It’s Friday… Let Loose at Work

Take a few minutes out of your Friday and enjoy the goodness.

Movie Madness: The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight has everything: fabulous performances, gorgeous visuals, well-paced plot movement, even for a film that is over two and a half hours long.  And, while the story is great, it’s also ultimately unimportant.  The film is a character study and the real plot points are not about who did what or how it happened, but about order versus anarchy and pragmatism versus chaos.  It’s Good against Evil, with Batman in the middle trying to usher Gotham from the darkness to the light.

Lost In The Tubes: Cheap Burgers Edition

• Good Stuff Eatery, the new burger joint on Capitol Hill owned by former Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn opened recently.  Here’s a story about the opening festivities and we’ll have a review of the food (check out the super-reasonably priced menu at their website) as soon as we can get over there. [DCist]
• Momma’s who want their kids to be president, listen up: no rape jokes.  Really.  Just get that point across, because they come back to haunt you.  Even if you used the joke 22 years ago.  Oh, and let’s not forget that it is relevant in 2008, because McCain is still an asshole who makes rape jokes.[Wonkette]
• On a lighter note, Billy Packer has already found a new job! (ish) [Tirico Suave]
• Liz, the new blogger at why.i.hate.dc is doing a great job so far.  Check out her work. [why.i.hate.dc]
• There’s a whole mess in Philadelphia sports right now because Chase Utley was unimpressed when the New York fans booed him.  NY Tabloids are calling him out and everyone is making a bigger deal out of it than it is.  Here’s a great and interesting recap of the whole deal. [The 700 Level]

Culturegeist 911: Liberal Beejays

This could not wait.  This is a Culturegeist 911.

I love minor league baseball.  I love the wacky promotions and the silly names.  One day, I’ll do a post about this, including some links to Darren Rovell’s page at CNBC where he hands out awards for some of the best and most absurd minor league shenanigans.  But for the moment, we have to talk about this:

The Liberal Beejays.  Really.  A member of the Jayhawk Conference in the National Baseball Congress, the Beejays (pause for laughter) play semiprofessional baseball in the great state of Kansas.

Hunter Pence, Rich Harden, and Troy Percival have all been Beejays.

This is priceless.

Thanks to Tirico Suave for bringing this amazingnes to our attention.

The Internet Is Your Playground: BRAINS!! Edition

• Want to scare your neighbors?  Keep those goldurn kids off your lawn?  Maybe even frighten off that pesky groundhog?  Boy have we got the thing for you!  (Caution:  may require occasional feedings involving human flesh and grey matter.)  [Gizmodo]

• Speaking of the walking dead, ladies and gentlemen, your Washington National Baseball Club!  [Bugs & Cranks]
• And while we’re on the topic… so long, Billy Packer.  [Deadspin]
• And for those still among the living who would like to get a fix to maybe feel like a zombie for a while, just listen for the happy music.  (Seriously, though, I’ve been making the joke that the ice cream trucks in the neighborhood around RFK are dealing for a while now, and I’ve heard real stories of this happening elsewhere.  Nobody should be surprised – it’s kind of a great cover, until it isn’t anymore.)  [DCist]
• And for anybody who’s convinced the apocalypse will come from climate change, and not something sensible (like zombies), here’s something for you.  [Capital Weather Gang]

Just for good measure, because no discussion of zombies is complete without it.  A special bunch of videos after the jump.

What the Hell Ever Happened to… Soul For Real

New feature time!  Much like VH1’s Where Are They Now?, our own What the Hell Ever Happened to… will track down the celebrities of our youth, using what limited resources are available to us – mostly our devilish good looks, and Wikipedia.  The inspiration for this feature was the following music video, which prompted the question you see above:  What the hell ever happened to Soul For Real?  [So, apparently embedding has been disabled for every version of this video residing in the tubes.  It will have to suffice for you to link over to YouTube to watch.  Apologies, but seriously, go and watch.]

Soul For Real.  Man, what an awesome group.  I mean, when I was a kid, they were like Jackson 5 meets Boyz II Men.  I remember watching them lip sync Candy Rain on Nickelodeon’s All That when I was a kid.  (All That, coincidentally, may be the subject of a future What the Hell Ever Happened to….)  They could sing, they could dance, and they were the bomb.  I mean what 13-year-old didn’t want to be in a singing and dancing heartthrob group with his older brothers?  (Anybody?)

