Steak & Ale: 1966-2008

Steak & Ale, the enduring American restaurant chain that offered diners the chance to eat mediocre prime rib in a building with slightly better lighting than Hitler’s bunker, died Tuesday after a long illness. It was 42 years old.

Metromedia, Steak & Ale’s parent company, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this week and immediately shut down all fifty-eight chophouse locations. At one time, there were nearly 300 Steak & Ale restaurants in this great land of ours. That was back in the eighties. Then T.G.I.Friday’s and Ruby Tuesday came along and people realized they liked to see what they were eating. Thus, they abandoned Steak & Ale, leaving the restaurants to wither away and die like so many neglected house plants.

I wish I could say I the last time I entered a Steak & Ale was before the brutal onslaught of puberty, but that would be a vicious, hurtful lie. There was an S&A across the street from the book publisher I worked for in 2006. I ate their once with a co-worker (his suggestion, not mine). It was alright. I think to truly enjoy it, you have to imagine a world without electricity, sunlight, happiness, optimism, and good feelings in general. Not too hard when you’re sitting around a dining area that could double as a medieval torture chamber.

Bennigan’s was also affected by Metromedia’s Chapter 7 filing; 200 of the Irish-themed eateries bit the dust Tuesday, much to the dismay of casual drunks and college students across the country. I guess deep fried corn beef sandwiches just aren’t what they used to be.

No one had Steak & Ale in the death pool.

Holy Childhood Fantasy Realization, Batman!

I don’t know why I’m just finding out about this now, but there’s a company out there that makes actual working replicas of the legendary Batphone from the 1960s “Batman” TV show. Finally, I can pretend I’m talking to Neil Hamilton every single time I’m yakking it up with someone! I’m sure this will be the best $122 I’ll ever spend.

P.S. – these folks also offer a replica of the famous Shakespeare bust Adam West and Burt Ward would flip open to access the Batcave. WTF? It’s like they’re reading my fucking mind! Get out of my head, Redhotphones.com!

How Much Would You Pay For A Tuxedo-Wearing Robot Gorilla & His Friends?

Okay, so the guy in this forthcoming documentary is not the guy I know who maxed out his credit card buying a set of Rock-afire Explosion robots from a Showbiz Pizza in Orlando, FL. I just want to clarify that before everyone starts deluging me with questions.

No, the guy I know who maxed out his credit card buying a set of Rock-afire Explosion robots from a Showbiz Pizza in Orlando, FL, is the same guy I know who has a buttload of Mr. T dolls and likes to show them off from time to time. His name is Greg Rivera and, as you can tell, he’s lead a pretty interesting life so far.

To the best of my knowledge/recollection, the Greg Rivera Rock-afire Robot story goes something like this: one day in the late nineties, Greg was trolling eBay searching for more ridiculous toys to add to his vast collection when he came upon an auction for a complete set of the singing, dancing, anthropomorphic animal robots (known collectively as the Rock-afire Explosion) from the Showbiz Pizza in Orlando, FL, where he and I lived. Incidentally, this was the same Showbiz Pizza where part of Parenthood, the Steve Martin movie, was filmed. Anyway, Greg jokingly placed a bid, assuming some hardcore Rock-afire fan would quickly outbid him.

He was wrong. Greg won the auction, which closed just above $5,000. Understandably freaked, I believe Greg applied for a new credit card and used it to make this singular purchase, immediately maxing it out. Suddenly his apartment was crowded with a tuxedo-wearing, keyboard-playing gorilla and his rockin’ animatronic pals. It should be noted the party auctioning these fine pieces of American ingenuity off was the inventor of the Rock-afire Explosion himself. Greg had to go down to the fella’s warehouse to pick his robots up, which was full of the requisite frightening-as-hell cyber-skeletons and copious amounts of fake fur/foam rubber.

