9.19.2007

Streaming my pop culture consciousness ...

Don't mind me. Just rambling about some of the other things I've been doing / watching / listening to the last few weeks in between all the pennant races ...

(What do you think I'm doing as a I write this post? Watching the Brewers, of course ... I'd be watching the Cubs too, but that game's on ESPN, which means it gets blocked out in our region. Idiot cable ... By the way, the Cubs and Brewers are all tied up atop the NL Central heading into tonight. The Brewers just went up 2-0 on homer No. 47 from Prince, and last I checked the Cubs were scoreless ... There's still a solid week left, but judging by the last few nights, I'm really liking the Brewers chances right now ... )

... So I was holding out as long as I could, but over the weekend Hotmail made me change over to Windows Live. Me and everyone else I know who uses it agrees: We hate it ... but then again -- we agree on this too -- we've hated it every time Hotmail makes a change, only to wind up getting so attached to it that it's inevitable we'll hate the next change ...

* * *

... With the fall TV season starting up, Kates and I have been pressing ourselves to clean up all the movies that have stacked up on our DVR over the summer and on our entertainment cabinet ... Most of them have been put off for a good reason -- we weren't that interested in seeing them, but we kept hearing good things about them and there comes a time when you feel like you have to see them whether you want to or not ...

And so we watched ...

Pirates of the Caribbean? Even with all the hype surrounding the third installment this summer, never really interested in seeing it ... But it was pretty darn entertaining. Funny. And I've enjoyed the last few Johnny Depp movies I've seen so much that it's getting to a point where I'll watch just about anything he's appearing in ...

Spiderman 2? Again, with all the hype surrounding a third installment this summer, I couldn't care less about this movie -- because I thought the first one was horrible (and I saw it in the theater ... ) ... Turned out, I liked Spiderman 2 enough to actually want to see Spiderman 3. I still thought the barage of computer graphics were so fake-looking and poor I laughed, but the action (and watching Kirstin Dunst) kept me interested ...

The Cat in the Hat. Ok, so I've never heard good things about this movie. But c'mon, it's got Mike Myers, Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin, and it's based on a Dr. Seuss classic. How bad can it be right!? ... Started watching it, and was happy to see Alec Baldwin, Kelly Preston and Sean Hayes too. Thought it wasn't too bad, but then again, it was being held up by Dakota, as usual, stealing the opening scenes as the primped and proper Sally, poking around on her palm pilot and making her to-do list ... Then Myers broke in as the cat, and the movie just started going from bad to worse. Kates and I fell asleep and woke up after the movie was long over. And I don't care to go back and watch what we missed.

And last night, I stayed up after the baseball games to watch Dodgeball. Yeah ... I'm going to liken this one to my experience watching Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle: A movie that starts out so silly and juvenile you want to turn it off ... but you can't keep from getting attached to the characters, and by the last 30 minutes you're rooting for them and you're glad you stayed on the ride ...


* * *

... I've gotten hooked on watching FX's "It's Always Sunny in Phladelphia." I'd never heard of the show until I ran across a preview for the premiere a couple weeks ago. So I tuned in, and enjoyed it ... In the premiere you had a guy infiltrating a group of enviro-hippies and then sleeping with their leader's girlfriend out of revenge. Two guys (one of them is Danny DeVito's character) become so addicted to digging through trash bins they turn into bums and don't realize it. And a couple ends up painting a baby (which they found in a Dumpster and named D.B. for Dumpster Baby) brown so he might appear Latino and have better odds of appearing in a commercial ... It's good old-fashioned silliness -- almost like the kind you'd find at Second City, or any other improv comedy club. It's funny stuff.

* * *

... I recently got a hold of Kelly Clarkson's new album. Right now, I can hardly stand to listen to it; it's too dark ... But I'm open to the possibility it could grow on me ...

... In the meantime, I've really been getting into The New Pornographers, Feist and Mates of State (Lawrence, Kan., baby!) -- who, by the way, all appeared together in a smashing performance on Letterman a couple weeks ago ... I've been clicking on "Fraud in the '80s" almost every time I've turned on my iPod for the last month ... I'm mesmerized by Kori Gardner's organ playing and the duo's punchy pop harmonies ... Check out the video ...

No comments: