Category Archives: Watching

Rihanna at the Borgata

You know that scene in The Body­guard? It was like that the whole time.

I’ve been all about R&B this year. Don’t know why it took so long. I guess it was eas­i­er to com­plain about all the things that were wrong with indie rock. Now when I look back, I feel like I real­ly did­n’t appre­ci­ate all the great stuff that hap­pened when I was grow­ing up because it was­n’t “under­ground” enough. Wish I’d under­stood the dif­fer­ence between main­stream crap and real­ly great, engag­ing art back then.

Hav­ing said this, this is a pret­ty lack­lus­ter Rihan­na song, but it’s one of just two videos from the Bor­ga­ta show last week­end. Fun­ny since you could­n’t look at the stage with­out see­ing hun­dreds of cam­eras point­ed direct­ly at her. Like I said, it was like that scene in The Body­guard from start to finish.

Last Call for Zane Lamprey’s Three Sheets?

I knew things weren’t good when I first caught a glimpse of Zane Lam­prey in a Sub­way com­mer­cial. When I start­ed fol­low­ing Lam­prey on Face­book, I saw that he was work­ing on a new project, but his oth­er show, Three Sheets, has got­ten a stay of exe­cu­tion. Then I read this post over on his site. This tweet did lit­tle to con­vince me that Mark Cuban was des­tined to save Three Sheets.

Is Zane Lam­prey cursed? Should the title of this post real­ly be “How Zane Lam­prey Sank Two Net­works?” Think of the SEO!

Now, I get why Trav­el Chan­nel balked. They have Antho­ny Bour­dain’s show, No Reser­va­tions, which fea­tures him doing much the same thing, with more culi­nary insight and less self-aware­ness. Peo­ple like that. He’s macho. He knows famous peo­ple. Win, right? Who could be both­ered with the wild­ly relat­able Lam­prey who seems to make friends eas­i­ly wher­ev­er he goes.

I still don’t remem­ber how we dis­cov­ered “Three Sheets.” My guess is that Helen hap­pened to find it while chan­nel surf­ing, or a friend told us we should tune in. The show was great. Even if you don’t care about booze, who would­n’t enjoy on-screen tal­ent will­ing to debase him­self in ways even the Three Stooges would refuse?

Whether he was at home or abroad, Zane got him­self into all the best kinds of trou­ble. Any­one who’s ever got­ten drunk over­seas knows how it feels to wake up the next morn­ing and hop on a plane, impos­si­bly hun­gover. It’s hell, yet Zane sub­ject­ed him­self to such tor­ture glee­ful­ly. I some­times found myself real­ly root­ing for the booze to defeat him, but like the Wash­ing­ton Gen­er­als, it nev­er won.

I hope Zane isn’t exiled to Cuban’s HDNet. Where does any­one watch that? I’m real­ly sor­ry we missed him when he blew through town last June. Hope­ful­ly he’ll find a munif­i­cent home for “Three Sheets” before he’s back through.

Inception

Very hap­py to final­ly see Incep­tion, my first movie in the the­ater since Char­lie was born. Far cry from the last movie I saw in the the­ater, which was Adven­ture­land, if mem­o­ry serves.

Great, big movie. It’s the sort of stuff that makes you want to shake any­one who tells you art should con­form to the new finan­cial real­i­ties brought to us by pira­cy. I love small movies, but if every­thing were shot on hand­helds I think film art would just die alto­geth­er. What would be left to do? If the world were only filled with ama­teur Cas­savetes, we’d be a pret­ty dour bunch, would­n’t we? I mean, is there even a point to get­ting into the thought puz­zle at the core (?) of the film? I feel like I’m still absorb­ing the movie.

Did any­one see The Pres­tige, Nolan’s stopover flick between Bat­man Returns and The Dark Knight? Guess not, because if they had I think more peo­ple would think of him as the M. Knight Shy­malan you don’t laugh at…yet.

Speak­ing of Shy­malan, the crowd burst into laugh­ter once his name was men­tioned in the trail­er for Dev­il. Dude’s not hit­ting his way out of this slump, unless he intend­ed to be the new Ed Wood.

Welcome Back, Cole

Are you glad we did­n’t ditch Cole to keep Cliff now? His one-hit out­ing under the hot Saint Louis sun was noth­ing short of sen­sa­tion­al. Yet Amaro thinks we need pitching!

I’m thrilled to see Cole bounce back from a lack­lus­ter 2009 cam­paign. He’s becom­ing the ace every­one knew he’d be. Makes me very opti­mistic for the next few years.