A night of food and comedy

Last night marked my first of many times that I will be going to the Acme Comedy Club. They have this deal where if it's your birthday month, you can get free tickets for a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday show. Being that it was Kate's birthday in June, we surveyed their calendar and thought, hey, we've seen this Bil Dwyer guy on Last Comic Standing, he's decently funny. If nothing else, we're not losing any cash and we can see if it's worth going to in the future.

Before the show, we hit up Sticks, the restaurant connected (and within) Acme. A bit pricey ($15-$25 for an entree or pasta dish), but well worth it. We then headed into the venue. The seating is assigned, but there isn't a bad seat in the joint. They've got tables set up and waiters that wander throughout the night, bringing you more beer (no alcohol is probably one of the biggest downfalls of all the larger shows I've been to at the Fitzgerald or the Orpheum).

I'd delve into the entire show, but I don't remember the opener/MC's name despite the fact that he had some great bits. They're having an amateur comedy competition in which three people do three minutes of comedy to see if they can progress to the next round. One was incredibly not funny, and two were trying to be Dane Cook and were sort of funny. But they don't really matter.

Jackie Kashian did the next set. At first, I didn't think she was that funny, but I was proved wrong as the night went on and became increasingly more angry and geeky. It's hard for me to review her (or any comedian for that matter), so I'll just say that it was pretty damn hilarious and worth checking out.

Bil Dwyer was great. I've seen him only on Last Comic Standing, and he's a lot more tame on TV than he is in real life. No, it wasn't revolutionary comedy like Hedberg, Hicks, etc., but it was funny, really funny. He did a lot of quick bits with unexpected/clever endings, but more than one-liners. The show was congruent and flowed really well from one subject to the next. His stage presence is great, and his set was simply a good time overall.

In future comedy news: both Josh Blue and Doug Benson will be coming to Acme (in August and September, respectively). We already bought the dinner & a show package to Blue's show, and anyone interested in comedy at all probably should as well. (He's the extremely funny one on Last Comic Standing with cerebral palsy, by the way.)

Superman Returns

Any one besides me seen this yet? I realize that it just came out today (unless you are a geek like me and went and saw the 10:00 show last night). Anyway, go see this movie. But before you do that you need to go through Brians check list of needs for seeing Superman Returns.

1. See Superman I
2. See Superman II
3. DO NOT see Superman III or IV (Superman Returns is the new III).
3. Don't be one of those douches that thinks superman isn't interesting.

Ok now that you have done those 4 things you are all set to see Superman Returns.

Some things to look for:
- Brandon Routh - ok, he looks a little young but he does a great job at taking over both Clark and Superman.
- Kevin Spacey - Amazing. Up there in top bad guy area. Has a little more of a new era evil to him, but still has some of that great 70's silliness.
- Parker Posey - not only can she keep up with Spacey and Superman, she just might steal a scene or two.
- And don't forget to catch the return of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, fantastic.
- Little things giving a shout out to I & II during the movie.
- The opening credits, Original John Williams opening music, with slightly updated credit text.
- And for the lucky ones you get to see the new Spiderman III trailer, and you will crap your pants with excitement.

For a great review of this movie go to IGN

true guitar heros

So I could wait for next week to put this up as the V of the W but I just can't wait that long.
Enjoy.



DragonForce - Through the Wire

R.I.P. Eddie

The dog that played Eddie on the show Frasier has died. The dog, Moose, was 16 years old. Apparently, he retired from acting when he was 10 and his son, Enzo, took over for him. He wrote an autobiography, co-written by Brian Hargrove. All I can think is, wow, that is one talented dog...he can act and he can manage to get a ghost-writer for his autobiography. Truly Hollywood.

In this corner...Uwe Boll...

I had read about this a while ago on IGN, but I'm too damn lazy to find the link again. Apparently, Uwe Boll is challenging critics of his movie to a fight...literally. He wants them to get into the boxing ring with him and duke it out. He's going to film it and then insert it into his new movie, Postal. It makes sense to me. Seeing as the guy can't use his brain or articulate anything clearly, he resorts to violence, which I find to be strange, fantastic, and horrifying all at the same time.

Say cheese for your statue, Gromit

The iconic stop-motion animated Wallace & Gromit are getting a statue in their birthplace, Bristol. I think this is a fantastic idea. I love walking around St. Paul and seeing all the different Peanut characters immortilized throughout the city. For some reason, I find the idea of lovable and familiar cartoon characters on the same level as Joyce, Wilde, and others carved into form oddly comforting. I do, however, think it would be amusing if, say, 1000 years from now, when humanity has been destroyed and some other species of life roams the earth, they think our heroes were a flaming Irishman, a bald-, spherical-headed young boy with a wisp of hair, a beagle, a cheese-loving Englishman, and a silent, but brilliant, dog.

Seven Samurai Heaven

This is why I waited to buy Seven Samurai. I realize some may think I'm lying when I say that Kurosawa is my favorite director, and that I actually enjoy sitting through 3 and a half hour long epics about samurai and feudal Japan, but I love, love, love it. I'm just hoping they do something to the Kurosawa samurai box set so that I can buy the others in one spot.

