The Omnipresence of Apatow

Sigh. Judd Apatow (or rather, the idea/signature style/cinematic sub-sub-genre of "Judd Apatow") is like that person from high school that you keep bumping into once, twice, sometimes three times a year, usually at other people's parties, sometimes out on the street somewhere, and whenever you see him/her you're like "WTF? Are we friends? Why are you still in my life?" But after those WTF moments have happened several years in a row, you just kind of give up and accept the fact that your social circles are inextricably and inexplicably linked, to the point where you almost kind of look forward to the random run-ins, despite whatever stress they may cause you.

Which is to say, for as many issues as I've had with Apatow and his loosely affiliated stable of cohorts over the years, somehow, on this rare weekend when I had both time and money to spare, I found myself taking in I Love You, Man and Adventureland at the theater. WTF? Are we friends? Why are you still in my life?

I Love You, Man, despite peaking early and featuring one of the worst end-of-movie wedding scenes since The 40 Year Old Virgin, is very funny, and Paul Rudd is absurdly charming (srsly, this is the kind of role I didn't even know I wanted him to play when I mentioned in my write-up on Forgetting Sarah Marshall that he needed to start carrying movies on his own again). But, perhaps predictably, it left me wondering why there isn't more space for female oddballs in these films. I mean, when I think of the majority of women I hang out with on a semi-regular basis, it's kind of awesome to realize that they are all extremely weird in totally wonderful ways. They're all super foxy and successful in their fields and many of them are in loving, functional relationships, and there's no doubt that they can match my dude friends pound for pound with The Funny. Obviously I'm biased and my control group is probably way skewed, but you get my point. Why is it seemingly so hard for writers and directors to represent this reality in these movies that have come to dominate our notion of contemporary film comedy? I'm sure Rashida Jones is a fine actress and it's cool that she's doing work on all these TV and film comedies, but her role as Paul Rudd's fiancee was so boring and lame. How much more interesting would this movie have been if she were swapped out for the "wacky" friend played by Sarah Burns (or hell, even Jaime Pressly, with her signature turbo intensity perpetually cranked up to 11), and then treated as the romantic lead, with all her tics and neuroses intact? To this date, Charlyne Yi in Knocked Up, who obviously wasn't even close to a having a prominent role, is the most memorable female character for me in any of these movies, and it's really because she was so gleefully fucking bizarre. More like her, please. This is the reality we live in. There's a reason why people love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig so much. They're the exceptions that prove the rule.

Despite being billed as "from the director of Superbad," I was really, really delighted to find that Adventureland is a sweet and sensitive little movie, full of tenderness and sadness and a nonjudgmental attitude toward the very true-to-life and occasionally morally compromised situations the characters find themselves in. I think if I were just a few years younger, it probably would have knocked me out even more. Jesse Eisenberg is perfect (I gotta check out Roger Dodger again sometime; I remember loving it when I saw it in the theater and totally forgot Eisenberg was the kid in it), and it's so cool to see what a smooth, unforced actor Ryan Reynolds has become, even in this small role. Though I, of course, understand why the movie needed its last scene, part of me wishes it would have seized the ambiguous ending and faded out just before that, with Eisenberg's character on the bus to New York, gazing out the rain-streaked windows, with the lights of the city shining through the raindrops like hundreds of light-emitting diodes, with the Replacements' "Unsatisfied" blaring on the soundtrack. It was such a beautiful moment.

In case you missed it last week, over on Fluxblog, Matthew Perpetua, man of the people, in his infinite wisdom, gave the Internet what it truly wants: kittens, cheeseburgers, and dreamy photo montages of President Obama.

Also in case you missed it, Shawn has been rolling out many exciting changes and additions to the Eat! Drink! Snack! empire: a site redesign, the daily "Nosh Nook" entries, a Twitter feed, and, every Wednesday this April, entries written by special guests from around the world (the first from Germany's very own Jonesalicious).

I AM A LLAMA; YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID

Tiny Bits of Funny

I bow at the feet of the genius who wrote this tutorial on LOL Kitteh as a Second Language. This is an absolutely virtuosic display of utter ridiculousness. I could have used the help when I was making this sign. That "have" is just crying out to be a "has."

I fully support Mimi Smartypants's suggestion that we all start using "SCIENTIFIC!" as happy-exclamation slang.

LOL, "Radiohead (my generation’s Arcade Fire)".

Also, it was just announced that the Long Blondes will be touring through the Subterranean in early June. Sooo much good live music coming up this spring and summer. I can't believe Someone to Drive You Home still hasn't been released in the U.S. yet.

They Never Came Close to Guessing

I know I'm a day late at this point, but RIP, Mr. Vonnegut. I've never been the biggest fan, but that's nothing more than a simple error of omission on my part. One of my fondest memories of non-assigned reading during college is of the weekend I spent pouring over Breakfast of Champions, after reviewing the execrable film version for the IU newspaper. I've inscribed this much cherished quote from the novel on the inside covers and in the margins of many notebooks since then: "Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne."

