Norma Desmond. The dialogue is composed of nothing but classic lines, from “I am big, it’s the pictures that got small,” to “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” It does drag in places and Swanson’s acting is so immersive that at times she becomes overbearing, but it’s nice to see Wilder go for broke and create a still-original piece of work. GRADE: A-.

Before Spaceballs they were asking trivia questions, one of which I answered correctly. (“Which famous actress was Mel Brooks married to in real life?”*) My prize was a pack of ten free passes to this week’s Heartland Film Festival, which I intend to use. So hopefully next week’s update will be full of independent, heartwarming, and generally family-friendly movies. Hey, they’re free.

*Anne Bancroft, duh.

He Was 9 In The Summer Of '69

2008-10-16T16:44:00.003-04:00

Owned:
Reckless, 1984
So Far, So Good, 1993

When I was a sophomore in college Ball State opened up their new sports arena. And, to celebrate, they decided to put on a concert. Apparently they couldn’t get anybody really famous, because they wound up with Bryan Adams. Because when you’re celebrating the opening of a multi-million dollar facility, there’s no one better to ask to christen it than the guy who sang “Heaven.”

Also, when I was a sophomore in college, I began to remove the lame music chains that had held me down all throughout high school. No longer did I automatically buy what was number one on the charts. Instead I began seeking out music that was interesting to me. Sure, a lot of that music was the popular grunge tunes of the time, but at least it was better than the over-produced crap that held power over me in high school. (I admit it: I once owned the M.C. Hammer Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em CD, among many other embarrassing discs. Note the verb tense on that last sentence. I don’t own them anymore.)

Bryan Adams could not have come to Ball State at a more awkward time in my musical life. On the one hand, I still enjoyed some of his music. How can you not enjoy “Run To You”? On the other, he represented everything that I was growing to hate about the pop machine. It didn’t help that I had just received his album Waking Up the Neighbors for Christmas and absolutely hated it. It was 74 minutes long, twice as long as his hit disc Reckless, and filled to the brim with stupid songs like “Hey, Honey, I’m Packin’ You In!” At least every other song title on that album ended with an exclamation point, almost like he was trying to trick us into having a good time. “See! It’s an exclamation point! It’s fun!!!” It didn’t work.

But he was coming to Ball State* and I had never seen him, so I bought tickets. Joining me was my friend Jeff, pop music’s best friend^, and my girlfriend at the time, Missi. Missi did not like it when Jeff and I got together – too many in-jokes, too much movie talk – so she decided to sit in between us at the concert, punishing us for being friends. I didn’t date her much longer.+

Anyway, the concert sucked. Bryan Adams showed up, sure, but he only sang about 25% of his lyrics. The rest of the time he let the crowd sing for him. Example:

BRYAN ADAMS: I got my…
CROWD: …first real six string. Bought it at the five and dime. Played it ‘til my fingers bled. Was the summer of ’69. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

That was pretty much the pattern for the entire evening. One of my biggest concert pet peeves is when the audience is asked to sing large chunks of a song. If I wanted to hear myself sing, I would have stayed at home and taken a shower. Needless to say, it was not one of the better concerts I’ve seen.

That being said, to this day I continue to have a soft spot for Adams’ early work. Reckless is one hell of an album, a tight 37 minute delight full of memorable hits (“Run To You,” “Somebody,” “Summer of ’69,” “Heaven”) and crazy, off-the-wall stuff that somehow works (“Kids Wanna Rock,” “Ain’t Gonna Cry,” “Long Gone”). I never got rid of it when I was purging discs left and right during college. I also kept his greatest hits disc, mainly for songs like “Heat of the Night” and “Cuts Like a Knife.” I could do without that awful Robin Hood song, but that’s why God invented the next track button on a CD player.

Bryan Adams all but disappeared after that concert. He continues to release albums but no one cares anymore. His last grasp of popularity was in 1993 when he released the adult contemporary single “All for Love” from The Three Musketeers soundtrack. That song was a trio with Sting and Rod Stewart. Hearing it was like listening to the careers of three formerly great rockers going down the drain. It didn’t help that The Three Musketeers was so awful that it holds the distinction of being the only movie ever made to make me nauseous as I was watching it.

He also had that song from Don Juan DeMarco, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman.” You remember that one. It was the song that went, “Have you ever really, really, really, really, really ever loved a woman.” Apparently his creative well ran dry prior to writing that song.

It would be cool if Bryan Adams hooked up and recorded an album with Rick Rubin. I’d check that one out of the library. But as it stands now, he’ll be known solely for “Summer of ‘69” and “Everything I Do, I Do It For You.” (The latter song was brilliantly mocked on Arrested Development, by the way.) Which is kind of appropriate. I mean, it’s Bryan Adams we’re talking about here. He’s edgy to people who have a lot of Paula Abdul in the collections# and lame to those who do not. I never seek him out but if the iPod shuffles to one of his songs I don’t mind listening. Unless it’s about doing everything for me. I draw the line there.

*I knew a guy who knew the guy who drove Bryan Adams around Muncie when he was there. Apparently, all Bryan Adams cared about was locating and visiting all the local strip joints. Bryan Adams = pervert.

^Seriously, the guy has awful taste in music. Some of the discs in his collection include works by Color Me Badd, Michael Bolton, Celine Dion and Marc Cohn. It’s like taking a trip to Easylisteningville everytime I look at his CDs.

+Unbeknownst to me, she was actually dating another guy at the time. I knew they were talking – he lived in Florida and she said they were “just friends” – and I was fine with that, but I had no idea they were actually a couple. Just like us. At the same exact time.

#My friend.

What Can I Do With A B.A. In Telecommunications?

2008-10-15T15:58:00.003-04:00

I saw Avenue Q again last night for the second time this year. I love that show. It combines my deep admiration for the Muppets with my extremely sarcastic sense of humor. The show is not for kids. Puppets have sex during the show. Funny, disturbing sex. And they sing songs like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet is for Porn.” What’s not to love?

For those not in the know, Avenue Q is basically a parody of Sesame Street. It takes place in front of an inner-city block of apartments, much like the PBS chestnut we all know and love. The cast is a mixture of puppets and real people and there are short animated videos in between scenes that are very much like the beloved pinball short that everyone in my generation counts as one of the greatest videos ever. (And sung by The Pointer Sisters!)

The difference is that the puppets aren’t children, they’re jaded twenty-somethings fresh out of college with no idea what to do with their life. The first main song in the show is “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” The next song is called “It Sucks to be Me.” Want examples? Here are some bootleg videos from Broadway I found on Youtube:

“If You Were Gay”:

“It Sucks to Be Me”:

And, yes, “The Internet is for Porn”:

And my favorite characters of the show, the Bad Idea Bears:

Yeah, Sesame Street it ain’t. But it’s not all scatological, stupid humor. There’s a lot of heart to the show. All the characters are longing for your basic human needs: love, friendship, stability. And they’re all struggling with their lives. All the clips I posted above happen before the first act is even half over. Believe me, the show eventually digs its heels into the plot and becomes emotional. I haven’t choked up that much due to an inanimate object since Wilson the volleyball floated away from Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

I don’t think last night’s performance was as good as the one I saw in Louisville. The energy seemed off a bit and some of the supporting human characters were, as my friend put it, “half-assing it.” The Indiana audience seemed appreciative of the show, but very cautious. They weren’t laughing as hard as the Louisville audience did, probably because a lot of them were offended by some of the material. And, yes, there were several walkouts at intermission. Gotta love them Hoosiers.

So, if anyone reads this, see Avenue Q this week at Clowes. Not only because it’s really funny, but also because if the show is successful then we’ll have a chance to see some good touring shows come through town in the future. If not, we’ll be stuck watching the musical version of Happy Days over and over again. (Yes, there is a musical version of Happy Days. It will be in town in January.)

One last fun bit: Fiddler on the Roof, Avenue Q style:

I've Got The Biggest Balls Of Them All

2008-10-14T15:58:00.002-04:00

I’ve been watching my movies chronologically lately, both to revisit some old friends and to finally get rid of the ones I hate. This kind of mass revisitation has led me to look at another area of my life that’s just as important to me as film: music.

My first CD player was purchased for me on July 25, 1987. I remember that date not because I mark it as a seminal event in my life – even though it is – but because my mother and I bought it at H.H. Gregg during their annual “Christmas in July” sale. I remember walking into the store shouting “Merry Christmas” – once a dork, always a dork – and leaving with a CD player boom box. The purchase was totally unplanned, I think, although now I can’t tell you what my mother and I were doing in the middle of an H.H. Gregg on a Saturday afternoon. It’s not like we hit the home appliance stores on a regular basis.

Anyway, the purchase came with a caveat: I could use the player all weekend, but, as of Sunday night, it would go into a box and not be mine until it was actually Christmas. Rules. Because I was 14 and broke, I only had enough money to buy one CD at Target that afternoon: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles had recently been releasing their material to CD and that disc had just come out, so it was on sale. Plus I was a burgeoning Beatles fan at that time and it made sense for it to be my first purchase. I played the hell out of that disc over the next 24 hours.

Sadly, I do not have that disc anymore. I leant it to one of my maybe-kinda-sorta college girlfriends and we “broke up” before I could get it back. The Sgt. Pepper in my collection now is an impostor. Also, if you think it’s weird that I would choose a 20 year-old album as my first CD purchase, the next two discs I bought were John Mellencamp’s The Lonesome Jubilee and Europe’s The Final Countdown. Yes, Europe. Shut up, I was 14.

