Trophy Wife

Tim Kicks It Old School

And now, from our trip to San Francisco this summer, something we like to call “Tim Kicks It Old School”:

Trophy Eating in San Francisco

Trophy Wife spent the weekend performing at The Purple Onion as part of the SFIF. It was wonderful. We made new friends (e.g., that guy whose cell phone could tell you what song was playing, Revolving Madness, and pianist Mark Takvoryan). We did three wonderful shows. And we ate at Tommy’s Joynt.

My first visit to Tommy’s Joynt was in 2005 when the Nite Terrors played the SFIF at the Next Stage. To borrow a line from John Denver, it was like coming home to a place I’d never been before. Picture a bar with character and community. Add to that bar an extensive steam-tray servery. In short, Cheers and Lawry’s had a baby and their baby is 60 years old.

Last summer, I took a four-day workshop with Bay Area Theater Sports. After class, I’d go to Tommy’s Joynt for dinner. Improv all day, and then some stew and a beer for dinner. Heaven.

This past Saturday, Trophy Wife dined at Tommy’s Joynt. The Wife loved the Joynt. I had a turkey drumstick, Natasha went with the sausage sandwich, Shaun Landry had the Corned Beef, Tim and Mike went with the brisket, and Opus and Kevin got nasty with the short ribs. Root beer, Sierra Nevada, Stella, and help-yourself water and pickles were also enjoyed.

Thank you, Tommy’s Joynt.

Accompanied by Andrew: Langer's

Since 2004, Harold Nights at the IO West have been made better by the keyboard accompaniment of Andrew Melton. And the same goes for a good lunch—it gets even better when you’re accompanied by Andrew Melton.

Andrew and I have gone on a few field trips over the years to some of LA’s most beloved restaurants and bars. To kick off this column, Andrew joined me, Natasha, and Michael for another lunch at Langer’s.

Langer’s just celebrated 60 years in business in the Westlake/McArthur Park district. They’re a classic deli and some say they make the best pastrami… in the country.

Andrew and I both had the pastrami on rye with a side of potato salad. Natasha had the blintzes. The food was, indeed, excellent. I would particularly point out the bread. So well done—heated and crisped just right. And the service is great—that almost motherly service you often find in a good deli or diner.

Langer’s is at the corner of Alvarado Street and 7th (a piece of geography recently named Langer’s Square)—a short walk from the MacArthur Park Metro stop. If you’re driving, there’s a convenient parking lot just east of the restaurant at the northeast corner of 7th and Westlake Ave.

So please go to Langer’s (they’re open Monday through Saturday, 8 am to 4 pm) and eat of their goodness. And if you have the appetite for the Fresser’s Special Sandwich, please let me know how awesome it was.

In Which Opus and Kevin Visit The Future

This past Sunday, Opus and I got our collective geek on at the annual Wired NEXTFest downtown at the LA Convention Center. Opus went as part of his All New Year project. I went to do recon for the upcoming Robot Apocalypse. And our companion – photographer Linda Abbott – was there to document it all. It was an afternoon full of exploration, shenanigans, and SCIENCE (said while twirling one’s finger upward)!

Kevin pwns Opus in BrainBall
photo: Linda Abbott

One of the highlights included BrainBall – a game in which opponents sit at opposite sides of a table from each other, a magnetic ball between them, and a headband that measures brainwaves strapped to their heads. The idea is that the more relaxed your mind is, the further you push the ball toward your opponent. It was like the Russian Roulette scene from Deer Hunter. Only with our minds.

I totally pwnd Opus in all three of the three games we played, using a deadly combination of my awesome brain-fu plus shouting word problems at him (“A train leaves Chicago at 4:30 PM at 70 miles per hour…”).

Opus signs autographs for his non-existant fanbase
photo: Linda Abbott

Other shenanigans included sitting at the empty NASA booth and signing the photos left over from the astronaut autograph session (no need to thank us), and trying to crawl into the spacepod they had set up.

But our main occupation that afternoon was fucking with the robotics people. In keeping with my recon mission, I asked each robot vendor what the easiest way to disable their robots would be once they start going crazy and killing people. Most of the scientists we encountered didn’t have much of a sense of humor about my line of questioning. Or much else for that matter. No one got the Cylon joke Opus cracked at the artificial robot flesh booth.

It’s slightly comforting to know that the first round of killer robots will all look like old Chinese scientists. It’s when they start looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger that we need to worry.
photo: me

One woman who did have a sense of humor was the daughter of a Chinese robotics developer/professor who had made a robot replica of himself. Camcorder in hand, she filmed the audience’s reactions to her father’s attempted leap of Uncanny Valley. Turning her camera to Opus and I, she asked what we thought of the entire thing. That was a mistake.