…and then nothing.  They had the one song that got them onto a tween-targeted sketch comedy show, but that was it.  I for one never heard anything from them again, outside of that song many, many times over the intervening years, thanks to the wonderful (seriously) All That:  the Album.  I mean, this was the group that kept the teenage-heartthrob-boy-group-who-sing-and-dance vibe going through the early 90s.  I won’t say they paved the way for Backstreet, Blackstreet, *NSYNC, and 112, but they definitely performed routine highway maintenance.  Find out what happened to this most important one-hit-wonder pop-soul boygroup of the mid-90s, after the jump.

The Internet Is Your Playground: Paralympic Doping Edition

We have a big week planned for Culturegeist: a couple of new running features, a Movie Madness for Hellboy II, and lots of links to interesting, fun, and funny goodness.  Yes, you heard me right… actual content this week!  With words!  But first, here’s some links to start the week off right and avoid that case of the Mondays:

• USADA caught of a couple of track and field athletes doping… at the Paralympics.  Luckily, I am slow of wit and unable to get myself in trouble making fun of this story. [International Herald Tribune]
• The New Yorker has an interesting piece on how Chicago influenced Obama.  Unfortunately, the editors thought it would be a great idea to put a cartoon of the Obamas as machine gun toting, flag burning Muslims on the cover of the issue… so there’s that too. [New Yoker article here, the cover here via the NYT Politics Blog, and The Carpetbagger Report on the campagins' reactions here]
• Good news, bad news in D.C.  Another gunman in Adam’s Morgan this weekend: bad news.  Witnesses ran him down and the police caught him: good news, such as it is. [NBC4]
• Apparently product placement is bothering the FCC so much that it is considering regulating the practice.  One idea includes disclaimers… which, by my count, will draw attention to the product placement and only make it more effective.  Right? [Gawker]
• Advice for Elton Brand from Allen Iverson and Charles Barkley, a couple of players who know what it’s like to deal with Philly fans. [The 700 Level]

The Internet Is Your Playground: Awkward to Hyper-Awkward Edition

• Ted Stevens is in the tubes!  Look out! [Wonkette]
• The iPhone 3G comes out today and you can expect Gizmodo to be on the news all day.  Luckily… because I don’t know what we’d do without thrice-hourly updates on the iPhone release. [Gizmodo]
• Phil Mickelson’s obscenely extravagant house is for sale.  There are two guest houses, a spa, and all the left-handed scissors you could ever need. [Deadspin]
• NFL Rookies + Showtunes = Hilarity.  Make it the cast of Oklahoma! and it gets even better.  Super awkward (and hilarious) video at the link. [KSK]
• And in our “Ugh, really?” Story of the Day: Bush regales the G8 summit with jokes about his poor record on the environment.  Ugh, really? [The Carpetbagger Report]

The Internet Is Your Playground: Tattoo’d on the Couch Edition

I’ve got a trip for work, so I’m likely out for the weekend, which means I won’t have a Weekending… post up tomorrow.  Suffice it to say that one of the (few) great international club soccer rivalries involving an American team renews itself Saturday night as your D.C. United play host to CD Guadalajara, better known as Chivas – the Goats.  I’ll see you kids Monday – here’s your Playground.

• Let’s keep the self-reference going from a couple days ago.  I’m planning on getting a tattoo this summer – thankfully I wasn’t considering any of these designs.  Wouldn’t that have been embarrassing?  [Radar Online - shout out to AL]
• And speaking of embarrassing… what a way to die.  Death by Couch.  [Reuters - shout out to Ms. Kelley]
• And back to the self-reference.  (What?  We’re a blog – it’s in the job description.)  The week I finally cave and buy a Mac, out leaks photos of the next edition.  Every bleeping time.  [AppleInsider]
• With all the important matters facing the District, from schools to transit and everything in between, perhaps the greatest question is this:  Are we a town or a city, anyway?  [DCist]
• I’ve never been to Yankee Stadium.  I’m doing my best to rectify that this summer, before it’s too late.  If you manage to make it up there, think about following Rick Reilly’s lead… if there’s anything left to pilfer, that is.  [ESPN The Magazine]

