pop culture, reviewed

For the last couple of years, Molly and Caroline and I have gotten together in New York in early spring to see shows, eat and drink, get rejected from VH1 game shows, and mostly just enjoy each other’s company.  Our third annual anniversary weekend commenced this past Friday and, as usual, hijinks and celebrity sightings ensued.

 We kicked off the weekend with Lucinda Williams at Radio City Music Hall.  Heartless Bastards opened — I really like their album All This Time  and they were good live.  Lucinda was great, even though she didn’t play my two favorites (“Metal Firecracker” and “Those Three Days”).  I’ll tell you what, though — Radio City has incredible acoustics.  We were on the front row of the third mezzanine (in other words, way up there) and it sounded like Lucinda was standing right in front of us.  I was impressed.  It was also just fun to be in a landmark like Radio City. 

After the concert we went to the Spotted Pig to eat a delicious burger, and wound up sitting in the upstairs area that I had preciously believed was a VIP section.  After we were seated there, we considered the possibility that maybe it was the place where they hide away the unfabulous.  We did really enjoy watching the other table that was seated in there with us, though.  It was five young men straight out of Entourage — one of them had a hoodie on and didn’t appear to be verbal.  He was clearly the Turtle of the group.   A couple of the others had on baseball caps and lots of bling.  We thought, hmmm, maybe the Spotted Pig is snooty and racist and they stuck the non-famous girls (us) and the black guys (them) away in the curtained-off area.  Then we noticed the guys’ diamonds, and that the waiter brought them at least a couple of rounds “on the house,” and that they were seated immediately upon arrival,  and so then we thought maybe the guys weren’t wannabe rappers after all but were actual hip-hop stars.  Then one of the guys handed his iPod to our waiter and the waiter started playing it over the restaurant speakers.  Surely not just anyone can request such a thing?  I don’t know my rap stars, though.  It wasn’t Kanye or Jay-Z or Luda and I don’t know anyone else.  If you read on Gawker Stalker that some hip-hop star and his entourage were at the Spotted Pig on Friday, please let me know, because we dined with them. 

On Saturday, after the unidentified rap star encounter, we were rewarded with what may be my favorite celebrity sighting to date:  Chloe Sevigny.  This was an interesting one for a couple of reasons:  (1) people say I look like her, and (2) she was wearing bloomers with tights under them.  Bloomers!  Little tiny bloomers like they were shorts!  With tights!  It was wonderful.  You see all these pictures of her wearing crazy weird clothing and then, lo and behold, there she is, moseying down the street in bloomers.  (“Moseying” is an accurate description, too.  She was in no hurry.)

On Sunday, Caroline and Elizabeth and I went to see Spring Awakening, along with Matthew Lillard, who is very cute in person but leaned against the wall of the theater during intermission like he wanted people to see him.  The play was good:  I loved the first act, loved all the music, did not love some of the more gratuitous aspects of the play, and was slightly disappointed with the obvious and formulaic ending. 

 Seriously, though.  We need to know who the rapper at the Spotted Pig was.  Any ideas would be much appreciated but I guess “rapper with bling and entourage” doesn’t really provide a helpful description.

Hi! We’re back from vacation! We drove to Disney World on Monday, spent three full days in the happiest place on earth (along with the entire population of Great Britain), and drove home on Friday before one of us killed and/or trampled a fellow tourist. It was great!

We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort and went to all four parks — the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, the Animal Kingdom, and MGM. I had not been since I was nine and Jake had not been since he was in high school (band trip!) so it was a fun new adventure. Jake initially thought that we were too cool and/or hip for a Disney vacation, but if you read this then you KNOW we are not that cool, so it suited us just fine.

It rained every day, but we still managed to see everything and do everything. Here are our reviews of the big rides:

(1) MISSION SPACE. My review — Cool, but made me queasy. Not worth a drive to Orlando just for this ride (Emily, I am looking at you.) It was neat, though. Jake’s review — Underwhelming. Was relieved that he did not get sick.