After a week or two (or three, maybe – the time frame on this story has never been clear to me), the novelty of owning the Rock-afire Explosion completely wore off. These stupid robots were taking up too much room, Greg thought, so back on eBay they went. My buddy was able to make his money back, which was great. The downside was some kid in Texas bought the fuckin’ things, so Greg had to rent a U-Haul and drive the shits all the way to Houston or El Paso or where ever. The buyer turned out to literally be a kid, too – a teenager who lived with his parents and really had no room either for this expensive pieces of crap. At least they weren’t Greg’s problem anymore.

So what does this story teach us? Don’t bid on eBay unless you really mean it, Orlando is home to a genius other than Wayne Brady, and I keep awesome company. All important lessons.

P.S. – if you think this story is insane, wait until I tell you about the time I drove a minivan full of Mr. T dolls up the Eastern Seaboard with Greg. I almost died like twelve times.

Carlton Knows Breakdancing Secrets!

I remember seeing this commercial for the first time seven or eight years ago. My girlfriend at the time had about four hours of USA’s “Cartoon Express” on video tape; we killed an afternoon watching the entire thing once, and the Breakin’ and Poppin’ ad came on approximately every five seconds. If you think Alfonso’s spiel is funny the first time, try viewing it repeatedly for a number of hours interspersed with shitty Reagan-era animated tripe.

There was a high demand in the eighties for breakdancing secrets. I certainly thought back then if I could master the mysterious art of poppin’ and lockin’ I’d have a much more fulfilling life. Of course, back then I also thought female genitalia operated like the giant beast from Alien. My mother had the birds and bees talk with me when I was way too young to understand it. As a result, I gleaned most of my sexual knowledge from monster movies. This is why I brought condoms and a chainsaw with me on my first date in high school.

But I digress. I wonder how Alfonso feels about Breakin’ and Poppin’ now. Do you think he still has the moves? He clearly still had them when he was on “Fresh Prince”:

Go Carlton, it’s your birthday! I wonder if he’ll agree to dance at my wedding. I’d get a real kick out of that.

Unsolicited Hellboy Review

Hellboy
Starring: Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
2004

The conversation that lead to me watching Hellboy Sunday afternoon, held Friday afternoon at approximately 3:00 P.M. EST (JG = me; JP = my friend John P-Quad):

JG: We need to party this weekend.
JP: We should see Dark Knight.
JG: Ah, I already made plans to see that with someone else.
JP: Fuck. Would you want to see Hellboy 2?
JG: I never saw Hellboy 1.
JP: Come over to my house Sunday and watch it. Then we can go see Hellboy 2.
JG: Okay.

I didn’t end up going with John to see Hellboy 2 because I didn’t think Hellboy 1 was all that great. The idea was awesome, but the execution was lacking. I’m all about Nazis attempting to exploit the occult for their own personal and political gain; I’m also all about Rasputin conjuring up tons of evil and seducing Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. I can also get down on the idea of orphaned demon Hellboy being raised by the U.S. government and having a Bigfoot/Roswell-type mystique surrounding his alleged existence. Hell, I’ll even take that gill monster who plays with a Rubik’s Cube and has David Hyde Pierce’s voice.

However, something just wasn’t coming together in this flick for me. I think the biggest problem was that every villain in Hellboy was set up to be invincible/immortal/invulnerable, so it was like what’s the point of even fighting them? They each die at least once and then magically come back to life or lay eggs somewhere or regenerate or whatever. I don’t know, maybe I missed something, but I’m not sure what it was exactly that Hellboy did at the end of the movie that finally offed Rasputin, the Nazis, and the slew of trans-dimensional creatures they brought to the surface of Earth once and for all. I know at one point his FBI partner handed him a grenade belt that wasn’t working; a minute later, Hellboy shoved the belt down a monster’s throat and it magically blew up. I guess that’s the power of the Devil for you.

At least it was good to see Selma Blair working. She played Hellboy’s pyrokinetic love interest. Jeffrey Tambor had a couple of good scenes as the stuffy FBI director who disagreed with Hellboy’s loose cannon ways. I can think of worse movies to watch on a Sunday afternoon.

Final grade: two and a half mask-wearing Nazi scientists (out of four).

