A Few Tips

1. If you ever wake up one day and decide to go running at the gym instead of outside because it's too cold out but then get extremely cold on your walk to the gym and decide you'll run there to keep warm, the best way to deal with the irony is to not think about it.

2. If, while running, you put your iPod on shuffle and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" comes on, causing you to realize that, at some point over the past 23 years, you have learned all the lyrics to "Total Eclipse of the Heart," reassuring yourself that you did so ironically will not prove especially comforting.

3. If a song by this hip new indie band you've been checking out lately comes on afterwards, it will help a little bit. But not too much. Especially because, deep down, you know that running to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was more fun.

4. And, hey, at least the version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" you have on your iPod is the one where Meat Loaf sings backup. He's legit. Kind of. I mean, he was in Fight Club.

5. If you're trying to melt cheese that has been refrigerated, bring it to room temperature first.

Why Headphones Are Important

If headphones didn't exist, and you happened to be at the gym with a lot of people who are much stronger than you are, and you wanted to listen to the soundtrack from, say, The Book of Mormon or Avenue Q or Spamalot while you worked out, it would be very difficult to do so without publicly compromising the aura of masculinity you have worked so hard to maintain over the years.

I'm not saying this has happened to me before, but I am saying that, yeah, this happened to me when I went to the gym today. Thank you, Nathaniel Baldwin. 

But not for supporting polygamy. Just for headphones.

I Usually Believe In Evolution

There's an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence in support of the theory; you get to use the phrase "vestigial structures" when you discuss it, which is a lot of fun to say; and Futurama did a pretty funny episode about it.

But then it takes me four tries to successfully open a pint of Ben and Jerry's. And when that happens...well, I can't help but have my doubts.

Mediocre Criticism of a Movie Most People Don't Care About

(I'm not really sure why you're still reading after a title like that, but, hey, onward.)

I really, really wanted to like Take Me Home Tonight. As soon as I saw the preview for the first time about a year ago, it seemed exactly like the type of movie I usually enjoy a lot more than I have any right to. It stars Topher Grace, who I have an almost unlimited amount of goodwill towards based on loving That 70’s Show as a kid and not watching it after it got awful, and features cameos from Michael Ian Black and Demetri Martin, two of my favorite comedians. It’s about kids who just graduated from college and don’t know exactly what to do with their lives, a topic that resonates pretty strongly with me for some reason. The action takes place almost entirely during one night and centers on young people trying to have fun, much like two of my favorite movies, Superbad and Dazed and Confused. And it takes place in the 80s, making it a very effective way for me to indulge my weakness for 80s pop hits.

So despite the tepid reviews and the fact that it was forgotten about seemingly moments after it was released to an already small amount of fanfare, I still wanted to see this movie pretty badly. Several months after it came out, I still wanted to see it pretty badly. A few days ago, I finally did.

And it was kind of disappointing. Not outright bad, but not great, and certainly not Superbad or Dazed and Confused (or American Graffiti, probably, but I haven’t seen that movie, so I can’t really compare the two). “Reasonably watchable,” as The New York Times review aptly described it. But I was hoping that at least for me—not just a member of the target audience, but a member who was eager enough for this movie to be good to ignore a lot of its flaws—it would prove more than “reasonably watchable.”

But it didn’t. Here are a few of the main reasons why:     

1. Topher Grace’s big speech: This was clearly meant to be the defining moment for his character/the film’s protagonist, Matt Franklin. It was supposed to be the climax of the film where he transformed from someone who was afraid to do anything into someone who was going to start making decisions in his life. And to symbolize that transition, we got a clichéd speech about why you shouldn’t pretend to be something you’re not that ends with, “Tonight I got one thing to say to all that bullshit. Fuck it.” And that’s it. It’s not entirely clear what the bullshit is or how we’re supposed to go about fucking it, but then Matt goes ahead and takes a risk and gets the girl and starts cutting down on carbs and etc. The speech could have worked as a semiserious drunken call to, say, continue partying, but it felt far too vague and artificial to actually represent a major change in the main character’s attitude and outlook on life.

2. Chris Pratt’s character is not such a bad guy: His character, Kyle Masterson, is supposed to be the dopey, overgrown frat boy who prevents Wendy Franklin—Matt’s twin sister and Kyle's girlfriend—from doing anything with her life by making her be his wife and nothing more. And he kind of is, but not in a “this guy is a huge asshole who absolutely deserves a comeuppance” kind of way. He’s genuinely excited to see Matt at the party. He doesn’t force Wendy to marry him; he just asks her, and she says yes. He gets upset when he finds out she applied to Cambridge for graduate school, but again, not in a villainous, I’m-trying-to-destroy-your-potential type of way but in a moderately reasonable I-don’t-want-my-girlfriend-who-I-just-proposed-to-and-bought-a-condo-with-to-move-to-England type of way. Granted, he’s a little happy when she doesn’t get in, which is undeniably a dick move. But is it enough of a dick move to warrant feeling gleeful when Wendy decides to turn down his marriage proposal a few hours after she had accepted it in front of hundreds of people they went to high school with? Maybe I’m having too hard of a time not viewing Chris Pratt as the eminently likeable Andy Dwyer on Parks and Rec, but I don’t think so. He’s kind of a jerk in Take Me Home Tonight, but not enough of one to serve as the de facto villain of the movie, which is how I felt the film was trying to portray him.

