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Man Cave
Man Cave is a testosterone-laden Monday feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.
If there was ever a tribute band forged specifically for bachelor party glory, it's gotta Get The Led Out, the American Led Zeppelin. Saturday night at the Electric Factory they played two long sets of Zep covers, played pitch perfectly per the album.
Get The Led Out seems to have mastered the crowd-please/nerd-please ratio. Their setlist didn't miss any "essentials" (i.e. most famous radio hits). But it skipped the second-tier radio hits for a bevy of deep-cut fanatic-favorites. Here's the run-down (as best I could text it to myself during the show):
As the usher ripped my movie ticket, I overheard a manager say, "Bridesmaids is like The Hangover for women." But after seeing it, I can say that this is only true in the most generalized sense (in that it involves pre-wedding shenanigans and lots of LOLs). More accurately, Bridesmaids is Superbad for adults. The ensemble cast delivered laughs of every variety. Let's take a look at some chicks you're likely to see much more of in the future, in order from left to right according to the photo ...
Kristen Wiig: SNL's leading lady actually reels it in for Bridesmaids, acting as the comedic "straight man." Down in the doldrums, she drives the story as the bride's life-long best friend while her surrounding cast members generate the bulk of the comedy. Don't be surprised to see this comedian try a few serious roles sooner rather than later in her career.
Maya Rudolph: The SNL alum made a splash in the indie film world with a leading role in the 2009 dram-com Away We Go (co-staring John Krazynski). She plays her strong-yet-feminine shtick as the bride, and has finished filming another comedy (Friends With Kids) as well as a TV pilot (Up All Night). She's probably the third most successful former SNL lady working in show biz today (after Tina Fey and Amy Poehler).
Wendi McLendon-Covey: Reno 911's Deputy Clementine stays true to her typecast as a sexually charged cynic. Married with children, her character attempts to fuel debauchery. She's good at what she does and is likely to continue doing this type of sarcastic sexaholic supporting role.
Rose Byrne: A successful, well-connected beauty who is the envy of Wiig for — among other things — her relationship that's recently developed with the bride. A relentless over-achiever, she's the "maid-zilla" of the group and consistently pushes Wiig's patience to the brink. This Aussie has been in a bunch of stuff by now, including Danny Boyle's Sunshine, neo-horror flick Insidious, Knowing with Nick Cage, and Get Him To the Greek.
I have such a love/hate relationship with Manayunk. I'm not gonna lie, it's mostly hate. To me, Manayunk represents that region on The Legend of Zelda map where you're like, "...really, this place again?"
It's certainly made worse by one indisputable fact: Manayunk should be awesome. On paper Manayunk could be Philly' best neighborhood. It has a hoppin' Main Street; bars on every other corner; a sweet brew pub; big movie theater; commuter-rail; decent yet affordable housing for college students and young professionals; and live music venues.
But how come every time I show up in Manayunk, I end up saying things like, "If I don't find a parking spot in forty-five more minutes, I'm turning around and going home." Or, "If this street repair restricts access to my buddy's house for six more months, I'm never coming back." Or.. "Thank God they're finally repairing this street!" But I will say one thing about the people who live in Manayunk. They're a resilient brood of serious have-funners who realize the potential of a back yard.
While at a barbecue on Dupont Street this weekend, we invented a new game called slodgeball. It's like dodgeball, but you must have a beverage in hand. You may not throw the slodge ball without sipping from your cup. You may not spill from your cup while getting hit by the slodge ball. If either of these things happen, you are OUT. Last team with players remaining wins.
I'm not going to lie, this is not a beginning-of-the-barbecue activity. This is for those later hours where everyone is feeling a tad more honest and in touch with his or her inner middle-schooler. To protect the innocent, I come bearing no photos, but if you were in a backyard in Manayunk this weekend, you know who you are!
I spent "Rapture Weekend" catching up on one of my favorite feuds, Jon Stewart vs. Fox News. I won't editorialize about which side I root for, but it's always enjoyable to sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch dudes get shredded in a debate with a self-proclaimed clown.
On this latest one, O'Reilly was outraged that the Obamas invited rapper Common to the White House for a "poetry slam." Stewart goes on to pound O'Reilly for having "inconsistent outrage" on behalf of him and "the apparatus" (Fox News).
When O'Reilly solicited votes on his website as to who won the debate, his own viewers admitted 79 percent to 21 percent that Stewart won. Surprisingly, O'Reilly posted these results on his website. I didn't see them up there, but HuffPo reports that O'Reilly did, in fact, fess up by posting the numbers on his site.
Man Cave is a testosterone-laden Monday feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.
Friday: Michael Clayton, the George Clooney scandal flick about agro-industrial lawsuits and corporate espionage, is just as good the second time around. Tom Wilkinson's role as the bipolar law partner is entertaining, magnetic and genuine. His breakdown after years of working at "an organism whose sole purpose is to excrete the ammo for much larger more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity" is just one of Clooney's many problems that require "fixing." If you skipped this a few years ago, Netflix the SHIZZ out of it.
