Other Guys, 618 Seafood, Downtown Baseball - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

Okay, yes, I laughed during The Other Guys. Out loud. Big laughs. About a dozen times. Maybe that's enough for a comedy.

But laughs or no laughs, what a badly written, confusing mess. Not confusing about what happened, but confusing about what was true or not.

I know -- it's fiction. None of it's true. No resemblance to any person living or dead, yadda yadda. But fiction has a kind of truth to it, and comedy especially so. We need a place to stand.

In the Mary Tyler Moore Show, everybody else could be wacky, but Mary Richards herself had to be real. She was cute as a button and funny, but she was real, and she had the same consternation with the antics of the others that we had. In Groundhog Day, we needed Andie McDowell's character to be our frame of reference. In Three Stooges farces, we need Larry. In other words, we need a character who is human, who isn't doing unbelievable things.

This is the action comedy that sounds great when it's getting pitched but usually falls down and dies in the writing -- think of The Last Action Hero if you doubt me. But at first it looked as if writers Adam McKay and Chris Henchy might have gotten it right.

The premise is that Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are two loser cops who aspire to be the famous (but hideously destructive) action-hero cops (played wonderfully by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson).

As you might expect, Ferrell plays the loserer of the two -- he's a guy who normally does forensic accounting, but for some inexplicable reason he has gotten himself transferred into a detective unit. So we expect that Ferrell will be highly eccentric, while his partner, Mark Wahlberg, is supposed to be the sincere, long-suffering, competent one. You know, Nick Nolte to Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours.

Uh-oh. I shouldn't have mentioned 48 Hours. Because that was a truly brilliant action comedy. So was Beverly Hills Cop, though in that one it was Eddie Murphy who was the character who kept it real. But in those two classic action comedies, the humor arises from attitude, character, and situation.

So we have to redefine The Other Guys a little. Not an "action comedy," but a "screwball action comedy."

So let's compare it to screwball comedies, shall we? Bringing Up Baby -- oops, we have Cary Grant as the befuddled but keep-it-real scientist. How about Arsenic and Old Lace? There we have the girlfriend (Priscilla Lane) to keep reminding us of what "normal" is.

That's who Mark Wahlberg's character should have been. So it's not just disappointing, it's downright baffling when he turns out to be, not unlucky (shooting the wrong person) but insane (the crazy ex-boyfriend). It leaves us nowhere to stand. Nobody is normal.

In fact, the closest thing to "normal" is Michael Keaton as the captain. But he doesn't get enough screen time to carry off the "normal guy" part.

Michael Keaton causes serious problems, though, just by being in the movie. Because he is what Will Ferrell only wishes he were -- a brilliant actor who does comedy. Will Ferrell is a shallow sketch comedian who is always, always, always out of his depth when he shares the screen with actual actors. And Keaton's presence in this movie causes constant embarrassment-by-contrast.

And I say that even though this is the movie in which Ferrell does the least mugging of any role I've seen him in. It's the closest to real he's ever been, as an actor.

This arises in part from the writers' lamest shtick: Having somebody adamantly deny, over and over, what is obvious to everyone else. This means that instead of acting zany, Ferrell has to act as if everything were normal. This keeps him reined in, which is good.

But the writers think we're really, really stupid. Six-year-olds, in fact, to whom the same joke will be funny over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So they provide us with what they think we'll like.

The mother-in-law coming out to be the go-between in a really randy conversation between a husband and wife -- not funny after the first thing she's forced to say.

Ferrell's seeming obliviousness to his wife's hotness -- which might have worked except that later in the movie they have him admit that he knew she was hot all along, which destroys everything we thought we knew about his character.

