Know how I knew you were gay? You like Coldplay.

When I first saw a preview for The 40 Year Old Virgin I thought "oh god, this is going to be a total train wreck." The concept of the movie just sounds like an outright bad idea. The kind of thing guaranteed to be juvenile, unfunny and tedious. But then I started reading reviews, and they were good!

So I went to see it. And it was good!

I know. Seriously. I consider this to be a monumental achievement in film. This movie had so many ways it could have fallen over and been terrible, and they were all expertly avoided. I'm still in a bit of shock.

Some ground rules: this is low brow humor. Think Will Farrel in Old School (also known as: Will Farrel toned down so he doesn't overpower the material.) But the movie manages to be sweet with it's low brow humer. I never felt truly bad for the title character, and I never felt like the movie was making fun of him. The movie likes the guy, and even respects him a bit. That tone makes all the difference with a concept like this.

Plus, it helps that Steve Carell is frickin hilarious. I miss when he was on The Daily Show. Hopefully this movie will get him some more work and we can all laugh with him more in the future.

I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I've had a rough week. What do you think holds it up, slick?

Wedding Crashers is a funny movie. Of course, I think Vince Vaugn is funny just about all the time. But still, the movie is funny. But it's not a great movie.

Vaugn and Wilson are funny guys. They play well off eachother and do a great job here. The problem is in who surrounds them. Outside of those two and thier two female love interests all the characters are two dimensional charicatures. The other guy, the dad, the brother, the grandmother - none of them even resemble real people.

Here's the problem with that: Jokes involving characters like that can only be bit jokes, like a Saturday Night Live skit. The jokes are fine, they're sometimes funny. But they're never really, uproariously funny - because for a joke to reach that level it has to have some reality in it, some human connection.

Great comedies have real characters and real jokes like that. This movie has some of those. About half the time it's a great comedy, the other half the time it's hit and miss (with a lot of misses.) I laughed, I had a great time, I might even buy it when it comes out on DVD. But the changing of gears kept it from being a great movie.

There's no such thing as nothing.

I Heart Huckabees is an odd movie. Admittedly, I didn't make it all the way through it (a combination of the oddity and my sleepiness.) But I saw enough of it for me to not make an effort at watching the whole thing. Ebert, always the excellent reviewer, did not disappoint in his review here. It's actually so good, I don't feel compelled to add anything to it.

It's like a 25 foot elevator drop where sometimes it take more faith then skill.

Watching surfing movies like Riding Giants sometimes messes me up pretty good. It's late summer, I'm in the middle of thinking about what I really want to do with my life, and watching a movie like this is just like someone taunting me. Saying "you don't need to spend your life in an office, you could make different choices."

The whole thing reminds me of quote I saw on a Starbucks cup the other day. I don't remember it exactly, but it went something like:

People say that failure can be limiting, but I think sucess can be much more limiting. The combination of opportunity, praise and money can lock you in for life.

Every now and then I wonder if I should be out doing something totally different. I wonder what it would be like to just change up my career and be a full time raft guide for a summer. Or go do some more event management. Hell, I even thought about becoming a paramedic. But change like that is scary, and it's scary for lots of reasons. Not only is it the unknown from a day to day standpoint, but those kinds of things come with a dramatically different financial position from where I am now.

My friend Jane went through all this, and in the end made a decision that I can't bring myself to make. She used to do IT work for a big company in Pittsburg, but eventually decided she needed to shift gears. She moved to Seattle knowing nothing but that she was enrolled in a raft guide training class. Initially the whole thing was just a three month leave of absense from her job. But when the three months were up she decided she likes this version of her life more. So she stayed. She found a job at a local outdoor clothing and supply shop and rafts every weekend (she's also by far our best rookie guide this year.) Jane's awesome, and I'm impressed and a bit shamed by her courage in this space.

So I think about friends like Jane, and watch movies like Riding Giants, and wonder if my priorities really are right. At the end of the day, the answer is I don't know - but I don't think they're too far off. I think just the fact that I go through the exercise serves as a good sign. And while big, dramatic change is romantic, the novelty of it all wears off if it's not right for me. Of course, sometimes you can't see past the haze of the unknown and just have to go - it's about faith.

But wait, you wanted me to talk about the movie? Secretly, I have been. Riding Giants is all about big wave riding - something that traditionally sane people stay away from. It's a thing that challenges your soul, confronts your fear of the unknown, sees what kinds of risks you're willing to take. This movie showcases that, or at least it did for me. I especially liked the mavericks section. Not recommended if you don't have any surfing background, but if you like surfing or have surfed before, don't miss it.

Also, stick around through the credits for my favorite quote in the whole movie:

I was in school and I was flunking french and my french teacher said what are you going to do when you get out, when you graduate school? You know you have to pass this. What are you going to do, are you going to go to college?

And I says no, I'm going to go surfing. I'm going to the north shore, I'm going to make my pilgrimage to the north shore. I'm going to ride big waves and if I don't die then I'll figure out what I do. This is a noble thing I'm doing. I'm going there to ride big waves, to find out who I am.

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