3. Matt’s dad seems proud of his son when he breaks laws and disappointed in him when he doesn’t: Bill Franklin starts out as a typical authority figure. The first time we see him, he’s sternly lecturing Matt at the dinner table about the need to find some direction in his life. Later, because he’s a cop and this is a movie, he and his partner happen to be the officers who run into Matt and his friend Barry Nathan after they’ve stolen and crashed a car. He asks Matt about the level of involvement he had in taking the car and actually seems disappointed when Matt says he left the dealership before Barry did the stealing. Later, after Matt has decided to take his first risk by “riding the ball,” (In the context of the film, this means literally getting rolled down a hill in a giant metal sphere, and it’s a big deal. Confusing, I know), Bill smiles when he finds Matt’s work ID in the yard that he landed in and destroyed. So the person who is giving Matt life advice is upset with him for not committing grand theft auto and proud of him for destroying the property of an innocent, law-abiding neighbor. It makes the earnest advice he gives him about the need to take a chance on something in life ring hollow.

4. “Are you going to Kyle Masterson’s party tonight?” This is a very, very small complaint, but when Tori Frederking—the hot popular girl who was Matt’s high school crush—asks him if he’s going to the party that’s the impetus for everything that happens in the movie, she uses the host’s full name. That’s not how hot popular girls refer to anyone they went to high school with. They only use first names because, since they’re popular and hot, they’re on a friendly, informal, first name basis with everyone. Using someone’s full name implies that they’re more important than you are. It’s one of the reasons we always refer to celebrities as, for instance, “Will Smith” instead of just “Will.”  So having a hot popular girl refer to a classmate by his full name sounds unrealistic and forced. This ruined very little about the movie but bothered me anyway.

Yes, there were more disappointing factors, but these are the ones that still stick out to me.

And now, because, damn it, I still like Topher Grace, and Demetri Martin was extremely funny in this movie as a wheelchair-bound, Goldman Sachs-employed asshole, and optimism is always more fun than pessimism, we’ll end on something about Take Me Home Tonight that I really liked and didn’t expect:

No one’s story wraps up too nicely at the end: Wendy doesn’t get into Cambridge. Barry gets fired from his job. Tori hates her job. These details all come out at some point during the movie, and although the characters appear upbeat and ready to keep trying at the conclusion, none of the aforementioned problems have been solved. Out of all the characters, Matt is the one who gets the strongest sense of closure, and even his plans don’t extend much further than traveling for a while. It’s a fun thing for a postgrad to do, but it doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing what to do with your life so much as it does postpone it. It would have been very easy for the filmmakers to have Wendy get into Cambridge and Barry get his job back and Tori quit her job and Matt find his perfect job, but none of these things happened because life doesn’t work that way. Problems don’t disappear because of one wild night, and you shouldn’t expect them to. Take Me Home Tonight seems to understand this, but, as the smiles on the characters at the end indicate, it also seems to understand that this doesn’t mean you have to go through life miserable.

It wasn’t Superbad; it wasn’t Dazed and Confused; it wasn’t even really that funny. But it had a good ending and a few good moments, so it watching it wasn’t a waste of time. And sometimes that’s all you get.

How To Have A Fun Saturday Night In New York City

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of

1. To ensure that you have the maximum amount of energy going into the night, get no more than five hours of hollow, inebriated sleep on Friday, eat an offensive fast food concoction for lunch, and pregame by watching the Republican debate alone. Then take a few swigs of Monster immediately before leaving your house.

2. Do not learn the name or location of the place where you are going. Rather, assume other people know this information. This will probably work out well.

3. Get on the downtown 1 train at 110th St around 11:30 PM. Once you reach 96th St, switch to the 2/3 express train in order to get downtown faster.

4. Actually, guys, it says the next express train isn't coming for 19 minutes. So maybe we should just stay on the 1 train? Guys?

5. Spend 19 minutes in the 96th St station pacing.

6. Take the 2 train to 14th St. When the conductor announces that this train will be making local stops between 34th St and 14th St, further invalidating your decision to wait for the 2 train instead of staying on the 1, pretend you don't hear him.

7. Transfer to the F train at 14th St. While waiting for the F train to arrive, make a hubristic comment about New York having the best public transportation system in the country that will probably not come back to bite you in the ass later in the night.

8. Board the F train. Intend on taking it to Delancey St until you hear the conductor announce something about the F train making stops on the C line after West 4th St that you still don't fully understand.

9. Get off at Canal St because why not.

10. Despite not really knowing where you are or where you're trying to go, stubbornly refuse to take a cab because you're a grad student, damn it, and such luxuries will have to wait until you're making more than negative five figures a year.

11. Bid a cheerful farewell to your friends who decide to take a cab. Smugly congratulate yourself and your remaining friends on your frugalness. This also will probably not come back to bite you in the ass later in the night.

