He'll Get Over It

I'm back from Washington...and now also Dallas (happy birthday, Dad), so now seems as good as time as any to update the blog.

I'll try not to get too sports-heavy here, but spring training is upon as pitchers and catchers reported to camp last weekend. If you don't follow baseball, first, shame on you. But second, the Texas Rangers have had some unexpected drama with their roster in the past month. Michael Young, the team's captain and all-time hits leader in club history, unexpectedly demanded a trade...publicly calling out team management for having lied to him and manipulated him during the off-season. I'll spare you the deep background as to how this messy debacle came about, as well as my own opinion about who shares the greatest blame, but know that Young is undoubtedly one of the most popular members of the Rangers. It would be a close race between Josh Hamilton and Young for a fan favorite, but there's little doubt that Young has been the heart and soul of a team that has seen many bad years. Until last year's run to the World Series, no active player had played in more games without making it to the playoffs than Michael Young. He has been the proverbial face of the franchise; a bright light amidst seasons of October darkness. It's with that background I give you this priceless video:



Awwww.

Evidently, Michael Young saw this video and decided it would be a good public relations opportunity---err, I mean a sweet moment. He met with the kid and took him on a shopping spree. But here's the funny thing...the kid didn't recognize Young without his uniform and number. The mind of a three-year-old is sort of perfect. It's not about the player...it's about the uniform. If only Michael Young shared the same belief...

Ooops. Guess I gave my opinion on who should be blamed.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

I'm off to Washington, DC for a long weekend, so there won't be much if anything posted here over the next few days. When I return, I'll try and keep this new-found momentum going for BoyHatesGirl. Thanks for all the positive feedback over the last two weeks.

Mystery Solved

I believe it's Occam's Razor which suggests that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. This was proven true tonight when I figured out why my roommate had been furiously cleaning the apartment the last 48 hours. There's a man in this house! A real live man! Should've known she wasn't scrubbing the bathroom for herself. Been there and done that. If she doesn't blow it, my apartment might finally stay clean enough for me to have guests. Or rather, if she does blow it. Dick jokes. Hilarious.

My Four Sex Tapes

Okay, they aren't real sex tapes, but they are sort of the equivalent---to me. There are four tapes in existence, the fourth having been made this evening, which would prove highly embarrassing for me should they ever come to light.

In no particular order, the first tape is my Real World: Boston audition tape from 1996. If I ever become famous, Jonathan Murray and Mary Ellis-Bunim will totally be searching their archives for my awkward but earnest attempt at becoming a reality television star. Somewhere I have a copy of this ill-considered idea, but I think this is one skeleton I'd rather not uncover. Let's just say I don't think the producers bought into my pitch about how they needed a regular looking nerd type to balance off the rest of the too-hot-for-real-life cast. Stupid producers. What do they know. Luckily, chances of me becoming famous dim with each passing day. Increasingly, this is a good thing.

The second tape is actually an older tape, one made in 1990 and whose whereabouts remain, mercifully, unknown. After a long and accomplished career in high school speech and debate (see tape #3 below), the wannabe star in me cried out for yet more attention. Seeking to expand my personal branding, I ventured into...as Jon Lovitz the Master Thespian might say, "Acting!" It was not my first foray into theater arts, but it had been five years since I'd given it a go and ultimately decided to eschew drama for debate. One of the events I competed in that year was Duet Acting, basically a 10-minute long performance with another partner. That partner, who shall remain unnamed since he's now a high-ranking staff member under the new Governor of California (not the old Governor, though that would be appropriate), was basically the worst actor in the history of the world. My partner made Tommy Wiseau seem like Sir Lawrence Olivier.

Our dramatic selection was Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon. I mean, we were two nerdy Jews who were both awkward with girls. What else were we going to pick? Driving Miss Daisy? Actually, that would have been genius, but I digress. As is "somewhat" allowed by the rules of the event, I proceeded to chop the play into bits and pieces...carefully editing and piecing together all the references to boobs, sex and masturbation. I basically rewrote Neil Simon into Porky's. We also gave the performance a few modern flourishes. At one point in the play my partner was required (as I wrote it) to perform a little touchdown celebration. The Ickey Shuffle was kind of a big thing in 1990, so I had him do that. Here's a video of the Ickey Shuffle for those too young to remember that titan of Cincinnati Bengal football.

We performed this piece probably 6-7 times in competition, each time gaining a slightly larger audience. Despite being a crowd favorite, the Rudy of the duet acting circuit as it were, we failed to ever advance past the preliminary round of competition. Still, before we hung up our sides, we reunited for one more performance at our speech team's Christmas party. Not gonna lie---NAILED IT. Someone shot video of this epic performance, one which ended with me pantomiming the squeezing of an imagined girl's breasts, but the video is lost...likely never to be found again until we're all just dust in the wind. Thank. God.

My third sex tape is from just a few months later. I had made it to the 1991 UIL Texas State Finals in an event known as Informative Speaking. This was a deeply ironic event for me to have been entered in as any of my teammates will gladly testify that I was anything but an informative speaker in those days. While I would splash a few facts around here and there, I was far more style than substance. I had a nice suit, I had a nice smile, and I had more confidence than I had any right to possess. Politicians make a living off of this, and high school speech was no different. I have boxes and boxes of trophies, plaques and gavels attesting to my "brilliance." Don't tell me Sarah Palin can't be elected President.

For the final (taped) speech in this particular competition, my semi-random topic (random in that I chose it from three other random topics) was about how Americans can deal with "the credit crunch." Folks, I tell'ya, I did not for the life of me have even an inkling back then as to what this so-called credit crunch was. Not. At. All. The seven-minute speech I ultimately gave, one for which I had 30 minutes of prep time, had NOTHING to do with the credit crunch. Not. At. All. My recollection is fuzzy, but for seven minutes I talked about the topic without saying ANYTHING about the topic. I probably repeated the words "credit crunch" a dozen times...to emphasize that, of course, I knew what the credit crunch was. Why define it? It's so obvious. It was the most ignorant I'd ever felt. When I see Sarah Palin dance around a question she clearly doesn't understand, THIS is the memory that comes to mind. Oh, and I also got first place and became the Texas State Champion for Informative Speaking. We're all fucked.

The latest addition to my growing list of "sex tapes" happened this evening. Unfortunately, due to disclosure agreements and the need to keep things a little hush hush, I can only speak about it in non-specific generalities for the time being. It is, however, a very cool project. In short, I was asked/volunteered to be interviewed for a feature-length documentary, one being made by a well-known documentarian. Given the breadth of the material they'll be covering for this film, there's a high probability none of my footage will even make the final cut---but that, of course, doesn't mean the tape goes away! I'll leave the overall theme of the movie also as a mystery, but my 35-40 minute interview ended up being a mini-therapy session as I looked directly into the camera and answered some very personal questions. It was fun, but I was nervous...and the experience was surprisingly intense. I responded to queries such as, "on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate yourself on looks?" I won't reveal my answer here, but I will say I opted to use decimals. Whole numbers are so non-specific. There were questions about my self esteem. Questions about my clothes, and so on and so forth. The kicker---and this weaves in very nicely with my preceding two posts---is that the producer and question-asker is...a girl I also dated briefly. Of course, that's the main reason I was even there in the first place. This wasn't another grand coincidence like the speed dating adventure. But still, it's getting to the point where I can't throw a rock in this town without hitting a girl I've dated.

Now, if only I had a rock...

Oh yeah, and this one, too. (ding)

Maybe I have dated every single girl in NYC. The New York Times featured a story in today's paper about how people use Facebook to announce their relationship status---because, you know, the Times is totally at the forefront of relevant and timely social media analysis. The story prominently features a girl that I dated for about 3-4 months...a girl in whose apartment I famously vomited in five different locations one night. That was the night I learned not to mix mustard greens with whiskey, wine, vodka, tequila and chocolate stout. Hey, you never know until you try, right? Anyway, this hard-hitting piece of journalism in the Times informs me that she is now in a relationship! Congrats! Glad to see that people who date me are not irreparably harmed by the experience. Things were approaching class-action lawsuit status there for awhile.

Next week the Times will have a cover story detailing the growing interest in this newfangled communication technology called Twitter. Sounds promising.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

This is a strange world we live in, and NYC may very well be the epicenter for that strangeness. I've had lots of random encounters in this city of almost 9 million people, including one last Sunday in which I ran into an old friend from Dallas I'd not seen or spoken to in over five years. I was getting off the train and he was getting on. Random. But even that sort of run-in dramatically pales in comparison to the chance encounter I had the preceding evening. It's been a week since it happened and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the astronomical odds of such a moment taking place. It truly is the most remarkable story I've ever gotten to tell.

