A Failed Comedy

"Man Of the Year"

A great idea for a movie, and one so representitive of our current times. Robin Williams as a smart personable political comedian who has a show on TV. (John Stewart, anyone?) Suddenly he has the idea to run for president. He wins. There you have the great set up for a funny political movie to follow him through his first year or so and see what changes in the three branches of the US Government because of him. A real opportunity for a writer and a director to make a good point and really say something about the current political climate. But no, that doesn't happen. Instead you get a pseudo-comedy that looks great in the previews and completely fails when you watch the entire thing.

Apparently the writer didn't think that the above story line was enough and wasn't fully satisfied with just writing a comedy. He (Barry Levinson) wanted to make this a political thriller and by doing so, failed miserably at a comedy and at a thriller. He introduces a computer programmer (Laura Linney) who works for a company that gets the go ahead to do the entire electronic voting booths throughout the country. She finds a bug in the program, and alerts the CEO, but he sees his stock rising and if he were to announce this glitch, he would lose a lot of money, so he drugs her, gets her put into a hospital and fires her from the company. The rest of the story is her trying to tell Robin Williams that he's not actually president and the electronic voting company trying to find her to stop her from telling anybody.

Both ideas are good alone, but somehow they completely fail when put together. Kind of like lobster and oreos. You like lobster, and you like oreos, but sandwich some lobster between oreos.... I don't think so.

Needless to say, I was dissapointed. It could have been a great movie. I guess I like "Dave" too much and thought from the previews I was getting into something more reminicent of that. I guess I'll just have to watch "Dave" sometime this weekend. Kevin Kline is great in that movie.

And so it begins...

So if any of you do not know - a couple friends and I started an Irish band awhile back for the sole purpose of having way too much fun the week of St Paddy's Day. It is a goal I think we might just accomplish.

The band is called "Juice of the Barley" after the Gaelic quote (not written here in Gaelic, but in English so that more that 6 people can read it):

"The milk of the cow is good for the calf, but the juice of the barley for me"

The band numbers 4, and features Dennis Bigelow on the guitar and lead vocals, Carole Lundren on fiddle, Sam Ernst on bodhran and harmony vocals, and myself on piano, harmonica, lead and harmony vocals.

It's been way too much fun getting together and jamming, and we've decided to stick around awhile and play year round, depending on the gigs that we get.

And on Saturday night, the madness started. We had a small intimate kickoff party with some great friends and some great beer to get things started. If you were unfortunate enough to miss said party, check out the Juice of the Barley myspace site for the complete rundown of all upcoming shows.

The pictures are from our living room show, I have to send props out to Kim who is responsible for the Manchester jersey and hat I'm wearing - I know it's not Irish, but I was so unbelievably excited that I got it, I had to wear it for the party.

And so raise your glasses and join me in the most traditional of all Irish toasts:

"May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand."

Hope to see you out this week and if not - have a happy St Paddy's Day with all your friends.

Best movie I've seen in a long time

I just saw the movie "Stranger the Fiction".

I loved it.

I'm not even going to review it, because I don't want create any preconcieved notions about it.

Just go see it. It's fantastic.

John Butler is a madman on the 12 string guitar

Words cannot describe how much the John Butler Trio rock live.

The best word I can think of to even begin to encapsulate the awesomeness of this show is "powerful". Powerful in all of it's meanings. The music, the sound, the lyrics, the attitude - all just blew me away.

The show was billed as an "acoustic" show, but I don't know if it would be possible for them to rock any harder. John Butler has an amazing effect on his acoustic guitars that rivals any electric rock guitarist. Half way through the show he played an eight minute solo instrumental on the 12 string that expanded my known world on what is possible on that instrument. The rest of the show he continued to astound switching from 12 string, to Dobro, to lap slide, to banjo and even some ukulele. The bass and the drummer were equally as mind-blowing on their respective instruments. The final encore song went on for a good ten minutes featuring an incredible bass solo followed by an amazing drum solo that left everyone in the crowd screaming for more. Between songs throughout the night John Butler would bring it down and tell the crowd a little bit about the song and where he was in his life when writing it which gave a very cool intimate "Storytellers" feel to this sold out show at the Fox.

