Andy Gapin

Last weekend I took a trip to Toronto with the girlfriend to see Evil Dead: The Musical again.

The drive up wasn’t too bad for the most part. We left about when I wanted to and would have gotten there right when I was planning despite stopping to get pizza and Rita’s and having my GPS decide that the best route was to go through downtown Scranton (leading to the adoption of the phrase “What the Scranton?!?”), except we got stuck in traffic for over an hour at the border to Canada. Once we got up to the booth, we went right through, but it felt like it took forever to get there.

By the time we got into Toronto and got checked in at the hotel, it was close to midnight so we just hit up a nearby bar for some greasy food and a few drinks…and photo hunt.

Saturday morning we got up and went down to the Distillery District to get breakfast. Unfortunately, it was a little early in the day to really check out the area so we walked around underground a bit instead.

We grabbed a very expensive dinner at the CN Tower, but it was pretty awesome. The food wasn’t the best that I’ve had, but the view is really amazing from up there. I had eaten there once before, but it was later at night when it was already dark out and we had a more inside table. This time we had a table right up against the window and it was still light out. It was really great.

The play itself was just as amazing the second time as it was when I saw it in NYC the first time. Ash was played by the same actor, but all of the others were different. The only actor that I didn’t like as much the second time was Cheryl (Ash’s sister). I didn’t feel that her singing was as good, but everyone else was really awesome.

Last time when I saw it, we sat in the fourth row which is just out of the “splash zone,” but this time I wasn’t having that that bloodless nonsense. We sat in the second row and got covered in blood. It was pretty awesome, but getting it all off was kind of a pain in the butt. I couldn’t even get it all off of my coat. It’s definitely going to need to take a trip to the dry cleaners. I probably should have showered before I went to bed because I woke up and the white case on my pillow had turned a nice blood red.

On the way back, we stopped at Niagara Falls for what I was planning to be a very short visit, but instead we stayed for a few hours. We took some pictures in front of the Falls, but really how long can you stare at a waterfall? So we went through a haunted house, played mini-golf, and got fudge, breakfast, and ice cream.

Getting through the border on the way back was a breeze which was much appreciated after all of the crap I had to go through to get a copy of my birth certificate so that I could get back into the country.

One of the best things about the whole trip was driving home and having a car behind me be a complete jerk, honking and flashing his lights for me to get out of his way when there was no where to go. When he finally was able to get around us, we were pretty ticked at him, but all was righted shortly after. A couple miles up the road, we saw cop lights go on and we both looked at each other and were like “no way, that’d be too good to actually happen.” Well, it did! It was great.

And here are the pictures…

The Onion’s A.V. Club only gave Run Fatboy Run a C+, but I’m going to go ahead and give it a slight bump to a B-. With David Schwimmer directing a movie written by Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg staring Simon Pegg and Hank Azaria, Run Fatboy Run is a movie that no bad review was going to keep me from checking out.

The story focuses around Dennis (Pegg), an out-of-shape security guard who had left his pregnant fiancée–played by the beautiful Thandie Newton–at the altar minutes before they were to be wed five years earlier. Now she has a new man in her life, Whit (Azaria), and Dennis can’t handle it. Determined to win her back, he decides to get in shape to run a marathon. I should warn though, the title is slightly misleading. Dennis is not really that fat at all. Mostly, he just has a bit of a beer gut and a smoking problem.

The movie provides a few good laughs and Simon Pegg is his normal, hilarious self relying on facial expression for each joke’s delivery. Azaria is…well, let’s just say that I had no idea his body was that well tuned. Enough for me to tell my girlfriend that I would understand if she cheated on me with him, at least.

I say check this out at your leisure. No need to rush out and see it this moment, but definitely find some time to get to it. I put this one well behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, but living up to those would be a bit tough.

The Playlist is now officially going to be a one hour radio show. After only doing an hour for a month now, I decided that it would be better to just stick with that for a while. When Summer comes around, I’ll reevaluate this and maybe I’ll go back to doing two hours, but until then, only half the new music.

Here’s last night’s playlist. I realize that I didn’t post last week’s, but I think you’ll get by.

If you spend anytime on the internet, and I’m assuming that you do since you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that a friend has rickrolled you at least once by now. If you don’t know what this means, you can click here to find out.

Ok, so you know what I’m talking about now? Good.

The reason why I’m bringing this up months and months after it has become a huge internet meme is because someone actually interviewed Rick Astley about this. It turns out that not only does he know about it, but he thinks it’s hilarious! This is much better than when Chuck Norris found out about the random facts and totally didn’t see the humor in it at all.

In the end, this is probably nothing more than a washed up celebrity from decades ago just being happy that people remember who he is, but I think that other celebrities can learn something from this. If you put yourself out there and want to be famous, you’re going to need to have a sense of humor and not get upset when people make fun of you. I’m sick of people getting pissed off when they get made fun of. If you don’t want people talking about you, don’t be famous!

Quit being bitches, celebrities!

You can read/hear all about Rick Astley’s thoughts here.

I decided that I’m going to add a new type of update to this blog. I’m going to post pictures of every new t-shirt that I get. Since I usually get at least one or two a month, this should be a fun every once in a while thing.

Maybe I’ll even go back and do some of my older shirts as well.

Somehow, How I Met Your Mother was the first of the shows that I watch to return from the WGA strike and I couldn’t be happier to have new episodes to watch.

Last week’s St. Paddy’s Day episode was phenomenal, but I wish I could say the same for Britney Spears’ appearance on this week’s episode. I can’t say that I was all that into the idea of her being on one of my favorite shows to being with, but I hoped for the best.

Maybe it was just the character she was portraying, but I thought her acting was awful. I was surprised to see that she was actually able to hold it together long enough to film the episode, but I’m pretty sure that an eight year old could have done a better job of playing her character.

And I think what upset me the most was that with all the hubbub about Britney Spears being on the episode, it went pretty much completely unmentioned that Sarah Chalke was also in it…playing a doctor, of course.

Sigh.

It’s no secret that I have a “slight” obsession with Zooey Deschanel, but anyone who has ever heard me talk about her knows that while I think she’s super gorgeous, one of my favorite things about her is her voice when she sings. Hearing her sing usually is enough to make me completely melt and when she sings in Elf it’s almost too much for me to handle.

After mentioning all of that, it should be no surprise that when I found out that she was recording an album with M. Ward under the name She & Him, I could barely wait to hear it. But finally, the album was released last week and it was well worth the wait.

Most of the music is on the softer side of things with Zooey’s voice perfectly complementing M. Ward’s instrumentation. The songs range from being soulful singer/songwriter gems to catchy indie-rock tunes to 50s inspired pop to straight up country, but they are all completely awesome. The album is made up of all original music except for two excellent covers of Smokey Robinson and The Beatles.

I could go on and on about this record, but basically, if you’re not swooning over this record, you’re messing up.

Just like they do every year on the first day of Spring, Rita’s will be giving away free water ice tomorrow. Don’t forget to get yours!

If it weren’t for English accents and a hot blond, I don’t really think this movie would be worth watching again. It had some good stuff going on, but it just wasn’t super exciting overall.

Watching a dude lose his leg in a bear trap was pretty intense and seeing someone use an over-the-shoulder missile launcher to try to take out a few bad guys only to accidentally blow up a plane that was flying overhead not more than a minute after saying he hated terrorists was pretty great. Other than that, most of it was pretty typical.

One of the tag lines for the movie is “The Office meets Deliverance.” Not really too far off, actually.

I give it a C+.