Michael Keaton's constant use of tag lines from TLC songs, which didn't work for several reasons: 1. Who knows or remembers anything TLC ever sang? 2. Song tag lines are often most effective when they're already cliches or common figures of speech, which is especially true of TLC songs, so it just sounds like normal speech except that: 3. The other characters are constantly pointing out the references so that even people who don't remember TLC songs are sure to notice that they're getting something "funny." Like somebody explaining a joke to you, and then telling the joke again and explain it again, over and over.

And yet there are enough genuinely funny things that as long I didn't try to care about anything or anybody, I was amused enough not to walk out. And even though his part was badly written, Mark Wahlberg is very, very good -- better than this movie deserved. So were Eva Mendes and Michael Keaton.

But we would have been better off staying home and watching Beverly Hills Cop or 48 Hours.

The restaurant at 1618 West Friendly, Avenue, called 1618 Seafood Grille, is one of the two offspring of the old Southern Lights. The other is the newly reborn Southern Lights, which is a cool upgrade of the old one, and much appreciated.

1618 Seafood Grille, on the other hand, is something quite different. In a city that recently lost the brilliant restaurant 223 South Elm, and which has never had a seafood restaurant that rises above near-adequacy, 1618 comes as a revelation.

We had heard good things from friends whom we trust to know what they're seeing and eating in a restaurant, so we arrived with high expectations. The menu was ambitious -- full of strange and inventive combinations that can only work when a chef has an extraordinarily reliable sense of balance.

For instance: "pan fried sea scallop and corn cake served with roasted zucchini, sour cream and sauteed asparagus over a black and navy bean sauce." Every single ingredient except the black beans are or have been on my loathsome list -- yet the combination, seasoned and prepared and arranged on the plate at 1618, is surprisingly enjoyable.

The "crispy shrimp and pork meatballs with a spicy lime chipotle cream and daikon radish salad": I almost cried it was so good.

And the fish tacos? I am repelled by the very notion of fish tacos. But these are so good that it's worth leaning over the plate and letting the habanero sauce drip all over your fingers and the plate in order to eat this perfect flavor-and-texture combination.

My wife was in rapture over the mozzarella, fried green tomato, and fresh vine-ripened tomato salad. I was happily astonished by the brilliant seafood chowder, which is like none I've ever had before.

And the fish entrees? Usually this far inland you won't find the kind of chef who knows how to bring out the flavors of the fish -- you're lucky if the sauces are good. But every entree that showed up at our table pleased everyone.

In short, 1618 immediately shot to the top of our restaurant rotation as the place we're eager to take friends and family to.

Is it perfect in every way? No. The menu is badly in need of an editor who knows how to spell. For instance, bruschetta was misspelled without the h. Admittedly, the incorrect "bruscetta" is spelled the way it's usually mispronounced by untrained waiters -- as "bru-shetta."

(Italian "sce" is pronounced like the English sh; Italian "sche" is pronounced like English sk, or the sch in school, so the word is "bru-sket-ah" when pronounced by someone who knows what they're reading.)

Another misspelling was the annoying hyperforeignism that puts a tilde over the n in "habanero." It's probably the influence of "jalapeño," which has the tilde, so the Spanish word is pronounced "ha-la-pain-yo." But habanero has no tilde in Spanish, and is pronounced with a simple n: "ah-bah-nay-ro." No tilde.

And people in a restaurant with food and service and ambience this fine should not be making menu mistakes like a Red Lobster, OK? Those are the rules, and it's a shame 1618 breaks them.

Fortunately, not everyone is a spelling-and-pronunciation-obsessed former copy editor like me, so nobody but me will care.

The other problem is that the sign out on Friendly Avenue leads you to think that the restaurant faces Friendly Avenue. The address is Friendly Avenue, isn't it? But the establishment that faces the street is Leon's hair styling shop, and what they serve is not delicious.

Instead, you drive around behind the building, where you will find (a) plenty of parking places and (b) the restaurant entrance.

Expect the entrees to cost between 20 and 30 bucks, the appetizers 10 to 13. Make a reservation.

