Posted by David on Jun 30, '11 9:29 AM for everyone
I’d like to share a little celebrity sighting I had the other night, but it requires a little bit of setup first...
The greatest “guy show” ever is The League on FX. Its about a bunch of guys in a fantasy football league, but that’s just the premise for getting these guys together for some seriously funny pseudo-improvisational comedy. If you’re a guy, go watch it now (iTunes, Hulu, etc.). If you’re a girl, don’t even bother. It will only reinforce your low opinion of the male species.
In any case the best character on the show is a guy called Rafi (Jason Mantzoukas), the brother-in-law of one of the league members whom they not so affectionately call “el cuñado”. He’s an obnoxious deviant, and even though he’s only been in five episodes, he’s the greatest character ever.
My friend Khaled and I watch the show obsessively and spend most of our time together discussing the show, and quoting Rafi’s lines (“Rafi Bombs”). We were out a few months ago and I stealthily took a photo of Khaled in front of a random guy that happened to look like Rafi. I think you get the point.
Fast forward to Tuesday night. Khaled, my partner in crime in NYC since the early 90s, is picking up and moving to Connecticut. We went out to celebrate is his demise, hitting a number of our old stomping grounds along the way. One such place was the Spring Lounge, a wholly unremarkable bar at Spring and Mulberry that we’ve been going to forever.
I’m sitting at a table facing the window and I notice a guy walking buy. I think to myself, hey, that's Seth Meyers from SNL. Cool. Then I notice the girl. Hey, that’s Amy Poehler. THen, I notice the guy with them. Holy Shit! El cuñado!
I literally jump out of my seat, grab Khaled by the shirt and sprint for the door. We catch up to them around the corner and the conversation goes something like this...
“Excuse me. I’ve lived in New York for over 10 years and I’ve seen tons of celebrities. Not once have I ever asked for a picture, but I absolutely have to have a picture taken with you.”
Amy grabbed my iPhone, snapped the photo, and Khaled and I spent the rest of the evening in stunned disbelief. Of all nights, for Bro Lo to walk by the bar we happened to be sitting in! I think Amy and Seth were quite amused by the fact that they got stopped by some half-drunk fans, and neither of them were the ones being asked for the photo.
Probably 999 out of a 1000 people would run into the three of them and have no idea who Jason is, but for us, it was the greatest celebrity sighting EVER!
Posted by David on Jun 19, '11 9:57 AM for everyone
A number of years ago, back when Tracy used to make me watch Oprah, there was an episode where she was trying out the best pizza places in the country. I recall thinking that it was a true miscarriage of justice that the pizza place she went to in NY - a city with an incredible lineage of great places to eat pizza - was some random crappy slice joint across the street from her NY offices. The conspirist in me believes that her Chicago bias was at play there.
In any case, Sarah Palin and the Donald recently shared a slice in NY and the video below was Jon Stewart’s glorious similarly-spirited reaction.
Posted by David on Aug 1, '10 10:08 PM for everyone
My fascination with South African "zef rap" band, Die Antwoord, has been previously documented, and weeks later I can safely say that it shows no signs of abating. Last Monday I set out for the heart of hipsterdom, Williamsburg Brooklyn, to see Die Antwoord live. First off, I was already awarding myself bonus points for a) actually going to see them and b) going to the show by myself. Upon arrival in Williamsburg I immediately gave myself additional points for quite likely being the oldest person in the neighborhood. I've always heard about Williamsburg's rep as the hippest place in America, but my few daytime adventures over there didn't really paint the same picture. Well, apparently its a nocturnal hood. I can totally see how the hipster label fits. I mean, the place makes the East Village look like Connecticut. There will definitely be more treks to Williamsburg in my future!
In any case, on to the show. The warmup act was Punches. Three guys from Brooklyn. One, who was manning the mic, looked like he just walked in from a day at the pool, and two twin brothers who looked like they just walked in from a fantasy baseball draft... at the pool. They were essentially DJs, manning a Macbook most of the time, although the first guy did sing two songs. So, you have three fairly dorky white guys on stage not really singing or playing any instruments. Sound exciting? Believe it or not, it was! In some weird way these guys made you feel like you were hanging out with them at a club, having an excellent time. Go figure.
As for the actual opening act, Boy Crisis, about the best thing that can be said for them is that they were followed by Die Antwoord. They had 7 or 8 people on stage and this was definitely quantity over quality. Kind of a downer after the first guys. No worries though. Their set was short and Die Antwoord lived up to all expectations.