Last Saturday I went downtown to participate in a "marathon-style" evening of speed dating. I'd done speed dating before (it's absurd, but totally fun), but only the kind where you go on 12-15 dates that last about 4-6 minutes each. This time there were 54 men and 54 women and we would go on FIFTY dates that lasted, at most, two minutes each. For the most part, marathon-style speed dating is an exercise in mass rejection. The girls mostly suck, and the guys are even worse. They hate us and we hate them. (ding) Next date. Objectively, I was easily in the top three of all the men there. That's less a compliment to myself than it is a comment on the dearth of decent men in this city. At least 10 guys were wearing Bill Cosby-like sweaters with not even a hint of irony. A few others had not yet realized they weren't exactly heterosexual, and a full head of hair was about as rare as a new Terrence Malick film. Good times.

Mercifully, the dates are exceptionally short---even shorter if you take the time to jot down a few notes on the girls as you move from table to table. My notes at the end read like the minutes from a KKK meeting. There just isn't time to put more down on paper than things like, "crazy Indian chick," or "black girl with curly hair", or "argumentative Aussie." You go for the most obvious details to help remind you who all these people were at the end of the night. One date was with a soft-spoken Chinese woman. I spent my entire two minutes with her spelling out the word trivia. T-R-I-V-I-A. That was the date. (ding) Another girl angrily lamented that there were no hot guys at the event. (ding) There were two Aussies and two Kiwis there, and each time I incorrectly identified their accent as the other. Turns out this is an insult. (ding, ding, ding, ding) And so on and so forth it went...all the while I chugged vodka drinks in epic fashion.

Towards the end of this marathon, I had a date with a pale-skinned girl with bright red lips and short brunette hair. Remarkably, especially given the limited time we had, we somehow realized that we both graduated from the University of Texas and that we had done so only one year apart. Now, if you think you know where the rest of this story is going...you don't, so stick with it. We briefly marveled at this minor coincidence and then...(ding)...time to move on. After the event was over, she sought me out at the bar where I was continuing to down drinks like Kobayshi downing Nathan's hot dogs in Coney Island. In other words, the details get fuzzy. I remember we chatted for about five minutes, and I remember we realized we were also both from Dallas. I didn't have any feelings about this at the time, but the next day that would change.

On Sunday, seemingly out of nowhere, I began to have a strange feeling that I somehow knew this girl. I often joke about how I've dated every single girl in New York, but that was far from the case in Texas. The Kraig from Texas wore sweater vests and listened to James Taylor in his dorm room during college. The Kraig from Texas wrote cheesy poetry about unobtainable girls whilst watching MST3k late at night. The Kraig from Texas, in short, did not date much. So how then did I know this girl? Did I know her? Was it in my head? Bit by bit the feeling grew, and then, finally, an implausible and utterly insane theory formed. I texted a friend that day and informed him that my theory had only a 5% chance of being true. It was that hard to imagine. This girl's name was Paulette, a rather rare name for people my age. I've only known two Paulette's in my lifetime. One cleaned our house when I was a child, and the other...

I emailed Paulette on Sunday night, whose address I'd gotten because we'd both "picked" each other at the speed dating event. I told her it was nice to have met her, but also that I had a crazy idea in my head and I was hoping she could disabuse me of the insane thought once and for all. I asked a simple question: Did you ever go to sleep-away camp in Texas? The answer came back loud and clear. YES. The pieces very quickly fell into place. Not only had she gone to Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas---a Jewish camp located about 15 miles from David Koresh's compound in Waco, Texas---but she had been...wait for it....wait for it...my very first girlfriend EVER. THE VERY FIRST. It's staggering. Somehow, 27 years later, my first "girlfriend" had taken a seat across from me at a speed dating event some 1,500 miles away from where we first met.

She did not recognize me and, for the most part, I didn't recognize her. The extent of that pre-pubescent relationship was asking her to "go with me", something which lasted all of two days. We never talked, we never held hands, and we never kissed. We were only together because her two friends at camp were "going" with my two friends and we were, naturally, encouraged to close the circle. My recollection of asking her to go with me is anything but romantic. I asked her and she responded with an apathetic shrug---not unlike how things work still to this day. I eventually broke up with her when I met my second girlfriend on the archery range two days later...but that's a story for another day. The breakup went down a lot like the proposal. "Um, is it okay if we don't go together anymore?" Another apathetic shrug from Paulette and I was once again single. And that was it. She and I never talked after that (and almost not at all prior to that) until we unwittingly met again last Saturday night.

I'm going out with Paulette on a real date in just a few hours---probably more for the story than any actual chance of romantic success---but if things ever were to miraculously work out, hello, NY Times Wedding section!

It's a crazy, beautiful world.

