Archive for May 10th, 2007

So it’s out! SPIDER-MAN 3 is in the theaters, and. . . . . . wow, everyone says its crap.

I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t rant quite yet (But check the ‘movies’ section soon, the review will be up in a jiffy.) but as a cross promotion for the film, all the Spider-man comics have him “Back in Black” which means Spidey has gone back to his black suit with the big white spider in the chest, meaning he’s all mean and angry and stuff.

Heck, everyone loves an anti-hero!

Personally, I don’t buy the “back to the darkside” ploy. It didn’t work for Jaime Foxx in Dreamgirls and it doesn’t work for Peter Parker. An actor friend of mine recently illuminated me to the trend that when a franchise wants to pretend that they’ve added depth to a story, they’ll make the claim that “it’s much darker.” Darker = better. Which in the case of Amazing Spider-man’s recent turn, doesn’t apply.

Here’s why Spidey’s back in the black suit:

During Civil War, Spider-Man went pro-SRA and under Iron-Man’s guidance, chose to reveal his identity to the public. Boom. In one issue (Civil War #2) Spider-Man takes off his mask in fornt of a full press corps, and says “Yep. Peter Parker. I’m Spider-Man.” Breaking a more-than-40-year precedent of the secret identity for our web-head.

The primary reason (and logically, the only real reason) Spidey kept his face a secret is because of the fragile, non-super-powered people around him. His frail aunt, his smokin’-hot wife, and every else that doesn’t stand a chance against the Green Goblin or Sandman. But under the SRA act, his most precious Aunt May and Mary Jane would be safe and protected by S.H.E.I.L.D., Iron Man, the Avengers, et al. They were SAFE!!

And then Spider-Man flipped. He joined Captain America and all the other Anti-SRA, assholes putting his precious wife and older-than-dust Aunt into mortal peril by ANY super-powered psycho that knew how to track down this guy named Peter Park whose face was on newspapers all over the city.

Of course, Wilson Fisk: The Kingpin hires an assassin to take out his most beloved, and when a bullet puts little old Aunt May into intensive care, Spidey puts on the Black suit to tell everyone. . . .

“See! I can be baddass too! I can be like Punisher, really I can!”

Bullshit. I slogged through one two lousy issues of Spider-man pretending he can acutally be a killer, talking about being a killer, dressing like an assassin, and claiming multiple times in only one issue that he’s ready to kill anyone who messes with his family. So far his body count is still zero.

We’ve been here before. During the first alien black-suit saga, during the dark periods of the late 90’s with the Harry Osborn Goblin and other haunting stories, but Parker will always be the good natured, caring, loving sentimentalist and I don’t think he’ll have it in him to take out the Kingpin. One big reason:

Spidey got the girl.

Wolverine; Punisher; Daredevil: All genuine baddasses, none of them get (or got) the girl. (Or in all three cases, “the girl” was killed in a horribly brutal fashion.)
Cyclops, Spider-man, Captain America: All upstanding, law-abiding citizen types, all got the girl.

Sometimes all a super-hero needs is the love of a fine woman.

I’m also proud to report that today was the first successful PANELGEEK GROUP! A handful of comic-heads, plus a couple of neophytes gathered at the Bowery Poetry Club to flip through some TPBs I offered to share and discuss favorite writers, storylines, and how modern war-time political climate has helped raise the bar on many series to appeal to a more sophisticated audience.

Read about it in Gothamist (soon)

The PANELGEEK GROUP will meet the second Thursday of every month at Bowery Poetry, and we hope to see you there!

Being “uncool” is kinda cool these days. Page through The Hipster Handbook, and you’ll embrace the fact that you suck at sports, read books, and wear glasses. We at Uncool Kids try to take back the word “uncool,” embracing our dorky tendencies to watch Broadway shows, promote cartoons as art, watch vampire movies, walk around with art on our head, actually enjoy taking quizzes, stalk cheesy sitcom stars, watch polo, and obsess over comic books. As a runty underdog myself, I can tell you it’s taken quite a few years to get past all the scar tissue of youth and embrace my nerdiness. I have stacks of diaries to prove it—and so do the self-derogating people at Cringe.

The first Wednesday of every month, young adults flock to Freddy’s Bar and Backroom over in New York’s safe haven for the coolest of the uncool—Brooklyn. At around 9 PM, Cringe begins as “brave souls come forward and read aloud from their teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence.”