I’ve been buying CDs for 21 years now. At a rate of at least one per week. Needless to say, I’ve amassed quite a large, varied collection. And I want to write about that collection mainly by concentrating on each particular artist. And first on that list is AC/DC.

Before we jump into the merits of AC/DC, let me say a word about organization. I’ve never understood the people who have their CDs all jumbled up all non-sensical, spread out in 42 different areas of their house. How do they find anything? I’ve been an alphabetizer since 1987. It’s the only way to fly.

Now, AC/DC.

When I was in college I bought AC/DC’s first and only live disc, titled, simply, Live. When I was young I enjoyed all their big radio hits, the “You Shook Me All Night Long”s and the “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”s, but never enough to start buying their catalog. The live disc had all the hits on it and, since AC/DC has always said they will never release a Greatest Hits disc because they prefer making a statement with each album, I figured it was the best I could do.

Well, the live album shone a light on how crappy AC/DC actually is live. All the songs sounded the same. Same structure, same ending, same tempo, same double entendre lyrics, same everything. It was pitiful. I gave that disc a chance, but, in the end, I sold it to Karma. I thought that was the end of my AC/DC buying days.

Then came the era of stealing music off the Internet. And there’s no better band to steal from than AC/DC. Don’t want to release a Greatest Hits disc? Fuck you, Angus, I’ll just steal the tracks I want! One of those tracks was “Back in Black.” And, for whatever reason, that song began logging some serious headphone time. It’s a hell of a song, “Back in Black.” A great riff, a sing-along chorus that firmly implants itself in your brain, and a scorching guitar solo that ends the track. That song deserves more than a permanent rotation on Q95’s idiotic playlist. (SEGER!)

So I bought the album Back in Black hoping for more of the same. It is AC/DC’s most well-regarded album, so I figured it wouldn’t be a bad purchase. And it wasn’t…if you don’t mind hearing the same song ten different times. AC/DC has a formula and they don’t like to deviate. It’s an entertaining and simple-minded formula, but it works. Still, it kind of makes their anti-Greatest Hits argument moot, since it’s not like their albums sound all that different from one another. I would totally buy an AC/DC Greatest Hits disc if they ever released one.

Some other AC/DC notes:

After seeing The Eagles in 1995 at Deer Creek, the amphitheatre put “You Shook Me All Night Long” on as exit music. The entire crowd began singing along in a spontaneous fit of joy. Those three minutes were arguably more entertaining than the overlong and overpriced concert that preceded it.

Even though that was a fun moment, if you looked up the word “overplayed” in the dictionary, it would tell you to see “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Hell, even Celine Dion has covered it.

AC/DC is coming to Conseco Fieldhouse next month. Every single ticket in the arena is selling for $94, even the nosebleeds. See The Eagles for who to blame for outrageous ticket prices like this. I’ve never seen them in concert and, at those prices, I don’t think I ever will. Plus you’d have to wade through a sea of Seger-loving hicks in order to get to your seats. Q95…ugh.

One final note: "Big Balls" is their masterpiece.

BEST SONG: “Back in Black”
SONG THAT SHOULD DIE: “You Shook Me All Night Long”

Dearly Beloved

2008-09-24T12:13:00.004-04:00

I just directed a show. Not just any show, but the funniest show known to man. At least that's how audiences responded to it. Rioutous laughter. And I owe it all to my cast and crew.

That's the cast above. The show was an over-the-top comedy about a Gone with the Wind themed wedding gone awry, which explains why they're all dressed so funny. I have to hand it to my costume designer, Christy: She really took my ideas and ran with them. The cast looks phenomenal.

Each one of them brought something unique and different to the show. Not only were they all immensely talented, but they each understood comedic timing. We had fun shaping their performances during rehearsals. As is usual during any rehearsal process, everyone bonds and becomes a family. Unfortunately, some of those families turn out to be extremely dysfunctional. This cast was not. Everyone enjoyed each other's company and lots of laughs were to be found offstage as well as on.

Since I didn't update at all during the rehearsals, there's no point in going back now and telling funny stories. That would bore everyone. Nor do I want to boast about how successful we...alright, I'll boast. The show was a hit. Four sell-outs. One Sunday matinee at 60% capacity. Lots of positive comments. And one bat who decided he wanted to see the show, too. That little guy spent a portion of last Friday's performance swooping around the theatre. Our word-of-mouth was so good that even the wildlife of Zionsville wanted to see it. (Although that bat still owes me $10.)

Directing was fun, but man was it a huge challenge. I think I got about 85% of it right. Even watching the final performance there were things I wanted to change. I definitely needed to move them more. There were portions of the show where people just stood there and delivered lines. And while that worked the majority of the time - thank you, God, once again for my cast - it didn't work all of the time. It needed some polish. But that's just me, overanalyzing. I don't think people cared, for the most part.

Also, the show was comprised of several smaller scenes set in distinct places. (Psychic shop, beauty parlor, etc.) Since the stage is small and I needed to let the audience know where they were at any given time, I used a rear projection screen and provided backgrounds behind my actors. I thought it worked brilliantly, but everyone else hated it. Fuck 'em, I liked the screen and I thought it was fine. That's why I'm the director.

Opening night was easily one of the best experiences of my life. Hearing an audience bellow with laughter at the show as well as seeing their reactions really made all the hard work worth it. I don't think I've ever been prouder. Each theatrical production is like a jigsaw puzzle: A bunch of small pieces need to fit together to create a larger whole. If some of those pieces don't fit, then you get an awfully odd looking jigsaw puzzle. Our puzzle was one of those 1,000 piecers that was all the same color. Awfully difficult to put together, but a wonder to behold when it was done.

And, yes, I would love to direct again. There's a sequel to Dearly Beloved. Hmmm....

My Big-Ass DVD Project: Dumbo

2008-08-21T16:32:00.004-04:00

I'm back to watching all my movies in chronological order. I know, I tried this last summer and it didn't last long. I have no idea why I stopped, because it's damn fun.

My most recent viewing was 1941's Dumbo. Released the month before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dumbo was Disney's cheap and quick attempt to turn a profit after both Pinnochio and Fantasia underperformed at the box office. Trimmed to a brisk 64 minutes, the movie is pure Disney: talking animals, cute sidekicks, beautiful animation and memorable songs.

It's also incredibly mean-spirited to its main character. A few examples of what happens to Dumbo during the first 45 minutes of the film:

* His big ears earn him nothing but scorn and contempt for everyone, exluding his mother and a mouse.

* His mom is chained in a lonely boxcar after protecting her child, leaving him - an infant - to fend for himself.

* He is given a prominent spot in an elephant routine, but he trips over his big ears and ruins everything. In the process, he injures all the other elephants and is kicked out of their circle.

* He is rerouted to the clown department of the circus and is forced to perform a humiliating routine.

* He visits his mother but can't actually see her because her chains don't reach far enough. He has to settle for her trunk, which she uses to cradle and comfort him.

* He gets drunk and hallucinates. Granted, the drinking is a mistake, but still. He's a baby.

After the drunken escapades of a baby elephant, he wakes up in a tree and the whole "When I See an Elephant Fly" stuff begins. At that point the film stops beating up on Dumbo and starts beating up on all the other assholes that populate his world. Clowns, old lady elephants, ringmasters, and mean audience members all get their comeuppance for the way they treated a small elephant with large ears. And it's enjoyable to watch them squirm.

But, you know, the movie works despite the fact that for nearly the entire runtime it emotionally beats up a child. Dumbo is an incredibly realized character and is animated so brilliantly that you fall in love with him the first moment he appears on screen. There's a reason people flocked to this film in 1941, both before and after a national tragedy: Even though he goes through a lot of shit, Dumbo remains optimistic. That probably resonated with audience members dealing with Pearl Harbor and the imminent threat of WWII at the time. Plus you'd have to have a heart of stone to not melt at the sight of Dumbo. I mean, look how cute he is:

I must comment on three sequences in the film. The first is the "Baby Mine" sequence, or, as I like to call it, "The Most Depressing Scene in Cinema, Ever." This is when Dumbo goes to visit his imprisoned mother. I can't see this film without bawling. Just thinking about it chokes me up.

Then there's the trippy "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence. The Disney animators must have gotten ahold of some acid 25 years before anyone else, because I can't think of any other explanation for this sequence. Two words can only be used to describe it: Fucked. Up.

Finally, the famous "When I See an Elephant Fly" number has been wrongly labeled as racist. Yes, it skirts the edges of being politically incorrect, but there's really nothing to it. Yes, the black crowes do say things like, "I be done seen jus' 'bout anything," but it's not insulting at all.

The reason for this chronological film project is two-fold: to see everything in my collection again and to weed out the titles that I don't like/need anymore. Dumbo, even though it's probably scarred a lot of children over its 67 years of existence, is rightly considered an animation classic and will remain in my collection. I'll just prepare myself to be bummed out whenever I decide to watch it.

Plus it's only 64 minutes long. Not many movies have that short of a run time.

Buy the Sky and Sell the Sky

2008-07-04T14:23:00.005-04:00

Last month, almost to the day, I flew to Minneapolis/St. Paul to spend a few days with my buddy Andie. I did the same thing last summer, it was a blast, so we decided to do it again. This time I based my trip around a concert by one of my favorite bands of all-time, R.E.M.

I have three favorite bands: The Beatles, Talking Heads and R.E.M. Half of the Beatles are dead, so I'll never get to see them live unless someone digs up the corpses of John and George and puts them onstage with Paul and Ringo. Talking Heads will never reunite because David Byrne has no interest in playing the old stuff and he and Tina Weymouth aren't exactly on the best of terms. But R.E.M., they're still around. And kicking some major ass.