The Internet Is Your Playground: Don’t Call It A Comeback Edition

• So, a comedian, a politician, and a wrestler walk into a Senate race… looks like Jesse Ventura is running after all. [Wonkette]
• The KSK guys are huge Judith Light fans. Really. [KSK]
• After moving Rodney Carney and Calvin Booth to make cap room, Elton Brand is a Sixer!  The city of Philadelphia is happy, but I’d imagine that Baron Davis is a bit pissed. [ESPN via The 700 Level]
• If you are into jazz, there is a ton of stuff going on this week in the D.C. area. [DCist]
• And today’s Bill Simmons Real World Story of the Year: Kevin from Season One is running for Congress!  The United States Congress!  The one in D.C.! (Yes, those are horses you hear behind you, and, yes, Death, Pestilence, Famine, and War are riding them.) [Gawker]

Lost in the Tubes: Footballs Are Soccer Balls Edition

• I can’t believe I’m posting to a Chicago Fire blog with United playing those evil men in red tonight in U.S. Open Cup play, but when I see that you posted links to your top 20 soccer commercials all time, I just can’t help myself.  [The Red Card]
• This bit is a little bit old, and it’s managed to slip through about 3 days worth of links.  Don’t say Culturegeist never did anything for you, at least not after you give this to your 80s-TV-obsessed cousin for his birthday.  Or your brother, who loved Boy Meets World.  [NYT]
• Personally, I’d rather see nuclear rule the power landscape here like it does in France.  (Yeah, I said it.)  That said, I’m all about diversity, and wind power definitely has its place.  [CNN]
• Okay, must appease Juice with this joke… New York Magazine.  Will Leitch.  Giant inflatable garbage bags on the streets.  Um… sex with man-leggings!  [via Urban Prankster]
• And because we’re nothing if not self-referential here at Culturegeist, here’s a link to a post about the shiny new entry level DSLR Canon is unleashing next month.  Having been looking to break into the whole “taking pictures with a nice camera” thing for a while now, I, for one, can’t wait.  [Machochip]

So Much Fringe… So Little Time

As DCist pointed out in their July Theater Preview, this month in the District is all about the fringe.  We’re talking over 600 performances.  More than 200 companies putting on shows in upwards of 30 venues scattered all over town.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the 2008 Capital Fringe Festival is at hand.  If you’re reading about the festival for the first time, odds are that you don’t have a pass (the cheapest of which runs $110 for 10 shows).  If you do want to get in to see some good (and, possibly, not so good) theater, a $5 button (one-time purchase) and $15 per show gets you in the door.  The button, coincidentally, gets you crazy discounts at all kinds of D.C. landmarks like Tryst, Open City, the Diner, Love Cafe, and more.  Pretty sweet, right?

At any rate, I don’t claim to be a theater expert, but I spent about two minutes and picked out a few plays that looked interesting from a few different genres.  (And I tried not to overlap with DCist’s picks.)  The list follows, complete with descriptions ripped right from the website.  After the jump!

Muppets Take Manhattan

I just recently watched Manhattan and it reminded me of one of my favorite YouTube mashups.  And you know how I love to share:

The 4th on the National Mall

On Friday, we went down to the National Mall to watch fireworks like they should be watched: with the Air Force Band in the background and the sky lit up with a wonderful display.

The National Mall gets a bad rap.  People say it’s an impossibly crowded disaster on the 4th and that it’s hard to have a good time there.  Well, this was my second 4th of July on the Mall and it’s been spectacular each time.  Details after the jump!

The Internet Is Your Playground: Choking on Footballs Edition

• This is as funny as any link we will ever post on Culturegeist, in my humble opinion.  I won’t tell you what’s on the other side of it, but I promise it’s safe for work and it has no volume… until you start laughing. [USA Today]
• This guy will be the first person on the planet with an iPhone 3G.  That either makes him very cool or absolutely, tragically not at all cool.  I’ll let you decide. [Gizmodo]
• Last night, Adam Eaton sucked for the Phillies.  Just ask him. [The 700 Level]
• You know the whole pay-what-you-want thing for music that’s doing so well for artists like NIN and Radiohead?  Let’s just say Oasis isn’t on that bandwagon and Noel Gallagher has strong thoughts on the issue.  (I’m sure you’re all shocked.) [NME via OhNoTheyDidn’t]
• A few months ago, a friend and I were talking about NBA free agency.  He said the Sixers should go after Elton Brand.  I agreed, but said that there was no way it would work out for cap reasons and, frankly, why the hell would Brand want to play in Philly?  Well, then the Sixers had a mini-resurrection, made a plan to clear cap space, and now they think Brand might sign. [ESPN]
• And one more serious note… Sometimes we take that whole First Amendment thing for granted… and then we read a story about political bloggers in Egypt being tortured and killed. Ugh. [Daily KOS]