The Blue Man Group, Dr. Tobias Fünke & Me

I love Arrested Development. For a lot of people who know me, that’s not news by any means. In fact, I love it so much that I’m recording a podcast about it with my friend Miles Rausch (and his “Hey, Brother” Bryce).

But for as much as I love Arrested Development, there are facets of the show that I can only appreciate from a distance. One such facet is Dr. Tobias Fünke’s desperate attempt to serve as an understudy for the Blue Man Group. Even though I know about the Blue Man Group, I really have no direct experience with them other than knowing they paint themselves blue (much better than Tobias does) and play awesome music on instruments made of PVC pipe and whatnot.

Fortunately, because of my cooler-than-me wife, my non-experience with the Blue Man Group came to a glorious end last weekend. Blue Man Group was in Springfield on February 18th and Lindsie and I were right there in the front (actually more like 300th) row, enjoying the spectacle that is a Blue Man Group performance.

While I’m not sure I’d pay another $28 each for our seats, which were about 10 rows back in the very top balcony, I will say that the Blue Man Group puts on a really entertaining, crowd-engaging performance that ended up being a lot of fun. For not saying a single word throughout the entire performance, they’re pretty funny. And listening to them play classic rock and pop covers on xylophones made of PVC pipe was nothing short of awesome. In fact, I’d probably pay more to see an entire concert of just that, but I have a feeling that won’t be in the cards anytime soon.

All that is to say, I now have a better idea of why Tobias is so desperate to become a Blue Man and, thanks to my wife, I find Arrested Development even funnier than I found it before. Which is an incredibly impressive accomplishment.

Best of all, my wife had a local clothing store print up the shirt you see up at the top of this post basically overnight. For all of you (sad, empty) non-Arrested Development fans, that’s Dr. Fünke himself, as a Blue Man on a blue shirt. Pretty funny, and cool of my wife to get that taken care of with only 36-48 hours to make it happen.

That’s all I’ve got. I’ll have more info on that podcast I mentioned later on (as far as when it’ll go live, etc.). If you haven’t checked out the Blue Man Group, it’s a fun performance. If you haven’t checked out Arrested Development, it’s an incredibly funny show that is absolutely deserving of your attention.

Thanks to my wife for a fun night and a funny set of matching shirts.

-Mike

Why I'm Excited for the New Spider-Man Movie

The new Spider-Man movie, The Amazing Spider-Man, comes out on July 3rd. And based on the new trailer, I'm pretty excited.



Some people are wondering why they'd already be rebooting the Spider-Man franchise when the previous trilogy just ended a few years ago. The first, most obvious reason is money. They'll make money off of it, so to the movie studio people, it's worth doing.

The second reason is that, right now, the superhero movie boom is still alive and kicking. In another 3-5 years, things might settle back down. People might eventually get tired of seeing superheroes in capes and tights running around beating up bad guys and making witty puns and quips, but the superhero movie genre still has life left in it - hence, a Spider-Man reboot.

To be completely honest, I'm most excited because this new franchise doesn't star Tobey Maguire. I don't know a ton about Andrew Garfield (other than the fact that he played Mark Zuckerburg's taken-advantage-of friend in The Social Network), but I do know that just the scene where he's catching the car-jacker is funnier than ANY line from the original three Spider-Man movies.

And that's important to me. Because in the comic books, Spider-Man is a funny, funny superhero. Like, laugh out loud funny when he's written well. And in the original movies, Tobey Maguire was about as funny/witty as a wall. He got the "nerdy" Peter Parker persona down pretty well, but Spider-Man has always been a two-sided coin. Nerdy Peter Parker disappears when the mask goes on, and witty Spider-Man takes over. In fact, part of the reason it's so important is because one of Spider-Man's strategies with a number of his villains is to mock them and talk trash to them in order to distract and frustrate them. It takes them out of their rhythm and he eventually wins the fight as a result of the villain making a mistake out of frustration.

Instead, throughout three Spider-Man films, we had to listen to Tobey Maguire's nasal-y, whiny voice as he got tossed around by every bad guy he fought, barely surviving every fight. If it weren't for Spider-Man 2, I don't know if I would've really enjoyed any of the films from that franchise - and I'm a HUGE Spider-Man fan (although, I'll admit, the series' target audience might not have been those lifelong fans who would be more opinionated than the average moviegoer).

Either way, this new franchise looks to be really well done. The cinematography looks gorgeous and the whole movie just feels grittier and realer. I mean, Spider-Man lives in (and fights crime in) New York City. It's not exactly the land of sunshine and smiles all the time.

I'm excited. I guess that's what it comes down to.