They're touring for their new album Accelerate. The album's been called a return-to-form, but really it's only being called that because they've found their balls again after a few albums filled with nothing but mid-tempo sludgefests. The disc really reminds me of their 1995 album Monster, another loud-rocking group of songs. That album holds a special place for me - queue it up and it basically transports me back in time to my final year at Ball State University - but I recognize that it's not their strongest album. And neither is Accelerate. Some songs kick ass, but most of them feel undercooked, like they needed to be worked on for a few more weeks before they were recorded. It's still better than their last effort, 2004's Around the Sun.

Anyway, the concert. R.E.M. has long ignored their very early material for reasons that are inexplicable to me. Those are the songs the die-hards want to hear, not "Losing My Religion" for the 3,000th time. And while in the past they have played a few older songs from their catalog, usually they only go as far back as 1986's Life's Rich Pageant.

Thankfully, that seems to be in the past.

This show was filled with older tracks, the highlight for me being "West of the Fields" from their first album Murmur. They also did "Shaking Through" from the same album, as well as other gems from 1987's Document and the aforementioned Pageant. And, yeah, they played "Losing My Religion" too, but it was surrounded by obscure tracks, so that's alright. Needless to say, I was in full-on R.E.M. geek mode. Here's the setlist, along with what albums the songs came from:

Living Well is the Best Revenge (2008, Accelerate)
These Days (1986, Life's Rich Pageant)
Disturbance at the Heron House (1987, Document)
What's the Frequency, Kenneth? (1995, Monster)
Hollow Man (2008, Accelerate)
Shaking Through (1983, Murmur)
Man-Sized Wreath (2008, Accelerate)
West of the Fields (1983, Murmur)
Accelerate (2008, Accelerate)
Ignoreland (1992, Automatic for the People)
Star 69 (1995, Monster)
Auctioneer (1985, Fables of the Reconstruction)
Houston (2008, Accelerate)
Electrolite (1996, New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
The One I Love (1987, Document)
Final Straw (2004, Around the Sun)
Sweetness Follows (1992, Automatic for the People)
Let Me In (1995, Monster)
Walk Unafraid (1998, Up)
Horse To Water (2008, Accelerate)
Bad Day (2003, In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003)
I'm Gonna DJ (2007, R.E.M. Live)

ENCORE:
Supernatural Superserious (2008, Accelerate)
Welcome to the Occupation (1987, Document)
Losing My Religion (1991, Out of Time)
Fall on Me (1986, Life's Rich Pageant)
Man on the Moon (1992, Automatic for the People)

As you can see, there were a lot of tracks from the new album. Couple this with all the album tracks played, and you can understand why someone would be disappointed that they didn't play more "hits." It's like that Springsteen show I saw last spring; for a super-fan like me it was awesome, but for a casual fan it kind of sucked. I'm not sure what side Andie rested on. She seemed to enjoy it, but she's not a huge fan. Andie, you'll have to chime in on that one.

Other notes:

* Johnny Marr, former lead guitarist for the Smiths and current guitarist for show opener Modest Mouse, joined them for "Fall on Me." That was kind of cool to see even if he didn't really add anything to the song.

* "I'm Gonna D.J." is a stupid song but damn is it fun.

* "Man-Sized Wreath" is my favorite track off the new album. I was happy it was paired with "West of the Fields."

* Michael Stipe was all over the place, jumping up and down, throwing himself around the stage, and spazzing out for the entire show. It was easily the most animated I've ever seen the guy.

* Two bands opened: The National and Modest Mouse. The National wasn't bad, although I have to admit that the only thing I remember about their performance a month later was the lead singer telling everyone that this was their first stadium show. Modest Mouse can basically be summed up by the following words:

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
(Bass drum. Bass drum.)
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
(Guitar solo.)
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"
(Bass drum and guitar solo.)

They were kind of annoying. And they didn't even play "Float On," the only song of theirs that everyone in attendance knew.

* "Ignoreland" sticks out like a sore thumb on Automatic for the People, but it fit right in with their current material. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that song.

* The crowd was pretty into it. At least we didn't sit down for the entire show like we did last year for The Police, which I saw in the same venue.

As for the rest of my trip to the Twin Cities, it was a great time. We went to the Walker Art Center, a huge modern art museum that included a CGI dolphin that would converse with us. (The dolphin is a movie buff. He knew what Short Circuit was.) I even took along my new camera to document the trip. However, we mainly just hung out, which is why I only have pictures of Andie's cats. At least they're cute pictures of Andie's cats.

We won't mention the bitch of a time I had getting home. Long story short: Cancellations in Chicago. Spent the night in O'Hare. Cancellations the next day. Hello, strangers, want to rent a car? OK? Let's drive home.

Fuck O'Hare International Airport.

Oh My My, Oh Hell Yes

2008-05-15T16:09:00.005-04:00

I watched the first half of the four hour Tom Petty documentary Runnin' Down a Dream last night. While it's way too long - four hours? on Tom Petty? really? - it's very well-done and pretty fascinating. Some quick thoughts on the first part:

* Am I the only one who thinks the song "Breakdown" captures the feel of late 70's perfectly? It's like I'm transported to a smoky, dark bar filled with skeevy people wearing butterfly collars and leisure suits every time I hear it. It also feels like it was recorded on black velvet.

* Before he was famous, Petty recorded a demo with his band in Florida and drove to L.A. to sell it. His method? He walked into record company offices and demanded they listen to his tape. That kid's got moxy!

* They keep talking about Tom Petty, sex symbol. Um, really?

* Petty fought the record companies not once, but twice. The first time he refused to give them the album that eventually became Damn the Torpedoes because he didn't like his contract. He got out of his deal by declaring bankruptcy which, according to law at the time, meant that all contracts he had signed previously were null and void. The second time was when the record company wanted to raise the price of albums to $9.98 starting with his Hard Promises record. He threatened to name the album $5.99 to confuse stores into selling it for even less. He won that battle as well. That Petty, he's a scrapper!

* They kept talking like his Mom died tragically when he was very young. But then they revealed she passed away when he was in his thirties, well after he was famous. Sad, yeah, but tragic? Don't think so.

* They have footage of Eddie Vedder singing with Petty. While I think Pearl Jam's output is hit and miss, I readily admit that Vedder is one hell of a singer. The fact that he's a big Crowded House fan is a plus as well.

* Early in his career Petty was playing at the side of the stage when the audience collectively reached up and pulled him off. They then pounced on him, trying to each have a Petty souvenir of their own to take home. By the time he surfaced his face was scratched and his shirt was torn. It took several bouncers to save him. His band kept playing throughout this scary moment. Way to have his back, Heartbreakers.

* Stevie Nicks pops up and says if she had been asked to leave Fleetwood Mac in 1976 to join the Heartbreakers, she would have. What a terrible match that would have made. Would Stevie twirl like a madwoman during "Refugee"? Would the Heartbreakers be able to play "Rhiannon" without laughing hysterically?

* They show a bit of the "Don't Come Around Here No More" video, but not enough.

* "Listen to Her Heart" is one hell of a song.

* No one comes right out and says it, but it's obvious that a lot of drugs were smoked/snorted/injected/etc. within the Heartbreaker circle in the 70's. Listening to him speak today should be warning enough for kids to stay sober for the rest of their days.

* Mike Campbell has dreadlocks now. The only rock star who has the ability to pull that off is Bob Marley, not a 55 year-old white man.

* Petty shattered his right hand in the early 80s by slamming it into a wall during a fit of anger. Apparently he snapped tendons, broke every bone, and basically turned his hand into jelly. I don't believe that he was able to do that kind of damage just hitting a wall in his house, unless the walls in his house are made of solid steel. No one's saying what really went down on that one.

I'm only two hours into it, which in Petty time means it's about 1987. I'm about to hear all about Full Moon Fever, the first Tom Petty album I ever bought. Only two more hours to go!

Stayin' Alive

2008-05-14T16:16:00.003-04:00

I thought it would be cute. I had no idea it would be so moving.

Young @ Heart tells the story of the Young at Heart Chorus, a group of 70-, 80- and 90-somethings who perform songs. Rock and roll songs. Punk rock and roll songs.

Now, they're not flailing about the stage and spitting on their audience, in classic punk style. They're simply singing the words and having a blast doing it. They have no idea where the song came from, nor do they care. They're just in love with performing.

You get to know the group throughout the film. There's feisty Eileen who reminded me a bit of my grandmother, taking a solo on "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" There's Lenny and Joe, two old codgers who nail "Life During Wartime" in the first rehearsal. And there's Bob, a man so plagued with ill-health but determined to do anything to sing in just one more show. He comes to rehearsal the morning after being released from the hospital, frail and sickly, but so in love with the idea of performing that he'd rather die than give it up. There are many, many more stories, all of them interesting.

I admit it: I expected the film to mock this chorus, to point and laugh at the silly old people singing songs they have no idea how to interpret. But the film never does that, although it does include some awful music videos that comes close to crossing that line. Instead it celebrates these men and women, proving that just because you're old doesn't mean you need to sit in your house all day, smoke cigarettes and curse those damn neighbor kids of yours. The point is made several times over that age is just a number. It's your mind and your heart that keep you young.

There's also real moments of sadness in the film that I didn't see coming. There is death in the movie, unexpected death that packs a whallop. And there's a performance of Coldplay's "Fix You" that will bring you to tears. I'm man enough to admit I was crying by the end of the song along with everyone else in the theater.

But it's not all tears. There's a lot of humor in the film, from the group struggling to learn Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" to Lenny's inability to nail the words to "I Feel Good." The chorus members all have great senses of humor and know when to laugh at themselves.

