She can tell which horse is gonna finish in first
For the last few years, Marisa and I have gone upstate over Labor Day weekend for a trip to the racetrack and/or drive-in, but because of this wedding thing we've got going on this year, we decided to go a month early. We packed a lot of living into mostly the west side of Saratoga between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon: a series of meals with my dad, brother, and mom; miniature golf; drinks at the Adelphi Hotel, which quickly shot into the upper reaches of my favorite bar-type places in Saratoga; the drive-in, of course; and the racetrack, where I won $1.60 (net profit across my three bets: negative $1.40).
Here are some photos; more, as always, at the click.
To be honest, I kinda thought drinking at the Adelphi would be one of those things I only understand to the extent that Rob and Jason really enjoy it, like cigars or the Mets (that said, I know so many people who like the Mets that: yes, go Mets). But it's beautiful! And quiet! On a Friday night during tourist season, no less. Of course, last call is earlier there than at a proper bar, and Jason actually missed it, but when we told him this, he immediately walked away and returned a few minutes later with a "bitch please" and a drink in his hand. We weren't actually hanging out on this patio in the picture because it actually got kind of cold at night over the weekend upstate, which, by the way, made me really happy. I was cold! Outside!
The next day, before we could go play mini-golf, we had to help Rob maintain Sabrina's community garden plot.
Which, yes, meant walking around the garden and pointing at things. Not five minutes after I put this up on Flickr, one Mr. Diego Balinhas had added it as a favorite. I'm not sure who this guy is but he seems like an enthusiast.
Then we played mini-golf. I lost pretty hard while Marisa and Rob battled for first. Marisa got a hole-in-one a few times, but Rob ultimately prevailed, I assume because of his commitment.
Further down the road from mini-golf: the Malta Drive-In.
I feel like I re-take versions of this picture all the time. (May 2010; September 2009; September 2008.) This time it was me, Marisa, Rob, Sabrina, Maddie, Meg, and her college buddy Dave. Showing on screen one, per my hopes: Dinner for Schmucks with Inception. After watching Dinner for Schmucks, though, that hope felt foolish. It's such a strange miscalculation, this movie. Almost everyone in it is generally pretty funny, save Jeff Dunham (I've actually never seen Jeff Dunham for more than a few seconds at a time, except in this movie, but on the basis of what he does here and what I've read otherwise, I'm all set, thanks). But the movie is an ungainly hybrid: sometimes it wants to be escalating slapstick farce (presumably kinda-sorta in the style of the French movie it's based on), sometimes it wants to be a warm-hearted buddy comedy, and sometimes it feels quite a bit more desperate than that. In all of that convoluted-yet-loosely-plotted hustle, the performers get lost. So we don't get the sarcastic self-hating Paul Rudd of Role Models or the dorky, awkward Paul Rudd of I Love You, Man or the wary, realistic Paul Rudd of Knocked Up, but rather Paul Rudd playing his character so absolutely straight that the guy not only isn't very funny -- he's the saying-the-obvious-boring-thing straight-man, not the deadpan-reaction straight-man -- but is actually kind of a pill, in all of the wrong ways. That is, he's not a funny jerk who gets a comeuppance and has a change of heart in a funny way, like, say, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. He's just kind of a tool who sighs and eventually becomes less enough of a tool to make his girlfriend love him again, so that we can have resolution to one of those comedy-device relationships that the audience could not (or should not, at least) care about any less. I don't mean to keep bringing up I Love You, Man, because I had plenty of problems with that movie, but think of the Rashida Jones character in that movie replaced by a piece of cardboard with a face drawn on. It's not the actress's fault here; the screenplay just uses her character with such objectified laziness.
