The Neapolitan Celebrity Sighting

So last night I dragged Karen out of the apartment for a late night ice cream cone run. The weather's good in New York right now, so it seemed like the time for that sort of thing. As we crossed the street across from our apartment, who should walk out of the bodega on the corner but Raymond Cruz, the guy who plays Detective Julio Sanchez on The Closer. Okay, not exactly earth-shattering as far as celebrity sightings go, but it was still pretty cool. We're both fans of The Closer, and I'm still small town enough that I get a charge out of seeing someone in real life that I've only ever seen on TV.

I mentioned it to my office mate this morning and he told me about a time when he saw Ethan Hawke and Sam Rockwell walk out of a bar with a couple of girls in Chelsea. This led to the discussion of the appropriateness of approaching a celebrity on the street and what you would say to that person. I think Sam Rockwell is an excellent actor, very under-rated, and I've never seen him in anything I didn't like. So if I saw him I'd be like, "I loved you in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, great movie, you were awesome." And with Ethan Hawke I'd be like, "Hey! Ethan Hawke! Hey!" Seriously, what am I going to say to him? "You didn't drag down Training Day that badly! I heard that your most recent book wasn't as gawdawful terrible as your first book!"

Which got me to thinking... What other celebrity pairings could you reasonably expect to see that would be completely unbalanced in terms of actual ability? I'm going to refer to this as the Neapolitan Celebrity Sighting. There was an episode of the Simpsons where Homer wants ice cream so he goes to the freezer and pulls out box after box of Neapolitan ice cream. In every box he opens, the chocolate stripe has been eaten away, leaving the vanilla and strawberry stripes untouched. The punchline comes when Homer yells, "Marge, we need more of that chocolate vanilla strawberry ice cream!" instead of asking for just chocolate ice cream, which is what he really likes. (Who says you can't dissect humor? You'll notice how I artfully cut away all of the actual comedy in that scene description. I'm like a surgeon. A surgeon of comedy, removing the funny with my scalpel of boring, labored exposition.)

Anyways, the Neapolitan Celebrity Sighting (aka the NCS). I'm trying to think of the ultimate Neapolitan Celebrity Sighting. My rules:
1. It's got to be someone you really like, paired with someone for whom you have nothing good to say. Ethan Hawke is a pretty good example of the latter for me. He seems likeable in a dopey sort of way, and much respect to him for bagging Winona Ryder back when she had her fastball. But I've never seen him in anything where I was like, "Wow, Ethan Hawke is really carrying this. What a talent!" I'd have nothing nice to say about his work. (ed. note: my office mate says he was really great in Gattaca, which I haven't seen.)
2. It's got to be realistic that you'd see these two together. This rules out pairings like, oh, Paris Hilton and Bruce Springsteen, or Star Jones and Spike Jonze, or Wilmer Valderrama and Terence Malick.
3. You have to actually be familiar with the work of both people in question. Your lack of compliments for the one guy? It's not because you've never seen his movies/read his books/heard his albums. You've experienced a bit of what this person has to offer, and you really don't like it. So when you walk by that bar in Greenwich Village and you see that guy in that band you really love, and he's having a drink with that girl from that show you've never seen...that's not an NCS.

The best one I've come up with so far is Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart. Think about it: he's fucking Han Solo, and Indiana Jones, and Jack Ryan. And Calista Flockhart...well, she's fucking Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Jack Ryan. No, seriously, for most of my life Harrison Ford has been the definition of manliness and coolness. (The last 6 or 7 years excepted, of course--going back pretty much to the point where he started dating Calista Flockhart, actually.) As a kid, who didn't want to grow up to be Han Solo or Indiana Jones? Calista Flockhart, on the other hand, is really only notable for giving us a good idea of what Natalie Imbruglia would look like if she lost 30 pounds. (Whoa, a Calista Flockhart reference and a Natalie Imbruglia reference? Yup, it's 1998 Day here at Get Crunk With Jesus.) Harrison Ford is/was so cool, and Calista Flockhart is...not. Practically the definition of the Neapolitan Celebrity Sighting.

So, on the off chance that anyone is actually reading this...any other suggestions? You can use the comments to post.

Overheard at the Wolf Parade Show Last Night

Saw the Wolf Parade show last night at Webster Hall, which was a scorcher. (More on that TK...) The opening act was a band called Holy Fuck. They were...I don't know, kind of a noise jam band or something. I liked their sound and generally enjoyed the show, but with the exception of their closing tune I felt like their songs didn't actually, like, go anywhere. Then again, I've never really been a big jam band fan. It's good for a song to stretch out and work out some variations, but for the most part that's just not my thing. So don't take my lukewarm review on them as necessarily a bad thing--your results may vary.

I don't know why I'm apologizing here for not loving Holy Fuck. I think I'm worried that maybe Holy Fuck's mom is going to read this and I'll feel really bad, and the comments section will be all this stuff about how I don't know how hard it is to make Holy Fuck music and it's real easy to tear stuff down but real hard to actually build something nice and I should try that sometime and see how I like it when someone goes on the Internets and makes fun of something I tried really hard to make.

Anyways, this isn't about my subjective review of Holy Fuck, who, in fairness, seemed like really nice guys and, with maybe a little more control from, say, a strong producer (the DFA?) they could be really excellent.

So before the last song, an Overheard with the two fratty guys standing next to me.

Lead Singer from Holy Fuck: "Thanks for coming out tonight. We're from Toronto and we don't come to New York all that often."
Dude #1, yelling: "Good! You suck!"
Dude #2: "Hey man, that's not right. I like these guys, they're pretty good."
Dude #1: "Yeah, I guess you're right. I'm sorry I insulted them."
Dude #2: "Don't apologize to me, apologize to the band."
Dude #1: "Go fuck yourself."