I was absolutely right about the insanity of thinking that a baseball stadium would help "revive" downtown. Just as predicted, it's an 8-block (circumference) slab of nothing, so that even when there's a game going on, the stadium still does nothing at all for the street.

It would have been easy for the city to require that the under-the-seats areas provide plenty of streetfront retail space. That's what makes a downtown. But our incredibly ignorant city planners, who apparently haven't read a book about city design in forty years, make no such rules and therefore keep encouraging the building of downtown-killing buildings like tall banks (ooh, we have a skyline!) and parking garages without shops on the street (ooh, another dead spot!) and, of course, our stadium (ooh, we have a minor league team!).

So as my wife and I made our way there to see a game for the first time ever, we couldn't help but notice that while people were streaming into the stadium for a seven-o'clock game, none of the nearby stores was open for business. Just as predicted, the only people making money are those who rent parking spaces; these people aren't customers for anything downtown except what's sold inside the park.

Once inside, we made our way (not very well marked) to the elevator that took us up to the box that a friend had invited us to. Inside, our opinion began to improve at once. The space, both inside the room and outside on the two rows of seats, was ample and comfortable. All who came were friends of ours, and we had a great time talking and enjoying soft drinks and refreshments provided by the ballpark.

We even sometimes watched the game itself. Especially because if you don't watch, foul balls can hit your box with considerable velocity, smacking into windows or the heads of the unwatchful.

About halfway through the game (against Charleston, I believe), our team started making runs. Winning, in fact. At that point the crowd's attention perked up and the game became interesting. Greensboro ended up winning. There was a bit of a glow. Rah.

It's a weird thing: Football is much better on television, because there's something to watch in instant replays -- the heroic athletic stunts, the intricacy of plays. But baseball is horrible on TV, because every hit ball looks the same in instant replay. Now and then a fielder will have a moment of unusual athleticism.

But football is horrible to attend in person, while baseball is fun. Part of the difference is the season of the year, but it's really more about the company. Though football offers plenty of breaks, baseball is one long break, interrupted by occasional moments of minute activity. One pitcher. One hitter. An occasional hurled ball. A twitch from the umpire. Baseball is about waiting for something to happen.

When you're there with friends, though, baseball offers you a couple of hours of good conversation while occasionally somebody does something interesting on the field that makes you fall silent to watch. That's entertainment.

Seriously. I had a great time. And considering how cheaply you can get a seat, it's a great family activity.

But not perfect. For one thing, the announcers and all their stunts were pathetic. Not because they are untalented, but because not one of them has ever been taught how to speak over big public-address systems. With all the echo and reverb, you have to talk very slowly for your words to be intelligible. Speak slowly enough, and you won't sound slow, you'll merely sound clear!

These announcers, alas, were radio-trained. Radio requires a constant stream of fairly rapid talk. Uh-oh -- the opposite of what is needed during a baseball game in an echoey outdoor park. So I truly did not understand any words except the last word of each sentence. That made it impossible to know, let alone care, what they were saying and doing. Talk about bush league -- why don't they get a professional announcer instead of a radio retread?

If it hadn't been for the scoreboard, it would have been impossible to know anything about the game or the players. The scoreboard was excellent.

Look, I still think the downtown stadium has failed to fulfil any of the promises made by its promoters. But it does deliver something good -- baseball, with all that that implies. Of course, it could be delivering the same thing at a refurbished War Memorial, or at a location that didn't leave a four-block (in area) corpse in the middle of downtown.

I'm not enough of a fan to want to have a box for the season, and I'm afraid that attending the game in my friend's box has spoiled me, like flying first class for a while and having to go back to coach. And I'm old enough that I'm not sure I can stand the bleacher seats for the whole game. But that's OK -- I'll just go down and take part in some of the promotional stunt races during inning changes ...

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Thursday, Aug. 26 -- Krakatoa Day

In 1939, WXBS television in New York City broadcast the first major league baseball games -- a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. At the time there were only a few television sets in private ownership and even fewer advertisers; the big bucks were still a few years away.

