Yet More NPR Nerd-dom

Last night, the husband and I hung out with Adam Felber, Peter Sagal, and Carl Kasell.

How cool are we?

SO COOL. Seriously. We were giddy like schoolgirls.

Pop Culture Clash

My office is on the 17th floor. That should prevent me from hearing street level traffic. However, either the wind is blowing in a very strange way, or there's a street performer with a saxophone on the 16th floor, because I've been hearing this guy for the last half hour. He's got a whole medley going on, and most of it I can tune out. However, every time it catches my ear, it's because he's playing the theme from "Sanford & Son." What's particularly annoying, though, is that my brain then fills in the words that Turk sang to Carla in an episode of Scrubs a few seasons back:

"Quiet down now
It is time to watch the show
See, it's starting -
Don't be licking me no mo'
Matter of fact, could you get me a handy wi-iiiiipe?"

You can see where this would be distracting, I'm sure....

ETA: In the middle of the night, I realized I mixed up my '70s-era sitcoms when I first identified the song in question as the theme to "Archie Bunker." The error has been rectified.

Movies - both Good and Not So Good

With the husband being on spring break, last weekend brought lots of movie watching: in theaters, Zodiac. Really, really good, and not just because it featured one of the most amazing casts I've ever seen assembled in one place (I mean, you're settling in, and all of a sudden - Charles Fleischer! Clea DuVall! John Carroll Lynch! Adam Goldberg! And that's just the ones I remember off the top of my head!). It was a veritable that-guy paradise.

Actually, though, John Carroll Lynch was kind of distracting. Because he played Jake Gyllenhall's dad in Bubble Boy, which is one of the most vastly under-rated films ever. And every time I contemplated the two of them at the same time (which was something Zodiac required), I'd frequently find myself thinking, "He's not dead - you're not dead, Jimmy!" If you've never seen Bubble Boy, you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but if you have, you're laughing really hard right now. Unless you have no soul. And that's your problem, not mine.

Anyway, the movie-watching continued with a group gathering on Saturday night to watch a friend's recently-acquired VHS copy of The Stepfather. Said friend has been obsessed with The Stepfather for years, so he bought it immediately upon finding it on sale for $3, despite the fact that he, himself, does not own a VCR. Because we do, we got to benefit from his purchase, and we are so pleased that we did.

It was, obviously, completely ridiculous, but it really owned its ridiculousness, never bothering with questions of motivation, or logical plot points, or even decent follow-through. It was just an hour and a half of utter predictability, and various incarnations of Terry O'Quinn. According to imdb, there's a remake planned for 2008 - we're so there!

And lastly, after The Stepfather was over, what was I to do but put The Turkish Wizard of Oz in the DVD player? About this, I have no words. Seriously, just read the Film Threat review. It was a pretty extraordinary experience, to say the least.

I Love VH-1 AND NPR

As most people are, I think, aware of my ongoing love affair with public radio, it will not be a surprise to hear that the husband and I headed out last night for a live recording of This American Life. We were thrilled to see Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, and Dan Savage present pieces inspired by "What I Learned From Television"; this theme was selected specifically because the evening was also serving as a fundraiser/awareness-raiser about the new This American Life television show (it seemed very important to Ira Glass that his audience like it, which was cute... and understandable, given that some people hissed and booed him when he mentioned having moved to New York to work on it).

Anyway, Ira Glass pointed out that many of the TV-oriented stories might be lost on the audience crowded into the Chicago Theater, as he felt it was a group of people that might be more likely to eschew television, saying things like, "Oh, well, I do enjoy NOVA." And I found myself weirdly proud to be representing the small sliver of the Venn diagram where TV addicts and public radio addicts overlap - perhaps because it was clear that Ira Glass himself falls into that category as well.