Enough of my rambling. See this movie!

The trailer:

The Motor City

2008-04-14T15:55:00.003-04:00

Last week I spent four days at a conference in Detroit. Downtown Detroit, to be exact. Not a place I was looking forward to visiting.

I would say the trip was basically a wash. There were good things about it and bad things about it. A quick rundown:

GOOD: The trip was a quick four-and-a-half hour drive up the Interstate.
BAD: There’s only so much small talk I can make with my co-worker.

GOOD: We stayed in a Marriott.
BAD: The Marriott was located in downtown Detroit.

GOOD: I was on the 21st floor.
BAD: The hotel had 70 stories, so I felt kind of scammed.

GOOD: For whatever reason, they gave me a handicapped room. The bathroom was huge!
BAD: No closet, just a small cabinet to put my clothes in.

GOOD: There’s a lot of space in a handicapped room.
BAD: I’m not handicapped. I had some guilt over that.

GOOD: Marriott is well-known for their large, comfortable beds. The reputation did not disappoint.
BAD: Seriously, did they really need to give me 30 pillows?

GOOD: The hotel was connected to a mall.
BAD: Because the hotel was also connected to two office skyscrapers, none of the mall merchants were open outside of regular business hours. Screw you, hotel guests!

GOOD: The mall had a food court.
BAD: The food court was only open during regular business hours.

GOOD: The hotel had a ritzy restaurant.
BAD: The library does not reimburse for meals.

GOOD: We had dinner at the ritzy restaurant the first night.
BAD: Goodbye, $35.

GOOD: The room had a 32” LCD TV in it.
BAD: Why is there nothing on television whenever I actually have time to watch it?

GOOD: I stumbled across a showing of Fargo in full-on HD.
BAD: I stumbled across a showing of Fargo in full-on HD with only twenty minutes left in the film.

GOOD: We discovered a Detroit PeopleMover outside the hotel. Just like Disney World!
BAD: Unlike Disney World, hopping on the PeopleMover meant you could be traveling toward a mugging or your death.

GOOD: Sunday night we went to Greektown to have dinner at a Greek restaurant. Unbeknownst to us, it was Greek Independence Day.
BAD: Everyone else in Detroit decided to have dinner at a Greek restaurant as well.

GOOD: Our waiter lit some cheese on fire. Opa!
BAD: Have you ever had cheese lit on fire inches from your head? Not a fun experience.

GOOD: The following night we went to Fishbone’s, a Cajun place.
BAD: The song “Skankin’ To The Beat” by Fishbone is still playing on a loop in my brain.

GOOD: One evening we went to a casino.
BAD: I miss Vegas.

GOOD: I won $30 on a slot machine called Dam Those Lumberjack Beavers.
BAD: I spent $20 to win that $30.

GOOD: We rode the PeopleMover all the way around Detroit to get back to the hotel.
BAD: Detroit is one hell of a depressing place.

GOOD: Met some cool new people. Some of whom might even be reading this blog right now.
BAD: Cool new people, please be aware that I’m not the most prolific blog writer.

GOOD: Lunch was free. Think catered wedding food.
BAD: Pine nut salads are not my thing.

GOOD: A big tire on the side of the Interstate.
BAD: A big tire on the side of the Interstate.

GOOD: Comp time.
BAD: Who the hell starts a conference on a Sunday?

We did no sightseeing in Detroit. Mainly because there’s nothing really to see in downtown Detroit, other than urban decay. That’s not exactly the kind of thing they put in the travel guides.

Would I go back? Hmmm...let me think about this one.

No.

Glory Days

2008-03-25T16:12:00.002-04:00

I suppose I should comment on the Bruce Springsteen concert I saw last Thursday night.

It was like seeing a Bruce Springsteen show from 1980. With the exception of “Dancing in the Dark” and the seven songs from his new album, all the rest of it predated the Born in the U.S.A. era. And we’re not talking about well-known songs from his early era, either; there was no “Thunder Road” or “Hungry Heart” in attendance that evening. It was all album cuts or rarities. In other words, for a Brucephile like myself, it was a bit of heaven. Really? “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”? I had no idea he even performed that song any more.

Unfortunately, my friend who went with me only owns Born in the U.S.A. and Bruce’s Greatest Hits. He didn’t know a song until “Badlands,” the final song before the encore. He hated the show while I loved it. Judging from the opinions I’ve read online after the show, he wasn’t the only one.

We had the best seats I think I’ve ever had for a concert. We were right next to the stage, twelve rows off the floor. We were basically on an even plane with the stage. I made eye contact with each person onstage that night and even received a nod from Steven Van Zandt when I waved to him. I have pictures of Bruce and the band on my phone and you can actually tell who you’re looking at. That’s how close we were.

Here’s what he played:

Night
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
Prove It All Night
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason To Believe
Rendezvous
Because the Night
She’s the One
Livin’ in the Future
The Promised Land
Spirit in the Night
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Devil’s Arcade
The Rising
Last To Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands

Backstreets
Kitty’s Back
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
American Land

During “Dancing in the Dark” Bruce pulled a little girl onstage to dance with him during the end of the song. (Think Courtney Cox in the video, only eleven years old.) They danced, he helped her back into the audience, but then he pulled her onstage to dance with him again. It was easily the best moment – and the cutest – of the show.

Also, the concert marked a brief return of organist Danny Federici. He hasn’t been on the tour due to a melanoma scare, but he looked great on the few songs he joined the band. Hopefully he’s on the way to a healthful and speedy recovery.

Bruce is the man.

(Note: The photo, which I found on Backstreets.com, is by Ron Valle. Great site there, by the way.)

Take Me To Your Leader, Grandpa

2008-02-29T16:21:00.002-05:00

Here's an article that claims old people like dogs and robots. Dogs I can understand. You'd have to have a heart made of steel not to melt at the site of a golden retriever puppy. But robots? Old people like robots? It makes me wonder what kind of robots they enjoy. They probably like the robots that clean for them, like Roomba or Rosie from The Jetsons, but I'm guessing they're not too fond of, say, the robots that work in an automotive factory. And they probably hate robots that travel through time in order to kill the man who will lead us in the war against them. Or maybe they like those robots because they're old and want to die before the revolution begins.

No, I haven't read the article yet. I just thought it was a funny headline and needed some precious commentary. Hey, you people were the ones begging for more blog content.

Ur Catz Make Me Chortle

2008-02-29T16:04:00.002-05:00

If you found the above picture funny, visit this site. I laughed a hell of a lot at some of the pictures and captions people came up with there. Who knew cats could be so entertaining?

No Oscars for Old Men

2008-02-26T16:54:00.003-05:00

The best moment of the Oscar telecast Sunday night was Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova winning Best Song for “Falling Slowly” from Once. After being cut off by the Orchestra Nazis, host Jon Stewart brought Irglova back onstage after a commercial break to say what she should have said before being rudely interrupted. Get used to seeing this clip: It’s guaranteed to make every Oscar montage from this day forward.

I love Once and wish it had gotten more recognition than it did. It truly is a magical film and these guys deserve their little gold guys. Here’s their performance of the song from Sunday night, introduced by everyone’s favorite leprechaun, Colin Ferrell:

The other wonderful moment from the telecast was Marion Cotillard winning Best Actress. As I wrote last week, her performance in La Vie En Rose was the only reason to see the film. Her joyful and honest acceptance speech made me like her even more.

Tilda Swinton wasn’t my favorite, but her speech was interesting. George Clooney should just get used to the fact that everytime he shows up at an award ceremony, someone’s going to mention Batman and Robin.

And, because he gave the performance of the year, here’s the clip everyone talks about from There Will Be Blood. Yes, I’m talking about the milkshake speech.

You wouldn’t know it from that clip, but the rest of his performance was phenomenal. That scene…he’s a bit off the grid in that one.

And there you have it, the 80th Academy Awards ceremony in a Youtube approved nutshell. If you watched all five clips, I just saved you three and a half hours.

Oh, and I guessed 13 of the 19 categories correctly, which means I scored a 68%. A D+, just like in high school!

There Will Be Oscars

2008-02-22T16:30:00.003-05:00

The Oscars are Sunday night and, since I’ve seen the majority of the films nominated, I figured I may as well weigh in with my opinions of who should and will win.

But, first, let me say that I pretty much despise the Oscars. They lost their relevancy for me in 1998, when they gave the award to Shakespeare in Love, a stupid comedy that disguised itself as important thanks to its English accents, over Saving Private Ryan. Ryan had its share of flaws – those bookends are God-awful – but it was an important film, one worthy of recognition. Since then, the Academy has favored giving awards to pretty women who make themselves look ugly (Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, etc.) and awarding the top prize to horrible films like Gladiator and Crash. Unfortunately, I can’t help but be swept up in the excitement of it all, so here are my picks. (Note: A * denoates a nominee I haven't seen.)

BEST PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Both Atonement and Michael Clayton were alright, nothing special but watchable. Juno was cute, and I laughed during it, but all I could think of when I left the theater was how hard some of that insufferable dialogue was trying to be hip. I loved There Will Be Blood, but it was more of a setpiece film than a cohesive whole. No Country for Old Men, though, was excellent from beginning to end. Plus it didn’t have a random milkshake speech near the end of it.

