Tragedy and Irony at the Arclight Theaters

.. our favorite movie theater in LA, where this past Thursday a film critic succumbed to a heart attack at a screening of, er, 'A Mighty Heart.

Boston, California.

The Red Sox visited San Diego this weekend, and we were among the Red Sox fans who took over the place and helped set a Petco Stadium attendance record.

Some observations about the field:

• Petco Park's a major sports stadium named after a place that sells puppies and chew toys. We were less than inspired. And once we stepped inside, we continued to be underwhelmed. It was new, yeah, but boring. A giant slab of concrete, like an open-aired version of the FleetCenter

• But one cool thing is that it sits in the middle of a downtown neighborhood. Meaning the surrounding high-rises were so close that people could stand on the balconies and look down into the park. Same for some of the condos in the area.

• No pitch count to be found,and it took us 4 innings to find the radar gun reading.

• Not enuff vendors. We were at the top row, and all we saw were cotton candy and Crackerjack vendors. Either the vendors there are too lazy to climb stairs (a possibility,y looking at some of them) or there are not enuff.

• Plenty of beer stands, tho. Never had to wait in line, so long as you aren't fussy about what you are drinking. (one stand only had MGD)

• Also looks like its a “Potty Parity” joint, one of the stupidest ideas of modern times. A trend in the 90’s to address the fact that thew lines for the ladies rooms were out of control. However, the geniuses decided that, in a venue that is 70% male on any given day, women should have an equal amount of restrooms so there were long lines for the men's; rooms, and no lines for the women's rooms.

• These are the ushers. Look more like refugees from a Jimmy Buffet concert than a paid employee at the park We walked past 4 of these guys until we realized they were wearing a uniform.

• No security. At all. 30,000 Sox fans came into town, and the Petco folks had no idea what was coming. Because it was Sand Diego, it took 6 full innings for the jawing back and forth to turn into full scale fights; once that happened, the stadium responded by sending an usher up to check it out. “If this was Fenway, the cops would have kicked his ass out a long time ago” is something we heard over and over again.
  

• About the fights- there were a few. Among the Sox fans were some very obnoxious fans, acting as if this was a Yankee game. One fat ass in a Sox jersey sitting behind us kept throwing things onto the fnas below- water bottles, trash, full beers. Said our buddy who’s been in CA for the past 10 years: “I hope Red Sox Nation doesn’t become like Raider Nation.”

• It was Throwback Night; both teams wore uniforms from the 80’s. Meant that we got to see those great road grays that the Sox abandoned. Also got to see the Padres sport their brown and gold uniforms again. (but things went too far) There’s a movement in SD to go back to a brown color scheme (but not as garish as what they used to have) We agree. None of the fans we saw wore the current Padres blue; most of them were in brown T shirts.

Top Photo via flickr.com

We only fill our tank when the moon is high...

And why you should too...

“As the temperature rises, liquid gasoline expands and the amount of energy in each gallon drops. Since gas is priced at a 60-degree standard and gas pumps don't adjust for any temperature changes, motorists often get less bang for their buck in warmer weather. Consumer watchdog groups warn that the temperature increase could cost consumers between 3 and 9 cents a gallon at the pump.”

But wait - there can’t really be anything to this. Besides, even if there was, it’s too expensive to replace all the pumps. Gas stations would never do it. ..

“In frigid Canada, where cold temperatures were giving consumers an edge, many gas stations voluntarily backed a program to add pumps that automatically adjust volumes based on temperature.”

Via the San Diego Tribune, which we read while locked inside our San Ysidro motel less than 2 miles from the Mexican border.

Sigh

We're big Fans of Denis Leary and Peter Tolan's Rescue Me. Would love to see more shows like that on TV. Unfortunately...

"In what would have put Mr. (Denis) Leary in the rarefied territory of Mr. Wolf and Jerry Bruckheimer (as executive producer of at least three law enforcement dramas running in prime time), Mr. Leary nearly got another series on next year’s television schedule: “Fort Pit,” set in a dysfunctional New York City police precinct. Mr. Leary’s production company, Apostle, made “Fort Pit” as a pilot at the request of NBC.

“We gave them what they asked for,” said Mr. Leary of the pilot, which was written by Mr. Tolan. “It was a dark, edgy, funny, heartbreaking cop show, like a modern-day ‘Hill Street Blues.’ ”

In the end, though, NBC went a different way, with a lineup of new dramas for next fall, including a remake of “The Bionic Woman.." via the NYTimes.

Rescue Me returns tonight. Watch it or you're dead to us.

John From Cincinnati

Sunday night at 10, on HBO, after the Sopranos.

Happy Lindisfarne Day

This is the day that most sources acknowledge to be the dawn of the Viking Age.