In 1883, the Indonesian volcanic island Krakatoa blew its head off in the biggest such explosion in historic times. The eruption was heard by people 3,000 miles away and created tidal waves 120 feet high, killing 36,000 people, and it hurled five cubic miles of earth fragments into the air. It affected the oceans and the atmosphere of the entire Earth for years, causing significant global cooling.

Friday, Aug. 27 -- Oil and Gas Industry Appreciation Day

I know, I know. With the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it might seem ironic to have "Oil and Gas Industry Appreciation Day" this year. Or, for that matter, any year. However, unless you drive an all-electric car, heat your house with firewood, sunshine, or coal-based electricity, and eat only food that was never transported on highways, all those workers and managers who search for oil and natural gas, and then tend wells and pipelines in deserts, icy wastes, or on platforms in the perilous sea are making your life, and our prosperous economy, possible.

This is Mother Teresa's 100^th birthday. Born in 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia, to a family of Albanian descent, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu grew up to found the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, which continues to tend to the needs of destitute people in Calcutta, India, and other places. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, back when you still had to do something in order to receive it.

Saturday, Aug. 28 -- I Have a Dream Day

In 1963, more than 250,000 people attended the "March on Washington" civil rights rally at which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made his famous "I have a dream" speech.

On this day in 1922, radio station WEAF in New York ran the first-ever broadcast commercial advertisement, sponsored by the Queensboro Realty Corporation of Jackson Heights, to promote Hawthorne Court, a group of apartment buildings. The rate was $100 for ten minutes.

Ten minutes? That wasn't an ad, that was an infomercial. Fortunately, commercials soon became shorter. And more expensive -- allowing stations and networks to start paying their employees.

Sunday, Aug. 29 -- "According to Hoyle" Day

Today marks the passing of Edmond Hoyle in 1769 (he was born about 1672). Though he may have studied law, his passion was game-playing, and for many years he lived in London and instructed avid players on the correct way to play the popular card games. His "Short Treatise" on the game of whist (a forerunner of bridge), published in 1742, became the bible of game-playing, and Hoyle's name still adorns books on the official rules of hundreds of games of many types.

More Herbs, Less Salt Day. Of course, we have since discovered authoritatively that reducing your salt intake has no particular benefit, and eating salt in reasonable quantities causes no harm. But there are still doctors who torture heart patients by prescribing a low-salt or no-salt diet -- something that no animal at a salt lick would tolerate. Old habits die hard -- I almost never use table salt and routinely cut the salt in recipes to a quarter of what is called for or less; no one has ever complained. So even if there's no scientific or medical basis for it, I live by the maxim "more herbs, less salt."

Monday, Aug. 30 -- Madame Frankenstein Day

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who took the last name Shelley when she married rock-star-famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was born on this day in 1797. In addition to being the author of the famous novel Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus, Shelley was noted for essays, poems -- and for her work in editing and publishing her husband's previously unpublished work after his death.

Tuesday, Aug. 31 -- Solidarity Day

In 1980, brave shipyard workers in Gdansk (Danzig), Poland, formed an independent (i.e., non-Communist) trade union. They named it Solidarnosc -- "Solidarity." The people of Poland -- doubly oppressed by Russian overlordship and their own Communist government -- embraced and supported the movement. The formation of the union was triggered by the firing of outspoken activists Lech Walesa and Anna Walentynowicz.

The Communist government responded by cutting off telephone communications between Gdansk and the rest of the country and censoring all news of the events, but underground presses succeeded in publicizing the dockyard workers' action throughout Poland and other countries in eastern Europe. The union began printing a news-sheet with a press run of 30,000 -- the first independent press in Poland since Communism took over.