(2) SPACE MOUNTAIN. My review — Still fun after all these years. Jake’s review — Fun. A roller coaster that he is actually willing to ride.

(3) AEROSMITH ROCK ‘N’ ROLL COASTER. My review — Awesome. I rode it three times. Jake’s review — N/A. He did not ride this one with me.

(4) SPLASH MOUNTAIN. My review — Fun. Not a big enough drop for my liking, but fun nonetheless. Jake’s review — N/A. He did not ride this one either.

(5) BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN RAILROAD. My review — Totally tame but still enjoyable. Jake’s review — N/A. Are you sensing a pattern here?

(6) TOWER OF TERROR. My review — Best ride ever! Or at least, best ride at Disney World. I loved it, which was surprising because heretofore I have been totally opposed to rides that just “drop.” I don’t like big drops, and quite frankly, I have been afraid of falling elevators ever since Sloane Clone’s Baddy plummeted to his grisly death earlier this season on Alias (and since I once had a nightmare that Rachel Green and I were on an elevator that crashed). I worked up my courage and decided to give it a try, though, and it was GREAT. I rode it twice. I would have ridden it more but I didn’t get around to it until our last day and I only had time to ride it twice. Jake’s review — N/A. What, you think he would ride this when he wouldn’t even ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad? No way. I didn’t even try.

Jake also did not ride the Dinosaur ride with me at the Animal Kingdom, even though it wasn’t even a roller coaster. He did go on the safari, though. We saw elephants! We also thoroughly enjoyed the 3-D movies: the Muppet one, the one about bugs (except Jake had to close his eyes during the part with the spiders), and the Philharmagic. That was my favorite. It might have been my favorite thing after the Aerosmith roller coaster and the Tower of Terror. Oh, and the frozen lemonades. Those were delicious.

Since we’ve been home, we have seen The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (my review: good, but read the books instead; Jake’s review: as far as movies your wife forces you to see, not horrible. I think he liked the blonde and Rory Gilmore) and Cinderella Man (my review: Love Russell Crowe! Apparently also like movies about boxing!; Jake’s review: Yet another very well done boxing movie).

Also, we finally watched the season finale of Alias. I don’t want to spoil it for any of you, but “My name isn’t Michael Vaughn”? Are you freaking kidding me?

Stay tuned later this week for a very important announcement about the future of Pop Culture, Reviewed. In the meantime I will leave you with the one picture we took on our whole vacation: me with a giant chimpanzee head. This is not just any giant chimpanzee head, though, people. This is in honor of Jane Goodall and is carved in the likeness of one of her favorite chimps, David Graybeard. I almost cried. (In case you didn’t know, I love Jane Goodall. LOVE. So should you.)

So, Jake and I have been busy lately, what with work and the holidays and all. Also, we are usually boring; thus, the blog neglect. HOWEVER, over New Year’s weekend we went to New York and now we are best friends with Jeremy Piven.

Our flight left at the ridiculous hour of 6:45 a.m. on Thursday morning. This meant that we had to get up at, like, 4:30. That ain’t right. However, it meant that we arrived at LaGuardia at about 8:45 a.m., and we were checked into our hotel room and taking advantage of the continental breakfast by 9:30. That was entirely worth the sacrifice of getting up so damn early.

We stayed at The Library Hotel, because Samantha Brown stayed there and because it is a hotel with a theme of books. Books! I love books! Am huge book nerd so must stay at hotel with books! I was not disappointed. Well, at first I was disappointed because we were staying on the Math and Science floor and I think we all know that those are not the kinds of books that I enjoy. But, we were in the Botany room and there were books with pretty pictures of flowers, so that was okay. The room was tres petite, but I didn’t mind because it was very nicely appointed. Dark wood furniture, a marble dresser, a pretty bed. It was far and away better than the rat trap we stayed in last year, which did not have books and also smelled like dirty mop water. No, The Library was lovely, and we enjoyed the second floor reading room where they served wine and cheese in the afternoon, and we enjoyed the rooftop terrace and the “writer’s den.” I was most impressed with the cozy fireplace in the writer’s den, but Jake was impressed with the plasma screen television. To each his own. Anyway, we liked The Library.