Then we have Steve Carell, and I feel for Carell, because he's obviously trying to give this movie the kind of grounded pathos he tends to bring to even broad comic characters. It mostly doesn't work, though; Barry, the schmuck who Rudd decides to take to this dinner competition where executives compete to show off the biggest idiot, is the first Carell character I've seen that feels like an utter construction, not a natural outgrowth of his persona and powers of observation. His schmuckiness is just ill-conceived at every turn: at the movie's convenience, he shifts from social awkwardness and nerdiness to What About Bob?-style neediness bordering on psychosis to abject stupidity. This isn't Carell pulling together a bundle of quirks and creating this hilarious mess of a person; this is a cuddlier, sillier Michael Scott who makes far less sense. And Carell, bless his heart, still manages to find some offbeat sweetness and sadness in Barry, which the movie mostly just exploits shamelessly rather than finding a comic tone to fit it. Jay Roach found this kind of rhythm with Austin Powers and Meet the Parents; neither of them are among my favorite comedies, but they identify their central conceit and execute them with some skill. This movie is from the Roach who did Meet the Fockers, or the least tamed bits from the Austin Powers sequels: not shaping the material, already relying on the characters like we've known them for a movie or two.
There are scattered laughs in Dinner for Schmucks; it's not one of those astonishing black holes of humor. I enjoyed Jemaine Clement playing an intense artist, even though (a.) the satirical target is barn-sized and (b.) Clement was actually even funnier playing a pretentious artiste in Gentlemen Broncos last year. Carell has the occasional funny line-reading, because he's a naturally funny guy. I sort of liked the craziness of Lucy Punch playing a crazy ex of Rudd's. But for the most part, wow, what a waste. This isn't even like Date Night, where the stars are a lot better than their material. Date Night is a symphony of comic construction by comparison. This is the material dragging its poor stars down. So I guess given that I wanted to see this movie, it's better that I went at the drive-in, and particularly excellent that I got to follow it with hot chocolate and seeing Inception for a third time, with more people who hadn't seen it before.
We capped the weekend off with a trip to the racetrack. As mentioned, I didn't really win anything, and neither did Marisa, although Saratoga as a whole did win when a Shake Shack outpost moved onto the racetrack grounds. We did that, obviously, with new Shack converts Rob and Jason, plus our buddies Mike and Erin, who haven't been to the city version yet and in fact came up to Saratoga primarily out of burger curiosity (though Erin turned out to be pretty decent at the ponies, too).
You know who won some big money, though?
The guy on the right. As if you couldn't tell.
Here are some photos; more, as always, at the click.
To be honest, I kinda thought drinking at the Adelphi would be one of those things I only understand to the extent that Rob and Jason really enjoy it, like cigars or the Mets (that said, I know so many people who like the Mets that: yes, go Mets). But it's beautiful! And quiet! On a Friday night during tourist season, no less. Of course, last call is earlier there than at a proper bar, and Jason actually missed it, but when we told him this, he immediately walked away and returned a few minutes later with a "bitch please" and a drink in his hand. We weren't actually hanging out on this patio in the picture because it actually got kind of cold at night over the weekend upstate, which, by the way, made me really happy. I was cold! Outside!
The next day, before we could go play mini-golf, we had to help Rob maintain Sabrina's community garden plot.
Which, yes, meant walking around the garden and pointing at things. Not five minutes after I put this up on Flickr, one Mr. Diego Balinhas had added it as a favorite. I'm not sure who this guy is but he seems like an enthusiast.
Then we played mini-golf. I lost pretty hard while Marisa and Rob battled for first. Marisa got a hole-in-one a few times, but Rob ultimately prevailed, I assume because of his commitment.
Further down the road from mini-golf: the Malta Drive-In.
