Tampa Is…?

Editor’s note:  As hoped, we found someone who graciously volunteered to review Jobsite Theater’s The History of the Devil.  Say hello to Adonna, and we promise to give her a proper welcome soon.  In the meantime, here is her review.

Forget Georgia; the Devil is down in Florida this month in The History of the Devil, a dark, witty tale of historical fiction and human nature. The story begins as the Devil selects his “advocate,” an appeals lawyer who must counsel Satan himself in his appeal trial to return to heaven after centuries on earth. In a courtroom in Kenya, a hot, hellish setting full of death and decay, the audience sits as a jury, witnessing accounts of the Devil’s earthly encounters.

We follow Satan’s story from his first moments on earth through to his judgment. As the prosecution and defense call their witnesses, we see reenactments of Lucifer falling from heaven, learning what it is to be human, encouraging depravity and destruction, bargaining with Jesus and more.

Witnesses are resurrected from their graves to testify at the trial, and we see that Lucifer is quick to persuade others to indulge in their dark side, even admiring their perversity, but hesitant to take direct action himself. Throughout this “history,” he struggles with his human qualities, experiencing innocence, pain, lust, betrayal and more—all while groveling for a chance to return to heaven, pleading his innocence as a mere scapegoat for mankind’s sins.

Overall, The History of the Devil is a delightful guilty pleasure for those with an open mind and a curiosity for history and religion. As the plot unravels, it raises some interesting questions of human nature and justice, with a wicked mix of historical cameos you just might feel guilty for laughing at.

The final scenes are a delightful trick, with a twist of fate for the court’s final remarks and judgment. Led by a talented and witty cast, a nearly three hour play quickly flies by for an engaged audience treated to the animated performances of a wide array of characters.

The History of the Devil presented by Jobsite Theater continues through November 16th at the Shimberg Theater, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.  Tickets are $24.50.

It’s hard to write a post about Choxotica, a new chocolate store on Dale Mabry and Ehrlich, without it turning into a love letter. The small store sells exotic chocolate bars from all over the world and offers a small cafe setting to enjoy the above mentioned bars with chocolate drinks so strong they should carry a warning.

I’m not too proud to mention my chocolate addiction. Out of all the addictions to have, chocolate’s one of the most tame. I’ve been known to hide Mounds bars in my office at work and buy a Hershey’s bar on the way home. But, these are mass produced chocolates diluted with wax and milk. The chocolate offered at Choxotica is pure chocolate art.

The truth is, Choxotica isn’t for the casual chocolate consumer. At $5 or more for drinks and bars, it’s a store made for real chocoholics. The kind who look at percentages and prefer their chocolate imported from obscure countries with hard to pronounce names. Sure, there are white (blasphemy) and milk chocolate bars on sale next to the rest. But, the real draw is the store’s selection of real, dark chocolates from all over the world.

Have you ever wondered what chocolate would taste like with curry and coconut? They have a bar for you. (In fact, it’s my favorite and always out of stock.)

Has the organic craze hit you yet? You can buy an organic stone ground bar in a plain brown wrapper. There are chocolates with pepper, chocolates with ginger, chocolates with nuts. Basically anything you can imagine dipped in chocolate is offered, even in the drinks, which are created by melting chocolate in a saucepan and pouring fresh milk or filtered water over the hot liquid bliss.

Curry and coconut doesn’t translate as well in their iced drink, but hazelnut and coconut is a winner when added to iced chocolate milk. And, their Mud Shake tastes just like an ice cream bar. They even offer a Wasabi Ginger hot chocolate for the brave of heart.

They also offer an email list with coupons they send out for special promotions, which makes the price a little easier to bear.

In short, Choxotica is an oasis for chocolate lovers who are tired of the fare offered in drugstores and supermarkets. But, if you don’t get the urge to bite into a few ounces of a high quality, bittersweet confection every once in a while, Choxotica isn’t for you.

The Red Bull Flugtag was presented here on Saturday, for the first time in Tampa Bay, and I attended with a group of friends along with another 110,000 people or so. The arrow in the photo indicates roughly where I was. See me? I’m jumping up and down and waving! Hello!

In case you’re not familiar with it, Flugtag, a German term meaning “Flying Day”, consists of teams of people building homemade, human-powered flying machines and piloting them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight. They never do, though.

So it’s basically the Superbowl of putting on ridiculous costumes, building stuff and pushing it off a ledge into water. And yes, this is as funny and entertaining as it sounds. When it comes to free entertainment, it’s hard to beat people falling into water. Include costumes and flying machines that don’t - just adds bonus points.

