Most of my friends know my fondness for break dancing, in particular, popping. I’m not very good, but I have my signature “robot arm spin” move, and can moonwalk/float moderately well. I also am one of those people that went to see “You Got Served” in the theater. Even with Viral videos of David “Elsewhere” being seen by millions of people, it’s still a relatively underground art form.

So when Robert Muraine (aka Mr. Fantastic) showed up on the TV Show “So You Think You Can Dance”, I was shocked. Not just at how creative and brilliant this kid is, but at the judges’ reactions as well. Somebody give this guy some money. Now.

Watch him totally kill it in the video audition…

Recently, my family and I visited a pretty nice corner of Florida – the southeastern coastal area of Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton. The area was clean, I was off work, and the beach with some crazy-sized waves was literally about 100 yards from my bed. Over the course of the week, it became fairly commonplace to wake up, eat, walk to the beach, get pummeled by waves taller than me for a couple hours, stumble home, eat, sleep, repeat.

The beach area we were near was pretty nice in that it was not completely overwhelmed by people. Even the popular spots were relatively low key, when compared to some of the more suave beaches in Florida. However, that very laid back attitude that was so prevalent on the beaches was equalized by the fact that Boca Raton may in fact be one of the snootiest place I have ever personally been – and I have driven through Connecticut!

The scene was like this:

It’s evening time and everyone is starved. We don’t know where we want to go (as usual), and we don’t have any real idea in which direction we should travel (as usual), so we just start driving to see what shows up.

Oh there’s a nice pizza place. I like the architecture (Boca has some decent snooty architecture). Oh wait it has valet parking. Well I don’t wanna do that. Me neither. That’s so awkward isn’t it? I don’t know. Don’t you have to tip them? I think so. Yeah, let’s just keep driving.

Driving.

Oh hey I could go for sandwich. That place looks like it gets a decent amount of business. Yeah let’s – wait a second… It’s got valet parking too…?

Driving.

Oh, a Taco Bell! Let’s just stop and eat because I’m about to crack. Me too… What is that guy doing standing out in front of it? He’s parking cars.

Boca Raton must have taken way too many snooty pills for its own good. I have never seen so many valet parking only establishments. I am not embellishing the following two stories:

We stopped at one restaurant, even though we knew it was valet parking, just because we wanted to look at the menu. The parking spots that were so securely guarded by the valet man-boy had ominous orange cones on them. There was no way anyone could get a car on those spots unless they first paid a pact with the parking dude. Here is the thing. The spots that the valet guy would be taking our car to were exactly 24 feet from front the door of the place and probably about 6 feet from where we would be “dropping off” our car. The man would get in, collect a tip, put the car in drive and make one 90 degree turn into the spot right next to him. When we would finish our meal, he would walk across the pavement, all 13 step’s worth and start up our car and then maybe back it up about 7 feet so that we could then get in, tip him, and drive off.

This is almost EVERYWHERE in Boca Raton. If it is not a chain restaurant, you better believe it is valet. Story number 2:

We went to see a movie. Pulled up and noticed the place – surprise – has valet parking. But this time we had a choice so we naturally chose to NOT use that service. We parked 2 aisles away from the theatre. Just 2. About 100 feet. Not far at all. We could not park any closer, since those spots had, like soldiers of the great roman army, orange cones.

When the movie was over, we walked out of the theatre and were astonished to see so many people at the front door waiting for their cars to be picked up. There was ONE dude there and about 15 car groups waiting. What did we do? We walked across the drop off pavement where the valet guy normally stands, and where now about 300 people stood waiting for their cars, across the first aisle where the cones used to be but now there were about 20 valet-parked cars (the owner’s of which we just passed and laughed at), and then another 10 feet to our car that was not valet-parked. We got in, turned the key in the ignition, and drove off, staring in amazement at the 550 turds who dropped off their cars with the one turd who was currently picking them all up. I would guess that it took us 35 seconds to leave. I would guess it would take them at least another 15-20 minutes.

There’s a party in my tummy! (So yummy!)

Are you laughing? Or at least smiling and nodding approvingly saying, “aww yeah…”?

