Tuesday, October 06, 2009 - Posts
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For the Bruce Springsteen fan who has everything: The Long Branch, N.J., home where the Boss wrote "Born to Run" is for sale. (You can read about the birth of that seminal record here.) It's small (828 square feet) and rather run-down looking, but the asking price is a cool $299,000, about $50,000 more than comparable houses in the neighborhood. That means the famous musician's mere presence nearly 35 years ago adds about 20 percent to its value.
This isn't the first instance of pop culture inflating real estate prices. In 1988, Bob Dylan's childhood home in the northern Minnesota town of Hibbing was up for sale at $84,000, a whole lot more than the appraised value of $46,000. (Relatedly, Dylan may have been looking at the Springsteen house—yes, the same one—when he was detained by police this summer and has recently visited John Lennon's childhood home, as well as Neil Young's.)
And over in San Francisco, the house that hosted the Party of Five is about to be listed. No word yet on the asking price, but it went for $5.4 million in 1999, well above market value. Just around the corner, the house where Arnold Schwarzenegger got knocked up in Junior is also on the market—and went for $55,000 more than asking price last time it was listed, in 2007.
I wonder how the poor New Jersey guy who drops $300,000 for the privilege of walking on the boss's floor will explain the purchase to his wife. "Honey, you don't understand! Springsteen wrote 'Born to Run' surrounded by these very walls! It's like we're living in the song!" But as memorabilia go, at least it's bolder than a T-shirt or a poster.
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Last week's dud of an episode had the Shame Index expressing concern that Barney and Robin's nascent romance might be problematic for this season of How I Met Your Mother—could these two be funny together? This week's solid effort answered the question with a reassuring yes.
Shameful:
—Robin's opening of Barney's briefcase with a sledgehammer. A shade too broad. Plus, would that even work?
—Marshall's beloved barrel, which felt like an afterthought—something to keep Marshall busy in an episode that didn't have much use for him.
—Barney's Twitter joke. Twitter jokes will surely be popping up all over sitcoms this fall. Prediction: Zero of them will be funny.
—Barney's Barack Obama Jr. pickup line. Another strained attempt at unnecessary topicality.
Awesome:
—Lily's declaration that Robin Scherbatsky is many things: "friend, confidante, occasional guest star in some confusing dreams that remind me a woman's sexuality is a moving target."
—Lily's professed allergy to barrel resin. The only good thing to come of the barrel plot.
—Pretty much all of the Robin Scherbatsky 101 bit. Kudos to the HIMYM writers for taking two plot strands that had the Shame Index concerned about this season—Robin and Barney's relationship and Ted's teaching gig—and combining them for quality comedy. Of particular merit:
—The three ways of distracting Robin from being mad at you, especially her soft spot for the mating rituals of empire penguins.
—The top five things never to do around Robin. Occasionally, HIMYM will leave some of its best material as an Easter egg for the close viewer. Last season, when Marshall became obsessed with Goliath National Bank's graphics department, he commissioned a chart ranking the U.S. presidents in order of how dirty their names sound. He only announced the top four—Johnson, Bush, Harding, Polk—but the list was printed big enough for viewers to see that Bush was also ranked ninth, which took the joke to a whole new level of hilarious complexity: Why is one Bush's name dirtier than the other's? Last night, a bonus item not to do around Robin was scrawled on the chalkboard but never read aloud: "mention hockey's lack of popularity in the U.S."
—Ted's hypercorrect pronunciation of Beaux Arts, which came out sounding like "bozarts."
—Shin Ya, who is auditing Robin 101. Just on the right side of the thin line separating amusing and harmful stereotype.
—You know an episode is more awesome than shameful when even Ted's sappy moral has some bite: "When you're dating someone, it's like you're taking one long course in who that person is. Then when you break up, all that stuff becomes useless. It's like the emotional equivalent of an English degree."
So: A fine return to form this week. In other HIMYM news, Rachel Bilson, late of The OC, has been cast in what executive producer Craig Thomas touts as a pivotal role in the series' upcoming 100th episode, raising the possibility that she is the one for Ted. Knowing how HIMYM's producers love to milk this mystery for all it's worth, however, the Shame Index hereby pledges to eat its shoe if Bilson turns out to be the eponymous mother.
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[Update, 5:18pm, Oct. 6th: Corrected the spelling of Scherbatsky. The Shame Index must have cut that class of Robin 101.]