“It’s better and cheaper than therapy,” boasts the Cringe website. After all, it makes you feel better to know that you weren’t the only kid to have a “Kick Me” sign taped to your back. And that maybe—just maybe—some people even had it worse than you did. Avenue Q—I told you we like Broadway plays—has a whole song about that.

Most of the crowd at Cringe look like they aren’t all that far removed from their years of dorkdom. And, actually, quite a few of them look like the Plastics that accentuated the fact that you weren’t cool. Their idea of a cringe-worthy diary entry would be gushing over some boy who their friends later deemed as lame. The backroom of Freddy’s was crammed full of apple-faced blondes and stylishly nerdy brunettes that looked like they came to Cringe as a study break from Lit 101.

The room was so full that I was relegated to cower in the stairwell with the other unfortunate losers. It was so unbearably hot down there, I started sweating like it was down to me and one other kid waiting to see who would get picked last in gym class. The pretty girl in front of me had some sort of oriental fan. I figured she probably had been here before. The room was probably full of regulars, and here I was—by myself, in the corner.

It makes sense that there’d be a lot of regulars. Cringe has been held at Freddy’s since April 2005. Everyone from “ABC Nightline” (see the video here) and “Newsweek” to “Time Out New York” and “Spin” has covered Cringe. (“This American Life” covered a similar show called Mortified.) Next month, Cringe will be held in London.

May 9th’s reading featuring a hysterical story—slurpily told in character as her younger self with braces—about a girl who in trying to achieve her “goal to masturbate and squirt tonight” almost catches her house on fire. She waxes philosophical when her parents get her priest involved

Like it’s a sin to touch yourself. What shit is that? Catholics are crazy. Mary had a baby, and you’re going to tell me she never masturbated.

Another reader was John Sellers, author of the recently released book Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life. …Apparently, Sellers didn’t always have good taste in music. In his 1983 journal, “document of my geekness,” he writes a whole section on how is favorite rock group is Journey. He also write about how he loves the Wizardry videogame, how inflation has affected prices at Showbizz Pizza, and how he wishes Abraham Lincoln had never lived because then he wouldn’t have to memorize the Gettysburg Address.

So yeah, it’s worth going to Cringe even if you have to stand in the back by the aquarium of frogs.

And what a night it was! Hosted by Lolita Bar in the NEW Lower East Side, all the classies and the flashies, the Vera Wangs and Chanel Diors of the City on Broome st. and Allen, where 250 Russian Jewish immigrants probably stuffed themselves into a Bell Jar tenements with a single air shaft and no bathrooms.

DAMN YOU, COOL KIDS!! AND ALL THE CONSPICUOUS WEALTH THAT THAT THERIN IMPLY!!

But this past Wednesday night was weighted heavily, or perhaps uplifted by a geekitude of absolutely honor and respectability: Urban Lore, and Knowledge of your City.

And with multi-colored, custom silk-screened T-shirts (thank you, Ad Hoc Arts.) the NYC Titans of Trivia All Stars were ready to take home the crown: A group of hotshot mostly NYC Tour Guides, helmed by The Levy family of Levy’s Unique New York. Their secret weapon, A living NYC Encyleopedia named Andy Sydor aka The RedMenace; both for his politics and fo the color of his head when he’s riled up.

(He’s the Union Shop Steward of Grey Line (The Red Buses) and if you ever want to get deluged with emailed articles about NYC by the DOZEN, email him: RedMenace@aol.com)

At a table in the back, surrounded by Wheat Beers (brought to New York by German Immigrants, mostly in Bushwick) and Pale Ale (from the Colonial Day, of course) and got going on the questions.

And BOY there were some stumpers. . . 6 categories, including

Old Names: (6th avenue used to be known as the West Road.)

It Happened Here: (The Hot Dog, invented in Coney Island in 1904)

On this date: ( Dec 8, 1980: John Lennon shot and killed. May 25, 1883: Opening of the Brooklyn Bridge)

and. . . lots of other very obscure stuff. . . The beer was flowing pretty heavily by then. Some very apocriphal stuff (I heard it this way!) and the occassional reference to something outside the city got the crowd into an uproar. But, when trivia geeks get fired up about something, the gloves are off. I should know. . .

(Triviacrats: RIP [for now]. . . SOB SOB SOB. . .)

The photo round was frustrating, as they were small, grainy photo-copys from the City Lore book in a dark bar when people were drinking.