Basically what I'm getting at here is that the John Butler Trio rocks. If you haven't seen them live make it a top priority. That's all I'm saying.

The Shins Rock the house and Cliff Diving at "The Most Exciting Restaurant in the World"

Wow.

Let me tell you something, Denver. You put out quite the night. Even hitting rush hour straight on couldn't put a damper on this evening.

It's been so long since I've been down to Denver during a rush hour that I completly forgot they existed. I'm used to trying my patience on Shields and Mulberry trying to get home from work - that's nothing compared to going 7 mph on a four lane interstate jam packed with cars. And then just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" came on the radio and all was better. Check out the music video for that song if you don't already know what I mean.

Then it was time for dinner - not my choice, but I was all for it when I heard what Cynthia suggested and all of the sudden we found ourselves at the entrance to the Denver, nay, Colorado landmark: Casa Bonita. I hadn't been there for probably 20 years and it definitely was everything I remember and more. Self proclaimed as "The Most Exciting Restaurant In The World" I would have to agree. It's set up exactly like an amusement park all the way down to the line you have to wait in to order and to get into the actual restaurant. Then once you get to the tables you're surrounded by palm trees, cliffs, water falls, old "Mexican" posters and decorations, Mariachi bands and high school actors and members of the local dive team who work part time putting on a melodrama with cliff diving every 15 minutes. Pretty spectacular. We had fun.

Then it was on to The Fillmore to see The Shins. It'd been a couple years since I had seen a show at The Fillmore and I forgot what a great venue it is. We got there in time to catch the last few songs of one of the opening bands - Viva Voca - a duo that had kind of a catchy Weezer type sound to them. The girl sang and played an electric two necked guitar/bass while the guy sang and played keyboard and drums at the same time. Pretty cool to watch.

Then The Shins came on and rocked the house. I've got their new album "Wincing the Night Away" and was sure that they'd start with the opening track on the album "Sleeping Lessons". I was right, and it just got better from there. After "Sleeping Lessons" they went right into "Austraila" followed by "Pam Berry" immediatly into "Phantom Limb" which was incredible. Next they played a couple songs off their oldler albums "Kissing the Lipless", "Girl on the Wing", and "Mine's Not a High Horse". After that came "New Slang" when all the 16 year old girls (and other Garden State fans) when crazy and started screaming. Definite highlights were "Saint Simon" (which totally made Cynthia's night) where they got the whole crowd to sing along on the "La la" parts. "Pressed in a Book" was a definite favorite of mine as well as "A Call to Apathy". They ended the show with "Girl Inform Me" which was a great high energy song and a perfect song to go out on. The sold out crowd was great and the Fillmore even gave the band little trophys for selling out the show which the brought out on stage and showed everybody.

Overall it was an awesome show - one that I would reccommend not to miss when they're anywhere nearby your area of residence.

Here's to another fabulous night, Denver. Rock on.

Strange Happenings in Local Ice Chest

Check this out:
I filled up a normal ice cube tray midday and then 8 hours later we needed some ice, and upon removing the tray from the freezer we found a freak occurrence. Sometime during the freezing process, normal everyday physics had flown out the window and left us with the ice cube shown. Dennis put it in his tea and as far as I know is still living normally, so it must have just been the physical properties of the ice cube that had changed inexplicably and not the chemical properties. What made this freak occurrence take place? We are without explanation.

Weird dream

I had this crazy dream last night, which is weird because I usually never remember my dreams. Our family was visiting some friends who lived right by a harbour on an ocean and there was a big steam powered paddle boat that was just floating out in the harbour. Then my dad and I thought it would be a cool picture if I were to jump in the ocean - it was shallow enough to stand - and push the huge boat around. But as we started walking down to the water this big storm came up and the water got really rough, but I thought I'd do it anyway so I jumped in with my clothes and sandals on and the water immediately took the sandals off of my feet. I kept looking around the bottom for the sandals, but all I could find were other people's flip flops. I was so mad at myself for not taking off my shoes before jumping in and now they were gone forever.

When I woke up this morning I was so disappointed and still mad at myself for losing my sandals. And then I realized that it was just a dream.