If not, watch this:

Yeah. Just take it all in. Maybe get something to eat…put some food in your stomach. Because I don’t think you should watch the next couple clips with an empty stomach. Plus, apparently, your food doesn’t like not being eaten. Anyway…on with the clips!

I think this is the opening title sequence…but with this show…you never know.

Now watch Frodo dance.

The show is called Yo Gabba Gabba! and while it is by all rights a children’s show, it has an absurd and quizzical appeal that I’m sure only older ones appreciate. Consider some of their guests during the first season: Tony Hawk, Biz Markie (he has a regular segment - Biz’s Beat of the Day, where he teaches kids how to beatbox…), The Shins, Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Rahzel, and The Aquabats.

So if you have children, you’ll have no problem explaining why you have all the episodes DVRed. If you don’t…well, just show anyone who’s curious one episode—they’ll either understand completely or you may never hear from them again. Either way, you’ll still have your Dancey Dance Time.

Last night some friends and I went to Blu Sushi, which you probably wouldn’t know much about unless you lived in Southwest Florida…but I’m sure you at least get the idea that they make sushi. That particular night was “Blu Sushi’s Tribute to the Little Black Dress” —ladies wearing a black dress got a free gift and champagne. There was no requirement for guys, but I dressed up anyways (I think I was the only guy there wearing a tie).

They gave our party of 16 the VIP room, which was basically our own room in the back with a large TV that showed various underwater scenes (fitting for a sushi place, I suppose).

Good sushi, good drinks, good times.

Now I’m off to the other coast for the beginning of a long weekend in Boca Raton. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to blog about come Monday.

You need me! Why do you keep spending millions of dollars on films that fall flat immediately upon their release?

Let’s look at a recent example: 10,000 B.C. ONE HUNDRED MILLION dollars was spent on this amazingly over-hyped movie. Most movies are supposed to make what was spent on them in the weekend box office. The movie actually managed to take in $35.7 million, still $64.3 million short of what it should have made. And believe me, after that weekend it was D.O.N.E. - done. It was rated 9% fresh on rottentomatoes.com, and a high percentage of reviews were extremely negative.

Don’t movies go through a process to see if they are financially viable? Isn’t the screen play looked at by movie executives? Aren’t there focus groups to see the general public’s reaction?

If those safe guards are in place - they aren’t working!

That’s where I come in! I have a knack for picking movies that are going to make it at the theater and ones that aren’t. Well, at least I think I do.

This summer seems like a good chance to try out my “movie intuition”; so every time I hear about a new movie I’m going to put a comment on this post as to what I think the outcome will be once it’s released. At the end of summer I’m going to go through my list and see how I did.

Keep an eye on this post if you want to know what to watch this summer!

And Hollywood, if you want to save some money by avoiding bad films, my services are avaliable.

OK. I can say without much expectation of negative feedback that the Nintendo Wii has universal appeal. The realistic demographic of this system is probably quite similar to the age range found on those Yes & Know invisible ink books.

Video games used to be a relatively focused territory of adolescent/teen/20 something boys. Rarely would parents or grandparents or girls venture into this button-mashing pastime. When mom or sis would somehow get reeled in for a game of Sonic the Hedgehog or MarioKart, we would laugh as they’d gesture emphatically with their controller in an effort to assist whichever character they were controlling. As if Mario would jump higher if you thrust the controller upward at the moment of your jump…how silly!

Fast forward to now. All those amateur game maneuvers have become an essential part of playing many games on the wii. They’re putting wiis in nursing homes and these old people are digital bowling their liver-spotted heads off. Moms, sisters, girlfriends and wives are all waiting in line for their turn to play wii tennis.

But there’s more to the wii than just extreme overall likability. The wii and its components have huge potential for abilities beyond what they already can do. Thankfully, there are people who realize this and are doing their best to take advantage of it. Take, for example, Johnny Chung Lee. He’s put together a number of different projects using the Wii Remote. Here’s a quote from his website:

“[The Wii Remote] happens to be one of the most sophisticated [computer input devices in the world]. It contains a 1024×768 infrared camera with built-in hardware blob tracking of up to 4 points at 100Hz. This significantly out performs any PC “webcam” available today. It also contains a +/-3g 8-bit 3-axis accelerometer also operating at 100Hz and an [expansion] port for even more capability. These projects are an effort to explore and demonstrate applications that the millions of Wii Remotes in [the] world readily support.”