Saturday: Cyrus stars John C. Reilly as a divorced man who meets Marisa Tomei and gets excited about life for the first time in years. Her son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill) is a twenty-one-year-old live-at-home man-kid whose mom-attachment issues are somewhat mutual. His creepy campaign against Reilly is half comedy half psych drama. It's clear that Hill's talents are stronger for comedy than drama, but this was a strong outing for him. His screen presence made most of the movie effectively uncomfortable, which is important to the story.
Sunday: Speaking of comedians taking serious roles, I had to check my comprehension when I saw Rainn Wilson's name listed in the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt flick, Hesher. Dwight from the office actually looked like a regular human being, donning a full beard for his role as a grieving widower. Gordon-Levitt did not, donning long death-metal hair and a massive tattoo of a middle finger on his usually bare back. Natalie Portman donned old lady glasses and an unasuming hairstyle. There was lots of donning going on, and I'll say that this film might have been the most thrillingly uncomfortable movie of my weekend. There were only five other people in the theater with me, and three of them walked out somewhat early on.
I didn't blame them. Most people can't palate surreal minimalism. If something is unrealistic, it needs to be way over the top, magical and soaring. One ring to rule them all! When something is unrealistic but laced with understatement and mundanity, people often mistake it for a poorly executed attempt at slice-of-life cinema. With the excpetion of comedies like Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine, whose juxtaposition of the absurd with the banal creates more comprehensible comedic contrast... this friggin flick was simply wild.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt played a fire-setting, metal-thrashing foul-mouthed squatter who behaves unpredictably benevolent and malevolant toward the recent widower and his thirteen-year-old son. Critics are describing the normally man-crush-calliber Levitt's character as "pure id." And that's exacty what he was. A free-wheeling entity of sexually inappropriate, violent, reptilian impulses. And nihilistically free of agenda. An entertaining popcorn flick this ain't, but if you're in the mood to deal with an oddly funny, dark story about sheer unadulterated subconscious, grab it while it still has a few days left in the theater.
Man Cave is a testosterone-laden Monday feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.
Friday: I spent Friday night reviewing my current favorite sitcom, Parks and Recreation. I'm somewhat pleased that I missed the first two seasons of the show, which are reviewed at a consistently lower caliber than the current season — which is more or less the funniest thing on TV. It's painful to think that this show existed without Rob Lowe (who, on Parks and Rec., is officially funnier than Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock), Adam Scott (who you know as the showoff brother from Stepbrothers) and Chris Pratt (an actor who I expected at first to suffer from comparisons to comedic look-alike Seth Rogan but turned out to be as funny or funnier on Parks and Rec. than Rogan ever was on Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared).
Saturday: You might be unsure as to why the Back To The Future trilogy is such a seminal guy institution. It's a family-friendly adventure that has romance and very little violence. But what it lacks in sports or brain-splattering nihilism, it makes up for in spades with technical detail down to the slightest variables. And the fragility that BTTF paints of life over a timeline makes it a compelling watch each and every viewing. If you ask the average fan what their least favorite of the three is, they'll often say Part III, likely because it has the most romance, the fewest plot complications and the most basic essential conflict (guy wants to shoot doc). My personal favorite is Part II, for the exact inverse of those reasons. And Part I, the most classic, is usually agreed on to be the most well -rounded of the three. I'm only a little embarrassed to say that this is not the first Saturday I've viewed the Back To The Future trilogy in its entirety.
Sunday: Man Cave Closed for Mother's Day. Will return next weekend.
Man Cave is a testosterone-laden Monday feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.
Friday: La Salle Young Alumni Night at the Grape Room in Manayunk
The La Salle Young Alumni Committee raised $600 for La Sallian Service Trips — one of which is Project Appalachia, a program where students spend their Spring Break building homes for needy families in Kentucky.
Four bands and three solo acoustic acts made up of La Salle alumni performed. Taking the stage was Bathtub Doggies, Jason Ager and the COPO, Sheri Gallagher, The Matt Gauss Band, Science Club, Sam Fran Scavuzzo, Jim Feighan and Bill Drust (pictured). Everybody rocked, including emcees Matt Lally and Dave Teruso (a.k.a comedy duo Animosity Pierre).
Saturday: A wedding with surprise guests, The Mummers
Remember your freshman year college roommate? The one you get randomly and hope to have a lot in common with? On Saturday I went to Conshohocken to celebrate the wedding of my college roommate. Much to everybody's surprise and delight, The Rustic String Band crashed the party to play some classics like the Eagles fight song, "When The Saints Go Marching In," and other Philly anthems. It's not considered terribly manly to rate weddings, but I'll give this one "8 Punches in the Face!" (out of 7).