So, the big news? Criterion is now releasing a 3-disc special edition of Seven Samurai on September 5. Here's the details:

• All-new, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Two audio commentaries: one by film scholars David Desser, Joan Mellen, Stephen Prince, Tony Rayns, and Donald Richie; the other by Japanese-film expert Michael Jeck
• A 50-minute documentary on the making of Seven Samurai, part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
• My Life in Cinema, a two-hour video conversation between Akira Kurosawa and Nagisa Oshima produced by the Directors Guild of Japan
• Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences, a new documentary looking at the samurai traditions and films that impacted Kurosawa's masterpiece
• Theatrical trailers and teaser
• Gallery of rare posters and behind-the scenes and production stills
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Peter Cowie, Philip Kemp, Peggy Chiao, Alain Silver, Kenneth Turan, Stuart Galbraith, Arthur Penn, and Sidney Lumet and an interview with Toshiro Mifune
• More!

MyRape

A 14-year old girl is suing MySpace for enabling sexual assault, claiming that it didn't do enough to protect her. The article says this:

The girl claims that 19-year-old Pete Solis falsely identified himself as a member of a local high school football team before she provided him with a phone number, according to the Chronicle.

She ought to sue her phone company for allowing the call to be made at all. Seriously, it's our right to give out our phone numbers to people on the internets who claim they are someone safe...or a player for the local high school football team. I think that it's the phone companies' responsibility to protect us from being fucking idiots.

No Mischa Barton...Ha

Askmen.com has its list of the top 99 women (there was an add on IGN and it caught my eye).
The noteworthy ones are-
Samaire Armstrong at 75
Rachel Bilson at 72 (should have been 1)
Scarlett Johansson at 28
and the top 3 are--
3-Angelina Jolie
2-Sienna Miller
1-Jessica Alba
There are a lot of other good ones, but most are bitches I hate or thought were dead.

And a happy Bloomsday to all!

In honor of Bloomsday, I leave you with two rather disparate quotes from Ulysses. The first is a quote about good old Ireland:

Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's clutching a noggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

And this one is about...well, I think you'll see:

He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.

And Nora, his eventual wife, summed it up best when she said this of Joyce:

I guess the man's a genius, but what a dirty mind he has, hasn't he?

1st post from the west

Find all the movie titles in this picture. Some are pretty cool.

Over on IGN they are having a 100 stars pick their favorite TV moments. This is day 2.

Good Tucker Max review of the "The Alphabet of Manliness."

Thats it for now...I have to go look for a place to live.

Awesome Knife Envy

I'm running with a theme today, and that theme is cooking. Via Wired, I found a slideshow of The Coolest Kitchen Accessories from Forbes.com. Some of them are, in fact, pretty damn cool. Others are just necessary. Despite the fact that we own the Kitchen Aid mixer, the list does make our kitchen feel a bit inadequate; it has "awesome knife" envy...or that's just me.

Note: The slide show does pass through some stuff rather quickly, so you may need to slow it down to read the descriptions. If you want a detailed reason for why you should be cooking, go to the Wired page first.

Hell's Kitchen 2.01–2.02

I don’t usually get into reality shows. The idea of watching people attempt to survive in a predetermined wilderness or coax a predetermined someone to love them while being videotaped and followed by a large camera crew isn’t my idea of reality nor is it good television. Competitions in which people are thrust into difficult situations wherein they must prove their specific abilities for an end goal without touting that the show is like watching people who aren’t aware of the cameras is much cooler. Take a few other things I enjoy—food, cooking, and an asshole—and you’ve got yourself, no not good old food porn, but Hell’s Kitchen.

I watched the majority of first season with trace amounts of obsession. Watching people who have varying amount of cooking skills suffer through what is essentially executive chef boot camp is somehow compelling. Chef Ramsey is a loud, obnoxious, perfectionist who enjoys screaming and swearing at his chefs to somehow drive them to the epitome of their abilities. They’re put through rigorous exercises and then forced to attempt to run the kitchen with customers who walk out on them, complain, etc. (and who wouldn’t if they waited two hours without receiving their food).

Overall, the characters just aren’t as interesting as they were last season (nobody has “head chef” tattooed on their knuckles, for one). Obviously, with only two episodes thus far, they’ve only been able to give a spattering of information about each one, and I’m sure they’ll become more interesting by the end. So far, we’ve had some basic background, one person has been kicked off for not being able to do anything, one left the show because his body was stressed out, and one was kicked off for not getting any of his entrées out. There has been one fire and one bad burn. Sounds fun to me.

Highlights: when someone is kicked off the show, instead of just impaling his or her chef’s coat on a coat rack, now the picture above bursts into flames. It’s just so amusing that I can’t help giggling every time it happens.

B[ow]log: Rolling (me: downhill)

A few weeks ago, Sam and I were at the top of our games. In one night, we both averaged over 180; the next night, Sam was still above 180 and I was in the 160s. That pattern has been holding relatively steadily. Sam's been holding strong around the 160s, and I keep dropping lower and lower. Last night, I started with a 165 and just kept on trucking downhill. I did connect 3 out of 5 team turkeys and picked up a 2-4-10 split. So that at least made me feel good about my life. Sam had a lot of turkeys and at least one quad. He bowled two 180 games and a lot of other solid games. Craig took second place by keeping a rather consistent 150-160 game.

Highlights: Turkeys (team and individual) galore, a split pick up, Craig Christ's insane holy pin action, and the fact that the lane almost never picked up the 8 pin (even if you throw it in the gutter on your first roll).

All Hail

Hello everyone and happy 666. The day that only comes once every thousand years and we are privileged enough to live through it. Go out of your way to do something that would make the dark lord happy.
"It's all for you Damien."