One of the big knocks on Die Antwoord is that their entire act is a carefully crafted and completely fabricated persona. I have no doubt that this is true, but they execute it to perfection and the energy that comes through in their videos pales in comparison to the live show. Bottom line, this was one sick show. Definitely a top five. They started with Enter the Ninja and Wat Kyk Jy and this 40-something was starting to question his location just a couple of bodies back from the stage. I was probably the only one in the mosh pit with a gimpy hip. :-)
Die Antwoord is definitely not one of those bands that sounds exactly like the album. In fact, the sound was a bit off every now and then. Didn't matter though. The audience was really into it. Die Antwoord was into it. After the (somewhat short) set was over, they came back onstage for an encore and Ninja said, "That was fucking perfect." And it was.
Posted by David on May 21, '10 4:05 PM for everyone
Talk about a study in contrasts here. My latest music obsessions...
Part I: Die Antwoord
I don't normally like hip hop, but I'm completely obsessed with a South African "zef rap" band called Die Antwoord. As Paden said, there's just enough euro-dance/rave music in there to appeal to my techno sensibilities. All I can say is watch the videos and see for yourself. They'be been tearing up the "interwebs" lately, although they've been knocked a bit for not being "real". No doubt the whole look/persona is well crafted, but ultimately who really cares. The music is awesome, the visuals are awesome, the persona (real or fake) is intriguing.I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I LOVE these guys.
In any case, if your sensibilities are easily offended, I would just skip the videos and move on to part II. :-)
If you aren't completely offended at this point, go check out their site. Some more videos there. They also have an instrumental version of their forethcoming album available to stream.
Part II: Lissie
Singer songwriter with a stripped down sound and an amazing voice. She was in the power rotation until Die Antwoord put a spell on me. ;-)
Posted by David on Mar 12, '10 9:34 AM for everyone
Ever since Lyla saw Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, she's been singing Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" non-stop. She even recruits Adrian to put on shows where they sing the song while using their Rainbow in My Room toy as a strobe light. For those of you unawares, the girl group in the movie performs the song.
Well, last week Lyla asked me to print out the lyrics for her. I didn't give it much thought. The song was in a Chipmunks movie. What could be wrong with it, right?
Yeah, maybe not. Picture my little 39lb. pipsqueak singing (from memory, I might add) the following:
Now put your hands up Up in the club, we just broke up
I’m doing my own little thing you Decided to dip but now you wanna trip Cuz another brother noticed me I’m up on him, he up on me dont pay him any attention cuz i cried my tears, GAVE three good years Ya can’t be mad at me
Niiiice.
No doubt I've made many parenting mistakes before this one, but I call this "Part I" as an acknowledgement of the fact that there will be many more to come. Poor kids.
Posted by David on Feb 2, '10 4:01 PM for everyone
With 24 hours+ of travel time each way to the Philippines, I have tons of time to watch movies on the airplane (and during my layover in Tokyo). Even though I planned ahead and loaded up my laptop of lots of movies from iTunes and made sure I was in a seat with a power outlet, I was largely limited to American Airlines' movie selection because I didn't realize that AA planes use DC power instead of AC. I could have bought a converter for $110 on the plane, but took a pass.
Oldboy (5 stars) - The best of the bunch. A KoreanJapanese movie (dubbed in English) about revenge. A man is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, then suddenly released. The movie is about him trying to figure out who took him and why, leading up to an incredibly disturbing plot twist.
Woodstock (4 stars) - Tracy and I recently rented Taking Woodstock. Nothing special about that movie, but it got me interested enough to want to rent the documentary made during the actual event. It was great getting a first-hand view of such a major cultural event. Of course, the music was amazing too. The whole flower-child, hippie thing has become a cliche decades later, but it was interesting to see just how real that movement was back then. Only downside is that the movie is almost four hours long. Not really an issue for me though, as I had a little time to kill.
King of Kong (4 stars) - Who knew that a documentary about two uber dorks competing for the world record in Donkey Kong could be so entertaining. I don't even play video games and I enjoyed it. The movie plays up the good guy vs. bad guy angle for an all around enjoyable 80 minutes.
More Than a Game (4 stars) - A documentary about the Akron Fab Five, that is LeBron James and the kids he played ball with all the way from childhood through to a national highschool championship. We're not talking Hoop Dreams here, but a really enjoyable movie. The only downside was that it was pretty clear the filmmakers were focussed on telling a particular feel-good story. I'm all for that, but I don't think it was a completely honest portrayal of any of the main characters involved.