Tampa is one of three cities to host the event this year, the others being Chicago and Portland, Oregon later this summer. Red Bull has sponsored about 40 of these so far and we (Tampa) set an attendance record, more than doubling the 50,000 that had been projected. I’m not surprised; literally everyone I spoke to for the last two weeks was planning on going. I think event planners were caught off guard:

• It was scheduled to begin at 1:00 and we got there at 11:00 when gates were supposed to open. But it was obvious that a lot of people had gotten in and set up camp much earlier than that, as evidenced by us ending up where we did.
• In spite of previously published warnings about things that wouldn’t be allowed in, there weren’t even cursory bag searches taking place, at least not at the gate where we entered (right outside the convention center).
• Food and beverage locations were few and far between, which was a matter of major concern because with that many people packed in that tightly, smack in the middle of the day, smack in the middle of July (why didn’t they schedule it for later, like around dusk?), remaining hydrated was of vital importance. Just because we were closer to the hospital than the launch pad doesn’t mean I wanted to go there. Eventually, even though we drank plenty of fluids, our group just couldn’t hang so we left around 2:00 and watched the rest of it from The Press Box. We had a good time but it was just too hot and too crowded to be enjoyable after a while.
• A group of people who were probably a little put out would be those presenting and attending METROCON which was taking place simultaneously at the Tampa Convention Center. Some of the more elaborately costumed anime fans might have had legitimate concerns about being mistakenly tossed into the drink by overly lubricated enthusiastic Flugtaggers.
• I don’t think there were nearly enough police officers on hand to handle traffic. We left well before the end and we still wound up stuck in pretty thick traffic on the way out. I can’t even imagine what it was like when the event was over.
• Lastly, I don’t understand why the city didn’t take advantage of the event to publicize the Riverwalk. After all, that’s really where it took place. For all the publicity the event got leading up to the big day, there was never a mention of Mayor Iorio’s legacy project and it’s proximity to the convention center as well as all the exciting cultural/dining/retail shopping opportunities offered in downtown Tampa…or will be some day…hopefully. I don’t know. It just seems like somebody in marketing would have thought of that, that’s all.

Overall, it was fun but there is a lot of room for improvement if/when it comes back.

(Cross posted at Ridiculously inconsistent trickle of consciousness)

A caveat first. Mary Jordan, who co-stars in the New Tampa Players production of Same Time Next Year for the next couple of weekends at the Carrollwood Cultural Center is my niece. So I’m biased.

That said, the two-act play, which also stars Marc Sanders, is a hoot.

Sander and Jordan reprise the rolls played by Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda in the 1978 movie, based on the play by Bernard Slade.

The pair - Doris and George - meet in a country inn in northern California in 1951.

That initial extramarital tryst is repeated the same weekend year after year until 1975 with hilarious - and bittersweet - results.

Both Jordan and Sanders (whom I am not related to) give extremely strong performances.

Is the play - which runs July 18, 19, 20 and 25, 26, 27 - as good as I think it is?

I’m not a theater critic, so I don’t know what an educated “critic” would say. My standard of excellence about entertainment, whether on stage, television or movies, is: Does it make me laugh or touch me in some way? Same Time Next Year does both.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for seniors and children and groups of 10 or more.

The play does include some racy language, so if you are easily offended or worried about tender ears, don’t go.

The Carrollwood Cultural Center is at 4537 Lowell Rd. Call (813) 386-6687 for reservations.

I’d heard rumors that a restaurant was going to occupy the abandon gas station at the corner of Platt and S Boulevard. Then, while attending a City Council hearing, I heard of a new restaurant going by the name Smoke. I thought it was very clever, the name, Smoke. The lawyer, representing the owner’s of Smoke, declared it would be a barbeque restaurant unlike anything Tampa had seen. I made a mental note and filed it away, “try Smoke.”

Running errands, I found myself at this very corner today and remembered the buzz. Suddenly, I had time for lunch.

From all corners of Platt and S. Boulevard, one can see the red circle Smoke sign hanging from a chain. It reads: Smoke Barbeque and Grill

I rolled into the gravel parking lot and saw a few men sitting outside at the patio tables. It was just quarter past 11 A.M. They were sitting at a table, lined and ready for a large party. The patio was very nice, well kept. It felt kind of sheik, but this is BBQ isn’t it?

(more…)

Funny women salvage surrogate comedy

Kate Holbrook is a successful Philadelphia business executive. At age 37, she has it all — including a ticking biological clock. She’d like to have a baby (husband optional), but that doesn’t seem medically likely. Besides, she’s too busy and spoiled to go through the actual pains of pregnancy and birth.

So she finds an agency that will set her up with a surrogate. That’s the premise for “Baby Mama,” a modest comedy with two superb leads and not a whole lot else going for it.

