And cut...

Well friends, if you stuck around long enough to even read this I am impressed. It doesn't take a genius to see where this blog was headed and I think I've decided to finally stick a fork in it. My heart's not there. It's not here either. My heart is not in recommending things anymore, so with this I bid FriendsRecommend a fond farewell. I wish we could have ended on a high note, and that may be forthcoming. Ricky B has agreed to share the account of his first and only bar fight with us via video. I am hoping this works out. If I can get Ricky to tell the story of this fight I can recommend it already without ever having seen it. It doesn't even exist yet and I can recommend it to you.

My one regret is that I never even made one of these lists myself. I'm not doing it tonight, so that probably won't happen either. We had a good run. I thank all of the guest bloggers current and past, Wardo, Ricky B, Todd, thechristophermyers, and Timmy Huff for their dedication to recommending things. You guys really recommended some things. Some good things at that. Thanks to all the list folks as well. I've discovered a lot of great things via those lists and will continue to do so. You all rule. Really.

I leave you with something I love. Super-musician Self's version of the Doobie Brother's "What a Fool Believes" recorded completely on toy instruments. I can't recommend this enough:

Zurich

Well, JesKA sort of called this. I am being nice to JESKa today, because she just sat through a really long show and didn't complain about it...at least not to me. Maybe to my brother, but not to me. Before I went away she said "you are going to go on vacation to Europe and just come back and recommend going to Europe on FR". This isn't completely true, but I do have something that I feel like a lot of you would really enjoy. The whole trip (Venice, Soglio, Zurich) was awesome and I liked them each for their own reasons. Venice for the classic-ness (word?) but was also too crowded and hot, Soglio for it's relaxing-ness (again?) and it's being 3/4 of the way up a Swiss Alp in a town of 200 people, and Zurich for a whole lot of reasons.

My recommendation today is if you are planning a trip to Europe, I highly suggest Zurich be a stop during that trip. My reasons are as follows. I love big cities. I think I will always (at least in the long future) live in a city or live really close to a city. I like the urgency, and being near the center of goings-ons. Something that you miss being in a city however is somewhere to get away...somewhere like vacation that gets you outside of the city. The solution in Zurich to this is there is a huge effing lake (Lake Zurich) right in the middle of it. And the water is clean. And you can swim in it. Imagine if you could walk down to the Harbor on a hot day and jump in and have that be refreshing and normal. I bet most of you can't even entertain that thought. This is what it is like in Zurich. It's a really cool big city with a vacation spot built smack in the center. I can't think of any other place anywhere that has this going for it. Anyone? Now, I don't just recommend Zurich as a place to go. Staying somewhere in a small town, with rolling hills, and mountain air is awesome and is part of the reason I loved Switzerland so much. But I'm just saying...if you are going all the way over there try to make Zurich part f it. Some pictures of the city, lakes and not lakes:

The Girl on the Bridge

I wasn't going to recommend anything today because it's the end of the summer and I just didn't feel like it. Still, I have two great recommends that I felt compelled to share.

The first is The Girl on the Bridge, by French director Patrice Leconte. I first saw this movie at my at my parents house on the Bravo channel when that was still a movie channel. I never knew what it was called or who was in it, and finally after two years Netflix recommended it to me. The thing about this movie that first caught my attention is the wonderfully attractive actress Vanessa Paradis, though I soon was completely taken in by some of the most beautiful black and white film footage I've ever seen. So many B&W movies are muddy and gray, never exploring either black or white, but The Girl on the Bridge spends its most captivating scenes in a high contract of the brightest whites and the darkest blacks, making for very compelling cinema.

The movie isn't heavy on the plot. A knife thrower rescues a girl about to end her life and takes her on as his assistant. You're never quite sure where the movie is going, and that's largely due to the fact that it never goes far, but it still pulls you in to the world of these two characters whose lives have suddenly intersected and become inseparable If Chris hated my use of the vibrant to describe a book, he's going to really hate my use of the world sensuous to describe this movie, but I think this scene makes a good argument.




