rivercityvibe   “Puerile, smutty, schoolboy nonsense” – My Mom

I went to see the Quantum of Solace at AMC Orange Park on Friday. My buddy and I made it in and out of the theater unscathed through a carefully practiced scheme of pairs fire-and-maneuver. It turned out we did not need the cover of smoke, on this occasion. The movie was awesome (it grossed $70 m over the weekend), but there was an added bonus – the new Star Trek trailer.

I have not, previously, had any truck with the Trekkie community. My preferred attitude toward them is “disdain” mixed with “amazement”. I have to say though, the new movie (another re-set/prequel I’m afraid) actually looks great, in conception and execution.

Some public spirited-geek-with-a-camera, has posted this bootleg version, online:

Pretty good, hey?

I hope you liked the fact that I repeated the statement in the headline for this post twice. I was attempting to add enhanced geek-appeal by making it more like an announcement on a starship’s speaker system.  If I could have made it flash red I would have.

Battle stations!

This lady’s name is Jessica. Jessica Biel, to be exact. We are overlooking, on this occasion, the likely German origin of her name (as we did for Klum), because she is so smoking hot:

Square head?

The usual source identifies young Jessica as an actress, although the films it lists are ones I have never heard of.

But who gives? Welcome to the rivercityvibe community, Jess!

I have been remiss the last few days. I promised to post while I was in California. I did not do so. You deserve to know why.

Certain elements conspired to make it highly unlikely that I would keep it together enough to tend to rivercityvibe. Those elements were, variously, a Sacramento brew pub, a hardcore jazz bar, a three hour  time difference, a profound lack of sleep and my habitual enthusiasm for utterly kicking the ass out of any new opportunity to misbehave.

Basically, my message is, though this place has delicious beer, avoid it:

DANGER!

Normal service shall now resume. Thank you for your patience.

Full disclosure – the guy in this who looks like the love child of Elvis Costello and Woody Allen is distantly related to me by blood. That is why, despite the glasses and jewfro, he is so fucking cool.

They are Midnight Youth in New York currently from New Zealand (yes, there are branches of the Bones family everywhere). They are being hyped by everyone as the next big thing and I could not agree more. Their debut single is The Letter. It is awesome. Buy it on itunes.

The only drawback is that I think one of the band is an emo.* (which I hate).

*emo watch – coming to a Jacksonville-based website near you soon!

I am about to leave (on a jet plane) for California, where I am needed to sort things out for the Governator. Consequently, I am pushed for time. In situations like these, I rob from Seth. This is known.

Here are some amusing emails:

Very amusing

I’ll report from 90210. In the meantime, be good.

Page Six is reporting that we may not have seen the end of our lovely Sarah Palin. Apparently she is being courted by talent agencies who hope to turn her into a “White Oprah”.

But hot.

Naughty, naughty!

The paper says:

SARAH Palin won’t be vice president, but she won the hearts of talent scouts and literary agents who are scrambling to sign her to multimillion-dollar contracts.

CAA, ICM, William Morris, Paradigm and other agencies “smell books, talk shows and commentary for Fox and CNN” as possibilities for the Alaska governor, West Coast PR man Hal Lifson told us.

There is one agency, however, that has no interest in her whatsoever. It’s the agency run by Ari Emmanuel, the real-life inspiration for Entourage’s Ari Gold (another classic last night, folks). Mr. Emmanuel’s brother,  Rahm has just been appointed President-Elect Obama”s Chief-of-Staff.

Boom!

It’s about time we got back to business with accomplished actress and rivercityvibe favorite LiLo:

And she can act. Not bad

We’ve all been drunk and done things that, half-remembered in the cold light of the following morning, make us uneasy. We tentatively question our friends in an attempt to work out just what happened , praying, hoping that it was not too bad.

[I once, to my eternal shame, stole a radio out of a police car in an attempt to impress the girl I was with (it worked, but she was AWFUL). Apparently, it was an encrypted one, worth about a bazillion dollars, so I woke the next morning to a full door-to-door search, cars, helicopters, you name it. I asked the girl’s roommate what the activity was all about while I helped myself to raisin bran. She told me,  and the full horror of the situation dawned on me. I became dizzy and nauseous and had to sit down. I’ll tell you the rest some other time but it did not end well. For the public-minded among you it was 15 years ago, in another country, and besides, the wench is dead]

Something similar happened to this fellow. A UK journalist who made some ill advised comments to a video camera regarding his job (including resigning and telling his boss to fuck off) which the kind individual who made the film posted on youtube, the very next day:

Ouch. I feel for this guy. His follow-up, filmed the next day, while sober is pretty interesting too. A case-study in how to make things a weensy bit better. Though not, obviously, get his job back….

There’s a lesson here, readers.

Jaime Pressly, who I had never heard of until she played herself as one of Vinnie Chase’s pieces of strange in Entourage, has apparently split up with her boyfriend, resulting in her questionable mugshot being posted all over the interweb.   I have to say, I am not impressed. Am I the only one that finds her a little …. man-ish?

I will no doubt get called out on this point. I can see the conversation now:

Misguided fool: “But she’s beautiful. Her features are ‘elfin'”

Joe Bones: “Yeah, I hate ‘elfin’. Apart from the pointy nose thing, it is often used as code for  ‘no tits’.”

Misguided fool: “Oh”

To misquote the Bee Gees, I win again!

Most of us ate bar food last night. Around about my 5th beer, I had something of a Damascene experience. I identified a hitherto overlooked component of US greatness.

The Buffalo Wing.

Be proud, America!

Stories about how these all-American foodstuffs came to be are legion. My favorite, from the usual source, goes like this:

One story is that Buffalo wings were first prepared at the Anchor bar, located at 1047 Main Street (between North Street and Best Street) in Buffalo, New York, USA on October 3, 1964, by Teressa Bellisimo, co-owner of the Anchor Bar with her husband Frank. Upon the unannounced, late-night arrival of their son, Dominic (and several of his friends from college), Teressa needed a fast and easy snack to present to her hungry guests. It was then that she came up with the idea of deep frying chicken wings (normally thrown away or reserved for stock) and tossing them in cayenne hot sauce

We tend to dispense with the word ‘Buffalo’ locally, referring to them as ‘chicken’ or ‘hot’ wings’. The fact remains the innovation of  delicious food that goes with beer is one of the things that makes America great.

Hot, medium or mild?