Tina Fey, our current favorite female funny person, stars as Kate, and although Fey’s always a charmer (we loved her Weekend Updates on “Saturday Night Live”), she’s only half the reason to see the movie. The other half would be Amy Poehler (the current SNL Update anchor), who plays Angie Ostrowiski, a South Philly lowlife with neither scruples nor a sense of propriety. They’re an odd couple supreme, and whatever value this timid comedy offers comes through their interplay. Fortunately, there’s a lot of it.

Unfortunately, there are wasted distractions that don’t work quite as well. Sigourney Weaver, as the head of the agency that hooks them up, is a cold caricature, while Steve Martin, as a pony-tailed New Age phony, seems better suited to a skit than a full-length film.

Greg Kinnear plays a nice-guy part that offers him no challenge, and the script seems to wander off into we-ran-out-of-jokes territory before it should.

Still, Fey and Poehler are worth catching — but their goofy exchanges should work just as well on video.

PG-13; 96 minutes. C+

BobRossMovies.com

Spurlock’s search finds that people are people. Everywhere.

Remember Morgan Spurlock? He’s the plucky, plainspoken guy who earned comic-documentary cred with “Super Size Me,” in which he stuffed himself with McDonald’s junk for a whole month while his health and love life slid down the tubes.

After an unimpressive stint as a TV documentarian, Spurlock returns to big screens with “Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?” As the whimsical title suggests, it’s a tongue-in-cheek, self-indulgent quest for brotherhood and justice, based on the notion that the world isn’t safe until the famous t errorist can be located and captured.

Of course, Morgan Spurlock isn’t going to catch that guy. He doesn’t really try. But because his girlfriend is about to have their child, he announces that he’ll be leaving her in New York while he gallivants on a fact-finding fun tour of Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In each land, the viewer-friendly filmmaker — neither as incisive nor insightful as his role model Michael Moore — asks local folks how they feel about the United States, the war on t errorism and, of course, the notorious Bin Laden.

At first, we were appalled by the silliness of it all. We wondered why his lady didn’t punch him out for abandoning her during her third trimester. And Spurlock’s foreign-policy expertise is so lowbrow that we wondered what he really hoped to discover.

But the film sneaks up on you. The movie’s title only hints at his agenda, which is to remind us that there are good folks and hopeless jerks everywhere you go. And because Spurlock is such a rank amateur at interviewing and analyzing, we can’t help but relate as he’s informed, argued with, ignored and even a ssaulted. (That last part was in Israel, where ultra-Orthodox Jews would rather beat him up than talk to him. Seems they don’t cotton to outsiders.)

Some themes come through regularly, particularly the idea that Middle Easterners don’t h ate America as much as they deplore American policies. Some interviewees are bright and thoughtful. Others are idiots, like the one who tells a Spurlock that the 9/11 attack was merely a cinematic effect, like Babe the talking pig. You’d laugh if it weren’t so disturbing.

And just when you think Spurlock’s world tour is a repetitive waste of effort, a cumulative effect kicks in. By the time the end credits roll — to the tune of Elvis Costello singing “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding” — we appreciate what the man is getting at. His baby isn’t being born into a perfect world, and it will take more than catching one t errorist to make it right.

The 93-minute film is rated PG. We give it a B-.

More Movie Madness at BobRossMovies.com

Pacino thriller is bloody nonsense

If someone tells you he intends to kill you in exactly 88 minutes, what would you do?

Personally, I’d dash to the nearest police station and hang around for an hour and a half or so.

But not Dr. Jack Gramm. This professor is a forensic psychologist with a lucrative, admirable sideline: He testifies against murderers so they are put away for good. In “88 Minutes,” one such criminal is about to be executed when a fresh victim turns up — trussed and bled the same way the convicted one killed his prey. Did Dr. Jack mess up? Or is there a copycat on the loose? And what’s with the threatening phone caller who promises to end Gramm’s life in, as we said, 88 minutes?

Red herrings and dopey twists fill this homicidal thriller, which apparently sat on a shelf for a while before being released in the U.S.

Al Pacino fans won’t care. In a rare excursion into genre flicks, the master thespian turns Gramm into an unflappable investigator who seems to ignore obvious threats while trusting all the wrong people.

Sloppy writing and incomprehensible exposition dull this macabre excursion. Messy murders punctuate the action, while we wonder who the real villain might be.

Suspects abound. Gramm’s gorgeous assistant (Alicia Witt) seems too good to be true, while one of his prize students (Leelee Sobieski) is too devoted for words. Could it be his secretary (Amy Brenneman), his university colleague (Debra Kara Unger) or maybe his pal on the police force (William Forsythe)?

And there’s the leering but possibly innocent man on death row (Neal McDonough), who never misses a chance to embarrass the man who helped put him away. How does he do it?

It’s fun to wonder, but the solution is such a letdown that you might be disappointed or even angered.

The film is rated R and runs a long 105 minutes.
We grade it a C.
Find more film fun at BobRossMovies.com