I feel like I re-take versions of this picture all the time. (May 2010; September 2009; September 2008.) This time it was me, Marisa, Rob, Sabrina, Maddie, Meg, and her college buddy Dave. Showing on screen one, per my hopes: Dinner for Schmucks with Inception. After watching Dinner for Schmucks, though, that hope felt foolish. It's such a strange miscalculation, this movie. Almost everyone in it is generally pretty funny, save Jeff Dunham (I've actually never seen Jeff Dunham for more than a few seconds at a time, except in this movie, but on the basis of what he does here and what I've read otherwise, I'm all set, thanks). But the movie is an ungainly hybrid: sometimes it wants to be escalating slapstick farce (presumably kinda-sorta in the style of the French movie it's based on), sometimes it wants to be a warm-hearted buddy comedy, and sometimes it feels quite a bit more desperate than that. In all of that convoluted-yet-loosely-plotted hustle, the performers get lost. So we don't get the sarcastic self-hating Paul Rudd of Role Models or the dorky, awkward Paul Rudd of I Love You, Man or the wary, realistic Paul Rudd of Knocked Up, but rather Paul Rudd playing his character so absolutely straight that the guy not only isn't very funny -- he's the saying-the-obvious-boring-thing straight-man, not the deadpan-reaction straight-man -- but is actually kind of a pill, in all of the wrong ways. That is, he's not a funny jerk who gets a comeuppance and has a change of heart in a funny way, like, say, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. He's just kind of a tool who sighs and eventually becomes less enough of a tool to make his girlfriend love him again, so that we can have resolution to one of those comedy-device relationships that the audience could not (or should not, at least) care about any less. I don't mean to keep bringing up I Love You, Man, because I had plenty of problems with that movie, but think of the Rashida Jones character in that movie replaced by a piece of cardboard with a face drawn on. It's not the actress's fault here; the screenplay just uses her character with such objectified laziness.
Then we have Steve Carell, and I feel for Carell, because he's obviously trying to give this movie the kind of grounded pathos he tends to bring to even broad comic characters. It mostly doesn't work, though; Barry, the schmuck who Rudd decides to take to this dinner competition where executives compete to show off the biggest idiot, is the first Carell character I've seen that feels like an utter construction, not a natural outgrowth of his persona and powers of observation. His schmuckiness is just ill-conceived at every turn: at the movie's convenience, he shifts from social awkwardness and nerdiness to What About Bob?-style neediness bordering on psychosis to abject stupidity. This isn't Carell pulling together a bundle of quirks and creating this hilarious mess of a person; this is a cuddlier, sillier Michael Scott who makes far less sense. And Carell, bless his heart, still manages to find some offbeat sweetness and sadness in Barry, which the movie mostly just exploits shamelessly rather than finding a comic tone to fit it. Jay Roach found this kind of rhythm with Austin Powers and Meet the Parents; neither of them are among my favorite comedies, but they identify their central conceit and execute them with some skill. This movie is from the Roach who did Meet the Fockers, or the least tamed bits from the Austin Powers sequels: not shaping the material, already relying on the characters like we've known them for a movie or two.
There are scattered laughs in Dinner for Schmucks; it's not one of those astonishing black holes of humor. I enjoyed Jemaine Clement playing an intense artist, even though (a.) the satirical target is barn-sized and (b.) Clement was actually even funnier playing a pretentious artiste in Gentlemen Broncos last year. Carell has the occasional funny line-reading, because he's a naturally funny guy. I sort of liked the craziness of Lucy Punch playing a crazy ex of Rudd's. But for the most part, wow, what a waste. This isn't even like Date Night, where the stars are a lot better than their material. Date Night is a symphony of comic construction by comparison. This is the material dragging its poor stars down. So I guess given that I wanted to see this movie, it's better that I went at the drive-in, and particularly excellent that I got to follow it with hot chocolate and seeing Inception for a third time, with more people who hadn't seen it before.
We capped the weekend off with a trip to the racetrack. As mentioned, I didn't really win anything, and neither did Marisa, although Saratoga as a whole did win when a Shake Shack outpost moved onto the racetrack grounds. We did that, obviously, with new Shack converts Rob and Jason, plus our buddies Mike and Erin, who haven't been to the city version yet and in fact came up to Saratoga primarily out of burger curiosity (though Erin turned out to be pretty decent at the ponies, too).
You know who won some big money, though?
The guy on the right. As if you couldn't tell.