Workers throughout Poland began their own strikes in solidarity with the Gdansk workers and on September 17^th the union became a nationwide (though still illegal) organization. In the year and a half that followed, more than ten million Poles joined Solidarnosc or one of its subsidiary organizations -- to the point that more than 80 percent of Poland's workers openly became members of the union. By now, the union was a full-on revolutionary movement, though they were careful never to resort to any kind of violence.

Leftists in the West were humiliated, as Solidarnosc shredded their fantasy that Communism was supported by the working class in Communist-ruled countries. And when Solidarity leaders met with Polish-born Pope John Paul II in Rome, in effect cementing the support of the worldwide Catholic Church for their revolution, it was clear that the Polish government no longer had control over its long-oppressed subjects.

Only pressure from the Soviet Union, with the threat of military intervention, was able to curb the revolution for a time with a declaration of martial law and a military takeover of all aspects of Polish government. Pressure from the West, however, led to the release of political prisoners, and Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalizing policies in the Soviet Union opened the door to greater toleration of Solidarnosc.

A wave of nationwide strikes then led to legalization of the union in April, 1989, and its being allowed to field candidates for national office and Solidarity won enough seats (despite being restricted to no more than one-third of the offices in parliament) that it was able to form a government -- the first freely elected, non-Communist government in eastern Europe in forty years. Over the next couple of years, all the rest of eastern Europe followed the Polish example, won their independence, and established various degrees of democratic government.

The courage and determination of the Polish people, combined with the weakening of the Russian Empire (aka USSR), changed the face of the world, and while Russia has returned to Tsarist (i.e., Putin's) autocracy, Poland remains a democracy and its economy is firmly recovering from the destructive Communist occupation.

(Meanwhile, the state-control economic policies and the ram-it-through-despite-the-will-of-the-people government practices that made eastern Europe so miserably poor and unfree for decades are still being touted by learn-nothing Leftists in Europe and the United States as a model for "fairness" -- i.e., everybody except the party in power starves.)

Wednesday, Sept. 1 -- Be Kind to Editors and Writers Month

September 1st begins such celebrations as:

Atrial Fibrillation Month

International Enthusiasm Week

Library Card Sign-up Month

National Honey Month

National Piano Month

National Rice Month

Though I suffer from periodic bouts of atrial fibrillation, believe in supporting and using libraries, and am married to a woman famous for her infectious enthusiasm, I chose "Be Kind to Editors and Writers Month" not so much for the "writers" part as for the editors. We live in a society where people seem not to care about spelling or grammar in our written communication, and editors represent the last levee trying to hold back the flood of illiterature.

The best way to show kindness to editors is not to take them out to lunch or dinner or send them cards (though you can do that, too). The best way is to ask them to edit something before you print it. Most people will be astonished at how many errors their writings have -- and will be grateful to the editor for sparing them the embarrassment they would have suffered if they had printed them without having them edited first.

(I speak particularly to writers of menus, signs, and websites, who regularly humiliate themselves without a clue that they are doing so.)

Today is the start of the "Million Minute Family Challenge." The 10^th annual festival runs from Sept. 1^st thru Dec. 31^st in a national effort to bring family, friends and neighbors together through board games. The goal is for all of us to accumulate one million minutes of game playing. You can add your minutes to the running total at www.millionminute.com.

Fortunately, this is a glorious time to play board games. Besides traditional favorites like Monopoly, Careers, Risk, Stratego, and Life; classics like chess, checkers, backgammon, dominoes, and go; and children's games like Chutes & Ladders and Candyland, there are many new games that are even better. A few suggestions of table games my family and I love to play together and with friends:

Ticket to Ride

Settlers of Cataan

Trivial Pursuit

Wise and Otherwise

Carcassonne

Dixit

GiftTRAP

Blokus

Apples to Apples

This list isn't even close to complete. Remember, though, that the best way to play is cooperatively -- that is, try to win while playing by the rules, but keep the mood happy and friendly so that everyone will have fun.