The Informant (3 stars) - A comedic take on the true story of Mark Whitacre, the highest ranked executive to ever turn whistleblower in U.S. history. Matt Damon does a great job as Whitacre, and the movie is generally entertaining. Maybe a little too odd in places. Good, but not great.
Star Trek (3 stars) - Not the greatest Sci Fi movie around (especially with the bar constantly being raised these days), but it was a fun movie to watch and worth a rental. Seeing a fresh take on places/things/people that I first saw decades ago was cool, and seeing how all of the characters first came together definitely hooks you in early. The new actors playing the familiar roles do a good job of making themselves enough like the originals without going so far as to seem like they're imitating Nimoy, Shatner, etc.
This Is It (3 stars) - I was surprised by the fact that I enjoyed this movie, mostly because I (like many other people) have long since forgotten about Michael Jackson the entertainer because of the freak show that he was since as far back as the early 90s. The movie was equal parts entertaining and sad. It was clear that even in his 50s, in poor health, and only remotely human looking, he was still eminently capable of putting on an incredible performance. You forget just how talented he really was. On the other hand, it reminds you of just how far he fell. Of course, if you believe that he was a child molester (I couldn't say for sure myself), then its all moot. That pretty much trumps everything. Even though I enjoyed this movie, I'm not sure if this is really worth seeing. You could just fire up some old videos on YouTube to get a refresher of his glory days.
Where the Wild Things Are (3 stars) - I wanted to like this movie more, but it just didn't do all that much for me. Maybe seeing it in the theaters, or anywhere else besides on a tiny back-of-the-seat airplane screen, would have been better. A lot of the visual stuff probably got lost in translation to the really small screen. I liked it, but maybe my expectations were too high.
Invention of Lying (2 stars) - It had its moments, but overall it just wasn't that funny.
Love Happens (1 star) - Run of the mill romantic comedy.
Fame (1 star) - I was almost tempted to give this two stars. Generally a stupid movie, but I'm a musical theater fan so some of the performance aspects of the movie were entertaining.
Drag Me to Hell (1 star) - Didn't bring anything new to the genre. I'm not sure why this movie was made. Not bad per se, but not really scary or entertaining at all.
Posted by David on Jan 10, '10 11:12 AM for everyone
My mac seems to have missed the memo about "it just works". I've been getting kernel panics every day or two now. A kernel panic is the mac's equivalent of Windows' blue screen of death. Although much more aesthetically pleasing then the BSOD, the end result is the same. Hard reboot.
The intrawebs say that a panic is usually hardware related and typically bad memory. I've run Apple's hardware test as well as a few passes of Rember/memtest and neither indicated anything wrong. I actually got a panic while Rember was making a 4th pass.
I do have 3rd-party memory in my mac, so it seems like the next step would be to take it out and see what happens. That's a big pain in the ass though. Anyone have any other suggestions?
Posted by David on Dec 7, '09 11:00 AM for everyone
I shook off the geriatric cobwebs last Friday night and saw one of my all-time favorite industrial bands. It was, in a word, awesome. The venue was perfect. Good atmosphere, and even if you were standing against the back wall you had a great view. Fairly small place.
The performance was excellent. An hour and a half of pure adrenaline. Although it's a three-member band, the show is all Douglas McCarthy. The two other guys "playing drums" behind him were almost laughable. Fortunately, McCarthy has incredible stage presence and carries the show on his back. For an old guy, he's still got it. (Wikipedia must be wrong, as it says that we're the same age. ;-)
They played all of their big hits during the show, including Lightning Man, Murderous, Join in the Chant, and Getting Closer. Murderous was kind of the turning point of the show. Brought a little life to the aging crowd. Getting Closer was the encore and everyone was full of energy by then.
Definitely a show that goes right near the top of my all-time best list. If you're an industrial music fan, here's a little taste from the show...
Posted by David on Nov 4, '09 12:24 PM for everyone
I've been pretty good about keeping up with the running these days. Averaging a solid 2 or 3 times a week since August. The cold weather is coming though and I want to make sure I'm equipped to keep it up through the winter and not wake up a fat ass come spring time. The coldest I've run in so far has been mid 40s. I wore a long-sleeve wicking shirt, a zip-up fleece and shorts. My legs were fine in shorts and I was borderline too hot in the fleece. My hands were cold to start, but fine after a mile.
I figure I'm all set upper-body wise with the fleece for a while. I can re-evaluate once it starts getting down into the 30s. Maybe a nylon shell would have been more appropriate for the mid-to-low 40s? Definitely need some gloves. I'm thinking some lightweight gloves mostly to break the wind. Until it gets a lot colder I think my fleece gloves would be too hot. I think I'm also going to need something for the legs once it drops another 5 degrees or so. Not sure what to get there. Loose pants? Semi-loose? Tights?