"It's much work, measuring turtles."

Come rock out at the Subterranean with me tonight, kittens, and catch the Bound Stems, some of Chicago's finest, in action. (Eight o'clock rock shows are very appealing to my creaky old lady bones these days.)

Great Turns of Phrase and Other Witticisms for the Day

"OK," says my subconscious, "give me one more reason to be looking forward to the National's Boxer." And MySpace, surprisingly, obliges with many, many more reasons, including the fact that the band "nods toward" Wrestling Entropy fave writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jonathan Ames on the album. Oh. Em. Gee. I'm coming dangerously close to completely ruining my first listen with anticipation now. (Stereogum issues a favorable premature evalution, Boxer drops on May 22, and the band journies to Chicago on June 7.)

How much are you loving this dustup (::guffaw::) about Keith Richards snorting his dad's ashes?

I give you the genius that is Just a Little Guy. (Thx, Michelle.) Go for the otters holding hands, stay for bons mots like "[T]his baby rusty spotted genet is about to snuggle his way right into your colon so he can eat you from the inside out. What are you going to do huh, punch yourself in the colon. Good luck with that."

S/FJ issues a memo to rappers.

I don't know how many of you have, like me, gotten completely sucked into Merlin Mann's online universe, but, for those who haven't, I'd hate for you to miss his excellent, and excellently funny, recent video podcast with J-Rod of the Long Winters. The one with Mountain Goats' bassist Peter Hughes is really good, too. (Thus ends my barely restrained interweb crushing-out for the day.)

Sean Fennessey on Battles' drummer John Stanier: "Like John Bonham on oxycontin, Clyde Stubblefield on steroids, Buddy Rich on calculus."

Moving on in to the New Year

I've been out to see a shitload of stuff over the past week or more. Had a chance to catch up with:

Notes on a Scandal. I really wouldn't recommend seeing this alone if you occasionally feel vulnerable about ending up a crazy, embittered old maid. (**Cough, cough** I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying--I have several black spiral bound notebooks full of articulate yet deranged scribbling exactly like Judi Dench's character's.) The acting is stellar, and it needs to be in order to actually make the statements about loneliness and desperation and codependency and selfishness and vile behavior (of both the deeply motivated and animalistically unmotivated varieties) as it wants to make. There were a few points, especially toward the end as all the various intertwined subplots started coming to their inevitable climaxes, that I saw the bizarro-world version of what this movie could have been without Dench, Blanchett, Nighy, Marber's script, and Eyre's direction (though I could have done without Glass's score--OK, OK, I get it, the frenzied sense of entrapment, etc.): it could have been so strident, hysterical, and cliche that it would have made me scoff, legitimately offended, at the needlessness in perpetuating the evil old lady stereotype yet again. Yet, it's so perfectly pitched that it reveals a deep, core truth about people who kill any chance at happiness they might have because they can't stop themselves from bringing those they want so desperately to love down into their own misery, even if being miserable together is in itself a kind of love. Bonus points for a "Fit but You Know It" reference.

The Painted Veil. Unoffensive, slightly turgid, clearly Oscar bait. There's one howler of a scene plopped into the middle, though, that just begs to be read as a red state/blue state metaphor, and it made me want to shout at the screen. Gotta love any screen work Liev Schreiber is doing these days, though. We need more.

Dreamgirls. OMG, so bad. I dislike it more the more I think about it. I expect better acting out of community theater. I guess they got what they put into it, though: musicians trying to act instead of actors trying to sing. (Why didn't they just do a staged concert, release the soundtrack album, and be done with it?) The character development is appallingly thin, and even the talented actors look like they're drowning. J. Hudson, though--wow. It's like her voice was directly wired into my tear ducts. Unbelievably powerful. There were only about 20 people in the theater the day I saw it, and we all still ripped up in applause after "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." The camera does love Beyonce, though, and, in that, she was well cast. I think the best acting she did in the whole thing was that montage of her being photographed in all those exotic outfits.

Children of Men. A real stunner of a film. (And, another Danny Huston performance I can add to my films-of-'06 tally!) It's so scary and so powerful. If I look at it as a "film," I can see Rosenbaum's point about how the back end of the movie turns into "a rather banal suspense plot about whether she and her child and therefore humanity will survive," but, as LK and I discussed, that sequence is also one of the most powerful visual metaphors for parenting that we've seen in a good long while, a fact which I'm willing to cast aside my rampant filmie snobbery for.

Miss Potter. Well, at least I didn't pay to see it. (Free sneak preview passes; thanks, MJO.) I declared afterward that I felt I'd been whimsied to a pulp. The only true moment in the whole boring slog was at the end of the dinner party when Renee as Beatrix whispers her acceptance of Ewan as Norman's marriage proposal, and his face crumples into a deep frown that, in any other circumstance, would give way to a sob of thanksgiving, yet he must tuck the passion of that emotion back into a proper stiff upper lip, which, despite his best efforts, still blooms out into a giddy but cautious smile. Get that man a light saber, people! (Erm...) The Onion A.V. Club ably and concisely sums up pretty much anything else you might need to know in order to convince yourself to skeep eet.