What Should Win: No Country for Old Men
What Will Win: No Country for Old Men

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

I wasn’t a fan of George Clooney, but, then again, I’m not a fan of Clooney in general. Did anyone really believe he was a desperate lawyer at the end of his rope? He just came across as too slick for the character. Johnny Depp was fine, but the latter part of his performance was him scowling while slicing people's throats. Tommy Lee Jones was alright, but I thought his work in No Country for Old Men was more deserving of a nomination. Viggo Mortensen was good, but he was more of a supporting role than a major one. That leaves Daniel Day-Lewis, who was phenomenal in There Will Be Blood. Some have complained that he was overacting, but I thought his performance was suitably over-the-top. (Unlike a few years ago, when he was nominated for basically chewing the scenery of Gangs of New York.) It’s a memorable performance, and one that will more than likely win.

Who Should Win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Who Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age*
Julie Christie, Away from Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

In a just world, Marion Cotillard would walk away with this award. La Vie En Rose wasn’t very good, but her performance was astonishing. Poor Laura Linney will be another bridesmaid. The Academy can keep nominating her, but they’ll never make up for giving the award in 2000 to Julia Roberts over Linney's phenomenal work in You Can Count on Me. Julie Christie will probably take the award for staring into space. Away from Her was a confused film that didn’t know whose story to concentrate on, but it’s a quiet film about a sensitive topic (Alzheimer’s), so it’s pretty much a shoo-in. Plus Christie is Hollywood royalty and hasn’t won one of these things in 40+ years.

Who Should Win: Marion Cotillard
Who Will Win: Julie Christie

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford*
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Like the Best Actor race, this one is all sewn up. Javier Bardem will deservedly take home the prize for his chilling performance in No Country. Poor Hal Holbrook was misdirected in Into the Wild and came across as more creepy than caring. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the only reason to see Charlie Wilson’s War, but he was more effective in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. And Tom Wilkinson was fine in Michael Clayton but he didn’t blow me away. It’s all for naught, though; Bardem will walk away with the gold.

Who Should Win: Javier Bardem
Who Will Win: Javier Bardem

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There*
Ruby Dee, American Gangster*
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Of the three nominees I’ve seen, Amy Ryan was easily the best of the bunch. While Gone Baby Gone was uneven, she was easily the main reason to see it. I didn’t care for Saoirse Ronan that much. Like the film itself, she seemed to keep her emotions in check instead of letting them messily spill forward. And Tilda Swinton didn’t have much to do in Michael Clayton besides sweat and work out on a treadmill. However, unlike the other categories, there isn’t a sure bet here. Early predictions were for Cate Blanchett, but she’s already won an Oscar for playing a famous person, so I don’t think she’ll win for doing it again. Ronan’s too young and Swinton and Ryan aren’t very well-known, which hurts them. I think this will be another instance of an unofficial Lifetime Achievement Award being given out, this time to Ruby Dee. I’ve heard she’s fine in American Gangster, but it's just a typical Ruby Dee performance. However, she’s never won an Oscar before and the Academy loves to reward legends.

Who Should Win: Amy Ryan
Who Will Win: Ruby Dee

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly*

First off, let me complain that a crap movie like The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie will play in this area for months while something unique and interesting like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly only plays for a week. At least give me two weeks to see it, you bastards! From what I heard, Schnabel did an excellent job helming what many called an unfilmable script. Not that I would know because computer animated vegetables were occupying its theatre and I didn’t get a chance to see it. You can rule out Tony Gilroy and Jason Reitman right away. Gilroy directed a decent film, but there’s nothing to distinguish it from your typical John Grisham blockbuster. And Reitman handled Juno well, but he allowed a bit too much quirk to get through. (The hamburger phone should have disappeared.) That leaves the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson to duke it out. The Coens will probably take the award, which I’m totally fine with. They’ve made nothing but interesting films since they started in the mid-80’s, and they deserve the recognition not only for No Country but for their entire body of excellent work. But Paul Thomas Anderson did a magnificent job with There Will Be Blood, and my vote goes to him.

Who Should Win: Paul Thomas Anderson
Who Will Win: Joel and Ethan Coen

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Brad Bird, Ratatouille
Diablo Cody, Juno
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl*

I have to be honest: Of the four nominees I’ve seen in this category, there was something in each of them that really bothered me. In Ratatouille, I hated the way the rat was able to use the human to cook food by pulling on the cook’s hair to control his hands. It was a terrible cheat. Juno was full of horribly unnatural dialogue that seemed to be saying, “Look! I can make a lot of dumb cultural references! Pay attention to me!!!!!” Michael Clayton was a by-the-numbers legal thriller with nothing to distinguish itself from all the other legal thrillers out there. And The Savages had some silly transitions between the acts, like the curling of the toes. (You know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen it.) The one nominee I haven’t seen yet, Lars and the Real Girl, is about a man who claims a blow-up doll is his girlfriend. So this is a strange category for me. I would have to say that Diablo Cody has the best screenplay of the lot, even though I wanted to tell her to shut her gob every once in awhile. She’s easily going to win as well.

Who Should Win: Diablo Cody
Who Will Win: Diablo Cody

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Christopher Hampton, Atonement
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly*
Sarah Polley, Away from Her

Once again, it’s a race between No Country and Blood. While I liked Blood and it’s story structure, the dialogue is pretty awkward at times. (“I….DRINK…..YOUR…..MILKSHAKE!!!!!”) Atonement was more of a directorial achievement than a written one, so it’s out. And Away from Her was too bland. Again, those damn vegetables barred me from seeing Diving Bell, so I have no idea what it’s screenplay is like. That leaves No Country, which will more than likely win. It gets my vote as well. Some of that dialogue is extremely memorable, and not in a milkshake kind of way. Right, friend-o?

Who Should Win: Joel and Ethan Coen
Who Will Win: Joel and Ethan Coen

Those are the major categories. For historical sake, here are the rest of my pics. Again, I only choose between films I’ve seen, since I don't like to consider something I haven't seen. If a category is missing, that means I haven't seen any of the nominees. Here goes:

BEST ANIMATED FILM – Ratatouille
BEST ART DIRECTION – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – There Will Be Blood
BEST COSTUME DESIGN – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
BEST DOCUMENTARY – Sicko
BEST FILM EDITING – No Country for Old Men
BEST MAKEUP – La Vie En Rose
BEST MUSIC (SCORE) – Atonement
BEST MUSIC (SONG) – “Falling Slowly”, Once
BEST SOUND EDITING – There Will Be Blood
BEST SOUND MIXING – The Bourne Ultimatum

Bullshit

2007-12-17T23:31:00.000-05:00

While at the gym tonight I watched the CBS Evening News. That newscast is still trying to fix the changes they made when Katie Couric took over as anchor, and, judging by tonight's episode, they still have a way to go. I was baffled by what I was watching.

Tonight they spent ten minutes asking each Presidential candidate about anger. Specifically, how they react when they're upset and when they were last angry. As you could probably guess, the answers were either political ("I was angry when George Bush sent us to war!"), silly ("I was made at the dog when she woke me up in the middle of the night.") or non-committal ("Angry? Oh, gee, I never get angry. It's been years, I tell you years!"). In other words, every single answer was a lie.

I think it was Mike Huckabee who almost trapped himself by nearly admitting that he flips people off when driving, but he pulled back on that answer at the last minute. Read between the lines of his interview and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Mr. Huckabee's middle finger gets a workout every time he's behind the wheel.

I wish they had been honest. It would have been great if Hilary Clinton had said, "The last time I was angry when I discovered Bill was cheating on me again." Or if someone else had said, "I got pissed at some lady at Starbucks for not putting enough foam in my latte." Or if Huckabee had admitted that he likes to tell people to fuck off when he's driving. Instead it was a double dose of crap. The first dose was their answers, and the second was the fact that a major network newscast was spending a third of their broadcast time on it. And politicans wonder why we hate both them and the media.

Snow Day

2007-12-16T23:48:00.001-05:00

I woke up to 4-6 inches of snow covering the outside world, so I pretty much did nothing today. Watched some TV, took a nap and basically vegged. Oh, sure, the roads were fine by mid-afternoon, but that didn't mean I was going anywhere. It was like an old-school snow day. All that was missing was the early morning discovery of school being cancelled.

Since I have nothing new to report, please allow me to sing the praises of Bagel Bites. Oh, Bagel Bites, how I love you so. In a match to the death between you and Pizza Rolls, you would win hands down. Plus, you're only like 400 calories for an entire box, which is cool for the old diet. Don't ever change, Bagel Bites. You're fine just the way you are.

Can you tell what I had for dinner?

The Five: Genesis Videos

2007-12-15T23:30:00.001-05:00

I recently bought the box set Genesis: 1983-1998, a set which contained remastered versions of the albums Genesis, Invisible Touch, We Can't Dance and Calling All Stations. The great part about this set is that each album comes with a retrospecitve DVD, one that highlights videos, concerts, interviews and documentaries from each disc. It's a great set and sheds a lot of light on both their music-making process as well as provides interesting glimpses into the Genesis vaults.

At this time, I need to mention how wonderful Genesis videos are. Being English with extremely dry senses of humor, the band had a bit of fun with a lot of these tracks. Need proof? Here are the five greatest Genesis videos of all-time.

Have you ever wanted to see the band posing as a group of illegal Mexican immigrants? Well, look no further than the clip from 1983's "Illegal Alien."

"Land of Confusion" is their best video, but it's also their oddest. It's all puppets, celebrity caricature puppets from a popular British television show called Spitting Image. Some of these "celebrities" have since faded into obscurity, so every once in awhile you see a puppet and you have no idea who it is. The Phil Collins puppet is easily the best.

"I Can't Dance" is famous for the Genesis walk. But I love it for the ending, where Phil goes all Michael Jackson, dancing like a madman, only to be carried away in disgust by the other two guys. The rest of the video's not bad, either.