Man, I really need to come up with my own unique unit of measurement for these reviews. I’ll get right on that.

Unsolicited Dark Knight Review

The Dark Knight
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by Christopher Nolan
2008

WARNING: The following article contains a handful of spoilers so potent and explosive they will not only ruin The Dark Knight if you haven’t seen it, they will also completely destroy the fabric of your reality. I’m not even kidding. Do not read the following review if you currently enjoy life on any level at all. Titanic pain awaits. You have been warned.

So Bruce Wayne is Batman. OMG, WTF. Also, there’s no goddamn surfing anywhere in this fuckin’ movie.

Before I say anything else regarding this film, I’d like to brag about the fact I saw The Dark Knight on opening night in Union Square in NEW YORK CITY. In order to accomplish this incredible, Herculean feat, I had to purchase tickets immediately upon leaving the theater after viewing Batman Begins in 2005.

“We’re not even sure they’re making a sequel yet,” the elderly usher told me that night. “But you’d better buy these anyway, just in case.”

It should also be noted that I saw exactly one person “in costume” for this premiere. A chubby kid in o-fficial Heath Ledger Joker make-up and an o-fficial Heath Ledger Joker t-shirt was milling about, looking a little too Marilyn Manson fan circa 1996. This kid’s ghoulish visage was almost as frightening as the time I walked by my local cineplex the night Austin Powers 3 came out and spotted three underfed dweebs in ruffled shirts, nerd glasses, and false teeth gesticulating wildly for local news cameras. Needless to say, I fled for my life that evening and took several cold showers when I got home.

Back to the movie. The Dark Knight is just as good as everyone says it is. Thrills, chills, spills, pills, kills, drills, hills, frills, bills, and grills – this movie’s got it all, plus Anthony Michael Hall. The most entertaining and exciting Batman flick since Keaton first donned the suit in ‘89. The only thing keeping TDK from exceeding that landmark film is ol’ Bats himself. Same issues I had with Batman Begins: the suit looks like a pile of misshapen clay, Christian Bale insists on growling like Joe Cancer while he’s in it, and the Batmobile is that all-terrain redneck nightmare I’d rather see crushing cars at a monster truck rally. Thankfully Bale was likable enough outside the cowl to make me root for his funky alter ego.

The story was nice and believable, too, grounded in some kind of normal crime reality. No wacky mind-altering gas, no penguins with missiles strapped to their backs, no dehydrating world leaders – just robbing, stealing, shooting, stabbing, beating, and a handful of bombs for good measure. Batman has some pretty silly high-tech crap (the tool he uses near the end of the film is some straight-up Metal Gear Solid video game-type wizardry), but as Homer Simpson once cheerfully pointed out to his wife, the Caped Crusader is a scientist. If he’s clever enough to keep that stupid car hidden, I’ll believe he can (SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER OH GOD SPOILERS ARE REAL FTW!) manipulate every cell phone in Gotham City.

And now I must address Heath Ledger. Does the late Aussie’s turn in The Dark Knight make every other performance in the entire history of acting look like a festering pile of diseased whale cock or merely the filthy, worm-ridden butt of a three-legged junkyard dog? I don’t know. All I can tell you for sure is the Ledge does a winning job bringing the Joker to life, transforming the beloved comic villain into the psychotic demon we always knew he could be. The Joker’s first major scene in Dark Knight will probably go down as one of cinema’s most awesome moments, right up there with Robert Shaw’s grizzly death in Jaws and that totally bad-ass part in The Untouchables where Andy Garcia shoots all those dudes while sliding down the staircase on his back (Andy Garcia, you just pwnd Capone! LOL).

Final grade for The Dark Knight? Four super-rich, strep throat-afflicted superheroes out of four. This movie is textured, satisfying cool, the kind that doesn’t come along too often. It’s worth the price of admission and then some.