“It is the day in 793 that Vikings raided Lindisfarne, the holy island off the coast of Northumberland. The Vikings hacked the monks to death or dragged them into the sea where they drowned them. The chapels and monastery were looted of the riches they contained, much of which had been derived from the payment by the common folk for their indulgences – monetary payments to safeguard them from the torments of hell. The treasure included gold, silver, jewellery, ivory coffins and much beside.” Via Wilson's Almanac

We’ve come a long way since then.

Bag O' Wind

What happens when you invite a news anchor to join a discussion about the Sopranos final episodes?

He takes 287 words to get to his fucking question.

(Days 36 - 39 are worth a look; those installments include one of the writers of The Sopranos in the discussion)

Slate’s TV Club is hit or miss, depending on the contributors. One of the best is the one they assembled to discuss The Wire.

Good thing he wasn’t working with plutonium

While trying to determine if our insides have, in fact, been turned to formaldehyde, we came across this nugget:

"Sucralose (an artificial sweetener) was discovered in 1976 by a graduate student at King's College London. His head researcher had told him to test some compounds, but he misunderstood and tasted them instead." Via Discover magazine

So, should we stop drinking Diet Soda or not? Yes, but not necessarily bc of the sweeteners. Still haven't found anything credible linking aspartame to cancer, formaldehyde, lupus, premature telekinesiss, or any other disease. All the articles we found so far are identical to every other piece of chian mail we've ever received over the years. i.e., breathless letters that begin with "THIS IS SO TRUE" and "SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW", and dire warnings printed IN CAPITAL LETTERS. All the info seems to be the same paragraph, inserted over and over again across several sites.

... except for this one

D Day plus 23,010

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the Normandy Invasion. (If we have to explain to you what the Normandy invasion is, then perhaps you've found this site by accident.)

Some people we know are bent out of shape that it’s not being acknowledged today, but what do you expect? Everyone’s already seen the movie. (Another great point made by someone who works at a rival web site is that 63 is a weird number; just wait’ll the 65th anniversary.)

Fortunately, the World War II nostalgia machine keeps on churning. Spielberg and Hanks are getting back together to make The Pacific, another HBO WWII miniseries (or Maxi-series, as the kids in the Industry call them), this time focusing on the, er, Pacific campaign. Captain Dale Dye, who by law must be involved in any movie about the military, just signed off from his LA radio show this past Sunday, explaining that he’s shipping out to the jungle for the next year to work on the series. If they're deploying Dale Dye, then you know it's for real.

And, for those of you who want something a little more recent, Generation Kill is just around the corner. Brought to you by David Simon and Ed Burns, the guys who created The Wire, based on the book Generation kill. Can't wait for this one.

“I definitely have had a blessed life.”

Catching up with the Beaver, Jerry Mathers, who at 69 is about to debut in the Broadway production of Hairspray.

"Mr. Mathers went to high school, joined the Air National Guard, graduated from Berkeley and started a career in banking and, later, real estate. He was not, as was widely reported, killed in Vietnam, though Tony Dow, a k a Beaver’s big brother, Wally, sent flowers to the Mathers family upon hearing the news.

One day in the late 1970s Mr. Dow asked Mr. Mathers if he wanted to join him in a production of “Boeing Boeing,” a ’60s farce, at a dinner theater in Kansas City, Mo. Mr. Mathers said he initially saw it as a way to bring a higher profile to his real estate business.

But the stint was so successful they followed it up with another show, “So Long, Stanley,” which toured the country. He returned to California to become the host of a radio show for a couple of years. (In a quirk laden with cultural resonance, Mr. Mathers was the emergency replacement for Timothy Leary, who tended to repel listeners.) Via the NY Times

True to the spirit of the show, the child stars of “Beaver” grew up to be responsible, mostly trouble free adults. We met the man who played Eddie Haskel a few years ago, who by then was a retired Los Angeles Police Officer.

Even Lumpy turned out OK.

“Frank Bank, who played Clarence (Lumpy) Rutherford, seconded Mr. Mathers in saying that “Leave it to Beaver” was only good fortune. He even wrote a book, “Call Me Lumpy,” detailing, among other things, his copious sexual exploits in the years following the show. Mr. Bank is now Mr. Mathers’s investment adviser.”

WOW

We’re probably the last ones in America to have discovered this, but we’ve been busy. Via a recent Bill Simmons chat, this guy named Ronald Jenkees remixes the theme to the new Rocky movie.

Almost Famous

A friend of this site is profiled by the Sam Allis of the Boston Globe.

“So I'm sitting in Fenway with a friend a few weeks ago watching Wakefield get lit up by Detroit. I overhear the big red-headed guy next to me tell someone he's going to Paraguay. I can't resist: Wasn't that home to General Stroessner, one of Latin America's hall of fame baddies? The hide-out of Joseph Mengele and all those crazy, zany Nazis after the war? And, help me out here, is Asuncion its capital or Montevideo? Yes, yes, and Asuncion, the man tells me. His name is Graham Campbell, and it turns out he's traveling there in his capacity as training manager at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.”

Congrats.