Some notes on recent entertainment.
Lily Allen @ 930 Club.
For all her efforts to cultivate an image as a diva with both middle fingers up, Allen’s on-stage manner is just childish. Dressed in a nightgown and backed by a band of polite fraternity brothers (many, many photos that other people took are available at Flickr), she introduced her songs with a combination of superfluous explanation and cringe-inducing grrl power (this song, “Not Big,” is about stupid boys and small penises! Who needs em! Right, girls?!).
I still like the songs, of course, and I had a good time, thanks to Chantal and Tony and the handful of other grownups who shared our bemusement over the antics of the high school girls (and at least one girl’s BFF mom) in the crowd, but I can’t say I was terribly impressed by anything that happened on stage.
Entourage.
This show is stupid, stupid, stupid, but I love it. Ari needs more face time, and everyone else needs less (my suspension of disbelief over Adrian Grenier’s role as a Hollywood superstar erodes with every awkward minute he’s on camera), but either way I’m watching every episode.
The Sopranos.
I never really watched this show regularly until last season (technically, the first half of this season), which everyone said was pretty weak. I like it for the same reason I like “Entourage” — it’s a show full of loathsome people who I find immense satisfaction in rooting for, anyway. I think just about everything that happens is riotously funny.
Grindhouse.
When I was very young, and still small enough that I had to stand next to the “you must be this tall…” sign at amusement parks, my dad took me on my first roller coaster ride. There were no loops, it probably wasn’t very fast, and the whole thing was probably over in about 30 seconds, but we were in the front row and I was terrified, sure that if I ever challenged death like that again, I would lose.
For years after that, I refused to get near the rides. I grew up in Pittsburgh, home of the Steel Phantom, which in my youth was both the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. Nothing could get me on it until eighth grade, when I caved to peer pressure and rode the Drachen Fire something like 12 times while on a school trip to Colonial Williamsburg Busch Gardens. Holy crap, I thought, I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this for so long.
In a similar fashion, though without the singular, traumatic event, I’ve always shied away from scary movies and those with a lot of blood in them. I like to think it’s evidence of my advanced, compassionate nature, but really I’m just easily spooked (or I used to be, and I never tested myself to see if I changed between the ages of 7 and 24). So when two roommates suggested yesterday that we get a few drinks after work and then see Grindhouse, my first reaction was to think of how I could demur without looking like a wimp.
But what the heck. After a few beers and a parting shot of Wild Turkey, we walked over to the theater for three very entertaining hours of blood, guts, guns and girls, during which I kept thinking, Holy crap, I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this for so long.