2010: My Year in Movies (part 3: Comedy)

Onward and upward to the seven 2010 comedies I saw (in 2010):

The Bounty Hunter *
Hot Tub Time Machine ***1/2
Date Night **1/2
Get Him to the Greek ***
Just Wright **
Cyrus **1/2
Toy Story 3 ****1/2

It's hard to describe just how much of a train wreck The Bounty Hunter really is. The two attractive leads have zero chemistry, the jokes are lazy and unfunny, and the plot is one of the most illogical you'll ever come across this side of an MST3K episode. Honestly, the best part is when they do an action scene to a Ke$ha song. And even THAT barely scratches the surface of one of the worst movies of 2010. It's not even one of those "so bad it's good" movies. It's just painfully bad. I watched it, evidently, so that others might not have to. Please avoid so that those two hours will not have been in total vain.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a rollicking fun trip back to the 80's that allows John Cusack to do what he does best---look sad and toss off snarky one-liners while getting the girl. Rob Corddry, however, is the real scene-stealer, and if this movie isn't evidence that he can carry a Hollywood comedy all by himself, then I don't know what else he has to do. A running joke with Crispin Glover is also immensely satisfying and, surprisingly, never gets old. Hot Tub Time Machine is lewd, it's sloppy, and it's one of the funniest films of 2010.

Date Night is one of those can't-miss comedies that doesn't, but then it doesn't exactly obliterate its target either. Tina Fey and Steve Carell are likable, comedic heavyweights, but the script largely plays it safe and gives them little to do except be swept along by the plot-heavy antics. There's (long) car chases and gun-play aplenty, and it all feels like it's taking away from comic opportunities rather than creating them. There are laughs to be had, especially in some particularly funny scenes involving a shirtless Mark Wahlberg, but Date Night is more of an amusing diversion than a memorable comedy...a kind of date night movie, really.

Get Him To The Greek borrows heavily from The Hangover formula and, for the most part, succeeds in replicating the off-the-wall comedy of its inspiration. Russell Brand reprises his character of Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a scene-stealer from that movie that showed some surprising depth. Attempts to build on that original depth, however, are a bit forced and take an unfunny, grim turn near the end. Sean Combs has a nice turn as a record producer (stretch?), and Jonah Hill is funny as always.

I went to the red carpet premiere and after party for Just Wright (ooooh lala), and I hung out with Spike Lee, Dwayne Wade, Common, Queen Latifah, and lots of famous black people I couldn't identify if my life depended on it. There was free food (nom nom nom), free booze (glug glug glug), and I got my face projected on the rooftop of the Empire Hotel (see above). These qualities alone earn Just Wright two stars. Unfortunately, the movie can't add to that 2-star total. Just Wright is one of those female-fantasy films, the answer to every movie in which Seth Rogen, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill get the impossibly hot girl. Plot: Fat girl in her mid to late 30's wins the heart of a studly NBA player at the expense of her impossibly hot, much younger, modelesque sister. I'm fine with the fantasy, but come on, make it at least as smart as the films where Seth Rogen gets the girl. The actors are likable, especially Latifah, but this is strictly for women in denial about the real world.

Speaking of Jonah Hill, Cyrus was an early 2010 release which earned high praise from many critics. In some respects, Cyrus is a good comedy, one full of dark humor and edgy, unexpected moments. Unfortunately, it also feels like an incomplete movie. I rarely say this about a film, but the characters and story of Cyrus deserved about 20-30 more minutes to truly earn the resolution they arrived at after just 92 minutes. This isn't Get Him To The Greek (109 minutes) or Hot Tub Time Machine (101 minutes). It's a more complicated movie, one in which the humor derives from characters, not plot or clever set-ups. I felt a bit cheated at the end, but that's probably an indication that I liked most of what came before.

I knew I'd enjoy Toy Story 3---it's a Pixar movie, after all---but I didn't expect to appreciate it as much as I ultimately did. As a former screenwriter, the script is a virtual role model for classic, Hollywood movie-making. It's sort of...perfect. The pacing, the roll-out of the set-up, the complications, the resolution...it's all...perfect. If you were going to teach screenwriting and story structure, this is one to look to. Add in the right amounts of wit and whimsy, the correct dose of sentimentality, that beautiful Pixar animation and, voila---a truly fantastic movie for all ages. Pixar makes it look easy, but I assure you it's not. It's a lot of talented people working to an impossibly high standard...and going beyond. Toy Story 3 cracked the list for Best Picture nominees, and it is MUCH deserved.

Animal Cruelty is Hilarious

Of the many things this world could use more of, dogs tied to wires is definitely one of them.