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.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 4

The Khyber Post-Mortem

I went to my fare share of shows at the Khy­ber while it last­ed. Was­n’t it great? The stretch they had was noth­ing short of amaz­ing now when I look back on some of the shows I saw there. Sure, there were your obscure psych rock artists like Ghost, city main­stays Bar­do Pond and the occa­sion­al top flight book­ing that was an absolute coup.

I saw the Decem­berists there in 2004, when they were plen­ty famous enough to play a big­ger venue, yet not so big that every­one and their broth­er was a fan. I caught Trad, Gras och Ste­nar there, too. My first glimpse of the Nation­al came there, too. They booked almost any­thing worth see­ing, until John­ny Bren­da’s came along and Sta­cie George stopped book­ing there and the city’s music scene moved north to Fishtown.

It was a beau­ti­ful mess of a place, sand­wiched between too many bad Old City spots to count.  Most of them came and went and now the Khy­ber has (sort of) gone, too. When I read that they intend to trans­form the dingy bar into a fan­cy Japan­ese eatery, I near­ly died laugh­ing. It was the sweati­est, smok­i­est club I’ve ever had the plea­sure of patron­iz­ing. Don’t get me wrong: Steve Simons has had suc­cess as a restau­ran­teur else­where in town, even if those spots are pret­ty unre­mark­able, but this is noth­ing short of using con­ceal­er to cov­er one of Old City’s most trea­sured blemishes.

I’m glad they had the good sense to run the venue into the ground for a good four years or so before doing this. Oth­er­wise I might have real­ly cared.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

The Columbia Avenue Grounds

As I’ve prob­a­bly men­tioned else­where, I often take my son Char­lie on dri­ves around our neigh­bor­hood to give mom a break and to get him to nap for about an hour or so. I fre­quent­ly dri­ve to the sites of old Philadel­phia ball­parks, most of which are just a short dri­ve from our home in the Port Fish­ing­ton triangle.

Today I took Char­lie past the old Colum­bia Avenue Grounds on Cecil B. Moore at 29th Street. I was shocked when I arrived and there was no his­tor­i­cal mark­er indi­cat­ing that it was once the home of the Philadel­phia Ath­let­ics. A World Series was played there, right in the heart of Brew­ery­town! There’s a great arti­cle here about the sights, sounds, and smells of the ball­park. Check it out.

The deep­er I delve into the his­to­ry of Philadel­phia base­ball, the more I fall in love with this city and its rich his­to­ry. Every­one likes to talk about Philadel­phia as the colo­nial cap­i­tal, but too many his­to­ri­ans and tourists treat the city as if it were frozen in amber in 1787. The his­to­ry of its neigh­bor­hoods are told by those blue his­tor­i­cal mark­ers that dot the city’s land­scape, serv­ing as reminders of the city’s won­drous past.

The next ques­tion is how do we rec­ti­fy this prob­lem and get the Colum­bia Avenue Grounds a his­tor­i­cal mark­er? (Orig­i­nal­ly post­ed at the Bring Your A’s Game tum­blog.)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 2

Another Big Week for Bring Your A’s Game

My friend and co-work­er Lee Rus­sakoff invit­ed me on his week­ly pod­cast, What’s Your 20, along with John­ny Good­times. You can lis­ten to it here.

Some great issues were brought up and I love answer­ing them. There are so many con­tra­dic­tions in sports own­er­ship at this point, what with bank­rupt teams mak­ing big deals at the trade dead­line and amaz­ing pitch­ing per­for­mances going prac­ti­cal­ly unno­ticed in their home­towns. Any time any­one tells me why this can’t work, I counter by say­ing that plen­ty of sports that are fail­ing before your very eyes, includ­ing the play­off-bound Texas Rangers, cur­rent­ly in bankruptcy.

No one out there has got­ten the mes­sage bet­ter than the inim­itable Ger­ard Cosloy, writ­ing at his must-read sports blog, Can’t Stop the Bleed­ing. He said this of my quest:

These efforts had me think­ing ; if a team receives luke­warm fan sup­port — despite impres­sive achieve­ments between the lines — is there real­ly some­thing total­ly fucked up about propos­ing they relo­cate to a sports mad north­east­ern city that rou­tine­ly sells out it’s bou­tique ballpark?

My sen­ti­ments exact­ly, Mr. Cosloy. Let’s hope more peo­ple see things the same way you do.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

I’m Living the Meme

Is that a t‑shirt yet? I coined it this morn­ing, which feels like months in Inter­net time. The beat goes on for Bring Your A’s Game (I promise I’ll write about some­thing else here soon), notch­ing yet anoth­er friend­ly post from Philly guy Dan McQuade over at the hilar­i­ous, awe­some Walkoff Walk.

I’ve got more in store with this. Yes, it’s verg­ing on — no, total­ly is — insan­i­ty, but I think that as sil­ly as it is, there’s too much fun to be had not to keep pur­su­ing it just to see where it goes. I’ll keep you in the loop if and when any­thing happens.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0