Now, as is tradition once a new Batman film has been released, let us begin speculating/postulating/spreading crazy, crazy lies about who or what will appear in the sequel. I officially put forth the following theories for Batman 3, Gotham 0:

- Damon Wayans as the Riddler, a collegiate Kaczynski-type who terrorizes the citizens of Gotham while retaining the ability to walk among them (of course, the studio would probably save a lot of money if they just hired this guy to play the Riddler)

- Christopher Lloyd as Mr. Freeze, a global warming watchdog who takes things just a bit too far

- Cee-Lo from Gnarls Barkley as the Penguin, suave affluent hipster who seduces high society socialites with his soulful singing and then beats them to death with his umbrella

- Jack Black as King Tut, the bipolar Professor who wants to kidnap Batman and take him back to ancient Egypt for the ultimate paaaaar-TAAAAAYY!!!

- The Jonas Brothers as all three Robins, simultaneously helping Batman solve crime while making pre-teen Gotham hearts swoon with their popular brand of faith-based pop rock

- CGI Ace the Bat-Hound voiced by a very bitter and sarcastic Norm MacDonald

- Yakoff Smirnoff as the weird Russian Batman who resides on Earth-30 in the alternate DC comics universe

- Verne Troyer as Bat-Mite (you saw it coming and there was nothing you could do)

None of this, I repeat, none of this is more insane or stupid than anything that was in Batman and Robin.

Why So Serious?

Going to see The Dark Knight tonight. If there’s no surfing in it, I’m demanding my money back.

X-Files Movie Haiku

I want to believe
they put Xzibit in there
because of his name.

Fake George McFly Speaks!

I was just over at IFC.com reading this article about how weird it is when certain actors are replaced in high profile sequels. Of course they mention Jeffrey Weissman, the unlucky fake Shemp who stepped in to play George McFly in Back to the Future II when Crispin Glover made too many crazy demands to return. This spurned a pretty famous lawsuit that made Crispy a very rich man and changed some actor’s likeness law.

ANYWAY, at the bottom of the article, the first comment is from none other than Jeffrey Weissman himself. OMG, LOL! Jeff sheds a little more light on the entire dual George McFly situation, saying:

“I was kept in the dark about what I was going to be doing on Back to the Future pt.2 ’til just about two days before the shoot. I was told by casting that I was up for being a photo double, even a stand in, when I was up for the part. I even called Crispin to ask his help in getting the work to help pay for my coming second child’s birth (I had worked on an AFI film with him & Dan O’Herlihy, and enjoyed watching his work, a year before the 1st BttF film).

When I found out Crispin was not doing the sequels, which seemed to me unimaginable, I proceeded to work with mixed feelings (mostly feeling like a scab because of all the weird reactions and treatment on set). I was called by Crispin’s name by the director among others, and I was told that the hanging upside down as George in the McFly household of 2015 was to torture Crispin for being such a pain in the ass on the first film. Oddly, I was cut from the making of docu-film, and…several promotions that I tried to do to further my career had the plug mysteriously pulled. Ahh, Hollywood.

I heard that Mr. Glover got $760,000.00 in the settlement.”

In the immortal words of Beck, that’s some straight-up new jack horse crap. Don’t worry, Jeff. I’ve worked both you and Crispin into my script for Back to the Future 4: Einstein’s Lament. You play George’s twin brother and shipping magnate Grover McFly. Megan Fox will play your wife. In one scene, you get to shoot E.T. directly in the face. Then the Ghostbusters show up and things get really crazy.

Crazy Ass Dream: Basketball Metallica Camp

I just woke up from this bizarre scenario in which I was a counselor at a Summer camp for kids who wanted to meet old basketball stars, unknown basketball prospects from Africa, and Metallica. All I really remember is Metallica trying to leave and a number of children convincing them to jump in the pool with their clothes on. Then there was this massive end-all game of hoops in which teams were ill-defined and we played with a bouncy ball. I remember passing to Dr. J. At one point, some kid from Kenya was on my back (literally) as I went for a shot. It missed the official hoop, but it eventually landed in the green and yellow kiddie hoop (which was right next to the official hoop). I credited my skills to a cheese-free diet.