Here are Phil, Tony and Mike as really bad televangelists in the clip for "Jesus He Knows Me." Phil is a little too annoying here, but, really, when has Phil Collins not been annoying?

This isn't really an official video, but it's a clip I found on Youtube of one of my favorite Genesis songs ever, "Who Dunnit?" from 1981's Abacab album. I know of only two other people in the world who like this song, so don't say you haven't been warned.

The person who created Youtube deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Or a medal of some kind.

R.I.P. Clearwater

2007-12-14T23:56:00.001-05:00

A new theatre opened in town today, the AMC Castleton Square 14. It sounds like your typical modern-day movie palace, all stadium seating and digital projection and such. It's close, but there's nothing playing there right now that I want to see. Plus it's at Castleton Square Mall, which I'm avoiding until at least December 26.

Sadly, the opening of this theatre killed another: AMC Clearwater Crossing. Clearwater was one of my four main theatres, and even though I didn't visit it often, I'm sad to see it go. Going there was like taking a step back in time to 1993, before each new cinema felt the same. The place had a personality, something that can't be said for the giant warehouses that show movies these days. Yes, there was no stadium seating and the theatres weren't very large, but the place had style. I was hoping it would stay around as a discount theatre, but it's not to be.

Some film memories from Clearwater:

1993 - Seeing Schindler's List there on a Saturday night soon after the place opened. Leaving the theatre drained of all emotion.

1994 - Escaping a hot July afternoon, my friend Colleen and I saw Forrest Gump there on a whim. While it's not my favorite film, it at least tried something epic. Plus it had some killer comedic throw-away bits. ("Always wear clean socks!")

1996 - Driving through a freak snowstorm to see The People Vs. Larry Flynt. Thinking that the place would be deserted, we were shocked to find it packed. Nothing will stop the people of Indianapolis from getting to Clearwater! Well, in 1996, anyway.

1997 - One of my favorite movie moments ever: Seeing Boogie Nights opening night and being totally enthralled by the film. I loved every single frame of that movie. Still do.

1998 - Entering a theatre with friends, all of us excited to see The Avengers because it had a kick-ass trailer. Two hours later, leaving the theatre severly disappointed. But at least we learned a valuable lesson about not trusting movie trailers.

1998 - Bumping into a former Charles Schwab co-worker in the ticket line, only to turn around after I had bought my ticket to discover this person had vanished. I haven't seen him since. Spooky.

2003 - Catching a look at the poster of Open Water as I entered the theatre, a poster that had been modified to appear as if it had been bitten by a shark. "Wow," I thought, "this movie is going to be exciting!" I thought wrong.

2004 - Seeing The Incredibles after work and loving every minute of it.

2006 - Watching as a 12 person audience decreases to two during a showing of Borat. Ah, Indiana. How I love your easily offended citizens.

2007 - Catching a late showing of The Simpsons Movie after an On Golden Pond rehearsal. At the time I had no idea this would be the last film I would see there. If I had known that, I might have taken a longer look around instead of just rushing into the theatre.

Hopefully they have some plans for the building, because I'd hate to see it rotting like the former video-arcade-for-adults Block Party building across the street. Maybe I should buy it and open up that discount theatre. God knows this side of town needs one...

White

2007-12-05T20:52:00.000-05:00

There was 4 inches of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning. I know it doesn't beat the total my sister had recently in Buffalo - where it's all snow, all the time - but it still pissed me off. For the record, I love the look of snow. Everything's all pretty and white and peaceful after a snowfall. Even something ugly, like my backyard garden, attains a pure beauty after a snowfall. The entire world becomes worthy of a Kodak moment.

Except for the roads. In Hamilton County no one believes in plowing. Oh, sure, the trucks are out but they're not really doing anything. I don't know if this is a budgetary problem or what, like they can afford the plow blades but can't use them because they don't have the money to repair them if they break, but it's awfully annoying to be stuck in rush hour traffic sitting next to a big truck that isn't helping at all. Yeah, I'll cut them some slack because it's rush hour, but still. When I woke up this morning at 5:45 to go to the gym, the snow was already on the ground. Do it before rush hour, people!

Yes, I'm getting up early to work out now. I've found that my body responds to that better than going after work. Because the last thing I want to do is walk on a treadmill to nowhere after working all day. But doing that first thing in the morning is fine with my body. Of course, I have to get up when it's still dark out, but that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

No, I didn't work out this morning. I knew the roads would be a disaster, so I went back to bed.

Tonight I watched an old R.E.M. concert video, Road Movie, filmed during the 1995 Monster tour. Many people hate Monster. I, however, love it. Some of that is nostalgia - that album was the soundtrack for the latter part of my collegiate career - and some of that is because the album kicks ass. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" "Crush with Eyeliner". "I Took Your Name". "Bang and Blame". "Star 69". Those are just a few of the stellar songs from that album.

Of course, Monster is nowhere near as good as their next effort, 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi. That album has the distinction of being the soundtrack to the first six months of working my first "real" job after college. In other words, listening to that album makes me depressed. (Even though it kicks ass. Seriously, you can't go wrong with "Binky the Doormat.")

Let's All Go To The Movies

2007-11-28T22:59:00.000-05:00

I just finished - literally, about five minutes ago - a book called A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey. It was written by Kevin Murphy, a performer and writer on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. (He was Tom Servo.) The premise was simple: Every day of 2001, Murphy went to a theater and saw a movie. Every single day. No exceptions.

The book is not a diary. It is not a review book of every movie he saw. Rather, it's a book about going to the movies, every wonderful and horrible aspect of it. Each week gets its own chapter, and each chapter has its own theme. For example, one week he decided to live on nothing but concession food. Another week he spent seeing second-run films in discount theaters. In the summer he took a weeklong road trip across the country and saw films at drive-ins. He spent three weeks in Australia, seeing films in a different country. (And also visiting the world's smallest commercial theater, run out of a man's house.) He went to the Cannes film festival. He snuck a Thanksgiving dinner into a showing of Monsters, Inc.

But the book's not limited to themed exercises, either. He also tackles some issues that pertain to seeing movies but aren't there in the cinema waiting for you when you buy a ticket. There's a chapter on critics, and what makes a good one and a bad one. There's a chapter on how fans can suck the life out of films instead of enjoying them for what they are. (Two of the movies released in 2001 that Murphy saw had huge fanbases, the first Harry Potter film and the first Lord of the Rings film.) There's a chapter on silent movies and theaters that still show them. And so on.

I enjoyed the book even more because I knew the theaters he was writing about. Murphy lives in Minneapolis and a lot of the theaters he visited I either drove by or heard about during my visit there this summer. (The two Landmark cinemas, for example, and the Mall of America theaters are both extensively covered in this book.) It made the book a more personable read for me, and I'm sure it would do the same for, say, the readers of this blog who actually live in Minneapolis.

I love going to the movies. I have since the day my mother took me to see Peter Pan at some theater in Lafayette when I was a little kid. I love the excitement of pulling up outside a theater, knowing that in a few minutes you're going to see something you've never seen before. The smell of popcorn in the lobby. The plush seats. Walking into a theater and seeing a group of strangers, all of whom will share in this experience together and then go their separate ways when its done, never to see each other again. The trailers before the show starts. The posters in the lobby. Hell, I don't even mind the advertisements. It all makes it fun and I love every minute of it. I have since 1977 and will probably continue to do so until the day I die.

However, I can't stand popcorn. I hate popcorn. It's like eating puffs of air that leave annoying remnants in your teeth that you're still spitting out hours later. Theaters must hate me since I never buy any concessions.

I picked up this book thinking it would be nothing more than a silly gimmick repeated over and over again. Instead I found a funny, interesting book that reminded me why I love going to the movies. If your passion for film runs as deep as mine - and you know who you are - read this book soon. You won't regret it.

Triptoflechtamachtisan

2007-11-24T23:10:00.000-05:00

I promise - promise - to never write about Mexican food on this blog ever again. Why? Because the previous two times I've written about Mexican food I have not updated this thing for months. So no more Mexican talk.

Just got back from Buffalo, NY, where I spent Thanksgiving with my sister and her family. We ate out for the big meal. It's easier for everyone that way. No mess, no arguments over who cleans up the dishes, no dogs invading the house and eating the turkey while you sit there unsuspectingly reading the paper. (Wait, that's Christmas.) They had some interesting food choices for us, like stuffed pasta shells or pork rolls with cabbage. In other words, stuff I like but never eat. Needless to say, I didn't have any turkey this year. But, seeing as how I'm not a fan of warm turkey, I wasn't upset.

The next day Val and I went shopping. Black Friday. It wasn't that bad, although Target was full of idiots. Fourteen registers were open and everyone was trying to go to the two closest. And of course they all had carts, which made it even more painful. I'm hoping everyone was still loaded on triptoflechtamachtisan, or whatever that chemical that turkey creates is called, and not incredibly stupid.

Val and I had lunch with Kristoff at Moe's on Black Friday and...

...shit! More Mexican food talk. I can't curse the blog. Sorry, no more talk of Mexican food now.

(Although I have to say that Moe's new Chicken Ranch Burrito is like their now-discontinued Chicken Ranch Quesidilla, only not melted. I prefer it melted.)

I "borrowed" a wireless Internet connection from one of Val's neighbors and found this great website that allows you to play old Nintendo games. I've been rocking the Super Mario 3 since Wednesday night. And I suck just as much at it as I did in 1989.

Today was a 9 1/2 hour car ride home. I don't think I need to say anything more about that.

I swear to God I won't go another few months without updating.

Que?

