Entertainment

First of all, A Mighty Wind was hysterical. As someone who listened to Peter, Paul and Mary as a child, fluff folk has a fond fraction of my heart. When you see the movie, take a good look at Eugene Levy’s (Mitch) “goatee” thingy on his face. It’s made exactly to look like a third, vertical eyebrow, as thick and as funny-looking as the other two. I was unable to divert my eyes. Now, that is comedy. Genius.

Tonight, M-D, Jen and I took in Laurel Canyon at the Montgomery Cinema. We enjoyed the flick. I think we were all rooting for the character Ian in some of the scenes. The film did end without a real resolution, which seems to be a popular technique in film making. I don’t necessarily like it. I always wonder what happens to the characters. I like to see conflicts resolved. Without any real ending, it leaves a lot to my imagination which is fun, but I’d like to know what the authors intended. If I wanted to write my own ending, I’d write my own movie or book.

In other news, Michael Moore speaks about developments overseas and “backlash” from his speech at the Academy Awards.

Weekends are never long enough, unless they are too long. Becca came home for the weekend, and there was much socializing. In addition, I saw a fantastic movie, Spirited Away (or literally, The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro). I’m not surprised that the first Disney movie I really like* in a long time is a movie the huge media corporation had nothing more to do with than to buy the distribution rights and then fail to promote it until it won an Academy Award. Technically, I guess they also secured actors to dub the English version, which as far as I’m concerned is unnecessary. I would have liked to watch the Japanese version with English subtitles.

* Note: Lilo and Stitch was also good, but it was a more typical merchandise-friendly Disney movie, but Spirited Away just blew it out of the water as far as quality animated movies go.

“Then about an hour later, Ben Folds […] called me and asked me if I would perform on stage with him…. I asked Ben if he would be interested in producing a record with me. He said yes, so we’re going into the studio together in the spring and will assemble the record together.”

– William Shatner (link from Jerry Kindall)

The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players will be on Late Night With Conan O’Brien Friday night. I believe they’ll be playing a shortened version of Look at Me! which unfortunately is not on their CD.

This week’s Entertainment “News” Story of the Week for this week: Julianne Moore Loves Locking Lips With her Leading Ladies.

“You kiss an actor and you don’t know what they are going to smell like. But you kiss a girl and she is going to smell good. And she’s very soft. They’re soft and they smell nice. Guys don’t.” Huh. Smelly actors. Alternative news title: Moore kisses girl for ‘Hours’.

I just got back from seeing They Might Be Giants play live for the first time in several years. I haven’t been following them much since the last time I saw them. That last time was a New Year’s Eve concert in New York and to put it kindly, the band was a little off. Tonight’s concert was a completely different experience.

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Here’s the real reason the holiday season is so expensive: Movies, movies, movies! And movies! So far I’ve seen Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Die Another Day, and The Ring. Still on my holiday shopping list are Drumline, Gangs of New York, Star Trek: Nemesis, and Catch Me If You Can (Christopher “Cowbell” Walken!).

A couple of Denise’s friends from Texas, Stephanie and Christian, are staying in New York for a while, so we met up with them. We decided to head somewhere that Denise had wanted to go for a while: Lucky Cheng’s.

This is an Asian bar and restaurant. The place’s particular hook is the fact that almost all the “waitresses” are dressed in drag. I think there were some actual women, but I guess you can’t always be sure. There were four bachelorette parties going on while we were there. While you could pay $50 for someone at your table to receive a complete drag makeover, we decided not to do this since our night was not yet over.

Following dinner, we wasted time in Starbucks until the doors to Blue Man Group were ready to open. Well, I shouldn’t say we “wasted time” since we talked quite a bit and got to know each other. And of course, the hot chocolate and coffee-like products warmed us up on an otherwise chilly, windy night.

Blue Man Group was wonderful. The audience participation bits were very funny and the music was fabulous. All around, it was just plain fun. At first I was disappointed our seats were in the back, but this gave us a slight advantage after the show. Some of the “art” that was created during the performance was for sale following the performance. Since Denise purchased my ticket to the show for Hanukkah, I bought her the painting the Blue Man created in one of the first segments. That is where our back-row seats gave us the advantage — we were the first to the merchandise counter, therefore the claim to the art was ours (once I gave them my debit card).

Speaking of buying things, the two of us also picked up new cellular phones yesterday. I finally upgraded from a phone that was being discontinued when I bought it over two years ago to a very new Motorola T720. Denise finally got rid of her pathetic Sprint PCS service to join me on Verizon Wireless with the same phone. The best part is neither of us should be paying more than what we used to pay.