Here are his projects:

Tracking your fingers…think, Minority Report

Multi-Point Interactive Whiteboard

Headtracking (3-D)

www.johnnylee.net

I was the DJ at the recent Beer Tasting party for the “thefourtwo.com” crew (see previous article). Instead of just having music in the background I thought I would try to channel the feeling of a club where they play chic music videos in the background. Music videos just seem to add something to the ambiance, and give people something to look at in case they get board. Of course the party was a HUGE success and the music videos I spent hours on all but went unnoticed ;(

You can see my hand-picked youtube.com playlist of some really neat videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AE75024C9F5C3AEE

One of the videos is called Precious from Depeche Mode’s most recent album - Playing the Angel. I have to say when I stumbled across the video I was highly impressed. They’re a band that you don’t hear much from anymore, but Precious is a song that is modern but still rooted in the classic Depeche Mode of the 80’s.

After Precious I decided to find their new album and give it a listen. When I did I was absolutely shocked by two different things.

First, this album was NOT new. In fact it was released on October 17th 2005 - almost 3 years ago! How did I miss it? Was I under a rock? They even toured the U.S. to promote Playing the Angel.

Second, the album was really good! Dave Gahan’s voice is as clear and melodic as ever and unmistakably links this new album to “People are People” and “Enjoy the Silence” I remember growing up. The synthesized sound, that makes them who they are, has matured a lot over the last decade. In fact, on some of the songs I would compare them to harder electronic groups like NIN (which is ironic because when they got started they were living in the shadow of Depeche Mode).

If you get a chance I would highly recommend giving this wonderful new-er? new-ish? album by Depeche Mode a listen. Keep a look out for them in the near future as well - currently they are in the studio recording a new album and I promise not to miss that one.

Many of us abhor public restrooms. I really don’t care as long as there’s not feces everywhere. When I have to go, I’m not too picky. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I have a friend who WILL NOT use public restrooms no matter what. I have been with her for trips where we will be gone all day long and we’ll get home in the dead of night and she can finally go to the restroom.

Irish director Paul Walker has a new view of public restrooms. ‘Let’s show a play, not just in a public restroom, in a New York public restroom at that’ (not to diss New York but the average public restroom in the city is pretty bad, even to me).

The 40ish minute thriller, Ladies and Gents, is shown in a restroom in Central Park. The acting actually occurs amidst the sinks and urinals and accompanying yellow stains and curlies. It’s suppose to symbolize the decrepit side of Dublin in the 1950s with slick politicians and prostitutes. The director states, “When you take the audience out of their comfort zone, there’s a different energy to the production”.

As a former ‘drama buff’ (or, Thespian-but I try to avoid that term since it’s linked with worship of the Muses), there are many difficulties I can see from staging a play in the bathroom. Obviously, it would be cramped, it probably wouldn’t smell too pleasant (depending on the sanitation schedule) and the many rehearsals in a bathroom would be tiresome.

Also, a performance in a public area, especially a bathroom, makes for an incredibly thin fourth wall; at one point, one guy came in and did his business in the middle of the play (they cannot close some restrooms or deny anyone access). Apparently, it was a huge success in European bathrooms, but there was much more red tape to ‘rent’ a public restroom in the United States.

Hopefully, there are enough people crazy or curious enough to see it, and these brave actor/actresses’ careers won’t go down the toilet.

Last Sunday night I went down to Naples, where they were having the Naples Music Festival. I met up with some friends outside the venue, and hung out for a bit there. After some loitering and a scotch & salad (separate items, mind you) at Blu Sushi, I met up with some other friends inside the venue, just in time to see the Gin Blossoms. They put on a great show, nothing too fancy, but everyone there seemed to have a good time.

Here’s some pictures, I’ll have some shaky videos up soon, as well.

In the hyper-competitive world of speed eating, it doesn’t get much better than this.

“Quick Lips” Lathan