2007-10-06T23:28:00.000-04:00

I had dinner tonight with some friends at Cancun, a local Mexican restaurant, before we went to see a show. I ordered the Cancun Burrito, a "customer favorite" as promised on the menu. The rest of the group ordered your typical Mexican dishes: enchilladas, soft tacos, fajitas, etc. When we all got our food, I looked at everyone's entree and made an interesting discovery: every meal was pretty much the same thing.

You take some meat. You wrap it in a tortilla. You drizzle some red sauce on top. You add generous side portions of rice and refried beans. And that's pretty much describes how you would prepare every entree at Cancun Mexican Restaurant. Oh, sure, the soft taco was served open and without the sauce, but it's still the same idea. It kind of surprised me when they brought the food to the table and actually asked us who had what items. Because it really didn't matter.

Here's the kicker: all these items were priced differently. I love Mexican food, but it's kind of a scam. Love the chips and salsa, though.

The show we saw was The Dining Room at the Belfry in Noblesville. It was funny, a series of vignettes set in different dining rooms of wealthy people. I say "wealthy people" because every skit had a maid or a cook or a servant that would pop in, make some jokes, and leave. For a play that advertises the power of evoking everyone's favorite dining room memories, it sure didn't do that for me. Because I never had a maid or a cook or a servant in the various dining rooms of my past.

And what is a favorite dining room memory, anyway? Like the play said - repeatedly - no one really uses the dining room for anything other than Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Well, to be honest, I do have a favorite dining room memory. That would be when my parent's dog was a puppy and she decided that the best way to get outside was to dig a hole beneath the dining room table. Apparently she destroyed the carpet before realizing that this was not possible. I could pretty much bet that that incident doesn't qualify as either of my parent's favorite dining room memory, but it takes the cake for me.

Long Time Coming

2007-10-04T23:28:00.000-04:00

Hey there, everyone. It's been...awhile. Three months, easily the longest I've gone without updating this thing. I've been busy. A standard excuse, yes, but still a valid one.

What's new? Not much. Highlights:

On Golden Pond rehearsed, opened and closed all since my last post. It was a good show, at least that's what they tell me. Between rehearsals and performances I saw it so many times that I kind of lost my objectivity. Assistant directing was a good time, although I could do without fixing some of the backstage drama. Actors.

I'm subbing for a show in Hillsboro called It Ain't OK at the OK Corral. Yeah, I know. They needed my help and I agreed to do it since I had the time. Hey, I get to make the funny, which is what I do best.

Follies is in full swing. I'm playing a band director. Who sings "Brown Eyed Girl". Come see that one.

I saw Genesis in Columbus, OH, a few weeks ago. The show wasn't bad, a great mix of their eclectic stuff and pop stuff. Nothing from Abacab, though, which pissed me off. No "Who Dunnit?" or "Dodo/Lurker"? Bastards. My favorite moment from the show was "Follow You, Follow Me." Nowhere near my favorite Genesis song, but for some reason it struck a chord with me that evening. Phil was on drums, the song was nicely done, and the visuals were awesome. Below is a performance of the song from Dusseldorf.

Other than that, it's been pretty quiet. The goal is to start updating this thing more frequently, so I beg my three readers to stop back soon. Well, give me a week. Or a month. Only time will tell, right?

Welcome To Moe's!

2007-07-06T22:50:00.000-04:00

I used to get a Joey Bag of Donuts burrito at Moe's Southwestern Grill, but it has now been replaced with a new favorite: the Chicken Ranch Quesadilla. Sure, it doesn't have a funny name like the rest of Moe's selections, but it's damn tasty. Chicken + Bacon + Cheese + Ranch Dressing = Mmmmmmmm. Or a grilled heart attack waiting to happen.

Moe's in Carmel is a strange place. One of the job requirements must be mandatory tattoos. I've never seen so many tattooed arms in my life, and remember, I've spent a lot of time in Hillsboro. Piercings are not mandatory, but, like Office Space flair, greatly encouraged. It's like a biker bar converted to a chain restaurant and no one bothered to fire the employees. That said, they're probably the friendliest bunch of fast food workers in Carmel. Plus, the Chicken Ranch Quesadilla is damn good.

I like Moe's because they give you chips with your order. Plus their signature salsa is called "El Guapo's Infamous Salsa". Any restaurant that openly embraces The Three Amigos is alright by me.

Did I mention the Chicken Ranch Quesadilla? Because it's good, in case I haven't.

Every Blog You Take

2007-07-05T23:01:00.000-04:00

I can cross another band off my list: I saw The Police at the Excel Energy Center in St. Paul Tuesday night. I was too young to catch them the first time around - although I owned (and still own) a copy of Synchronicity on vinyl - and decided they were worth traveling to see since, of course, they weren't coming to Indianapolis. So I rang up my friend Andie who lives in Minneapolis and we made plans to see the show. Yes, tickets were expensive, but it was worth it. The setlist:

Message in a Bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking on the Moon
Voices Inside My Head
When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around
Don't Stand So Close To Me
Driven To Tears
The Bed's Too Big Without You
Truth Hits Everybody
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Walking In Your Footsteps
Can't Stand Losing You

Roxanne

King of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take

Next To You

As you can see, it was heavy on the hits, but that's to be expected since it's a reunion arena tour. They didn't merely crank out robotic versions of the originals, though; a lot of the songs were arranged differently and reflected how each musician had grown since 1984. While it was nice that they put some effort into it, I do wish they had been at least a little faithful to the original arrangements on some of the tracks. "Synchronicity II", one of their hardest songs, should have been stellar, but an odd intro derailed it for a bit. And songs like "Truth Hits Everybody" and "So Lonely" should crank tempo-wise, but instead they lacked the punk edge they needed to thrive. Now, to be fair, the band might have been reacting to the lame crowd, which decided sit through the entire show rather than get up and enjoy themselves. How can you watch a Police show sitting on your ass?

Andie pointed out something I loved: It was just the three of them onstage, no additional musicians or singers added to beef up the sound. Since their last tour was bloated to the extreme, it was great to see them stripped back down to their basic lineup. This could have been a disaster, since both Stuart Copeland and Andy Summers haven't exactly been in the public eye for the past twenty years. And Sting, whose last album was composed and performed on a lute, doesn't exactly play rock and roll anymore. But not only has everyone kept their chops, they've improved them. Copeland's bitching about their sloppiness in the press aside, I found them to be a tight, cohesive unit.

I also loved Sting's bass. It was beat to hell and looked like it had been with him since 1974. Like the men onstage, it had seen a lot and was there to celebrate it all.

Next concert: Old 97's, The Vogue, Next Monday.

Fight The Power

2007-06-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

OK, so what if it's dated? And so what if it lurches from scene to scene, never really concentrating on one aspect of its story successfully? And so what if it has stilted dialogue and bizarre performances? The Public Enemy is the original gangster film. It laid the foundation for all the gangster movies to follow. Without The Public Enemy, Martin Scorsese wouldn't even have a career. (A fact he acknowledges in the making-of documentary on the DVD.)

Watching it again, I was struck by the direction of the film. There are long tracking shots, not really a common practice in 1931. The compositions are beautiful, and the way director William Wellman suggests violence is astounding. That picture above is the only time you see someone killed onscreen. The rest of the time you only hear what's going on, allowing your imagination to run wild.

The movie made a star of James Cagney. He turns in a great performance, one that's so good that people often thought he was this guy offscreen as well. Cagney, a trained Broadway singer and dancer, knew what his bread-and-butter was, and mainly played variations on this role for the rest of his career, save for a stop or two into musicals. (See Yankee Doodle Dandy. Or, better yet, don't. That film is dreadful.)

The film is best known for its grapefruit scene. Cagney, listening to his girlfriend nag him about not being around, gets fed up with her talk and smashes a grapefuit in her face. The bit comes out of nowhere and Wellman wisely doesn't linger on it. By the time you register what's happened, the movie's moved on to another scene.

The film has its problems, chief among them Beryl Mercer as Cagney's mother. She's so horrible that she nearly ruins the film. It's a strange train-wreck of a performance. She plays the character so naively and childlike that you wonder how the character even managed to have children, let alone raise them. I understand what the script was getting at - that single parents have a tough time keeping their kids out of trouble - but just because she was the only one raising them didn't mean she needed to be portrayed as slow and dim-witted. I kept wishing Cagney would off her mid-film.

My favorite part of the film is the horrific final shot. Can't say too much about it for fear of giving away the plot, but you can probably guess what it involves. It's one of the more realistic and gruesome ends to a gangster film I've ever seen.

And this is not the movie where Cagney says, "Top of the world, ma!" That's White Heat, which I've never seen.

Die Lichte Das Grosstadt*

2007-06-22T23:52:00.000-04:00

This week, the American Film Institute revised their list of the top 100 movies of all-time. The list, first published in 1997, was updated to include any films released in the past ten years. And while there were some new films added, the most newsworthy event of this new compilation was how some titles changed their positions.

Take City Lights. On the original list, it was number 76. But in the past ten years, its stature must have grown, because on the new list it vaulted all the way to number 11.

I like the film, don't get me wrong. It's cute and it has extrememly funny moments. The boxing scene includes some of the funniest moments in film history. And the famous final scene is touching. But the eleventh best film of all time? I don't think so.

Look, it sounds like I hated City Lights. I didn't. When I watched it tonight, I was never bored and I never cringed at anything I saw. Chaplin's critics call him too maudlin, but I think that's what makes his movies timeless. The emotion is so basic that we can all relate. Also, his use of sound in this film was ingenious. Not wanting to give the Little Tramp a voice since the character had never spoken before, Chaplin used only sound effects and music to convey his story. He took a gamble that the film would alienate audiences at the time since all anyone wanted to see were talking pictures, but he didn't, and the movie's obviously gone on to become the eleventh best film of all-time.