I don't think I need anything too crazy. It will probably be pretty rare for me to be out in the 20s. Maybe a little bit in Jan and Feb.
Any cold-weather runners out there with some suggestions on what to wear and when?
Posted by David on Sep 22, '09 2:46 PM for everyone
Yesterday, in just a matter of minutes, Adrian stuffed gobs of toilet paper into the toilet, and then flushed it. He also learned how to use his bins of books to reach up onto the previously safe top of the bookshelf in his bedroom, and proceeded to throw the items up there onto the ground. Finally, for good measure, he bit another kid at the museum.
Did someone say "Terrible Two's"? He's such a sweet and lovable little dude, but this could be a long year. :-)
In related news, Lyla had Adrian wearing tutu and carrying a magic wand yesterday. He ran around the house yelling, "I be a fairy!" while Lyla tried to get him to do ballet. I guess its only fair considering that Lyla usually ends up as road kill on Adrian's path of destruction.
This morning he went out the door wearing one of the cat's collars. Never a dull moment!
Posted by David on Aug 17, '09 12:19 PM for everyone
Had a great weekend with the family. On Saturday afternoon we went over to Lincoln Center to see a puppet show. The puppet show was pretty lame, but we went over to the band shell and saw a great Beatles cover band. Tracy used to play a lot of Beatles in the car when we were living out in San Francisco so the kids know a lot of the songs. The band played Sgt. Pepper start to finish, so Lyla didn't get to hear Yellow Submarine (her favorite) but she really enjoyed the show. They were serving beer and wine, so mommy and daddy enjoyed the show as well!
After the show we decided to have an early dinner at Citrus. A good-but-not-great restaurant at 75th & Amsterdam. We tend to go their a lot on the rare occasions we are out to dinner with the kids. It's a pretty large space and somewhat immune to outbursts from the kids. They also serve a good margarita, which helps. For some strange reason, our kids won't eat anything - incuding pizza! - but they both seem to like salmon. I usually get that as my standard dish at Citrus, but now that Adrian is in on the salmon action there isn't much left for me to eat anymore!
On Sunday Lyla and I had a little daddy-daughter outing. We started off with lunch at Sweetiepie. It's a very girly-themed little restaurant in the West Village. The table in the font window sits inside a huge brass birdcage. Lots of pink. Lots of balloons. Lyla loved it. Her silver-dollar pancakes were perfect for bathing in the bowl of syrup.
Next we walked over to Washington Square Park and spent some time in the playground and in the fountain. I wasn't planning on getting wet, but Lyla wouldn't rest until she "tricked" me into walking through the center of the fountain. I love Washington Square Park. Could have spent the entire day there.
After a snack and a quick errand we were off to the Lower East Side to get some candy at The Sweet Life. Kind of a long haul for what turned out to be a cute but not incredible candy store. Lyla ended up getting gummy bears, which of course we could have bought anywhere. Probably stick with Dylan's Candy Bar next time. In any case, we did get to walk back through Chinatown. Crowded and a bit smelly, but definitely authentic. We had fun checking out the unique foods on the display at the markets. We also bought some of Lyla's favorite dried mango (which I first brought back from one of my trips to the Philippines).
After a little browsing around Nolita, it was time to head home. A little bit of a long day for Lyla but we had a great time.
Posted by David on Jul 9, '09 7:22 PM for everyone
At night we usually close the dining room door to keep the cats away from the bedrooms. Now that the kids sleep later, I don't need a wake-up call from a couple of hungry cats meowing at the door.
Unfortunately, last night I closed the door without noticing that Lasher was still in the living room. That put Lasher's bladder and the litter box on opposite sides of the aforementioned door. Inevitably, the bladder needed to be emptied and, of all the places he could have picked, he chose the sofa.
"Get sofa cleaned" has been at the bottom of my to-do list for a few years now. No more. Thanks Lasher!
Posted by David on Apr 3, '09 9:47 PM for everyone
I'm sitting in a chair, in the sky, connected to the internet. Pretty cool stuff. Even did a video chat with Tracy. Virgin America has definitely taken the number one spot away from JetBlue in my book. Of course, my flight left three hours late so I won't be getting into NY until after 2am.
Had a good week out in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. Saw some good friends. Did some schmoozing and networking. Posed for lots of photos with Julie. Stayed out way past my bedtime.
We weren't in San Fran long enough to be nostalgic about it, but having a sense of familiarity with a place when traveling is definitely nice.