But after Craig Finn of the excellent band The Hold Steady read off the 60th questions, the scores were tallied and the

NYC TITANS OF TRIVIA ALL-STARS CAME IN. . .

2nd place. . .

After Kevin Walsh and the Triborough Destroyers beat us by a single question. Ladies and Gentlement, Kevin Walsh is the Moby Dick of NYC Trivia. . .

Next time, Walsh. . .

Next time. . . . . . . .

I’m wondering if there is some unwritten book of code for improv houses/basement comedy shows. For example:

People’s Improv Theatre: West 29th Street, above a sushi restaurant

Upright Citizens’ Brigade: West 26th Street, next to a Gristedes

PIT admission: $5

UCB admission: $5-$8

PIT theatre access: hike upstairs to purchase tickets

UCB theatre access: watch line snake downstairs as you wait for your tickets

PIT theatre gripes: a wee bit chilly

UCB theatre gripes: supportive beams that hinder visibility

PIT VIP service: buy warm beer at ticket counter

UCB VIP service: buy warm beer at ticket counter

PIT claims to fame: photos on walls, ranging from Steve Buscemi to Mariska Hargitay to Lisa Gastineau, you know, of the notorious Gastineau girls…what do you mean you never watched that show?

UCB claims to fame: everyone

PIT attire: frayed jeans, old tee’s, vintage Chuck T’s (yes! uncool factor), throwback corduroys, unwashed hair…

UCB attire: unwashed jeans, throwback tee’s, old Chuck T’s, frayed hair….

PIT courses: $333 dollars for weekly introductory improv course

UCB courses: $325 dollars for weekly introductory improv course. If you purchase a Starbucks before class, it all evens out.

The PIT, however, hosts an event called The Liar Show, in which the director invites three people to tell their most absurd, outlandish, and literally unbelievable stories to an audience, while images of infamous Liars flash in the background (Nixon, Bill O’Reilly, James Frey to name a few). Afterwards the audience members are allowed to ask questions, in attempts to poke holes through the stories, and then vote on who they believe is the Liar. The winners get PIT T-shirts.

Last night we were ushered in just a minute before 7 p.m. and were ushered out barely forty five minutes later. Remember in college when your well-meaning but rambling professor would say, “Oh dear…I’m afraid I’ve run over and the next class has to come in?” That’s basically what happened. The PIT’s schedule is so packed that the show wasn’t given enough time.

I once read an article in a women’s magazine, before I quit women’s magazines (along with designer coffee and a bad boyfriend), that said that people who lie always give too many details. Armed with this info, I thought I would be able to nab the liars. But all three stories were very detailed.  I kept thinking, “You can’t make this stuff up.” 

The first storyteller, Brian, told a really funny story about his attempt to renovate an independent theater in Haverhill, Massachusetts, with hopes to subsequently revitalize the town. His plans were foiled when he kept giving away free tickets, to “plant the seeds” of marketing. Then he enlisted the help of a comedy group named “Mrs. Potato Head” who performed a skit entitled “Sore From Fucking.” Brian was possibly lying.

The second storyteller, named Sara, recounted her experiences trying to find a New York City apartment on craigslist with her salary as a store greeter for Banana Republic. She found a dream deal in Park Slope. But the tenants - her future roommates - were an attractive forty-something investment banker and his teenage girlfriend named Seng-Yi who didn’t speak a word of English and who, by the way, cleaned the house naked, per his request. The story sounded crazy, but having gone through my share of craigslist encounters, I couldn’t peg Sara as the Liar.

Finally, the last potential Pinocchio, named H.R., began by telling us about his obsession with the movie “The Graduate”. Then he told a story about his affair with an older woman he met during his first summer in New York, and how he fell so head over heels in love with her that he didn’t go back to school in Wisconsin the following year. He proposed and she gently pointed out that they were at very different places in their lives. He moved out of her apartment and wound up finishing school. The whole thing was not unbelievable. But he was so verbose - his language was almost - and I hate this word - “flowery” - that I figured he might be fudging the details and thought maybe he wouldn’t have gotten laid if he was a hardwood floor plank.

Only a few people asked investigative questions, and one of the questions was “H.R., have you ever told your girlfriend that story?” to which H.R. replied, “No.” Turns out the girl who asked that question was his girlfriend, and she didn’t seem happy.

The director then took our ballots, announced that The Liar was H.R., and handed us our t-shirts. The T-shirt was well worth the five dollar ticket. But I would’ve liked to have seen the event stretch a little longer.