(To be honest, I hate lists like these. They're just shallow attempts at nostalgia, and more often than not they fail miserably because everyone concentrates on the negative aspects - what was left off, what was kept on - than the positive ones. Still, if it inspires some kid who doesn't like black and white silent movies to give City Lights or The Gold Rush a look, they can't be all bad.)

*The title of this post is the official German title of City Lights. The DVD includes a German trailer, one of the most bizzare things I've ever seen. It's nothing but short clips of the movie underneath an announcer screaming gibberish like "Morgan! Heute! Gestern!" ("This Morning! Today! Yesterday!") What time periods have to do with City Lights, I have no idea.

Hooper's Pizzeria

2007-06-21T22:38:00.000-04:00

Found this on Youtube today. It's a mash-up of Spike Lee's classic Do the Right Thing and the beloved children's program Sesame Street, using the old Fisher Price set I owned when I was a kid. (Although I must have had the basic version of the set, because there are a lot more Muppets in this skit than I ever had.) It gets a little lame towards the end, but the first half made me laugh hysterically.

Mr. Hooper must be spinning in his grave.

Elvis Was a Cajun

2007-06-19T22:49:00.000-04:00

See Once. It's been dubbed an "art house musical" by its director, which is a pretty apt description of the film. A busker (street musician) meets a Czech woman on the streets of Dublin, they form a friendship and begin collaborating on music. It's a nice meditation on how music can bring people together and inspire their lives. It's nice to see two characters - a man and a woman - bond without the film trying to cram a romance between them down our throats. The movie is a romance, just not a typical one. It reminded me a lot of Lost in Translation, only with better music and without the self-importance that that film had. (And the characters are roughly the same age, which eliminated the creepiness factor of that film.)

But here's the best part: The lead actor was one of the musicians in The Commitments. He was one of the three members of And And And. Guitar player. Once has a lot in common with The Commitments, and not just its setting. No soul music in Once, though.

Sure, I could bitch about the mid-section of the film, especially a seriously cheesy moment when a character goes to a drug store and breaks into song on her way home. (It was the only moment in the film that didn't feel real.) Or I could complain about the music which, while good, still felt like leftover Damien Rice tracks. And there's a silly section with a motorbike that should have been rewritten. But those are minor problems. I highly recommend this movie. See it if you get a chance.

"Elvis was a cajun, he had a cajun heart..."

"That's fuckin' blasphomy!"

Brand New Key

2007-06-18T22:36:00.000-04:00

Check out the new toy. Yep, my entry into the 21st century is now complete. A few years back I finally broke down and bought a cell phone and now, as of today, I own a laptop. I can now access the Interenet pretty much wherever and whenever I want to. Wires are for losers!

Of course, my PC had to die a miserable Unmountable Boot Error death in order for me to buy a new laptop, but those are just small details. Sure, I could have rebuilt the PC, but I'm about to assistant direct a show - as well as direct a show next spring - so my excuse was that I could use a new laptop for notes and stuff. This will be a good thing, since I lost what little writing ability I had around 1996 when I started using computers all the damn time.

This is my first experience with Windows Vista. It's pretty cool, a bit mac-y, but easy to use. It sure does love its pop-up windows telling me all sorts of info, that's for sure. Those will all be disabled soon.

And that picture above is the cleanest you'll ever see my desk. Take a note of it.

The Old Man

2007-06-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

Father's Day. Spent the day at Mom and Dad's doing Father's Day type stuff, like playing many games of Ping Pong, all of which my father easily won. (Or did I let him win, since it was his big day? I will never tell.) We also conned my mother into making homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner. My mother's secret ingredient for that dish? Cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. She put three pounds of the stuff into the mix, and even then she said she "didn't have enough." If I die of clogged arteries tomorrow, at least you will all know I died a happy man.

In other news, it is never going to rain again. I'd like to thank Mother Nature for helping me with my goal of keeping up the yardwork this summer. It's very easy when everything has died.

The Beginning of a Long Project

2007-06-16T22:31:00.001-04:00

After a steady diet of mostly modern garbage - seriously, how many pointless sequels can be released in one summer? - I've decided to go back into film history and watch some older titles. (Basically, I took my DVD owned list and my DVD wish list, mashed 'em together and sorted them by year. The plan is to watch them all chronologically, either renting or buying the ones I don't already have. We'll see how far I get.) First up was 1925's The Gold Rush, one of Charlie Chaplin's many masterpieces.

There is seriously very little wrong with this film. The narrative is pretty tight, the acting is hilarious, and nearly every scene is a classic. There's the rolls-as-shoes bit. The eating-a-shoe bit. The house-on-the-edge-of-the-cliff bit. But they all pale in comparison to my favorite moment of the movie, the starving-man-hallucinates-and-thinks-his-friend-is-a-chicken bit. Chaplin is easily the screen's best chicken. Funny stuff.

I have about three silent films on my list, because a) I haven't seen many and b) a lot of silent movies have long since been destroyed by film disintegration. I have seen some Buster Keaton stuff, which I enjoyed but not enough to watch again. Keaton's movies, while clever, have never been nothing more than technically funny films. They're executed brilliantly, but they're very cold. Chaplin's movies, on the other hand, are not only stuffed with physically impressive sequences, they also have a lot of heart. It's that emotional element that makes his films succesful.

More on this film journey as I take it. See, I told you I was going to blog more often.

I'm The Blog Who Loves You

2007-06-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

Just got back from the Wilco concert. For all you Wilco fans, here's what they played:

Shot In The Arm
Side With The Seeds
You Are My Face
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Kamera
Handshake Drugs
War On War
Impossible Germany
Sky Blue Sky
Jesus, Etc.
Hate It Here
Walken
Shake It Off
I'm The Man Who Loves You
Hummingbird

Sunken Treasure
Spiders

Heavy Metal Drummer
Outta Sight (Outta Mind)
California Stars

We missed the first three songs due to a lack of parking spaces around the Murat. Which sucks, because "Shot in the Arm" is one of my favorites. Oh, well, maybe next time.

The band was at the top of their game. "Outta Sight (Outta Mind)" was a lot of fun, as was "I'm the Man Who Loves You". And seeing Jeff Tweedy run in place during the outro to "Hummingbird" was worth the price of admission alone. I was kind of hoping to hear "Misunderstood", since the live version on Kicking Television is phenomenal, but they opted not to play it. And no Uncle Tupelo stuff, which I didn't expect but was secretly hoping for. When are they going to reunite?

But don't take my word for it. The band has officially archived the concert on their website so you can listen and judge for yourself. Here you go. How cool is that?

Look, pictures on the blog! This thing just keeps evolving. Now I just need to update more often and we'll all be set...

Next concert: The Police in Minneapolis.

It's A Hard Knock Life

2007-05-30T22:43:00.001-04:00

Last week I spent five days at my parents' house, dogsitting. My parents' dog, Lizzie, is a seven year-old Golden Retriever. She's a great dog. Needy, but great. Unfortunately, she's not terribly exciting to spend five days with. Here's her typical schedule:

8 a.m. - Rise. Walk over to the person in charge who is still sleeping. Whine.

8:15 a.m. - Go outside with person in charge who is standing there in a daze. Pee.

8:30 a.m. - Eat entire daily food allotment in three minutes.

8:33 a.m. - Lay down while person in charge is taking a shower. Sleep.

11:00 a.m. - Wake up. Go to person in charge. Sit close to him, but make sure you're far enough away so that he can't reach out and pet you. Whine.

11:05 a.m. - Go outside with person in charge. Spend five minutes sniffing the area where you last went to the bathroom. Do absolutely nothing. To frustrate person in charge, grab ahold of your leash with your teeth and pull on it.

11:15 a.m. - Go inside. Lay down. Sleep.

1:00 p.m. - Wake up. Person in charge is having lunch! Beg for food. Drooling is mandatory.

1:30 p.m. - Lunch for person in charge is over. Lay down. Sleep.

3:15 p.m. - Wake up. Find a window. Look out of it.

4:00 p.m. - Leave window. Drag stuffed animal from your toy basket. Shake stuffed animal furiously. When person in charge gets down on the floor to play with you, jump up on the couch where he was sitting, lay down, and sleep. Pretend like you don't hear the swearing from person in charge.

6:00 p.m. - Wake up. Whine.

6:05 p.m. - Go outside. Spend five minutes sniffing the area where you last went to the bathroom. Pee. Poop.

6:15 p.m. - Go inside. Lay down. Sleep.

7:00 p.m. - Dinner for person in charge! Alert! Alert! Beg for food. Perform tricks if necessary. Drooling, like at lunch, is required. Anything to get a bite of whatever it is he's eating.

7:30 p.m. - Lay down. Sleep. Person in charge is watching a movie, so this is a good time to rest.

8:45 p.m. - Wake up. Go to person in charge. Whine. Make sure this is during the most important part of whatever movie it is he's watching.

8:50 p.m. - Go outside. Spend five minutes sniffing where you last went to the bathroom. Pee.

9:00 p.m. - Go inside. Sit next to person in charge, who now must pet you. For an hour.

10:00 p.m. - Lay down. Sleep.

12:00 a.m. - Bedtime. Follow person in charge upstairs. Jump on the bed and strategically place yourself in the worst position possible so person in charge has to lie in some strange cross-angled, bent-shaped, uncomfortable way. Sleep.

8:00 a.m. - Rise. And repeat.

It's hell to be a dog.