The other movie I need to recommend is Inglorious Bastards. I just saw it this weekend, and it's one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's certainly Tarantino's best movie thus far. From the plot, to the banter between characters, to the acting, to the visuals, to the everything. Go see this movie. Tarantino is really at the peak of his career here. I could watch this movie again and again. Here is a trailer you may not have seen yet. There's a little bit of a spoiler in here, but nothing too serious.

Man Show Boy

So in the spirit of the last post, I thought I'd present the Man Show boy. Remember this kid? Inspired by Letterman, Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel sent this kid around and made him say some hilarious stuff to unassuming folks.

This was one where he was selling Girl Scout Cookies.

Diggity Dank

Hey guys!!

So, its been pretty awful around here since Adam left. I really miss that guy. I thought I'd lighten up the joint by embedding one of my favorite David Letterman videos. As a teenager, I always loved when Dave left the studio and did some man-on-the-street stuff and caught lightning in a bottle by accidentally finding amazing secondary characters. I had another great clip embedded featuring Manny The Hippie, but YouTube just removed it! Its possible that you can find it via this link but work is telling me I need to update some software before I watch it. If it plays for you, its well worth it.

Either way, here's Dave having some great fun with Rupert Jee from the Hello Deli.





UPDATE: Here's Dave working at a Taco Bell:



And more!

The Ground Beneath Her Feet

It's almost not fair that I even post this recommend because I'm not even half-way through this book yet. However, it's one of the most enjoyable, entertaining, vibrant and clever books I've ever read.



This is basically a retelling of the Orpheus / Eurydice story, but set in the 1950's, 60's and 70's in Bombay, London and New York.

Everything about this book feels alive. From the very first few pages, you already have a clear picture Vina Apsara, the "her" in the title. Characters are revealed so vividly, that you instantly know each and every one of them. You can picture the fez on Darius Xerses Cama's head, and you imagine the dopey smile on his crippled son's face.

Rushdie so effectively conveys the passions, worries and fears of each character. Every character's entire personality is told in just a few sentences. And when Rushdie spends a hundred pages devoted to just a few main characters, you feel as if you've lived their lives a hundred times.

The other characters are the cities themselves. I've only been reading Bombay so far and am just getting to London, but I feel like I know Bombay and lived there for decades during a period of great change. Change is really what is at the heart of this story. Lives change, cities change and so does the world around them. Change occurs across generation, and affects politics, music, culture, families and individual lives.

I could describe this book forever and never quite explain it. Rushdie is a master of language in a way that Nabokov was.

I highly, highly, highly recommend this book. And if I finish it and that changes, I'll be sure to let you know. Just to help convince you that this could be awesome, here is a picture of Salman Rushdie.

Windy City Heat

Hey everyone,
I'm back after a hiatus of buying cars, and taking out loans; which took up a good deal of last week.

Today I wanted to talk about a favorite movie of mine that I'm betting most of you have never heard of: Windy City Heat. This is a made for TV movie from Comedy Central that aired in 2003. It's all a documentary of a fake movie the one star thinks he's making, but it's all an elaborate prank that everyone is in on...The lengths they go to fool this guy are pretty amazing, and the movie he thinks he's making is completely ridiculous. Also, everyone involved in this fake movie introduces themselves to the main guy, Perry, as some funny fake name. Perry never once catches on that the whole thing is a sham. The producer says his name is John Quincy Adams, the casting director says his name is Roman Polanski, the personal assistant says his name is Burt Ward.

One of the funniest things about this movie is Bobcat Goldthwait. He directs this fake movie, and is constantly making Perry re-take awful scenes. One scene they make Perry drink this terrible concoction of milk, beer, chinese food, donuts, eggs, etc, all blended together....Then Bobcat says they didn't get it, and make Perry do it again. Anyway, what I'm getting at is this movie is a comedy gem. Constant laughs the entire way through. Borrow it from me.

Here's a my favorite scene from the movie: