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For Geoff and Cierra’s wedding last week, Geoff wanted all the groomsmen to be clean shaven. Not trusting us, he made 8 appointments for a shave at the Man Shop the morning of his wedding.

I picked up Geoff’s dad and showed up late to the shop.  Since we were late, we had to wait for our shave.  I watched as Geoff and the others nervously sat in their barber chairs, watching their respective TV turned to EPSN and Spike TV  You might imagine the Man Shop is filled with Hooters-type girls giving hair cuts and shaves.  To put it kindly, its filled with Hooters rejects that are mediocre on close shaves.

The idea of the Man Shop is cool though.  Each station has a reclining chair with full sink and hoses.  On the wall at each station is a hanging flat screen TV, and a large mirror.  A beer holder is the only thing missing.

The walls are brightly colored orange, along with a ‘past’ ‘present’ and ‘future’ girls pictures (I think the past photo was of Farrah Fawcett).  The waiting area hand a pool table, a miniature golf putt-putt green, and a popcorn machine.  Take a look at the man experience, via their website. 

Overall, I think all the guys agree, we could have done better ourselves.  The kicker of the shave was the hot towels.  Those babies were super hot, especially after the cut.  I don’t think any part of the Man Shop was demeaning toward women, simply, its geared toward guys.  It’s like a mixture of a sports bar, and barber shop. 

I would probably only go again for a special occasion; I think Seattle is ready for the Man Shop.

/juice

Tonight I went and saw District 9 and I was pleasantly surprised.  The movie, which is based off of a short film  by Neill Blomkamp, is about a city in South Africa that gets visited by an alien ship.  The movie starts 20 years later, after they were taken and put into man-made camps and forced to live there.   As the movie progresses, violence and chaos break out and decisions have to be made.  Full of intense action and well placed special effects make this movie a must see.  Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp do not disappoint.

–Tim

(500) Days of Summer is a story about a guy and a girl who fall in love.  Guy stuck at a dead-end job and girl is somewhat of a free-spirited bird.  It stars the boy teen from 3rd Rock from the Sun, and a hippy-esk chick who is engaged to lead singer Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie.  The movie has not been released fully to all theaters; it’s playing in select (non-chain) theaters.  Bethany and I saw it at the Guild on 45th.

Tom (Joseph Gorden-Levitt) finds himself being miserable working at a greeting card company, writing those cute little phrases in birthday and congratulation cards.  He jokes with his coworkers, about finding the right girl for him, but they just never work out.  Enter Summer (Zooey Deschanel) as assistant to Tom’s boss.The movie jumps back and forth between day 1 and 500, depicting the funny and sad periods of their relationship.  Tom is taken back by Summers beauty and she is all he can talk about.  A little obsessive, to say the least.  In their true first incounter with each together, Tom is listen to The Smiths on his headphones in the elevator.  Summer enters and recognizes the band.  According to Tom, they quickly bond because of this recognition of the band.Summer is hot and cold with Tom throughout the movie, which produces comedy through Toms facial expressions, his actions and discussions with his friends.  She wants to not be tied down and just have fun, but is slowly, in Toms mind, falling for Tom.  There are quite a few scenes with Tom’s friends, which really bring out the comedy of the movie.

SPOILER ALERT (external link)

Short points:

1: Not to many continuity issues

2: Zooey sounded like Kermit the Frog most of the time and reminded me of Maggie Gyllenhaal.  And not the hot Maggie Gyllenhaal.

3: Joseph did an excellent acting job.  Kept it emotional and serious, then funny when needed.

4: The actress playing Autumn (Minka Kelly) is way hotter then Summer.

Great movie.  One of the better ones I have seen in a while.  This more romantic then drama movie had the perfect amount of comedy, keeping me happy.

I might purchase this movie when it releases to Blue-Ray.

/juice

For our anniversary, Bethany and I went to dinner at Pasta Bella, in Ballard.  Hiding in plain sight, the restaurant is located on 15th Avenue NW and 59th.  We missed it the first time we went there (for her birthday), and nearly missed it this time.

The restaurant is divided into three sections.  The first section is for employees only, being how it’s the kitchen.  The second and third sections are for customer seating (third second for larger parties).  It is a rather small restaurant with 50 seats max.

Both times we have been to PBR, there are been only 2 other parties in the restaurant.  Our waiter sat us in the section that didn’t have air conditioning (on the second hottest day in Seattle, ever).  Our waiter, who had a french accent, told us the specials and gave us our menus.  Bethany ordered a glass of Chianti wine, water for me.  He returned with our drinks and vanished.  It took him over 10 minutes before he came back to see what we want to order.  He didn’t mention anything like, “oh sorry, I was stuck at the other table,” or lie and say “Anglo was slammed the kitchen with orders, and I had to help.”  We were pretty hungry, so as soon as we saw him we ordered as fast as we could.

Cooking time was about right.  It wasn’t to long after we ordered that I had my spaghetti and meat balls in front of me.  It was a very large dish, and plenty of noodles.  The spaghetti sauce was okay, however, I’m not much of an onions fan – this was full of onions.

We made good time, however, only being there for just over an hour.  We could have been out of there sooner, if we didn’t get slow service at first.  That was the most frustrating part, especially, since the last time we were here, it was just as slow.

Atmosphere:  Quiet, peaceful. Italian style artwork and decorations on walls.  Uncomfortable chairs.  Low lighting.

Crowd:  Only one other group in our section.  Age range of 40-50.  Don’t see myself playing Wii bowling with them.

Music:  None.  Only noise was from the cars racing by on 15th ave.

Prices:  Decent.  Wouldn’t have mind if it was $1-2 cheaper.  $12.99 for spaghetti and meatballs, left-over sized.

Overall, I’d go again.

/juice

Thursday July 23rd, I went to the Cha Cha Lounge, in Seattle.  I’ve never been and thought it might be a nice change.  I’m actually very skeptical about trying new places unless I’ve heard amazing reviews from a close friend.  Call me narrow minded, but nothing beats Kate’s Pub (Free pool and darts, half off menu items between 4:30-7:00 and Thursdays are $3 pitcher of PBR).

The Cha Cha Lounge was rather difficult to find.  I drove by it once and walked past it another time looking for it.  I’m pretty good with directions and I knew what the address was but this place was really hidden.  Turns out, it is in the basement of another bar/restaurant that share the same entrance.  Who knew?

I arrived to the entrance and had no idea who to show my ID to.  There were so many people sitting at that entrance, all holding beers, that I just started flashing my ID wildly until someone gave me the okay nod that cleared me to go in.  This late 20’s guy with a long black beard, down to his belly button was the gate keeper to the lounge and officially granted me access after reading my date of birth.

I walked down the 20 steps to the basement which quickly brought back memories of my years wrestling with Nacho Libre.  The room was painted with red incandescent bulbs (com’on, no LEDS or energy saver bulbs?), presenting a nice, dark atmosphere.  The room was divided up into 2 rooms.  The bar was on one side and the seating was in the other section.  There was also an outside smokers section that had tables.  Though, the size of that place was small.  Litterally 3 1/2 feet in width and about 12-15 feet in length.  A smokers heaven, I would assume (keeping warm outside).

The walls were plastered with drawings of mexican cartoon-style wrestlers in tight spandex with colorful masks.  One of the walls was a bottled wall.  It had the buttom of 100’s of bottles with concreate interlacing them together.  The ceiling completely covered with sombreros.

As I arrived to the bottom of the stairs, I searched for my party.  It took me about 30-45 seconds before spotting them because there were a ton of girls that hard short dark hair, straightened, similar to Bethany’s.  I was fooled a few times thinking that one of the girls was her, and wondering who that guy was she was with.

I went to the section where drinks were servered.  I noticed there were two lines, which looked to be segratated between girls and guys, about 15 people in each.  I stepped into the ‘guy’ line and started looking at the menu behind the bartender.  No more then 20 seconds later did a 6 foot 9 tall guy came up to me and said:

Are you buying a drink?

I responded,

Yeah.

The giant man asked me,

Are you going to pay with cash?

I thought this conversation was going to head into the direction of “I’ll pay you cash if you order and buy my drink because I don’t want to wait in line” or something similar.

Yup, cash.

The giant man with a real bad hair cut steps back and pulls out a small notebook.

Okay, what do you want?

What the?  You work here?  There are two lines of people in front of me, and you just randomly picked me for super speedy service?  Did you know I was going to write about this?  Was it my boyish good looks?  I’ll go with the latter.

I get my drink and find my party sitting in a half-circled cozy booth.  The place was definitely over crowded.  Parties were stealing chairs from tables.  Other mega-parties were stealing tables, while not everyone could sit down, but used it as just a place to set drinks.

The Cha Cha Lounge had large, spacious restrooms.  The stalls were covered in SubPopand unknown band stickers.  The wall opposite side of the sink was covered in tweleve 8 1/2″ by 11″ photos that were taken from a mall-style photo booth.  I located the photo booth outside of the men’s restroom, as I exited.  Is that where they take those humongus photos?  I wonder if the women’s restroom has the same decor.  I didn’t check.

We ended leaving about an hour after I got there, unknowing to me if food was served.  Below is a quick summery

Atmosphere:  Original scenery, cool art, awesome lighting

Crowd:  Looked like a group of people I would hang out with.  Hardly any douche-bags, or Ed Hardy wearing muscle-heads.

Music:  Loud!  Way to loud!  I don’t know if they were trying to get people to leave, but most of the time I had to yell to talk to my partner sitting butt-check to butt-check to me.

Prices: $4.25 for a Whiskey Sour. (Average for the First Hill/Capital Hill District)

Overall, I’d go again.

/juice

Okay, okay, so I havn’t seen District 9 yet, so this isn’t going to be a movie review.  But I am looking forward to seeing it.  Basically, in a few words, it looks amazing!  Below is the Original Short Film – District 9, which the box office movie was based off of.

District 9 will be in theatres August 18 of this year, and shot by Neill Blomkamp.  Blomkamp was the producer of the movie Halo, until it went on indefinate heitaus.  The combination of Peter Jackson (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings trillogy) and Blomkamp (lots of small documentary style films) is simply, amazing.  I’m not a big Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter fan, so I wasn’t at the begining of the line, at the midnight showing of these movies.  But you can almost count of me seeing it if not opening day, opening weekend.

Don’t forget to check out the site: d-9.com.  The site has the official trailer, a satellite map that shows where the aliens live and other restricted areas, links to MNU (Multi-national Union) [which currently have career openings now] and a 800 number to report any aliens out of zone, or exhibiting improper behavior.

AWESOME!

/juice

Yesterday, my partner signed up for Netflix – 1 out at a time – program.  It is something we have been talking about for the last year and never really thought we could afford it.  Turns out, we can!

I’m so excited about getting these movies in the mail, and even more excited about ‘Instant Viewing’.

Since my current job is awesome [/sarcasm], I get to connect to the Internet as well as watch DVDs.  I look forward to writing reviews about the movies I watch and doing some good critiquing.  I’m a huge continuity person, so mostly it will be about that.

/juice