Sunday: Eagle Vs. Shark
I took a break from my alma mater with a dip in to my Netflix queue, firing up Eagle Vs. Shark starring Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords (the tall, funny-looking one). Eagle Vs. Shark is effectively New Zealand's answer to Napoleon Dynamite. Jarrod (Clement) and Lily (Loren Horsley), two socially awkward misfits living in their own fantasy worlds, find awkward acceptance with each other and come together to go on important adventures. Quirkiness ensues. I give it "5 Punches in the Face."
Man Cave is a testosterone-laden Monday feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.
In between a bachelor party in A.C. and a housewarming party on 42nd and Chester streets, I squeezed in a couple multi-hour sessions with House M.D. I am currently feeling generous enough to offer you a brief rundown of each season. But be warned: There are spoilers.
Season 1: Fox introduces the world to Greg House, M.D., a cranky genius with a team of hungry young doctors and a friendly foil named Wilson. Wanting to create a medical Sherlock Holmes, creator David Shore made him morally ambiguous, misanthropic, and addicted to pain pills — a great leading character.
Best Episode: "Three Stories"
House agrees to do a lecture in exchange for fewer clinic hours and weaves a series of hypothetical diagnostics scenarios together (SPOILER!) in a way that reveal his own history with leg pain and subsequent Vicodin addiction.
Season 2: Things are starting to get interesting with House and his ex-wife Stacey. Stacey is now a lawyer at the hospital, and therefore involved with the ramifications of House's regular guideline stomping.
View galleryMan Cave is a testosterone-laden Monday feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.
If you're my age, you were in 6th grade in 1995. CD players had only recently become household items and there were certain bands that exploded just as nearly every middle class family in America (even the cassette tape holdouts) had finally purchased the laser-guided magic boxes. It may be no coincidence that many of us seemed to own these five CDs (in no particular order):
Ace of Bass: The Sign
Yikes, I may never be allowed inside Kung Fu Necktie again, unless I say I was mocking these Swedish pop stars while listening. But I wasn't. I was jammin' out. "All That She Wants" was moody and mysterious — an interesting twist on top 40 pop. But my personal favorite was "Don't Turn Around." Looking back, I hope there's truth to that Lester Bangs quote, "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."
Hootie and the Blowfish: Cracked Rear View
"Only Wanna Be With You" was practically the department store national anthem that year, but for the entirely confident (and blissfully unsophisticated) music fan, there are other tracks on here that were quite enjoyable. "Let Her Cry" equals the bittersweet setting of boys standing on one side of the dance floor and girls standing at the other. "Time" was sorta rockin', as much as a Hootie song could rock. But "Hold My Hand," was practically unlistenable ... even to a 6th grader.
The Cranberries: No Need To Argue
"Zombie" was just rocking enough for me to be able to mention it during recess without eating a fist. But the rest of this disc from these post-Celtic folk rockers was something I could only listen to with earphones on, lest I require self-defense classes.
This weekend I was laid up with severe sciatica pain — presumably the delayed result of ill-advised full-tackle snow football back in January. So it was mostly a web-surf and DVD-centric weekend.
(Which is to say, somewhat ordinary.)
Sleeping in Airports
This website is exactly what it sounds like: a consumers guide reviewing which airports are the most comfortable for catching Z’s while you’re waiting around. Apparently, Vancouver Airport is a narcoleptic’s nirvana. Unfortunately, our loud Philadelphia International Airport ain’t exactly the Waldorf Astoria. I don’t know why I love spending so much time on this site. I rarely fly and I’ll never visit most airports. I think there’s just something anthropologically satisfying about witnessing the Internet manifest destiny in this manner.
Reservoir Dogs
The opening scene where Quentin lectures the rest of the guys about Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” is emblematic of his ability to tie down larger-than-life characters to relatable situations like shootin’ the shit at the diner. Until Inglorious Basterds came out, R-Dogs held up as my favorite Tarantino joint (but now it’s either a tie or the Basterds for the win).
Wit Out
A new blog run by some comedian friends, dedicated entirely to local comedy in Philly. WitOut offers access to a lot of great videos, and a pretty thorough roll-call for Philadelphia comedy-shows and available comics/groups. If you’re looking to try telling jokes, they have a great open-mike guide as well.
Waiting
I haven’t yet worked in the food service industry, but if it’s anything like what they depict in Waiting, well, then it seems like most other jobs I’ve had. Ryan Reynolds channels his Van Wilder to create a depraved, young Shatner-esque frat-a-saurus alpha-male of the food industry. Supporting laughs are provided by Louis Guzman, John Francis Daley, Andy Milonakis, Chi McBride, David Koechner, Justin Long (as the straight-man) and others. Unlike with some lowbrow comedies, I don’t really mind when this one tries to get serious during the third act. Long’s performance is believable enough to earn some leeway when spaces between laughs get extended. Besides, isn’t that what life’s all about? Existential connundra punctuated by dick jokes?
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