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Cedar Rapids in Woodstock
Friday, March 18 2011
Today was even warmer than yesterday, though Gretchen was better than me at taking advantage of it. She set up a chaise lounge out in the driveway and solved some crossword puzzles and did some reading. The dogs and cats were similarly cheered by the conditions, sunning themselves around her like roadkill.
This evening Nancy came over and the three of us carpooled to Woodstock for vegan pizza & fries at Catskill Mountain Pizza and then a movie at Tinker Street Cinema. The pizza was good, mostly due to the crust. That place is a far cry from gourmet, being rather half-assed about the application of toppings. For example, they always cube the soy cheese, so it never adequately melts. As for the vegetables, you'd think maybe they could steam the broccoli or sautée the mushrooms. Not a chance! They're tossed on raw and the best you can hope for is that they get a little singed. The fries, though, were delicious, having been prepared with a little breading. And the Catskill Mountain Pizza beverage cooler is loaded with lots of interesting beers, including one of my favorite quasi-IPAs, Lagunita's Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale. That was what I had to drink tonight, though the ladies had wine instead. Over dinner, I found myself having to describe the music video released by latest-internet-memestress Rebecca Black; somehow they'd totally missed this particular meme. Fun fun fun fun. By this point in the memecycle, though, I'd already started feeling sorry for Rebecca. She actually seemed like a nice kid in her Good Morning America interview. Yes, it's 2011, and internet memes are now covered on Good Morning America.
I'd been the instigator behind the viewing of tonight's movie, Cedar Rapids. I'd heard Ed Helms interviewed about it on Fresh Air, and it sounded like it would be hilarious. With John C. Reilly, Ed Helms, and Isiah Whitlock Jr., that guy famous for saying "sheeeeeeeeeeit" on The Wire, how could you go wrong? It ended up being all that we hoped it would be: a dull grey profession (midwest insurance salesmanship) set in contrast with the messiness of human existence: naivité, low-roller corruption, sex (in all its most important manifestations), drunkenness, remorse, jealousy, envy, drug abuse, violence, the threat of violence, sublimated racism, and at least one frightfully odorous bowel movement. The best scene in the movie is the one where the mild-mannered character played by Isiah Whitlock Jr. impersonates a "gangsta" and then, by way of explanation to the dumbfounded friends he just saved (all of them white), "I do a pretty convincing Omar from the HBO program The Wire." As for John C. Reilly, he really needs to get a best supporting actor Oscar already. In Cedar Rapids, "straight" (with regard to the comic charge of a performance) is always a relative term, though nobody was ever less straight than John C. Reilly. I told Nancy and Gretchen to be sure to check out Brule's Rules to see Reilly in some wickedly-brief moments of comic genius.
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