Our first order of business was to get to TriBeCa for our lunch reservation at Nobu. Oh, black cod with miso, how I love you. You are like candy to me. You are delicious. Everything else we had was also wonderful, including my wasabi bloody mary and ginger martini. I did not drink both at the same time. Jake had boring saky. Boring, boring, boring. Yes, Mama, we were drinking at lunch. What? We didn’t have anywhere to be, and we were on vacation! More ginger martini, please. (Note: a ginger martini tastes exactly like a ginger Altoid. You should buy some ginger Altoids and pretend like you are at Nobu.)

Incidentally, on the way to Nobu we were shopping and we saw Whoopi Goldberg standing outside an enormous, very very dirty, black SUV. She looked exactly like Whoopi Goldberg. You can’t miss that hair.

Thursday night we ate dinner at a Thai restaurant that we suspect may have been a chain, but it was close to the play that we were seeing that evening — Fat Pig. I made reservations for Fat Pig because it starred Andrew McCarthy, Keri Russell, and Jeremy Piven, and because it was written by Neil LaBute. Having loved Andrew McCarthy steadfastly since at least the fourth grade, when I first remember renting Pretty in Pink, this was most exciting. Readers of this blog and those who know me in real life also know that I adore Felicity. Even when Keri cut her hair, I loved her. Loved Noel. Loved Ben. Loved the ending of the show, loved Keri Russell, love J.J. Abrams — so Keri’s role in the play was also exciting.

Moving on, hopefully I don’t need to tell you people how awesome Jeremy Piven is. He’s friends with John Cusack, for pete’s sake, but oh, The Piven is quite cool enough on his own, thank you very much. Let’s consider, for a moment, his impressive body of work: Lucas. Say Anything (“You must chill. You must chill. I have hidden your keys. Chill.” “I love you, man.”). Grosse Pointe Blank (“I can’t believe it’s been TEN YEARS.”). And, no, I am not forgetting PCU (which I saw in the theater, might I add) or his ironic turn in Old School. And now, the boy has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Entourage, where he is definitely, by far, without a doubt, the best part of the show, way better than Kevin Dillon and Nicky Hilton’s boyfriend, even though those two are also quite amusing. Hug it out. I think we can all agree that Jeremy Piven is pretty awesome. (Note: I discovered this weekend via HBO that The Piv was also in Chasing Liberty, but let’s not hold that against him. Mandy Moore was in it too, and I still like her. I even bought that CD of hers with cover songs on it. Shoot. I should not have admitted that. What I meant to say was, she’s dating Zach Braff, and everyone loves J.D.)

When we walked up to the theater, Andrew McCarthy was standing about half a block away, talking on his cell phone. Dear Lord, there’s Blaine, right there, in the flesh. He is skinny, but still hot. I stared at him but I don’t think he noticed.

The play was excellent. (Even the music during scene changes was great — the song they played after the first scene was Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Hoodoo Voodoo. Awesome.) There were plenty of your typical cringeworthy Neil LaBute moments, plenty of lines where you wholeheartedly disapprove of the offfensive sentiments being expressed but have to laugh because they are so outrageous. The show was perfectly cast, and I loved seeing Keri Russell do a great job in a role that was decidedly the anti-Felicity. The fourth actor, Ashlie Atkinson, was absolutely fantastic.

Jake wanted to leave immediately after the show was over, but I convinced him that we needed to stalk the cast for at least five minutes. (It didn’t even take that long for the cast to leave, and they left out the front door, not the stage door, so it didn’t even count as official stalking.) Ashlie Atkinson left first, and I told her that the play was great and that she was wonderful. She could not have been any friendlier. She said that we were the best audience they’d had — aw, shucks, I bet you say that to all the audiences. She complimented me on my (lime green clutch) bag and I told her I liked her hat. I would totally want to hang out with her if I lived in New York and could figure out a way to be friends with her instead of a stalker.