After recording a few minutes of our anti-robot japes, she put down the camera and asked, “Are you two actors?” We, of course, denied the accusation, which prompted her to follow up with “. . . Or sitcom comedians?“ As if being a sitcom comedian is somehow different from being an actor and (judging by the tone of her voice) a far inferior occupation.

But perhaps the best moment of the day (and one of my crowning achievements in life, really) occurred while Opus and I were investigating the “Future of Entertainment” section of the hall. After playing a game of 3D Pong (which you would think would just be regular ping pong, but it wasn’t), we came across a simple white cube, about waist-high, with a light shining down on it. Clearly meant for an exhbit that either hadn’t been or was already set up and taken down, the cube was now bare. So I came up with a new use for it.

I told Opus to stand opposite me and, with the cube between us, we crouched down. With determined looks on our faces, we started moving our hands in a way that suggested some type of back-and-forth game was being played – complete with celebration after points “scored.”

Kids are gullible
photo: Linda Abbott

Sure enough, after a few moments, we started to draw a small crowd around us. People curious as to what we were playing and why they couldn’t see it.

But the crowning moment occurred when two boys asked us if they could step in and play our game. After Opus and I positioned them exactly where we were standing (since it was the only place they could “see” the game), we tried to hold in our chuckles as they actually tried to “play” our imaginary game. It was amazing.

Sure, we’re jerks for duping childen. And being smartasses to the world’s top scientists. But whatever. Next year, we’re bringing a videocamera. The NextFest is too fertile ground for comedy to remain unplowed.

That's Our Jill!

If there’s one thing we Wives love, it’s online banking. Am I right? So imagine how excited I was to see our very own Jill in the following graphic on the Bank of America site last week:

I don’t know about you people, but nothing makes me want to refinance my mortgage more than Jill standing in front of her Hobbit House in the middle of the Shire with a vaguely creepy dude on her arm.

there's a new Wife in town

I guess I don’t really know how to say this…

but we got married. Again.

You know how you go out at night and you drink way too much and you meet someone and you totally hit it off and there’s more drinking and then there’s making out and stuff gets fuzzy and the next morning you wake up and there’s a ring on your finger and you’re MARRIED? and you think, oh, crap, i never meant for this to happen, how crazy! how much did i drink? and at first it seems so weird, but then you realize that maybe it was MEANT TO BE, and the things this person does might seem so off the wall initially, but in an endearing way. and you think to yourself, “let’s make this work. let’s make this happen,” and the next thing you know, you realize you were absolutely made to be together and you can’t imagine being with anyone else, ever?*

Well, the entire team drunkenly made out with the awesome Rachael Drummond, married her, and now she is a new Trophy Wife.

Welcome, Rachael, to our HOUSEHOLD.

*this scenario is in no way loosely based on the plot of the new Judd Apatow film, “Knocked Up.”

The Wife: Pranks For The Memories

Dateline: Phoenix.

While your correspondent here slept, his roommates in the Trophy Wife boys’ hotel room in Phoenix pulled off a real laffer of a gaffer. You see, I was sleeping but they, on the other hand, were not. They were awake. Wide awake. Moreover, they had a camera. Here’s what ensued in what I’m calling the Best Prank of 2007:

Fire in the Hollywood Hills

A brush fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills today. The fire is now under control, thanks to LA city and county fire departments. Everyone in Trophy Wife is confirmed safe. Our archive (containing tapes of past shows, internal memoranda, ephemera, slam books, and t-shirts) is also safe.

The fire broke out near the parking lot of the Oakwood Apartment complex on Barham Boulevard. It’s just east of the Cahuenga Pass, on the San Fernando Valley side of the Hollywood Hills. The Oakwood complex has over 1,000 fully furnished units available for short-term lease. Its tenant population is itself a flammable mix of recently divorced Angelinos and teens and twenty-somethings in town for pilot season. All are safe at this point and no housing was damaged in the fire.

As Mayor Villaraigosa reminded us at his press conference this evening, please make sure you clear your brush as we head into fire season.

Two Trophy Birthdays

Today is our very own Opus’ birthday. Here he is on The Naked Trucker and T-Bones show:

And yesterday was Tim’s birthday. Here he is at his birthday party over the weekend:

Congratulations to them both.

Oscar is King

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is having their annual awards ceremony this afternoon. As a resident of Hollywood, I have a front-row seat to the perimeter of the 8 square blocks they’ve cordoned off for this weekend. I’m about as inside as it gets, among those of us on the outside.

And so, here’s my first dispatch as Trophy Wife’s embedded Oscar journalist… There are more canopies and tents up this year along the red carpet so that Oscar attendees have a 0% chance of getting rained on. In a related story, pretty much no chance of rain today.

That’s my early a.m. briefing. I’ll blog again if any new stories develop (that go unreported by the mainstream media). To manage your expectations: I’ve served as Trophy Wife’s embedded journalist for other awards ceremonies in the past and I’ve never had to blog. So don’t count on hearing from me.