12. Decide against walking to the club because doing so would take almost 20 minutes. Attempt to find the J train and take that to Delancey St instead.

13. No, that's the 1 train.

14. That's the ACE train.

15. That's the 1 train again.

16. Shit.

17. Wait, wait! Here it is! We found it! Nice work everyone! And it only took, like, 20 minutes! Things are finally looking up!

18. Take the J train one stop from Canal St to Chambers St, after which it will stop. Do not realize you took the train in the wrong direction until the next day when you are attempting to write a blog post about your night.

19. Get off at Chambers St. Establish that you are now farther away from the club than you were before getting on the J train.

20. Hold on, is it seriously after 1 AM right now? So we've been trying to get to this place for, like, an hour and a half?

21. You know it takes me an hour and a half to get from the city to my house, right? My house in Connecticut?

22. Call your friends who took a cab to see how the club is.

23. You're still waiting in line? Wait, there's a line to get into this place? And a $10 cover? Seriously?

24. Decide not to go.

25. Decide to go.

26. Try to catch a cab. Fail.

27. Decide not to go.

28. Take the 2 train back to 96th St. Experience a brief sense of relief that you at least managed to catch an express train home before realizing that it is making all local stops.

29. Order mozzarella sticks at the Seinfeld restaurant while discussing the Republican debate you were all watching earlier and attempting to convince yourself that none of the girls at that club would've talked to you anyway.

30. Go home. Watch an episode of Party Down before going to bed.

31. Realize any night that ended with you and some good friends eating together at 2 AM really couldn't have been that bad.

32. Apologize for the cheesy ending. Rectify it by acknowledging that it was cheesy in a snarky, self-aware fashion.

The Double Down

Photo courtesy of good friend and Twitter legend Andrew Katz. 

I've been fascinated with the Double Down ever since I first read about it in The A.V. Club over two years ago. Something about the idea of a sandwich that contains two fried chicken patties in lieu of two slices of bread just seemed so purely, perversely American to me, to the point where trying one felt almost like a patriotic duty as opposed to an impulsive, lustful decision I might make while stoned.

So way back in 2009, I decided that, at some point, I needed to try this sandwich (if you could call it that). The problem was, other things kept getting in the way: school, work, schoolwork, the Arab Spring, dignity, etc. My desire to try the Double Down gradually started to wane, and eventually, it was pushed into the already crowded realm of Things I Like To Joke About Doing But Will Probably Never Actually Do (heroin, prostitutes, showering) (I'm kidding about one of these things. Try to guess which one!).

Until yesterday.

The process actually began on Friday night when--our passion abetted by a few drinks--my friend Lorenzo and I declared that tomorrow we would go to KFC for lunch, and we would each order and eat one Double Down. Granted, I had made similar promises before, but there was something about this one that seemed more honest and genuine. Again, this may just have been because of the alcohol, but it's possible bigger forces were also at play.

Sure enough, at 1:00 in the afternoon the next day, I found myself waiting in line at a KFC on the Upper West Side with Lorenzo, mere moments away from finally bringing this dream of mine to fruition. We briefly debated backing out and ordering something that didn't spit in the face of the Earl of Sandwich but decided that, no, we had come here to try the Double Down, and, by God, that was what we were going to do.

And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Having said that, this is mainly because my expectations were almost comically low, and I certainly don't think I'll ever order a Double Down again. But I had assumed that this sandwich would instantly give me a heart attack or, at the very least, Type 2 diabetes. What I got instead was a sandwich that looked disgusting and that sat heavily and unpleasantly in my stomach for several hours but ultimately tasted fine, minus a few bites that were a little heavy on the Colonel's Sauce (I don't know what this is, but it was light orange, which made me slightly uneasy).

Because at its core, the Double Down really isn't a very nauseating combination of ingredients. It's chicken, bacon, cheese, and sauce. The infamy and the sense of deep, existential shame you experience while ordering and eating it both stem almost entirely from the presentation: you are clearly eating a sandwich that has substituted two slices of bread for two fried chicken breasts, and it's difficult to get past that. Really, all KFC would have to do is slap some bread above and below each piece of chicken to essentially turn the Double Down into a chicken club sandwich (incidentally, it would also become more unhealthy, as the bread would add calories and carbs). But a chicken club sandwich isn't very exciting. Not exciting enough to make a supposedly intelligent 23-year-old spend years of his life wondering what one tastes like, anyway.

So I guess it's possible that this whole Double Down thing was just an elaborate marketing campaign, an attempt by KFC to pique the morbid curiosity of consumers that I completely bought into. In which case I say to the fine people at Yum! Brands: nice job, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next. How about just shoving all of your popular menu items into a bowl?

Oh, wait...

Grocery Store Music

Yesterday, when I went into the grocery store to purchase a few seminal food products (jelly, Pop-Tarts, and granola bars), "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears was playing.

I immediately broke out in a huge smile and start singing along. This led to more than a few strange looks from the other shoppers, but I was enjoying myself too much to care.

I'm not sure where my life is headed or what I'll be doing five months from now, but I feel like as long as I can keep getting absurdly happy when a Tears for Fears song starts playing in a grocery store, things will be ok.