Andrew McCarthy left next, still skinny and still hot, but he crossed the street to talk to a friend and Jake would not let me follow him. I wanted to tell him that he was so scary on that episode of SVU where he keeps the woman in the box under his bed that I couldn’t watch St. Elmo’s Fire or Class for months. I think he would have appreciated that, but no, my mean husband told me it was “rude” to interrupt a “private conversation.” Whatever.

So the Piv and Keri Russell come out next, and they are both so monumentally adorable that you just don’t know. Keri Russell has the prettiest skin and the prettiest hair, and she was friendly and smiling and seemed totally normal and down-to-earth. (Note: If you are some pinko Commie who doesn’t believe how pretty Keri Russell is, you just go on and read Molly’s latest — she can vouch. Keri Russell is lovely.) She was also talking to a friend and I could not work up the nerve to go tell her that the play was great and that Felicity is probably one of my top five shows of all time. Manisha and Stephanie, you’re with me on that one, right? But I kept thinking, well, maybe she wants to get away from being typecast as Felicity, so maybe she wouldn’t like that. I chickened out. I also could not decide whether she would think it was funny if I told her that I really, really enjoy The Babysitter’s Seduction, particularly when I watch it now, post-Seventh Heaven, because Rev. Camden is a big ol’ perv in that movie.

Okay, so by this point, the Piv was talking to two women of a certain age who were standing next to Jake and me. It was an awkward circle of five. He apparently knew the women (or maybe they knew his mom?) and I was genuinely trying not to eavesdrop, but it was hard because they were right next to us and he was sort of looking at us as if he were talking to us too, and not just the old ladies. I told him it was a great show. He thanked me graciously. Jake finally convinced me that we had done enough stalking and that it was time to leave, plus by this point we were basically hanging out in the middle of the Piv’s conversation with his mom’s two friends, and I felt conspicuous. We decided later that the reason he had been looking at us outside the theater was because he WANTED to talk to us and WANTED to include us in the conversation, maybe even WANTED us to rescue him from the two old mom’s friends, but we blew it. We blew our chance to become best friends with Jeremy Piven. We let him down… and in doing that, we let ourselves down. Damn it!

On Friday we had lunch at Union Square Cafe, which was delightful, and basically walked around and shopped. We had dinner at Blue Hill near Washington Square with Michael and Caroline, and it was lovely. The restaurant only seats 55 or 60 people, and we had a seven-course New Year’s Eve tasting menu that was really good (although it was mostly just nice to see Caroline and Michael again).

More shopping and wandering and looking and just generally being tourists (but trying not to look like tourists) on Saturday, until we met Molly and her husband for dinner at Babbo. Babbo is now one of the top three meals I have eaten in my life, I think (the other two top spots are the first night of our honeymoon at La Chaine d’Or in Les Andelys, France, and New Year’s Eve 2001 at Bistro Savannah in Savannah, Georgia). Anyway, the tasting menu at Babbo was out of this world (and, of course, it was most excellent getting to hang out with Molly again). We thoroughly enjoyed all seven courses of the tasting menu and told our friends about how we totally blew our ONE CHANCE to become best friends with Jeremy Piven, and we lamented the lost opportunity of hanging with the Piv. It was sad, and I had considerable regrets, but what can you do?

After dinner, we went to Chumley’s, which I loved because it didn’t have a sign and because lots of writers have gone there. I had the cider, which looked like Sprite and tasted like apple juice, and which I enjoyed quite a bit. We were generally still basking in the glow of the pappardelle with chanterelle mushrooms when who walks in but — you guessed it — none other than The Piv himself. CLEARLY, God is telling us that we are MEANT TO BE best friends with Jeremy Piven, and God gave us this opportunity to make things right between us. That meant that I HAD to go up and talk to him, even though I was a little scaredy-cat. I would like to say that I went up to him, immediately impressed him with my obvious wit and sophistication and lilting Southern accent, that he joined us in our booth and we laughed and drank the night away, then all exchanged cell phone numbers and made plans to visit him out in L.A.

