The Weekend Edition

To keep with tradition, this evening I present to you the weekend edition of A Slice of Fried Gold, also known as "Why the previous weekend rocked." However, once again due to my forgetful nature there was no camera present (others did have cameras though, so we'll see what I come up with later) and sadly I have absolutely no pictures. My bad! In standard fashion, I'll break it down in a Cliff's Notes format, and then go into details about a one or two specific happenings.

• First dinner ever at Ginger
• Cirque Dreams at the Performing Arts Center with Colver, Lorna, and Kim
• Palmer Open House for GCI
• Being recruited to be a mascot performer
• Dancing at a busy intersection in Palmer with a coworker
• Making sushi for the first time with Amy
• Jason's Bday BBQ
• Rocking killer vocal/guitar duets on Rock Band with Amy
• King's Cup again
• Wrestling and rap battling
• Tragedy striking Battlestar Galactica
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall with the crew
• Finally watching my How I Met Your Mother DVD's and falling in love

So yeah, busy weekend as per usual. Fueled by coffee and tons of delicious food, it all went really well and I had a ton of fun. Plus the weekend was gorgeous, with blue skies and sunlight in every direction along with 55 (!!) degree weather - leave us alone lower 48, we're Alaska, that's as good as we get. I really do think that nothing beats Alaskan summers, and I'm already getting that feeling even though the snow hasn't even left us quite yet.

What stood out this weekend? Well, in particular the GCI open house was a huge success, and I had a ton of fun joking around with coworkers, high fiving Bob the Builder, dancing at intersections to attract traffic, and being amazed at various networks ability to only hire attractive girls to work for them (at our open house there were two PBS Sprout reps, and they were both very nice and very cute).

In particular, I was pretty jazzed and my energy apparently stood out to a lot of people around me, including one of the people involved with the "talent" - aka the guys in the Bob the Builder outfit - who asked me to send in a resume to do mascot work in Alaska. Obviously, I won't do this, but if I'm ever in need of a third revenue stream (along with my primary job at GCI and my side business with Amy) I can always act as an Eagle or Tony the Tiger for a few hours and make bank. Seriously funny though, and I'm glad I seem to have the skill set necessary to run around in an oversized character costume.

Also standing out this weekend was the performance of Cirque Dreams that Kim, Lorna, Colver, and I attended, which was spectacular and very entertaining. My good friend Sobo always raved about the Cirque events, but I was never really interested in it. Now? Pretty impressed, as the show we went to was extremely well performed and visually arresting in a way I didn't really think it would be. Sure, it was still cheesy like I thought it would be, but it was a lot of fun and I love trying new things. This was definitely new, and I'm glad I had another weekend with so many new and exciting experiences.

Forgetting Freaks and Geeks

Since 2005's the 40 Year Old Virgin, Judd Apatow has become a household name more or less. He's produced/directed/written many massive hits, such as Superbad, Knocked Up, and Talladega Night, which have all made his star grow brighter and brighter. For the most part, his productions are superb and have led to a resurgence in both creativity and quality in the comedy genre. This can be greatly attributed to Apatow himself, but his successes can really be tied to one of his biggest failures: Freaks and Geeks.

Freaks and Geeks was a slice of life of 80's high school for the outcasts - the freaks and the geeks. Within this failed (but genius) dramedy was an electric cast and tons of talent. Seth Rogen of Knocked Up and Superbad, James Franco from the upcoming Pineapple Express and the Spider-Man franchise, and the subject of this blog post himself, Jason Segel, all came from that very show. The show was/is one of my all time favorites, and even with every critic on the planet bending over backwards to shower it with praise, it never clicked with audiences - until the DVD was released that is. Now it's well loved, but at the time it was another low rated, highly regarded dramedy.

Most everyone from Apatow's little modern day Rat Pack of comedians has found some level of success after F&G, and the newest one to do that is Jason Segel. This weekend the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall was released, and it both stars Segel and is written by him as well. The movie is a wonderful little ode to finding your way back from a broken heart and from finding out who you really can be in the process. I quite liked the movie (loved even) and found myself laughing throughout the whole of it, and the rest I was rapt with attention towards because I cared what happened to the characters. Neither the comedy nor the story would have worked nearly as well with someone besides Segel, who without ever having been the lead in anything managed to carry the weight of the film all upon his capable shoulders.

Now, after years of supporting roles (primarily as Marshall in the delightful sitcom How I Met Your Mother and in other Apatow productions like Knocked Up), Segel found a role that could carry him to the top and I couldn't be happier (Marshall opened at #2 in the box office - $17.4 million - not bad). His Nick Andropolis and Seth Rogen's Ken Miller were my two favorite characters in Freaks and Geeks, and their ascent to the A-List in Hollywood has been the one silver lining to come from the failure of the genius that was that show. So as much as I wish that show hadn't been cancelled, maybe everything worked out for the best.

I fully recommend Forgetting Sarah Marshall, although fairly crude at times, it is also very funny, touching, and it has puppets - I mean come on, who doesn't love puppets? It's worth it if only to see Segel's characters puppet rock opera about Dracula (and to hear Segel's awesome Dracula singing voice). Plus it's cast is incredible, with Segel, Kristen Bell, Bill Hader, Mila Kunis (hard to not fall in love with her in this), and Russell Brand rounding it out, along with small side roles for comic geniuses like Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, and Jack McBrayer. Go check it out, and rent Freaks and Geeks while you're at it. You'll wonder why you didn't watch it the first time around.