Casino Royale. Wow, what a pleasant surprise! How thrilling was that opening foot chase through the construction site and on into the embassy? How nice was it to get even a little bit of Jeffrey Wright? I'd also just read the novel and was impressed by how closely they stuck to the basic plot outline while improving on some of the weak spots and making it utterly contemporary. And, not to be all I told you so, but Daniel Craig is perfection.

Elsewhere:

S/FJ writes the best review of Volver I've read yet. I doubt it will be topped.

Robot gives birth in South Korean hospital. Snip: "The newborn, also a robot, is equipped with lights on its hands and cheeks to indicate its health -- blue lights mean problems while pink lights signal all is ok." I love that "also a robot" parenthetical--as if there were some chance that the robot would be giving birth to an actual human. Or, perhaps, a puppy.

900 Hay Bales Dropped to Snowbound Cows. Someone please tell me there were gay cows out there! OMG, I so love the mental image. As Alex Ross wrote in the midst of all the Brokeback hysteria last year, "please rise for the singing of the gay national anthem: 'pling-pling-pling pling...pling...'" (moo moo-moo-moo).

Much like the album itself, an epic and stunning interview with Joanna Newsom about Ys (via). If this doesn't convince you, you will never be convinced.

Wait, wha--? Kele Okereke is gay? Or bi? Or whatever? (Link via.) I wonder how I never knew or figured that out before. Huh. Even though I've warmed up to the band considerably over time, it actually kind of makes me like them about 500 time more.

Happy birthday, David Bowie. I listened to "Queen Bitch" on the train this morning in observance of the day.

Wild Animal Edition

Bears killed and ate a monkey in a zoo on Sunday in the Netherlands, jest in time for visitors to witness the carnage and be traumatized forever.
(Link)

The first wild grizzly bear/polar bear hybrid is found in Canada. Any word yet on the gorilla-shark mutant of the Discovery Channel's dreams?
(Link)

Alligators killed three women in Florida this week; previously, there had only been seventeen confirmed deadly gator attacks in the state since 1948.
(Link)
A British website's report on the same story features the headline "Florida rocked by alligator attacks." This could also work as a perfect lead-in for a review of a really kick-ass Cajun music festival. In this article, an exasperated trapper laments, "We can't just keep developing wetlands for homes and shopping centres and then wonder why we are up to our ears in alligators." I don't know about you, but, every time an alligator is closing in tight for a nibble on the old earlobes, I inevitably find myself wondering, "why am I up to my ears in alligators?"

And, only lethal to my sense of cynicism: hamster tongues.

Tell Me "Snack Hamster" Doesn't Sound Like a B-52s Song

A weird day for weird animal behavior in urban environments: snakes and hamsters hanging out amiably in a zoo in Tokyo (thanks for the link, Nora Rocket) and a whale swimming up the Thames in London. This makes Mike O'D's joke about the dead pigeon on my backdoor staircase asking me in a Groucho Marx voice, "wha? Ya mean'ya never saw'r a dead pigeon before?" seem almost possible.

A brief but surprisingly bold defense of religion in indie rock today on Pitchfork.

I have recently taken to enhancing my hot beverages with French vanilla Coffeemate, and, boy howdy, does it make me feel a little less apathetic about my life right now. It's especially good with the Celestial Seasonings Perfectly Pear White Tea. Mwrowr.

Dear ambiguously accented, fast-talking waiter from the Wildfire last night: you get funnier the more I think about you. You were a fine waiter and all, and I mean no disrespect, but, seriously, are you part cartoon? Were the formative years of your childhood spent in an RKO comedy? Never has anyone actually said to me, in apparent earnest, "thass veruh, veruh nahce. Eggggcellent choissse." I couldn't have asked for a more perfect complement to the retro steakhouse ambiance. Bogart's Charhouse could use a few of your ilk to help class up the joint.

A Perfect Day for Banana Phones, and Other Stories

Banana phone,
originally uploaded by wrestlingentropy.

OK, so this is just the most recent in a long line of photos I've taken of my sister in ridiculous situations (e.g. posing with the fuzzy purple tire monster in the kids' corner at the auto parts store [?], sitting on the edge of the fountain in front of the garbage dump in Northwest Indiana, etc.). I was trying to kill the roll of film and insisted she needed a funny prop. (Bananas in your ears? Always funny; am I right?) She's stopped protesting as much when I tell her to do these things; I suspect she's actually beginning to enjoy it. (More random new, semi-recent photos here.)

Wow. Somebody found some old, undiscovered Jeff Mangum demos in a house in Louisiana. It's been a resoundingly good year for NMH fans between the release of Kim Cooper's 33.33 book on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Mangum's surprise guest appearances onstage with Olivia Tremor Control and Elf Power in New York, and Pitchfork enshrining In the Aeroplane as a classic 10.0 album.

Monkeys with accents, also always funny.