MAN CAVE: Easier said than done

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MAN CAVE: Easier said than done

POSTED: Monday, March 28, 2011, 4:00 PM

Filed Under: Man Cave

Last week my landlord scheduled a fire inspection, which means I had to un-plug every extension chord in the man-cave (apparently, extension chords violate the fire code in my neighborhood). As if I’m powering every Prius in Collingswood out of my third floor den, removing them is a somewhat life-altering (and furniture-moving) process. It occurs once a year, and then my ‘cave remains in this poor state until motivation and a spare couple hours coincide (a phenomenon which occurs MAYBE once every three months).

So, for now, I have to move outward for my requisite multi-media entertainment saturation. This weekend it started with Bradley Cooper’s Limitless.

I can’t say this movie was disappointing, because I could tell from the reviews that it was going to be a somewhat shallow treatment of man’s greatest desire — a pill which sheds light on all things and turns your brain into a dual-core supercomputer. I was doomed to see it, since brain-power expansion is a fetish of mine and I could no more easily resist this than Michael Cera could have resisted “Diary of a Wimpy Kid."

Sure enough, Limitless offered up a fast-paced display of the gimmicky quirks available with newfound ingenuity. Unfortunately, there was little to no examination of the philosophical, ethical or ‘big-picture’ implications of such a drug existing. I know this is tantamount to a Star Trek fan complaining that the new Trek film was too action-packed and could have used more inter-galactic diplomacy. But nerdiness is the new testosterone, so deal with it.

On Saturday, I brought the wife up to The Bookstore Speakeasy, a 1920s style pub in Bethlehem. Stepping up to a door with nothing but an address, on the side of a building that resembles... a windowless, abandoned church bingo-hall? Or whatever makes up the bulk of the shady-ass buildings in Bethlehem’s south side. You step down into an oddly-lit foyer the size of a men’s-room with book-shelves everywhere and a dapper young lady asks if you have a reservation (which, you’d better!).

You are then ushered through a black curtain — a portcullis into prohibition. Bartenders with beards and tuxedos are shaking cocktails and hand-smashing large made-to-order ice-cubes designed to neutralize watering down. People are talking and laughing under a low ceiling in a room that is dimly lit with candles and tiny kerosene lamps. I’m not sure there’s a light-bulb in the entire place. In the corner, a man in an old-timey suit is playing piano. Semi-partitioned sections give off the illusion that the place could seat more than 30 — which, I’m almost certain it can’t.

A bluesy swing-jazz band plays entirely un-plugged from 9:30 to 12:30. If you’re not seated near them, it can be tough to hear their upright (aging) piano, upright wooden bass, banjo and mic-less singing over the roar of people having an amazing time and frequent ice-chipping. We got lucky with a rare low-tide in customers to move closer to the band. These mysterious musicians played music that--to my knowledge--really doesn’t exist anymore. A sort of bluegrass swing, it might as well be from the cartoons our parents grew up with. With frequent swaps-out of the banjo for a fiddle or acoustic guitar, they traded solos and bounced from jazz to blues and back. I normally harass musicians for their life story, but I decided to let these prohibition swingers remain a mystery. There’s some odd joy in not knowing. A lesson, perhaps, from Limitless...

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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