Those would be lies, though.

The truth was that we didn’t even have a booth, so instead, I stood next to him at the bar, smiled at him and his companion, told them that my husband and I had seen the play on Thursday and that we thought it was great. He smiled, thanked me, made a joke, ha ha, we all chuckled. I failed him again, however, because I did not congratulate him on his Golden Globe nomination. I was only 99% certain that he had, in fact, gotten nominated, and what if I was wrong? How awful would it be to congratulate him on a Golden Globe nomination and him be all, “Uh, actually I didn’t get nominated. Thanks. Thanks a lot!” It would be like when Caroline congratulated one of our law school classmates on passing the bar when he didn’t actually pass the bar. Sad times.

On Sunday we went to Pastis and saw exactly zero famous people, and then went to see Avenue Q and spent the rest of the day (okay, the rest of the WEEK) singing, “I Wish I Could Go Back to College.” (Because who wouldn’t want to go back to college? Sleep late, go to class, eat lunch on your meal card so it’s not like you even have to really pay for it, watch Days of our Lives, nap, get ready to go out. Them’s good times, but that’s beside the point.) And then we went home, back to Columbia and our house and our doggies, wishing we had been there longer so I could have tried to hang out with Maxwell, but basically all was still right in the pop culture universe because we did not yet know that Brad and Jennifer had Officially Separated. Those were the days.

We had a great time on our trip. We got there really early Thurs. morning and didn’t leave until mid-afternoon yesterday so I felt like we had enough time to do most of what we wanted to do. Mostly we just wandered around and shopped, which was fun, even though I didn’t buy much — nothing big. We went to the Guggenheim yesterday and that was really cool — I had never been there before. Our hotel was not great (tiny and smelled like dirty funk), but that’s okay. It was in a good location.

We enjoyed both shows a lot — The Producers was hilarious. It’s as good as everyone says it is. We waited outside of the theater after the show (along with a couple of hundred other people) and saw NL and MB sign autographs. I didn’t get them to sign anything, but I saw both of them really closely. Nathan Lane is shorter than I thought and Matthew Broderick is definitely one of the more adorable people I have ever seen. I was about an arm’s-length away from him. He was precious.

Those were definitely the two best celeb encounters, but we saw several other random people too.
Possible but disputed sightings: I swear I saw Isaac Mizrahi at Barneys, but Jake said it wasn’t him. I still say that I know what Isaac Mizrahi looks and sounds like a lot better than Jake does, so I’m sticking to that one. I also think I saw Lea Thompson walking in Times Square, but I’m not sure. Who really cares about that, anyway. In 1985 that would have been an exciting spotting, but no longer.

Confirmed sightings: Jake saw some sports announcer, Jim Nance (?); of course I had no idea who he was. I definitely saw Jennifer Beals leaving The Producers and she is even more attractive now than she was in Flashdance. She had on what appeared to be a purple Burberry newsboy cap — very cute. Oh, and yesterday I definitely saw John Boy Walton walking down 8th Ave. I did not yell out, “Night, John Boy!” but I did smile at him and I could tell he knew I recognized him.

I saw on www.gawker.com today that Jaime from Rich Girls was at the Marc Jacobs on Bleecker St. on Saturday, and we were also at the Marc Jacobs on Bleecker on Sat., but I didn’t see her. Too bad. I would like to see whether she is unfortunate-looking in person, or if it’s just the cameras. I would also like to see whether she really has Fred Flintstone feet like my friend Caroline says — seems so, b/c the blurb on Gawker said that she walked like a pigeon. Bless her heart.

We had one of the best meals we have ever eaten, at Nobu. It was incredible. I want to go back to NY just to go eat there again. Balthazar was really good, too, but Nobu was just out of this world. Unbelievable.

I did not see Ryan Adams or Parker Posey, much to my disappointment. And, contrary to popular belief, I would not have stalked them/followed them/accosted them if I had seen them. I would have just gotten really, really, really, excited.