Word: guys
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...That sounds fairly mature. And in fact it's more mature than the movie, which, whatever its ostensible message of love between two improbable strangers, is a celebration of male camaraderie, and how guys need to do their guy stuff. That too is a theme with an honorable movie history: in the snappy bravado of heroes in Howard Hawks westerns, the desperate friendship in war-movie foxholes, the sass and sarcasm exchanged by slobby Oscar and his poker pals in The Odd Couple. It exists in real life, too, of course, in less appealing ways than Knocked Up lets...
...Rudd) and finds a compatible mate. But The Girl (Catherine Keener) was hardly a character at all; her only function was to unleash a hearty laugh whenever Carell passed a joke. Alison, granted, is more prominent and complicated here. But for all the lip service Apatow pays to the guy-gal plot of Knocked Up, he invests much more energy and affection in the scenes of Ben with his friends and, emphatically, with Pete - who is the one person in the movie Ben really falls for. It's another old plot: beauty and the beast...
...Rudd in Knocked Up is Ben's humane, hunky alternative to his lower-life-form friends, and a closer soulmate than Alison. He can't have sex with Pete, but Alison can't make him laugh so hard - which is what matters in a guy-centric comedy. Ben is tolerant of Alison's weaknesses but attracted to Ben's strengths. He's not the Other, which guys like Ben think of women; he's the better, cooler Ben. At the film's climax, the two go off to Vegas, again not to have sex but to do some "shrooms...
...when I invited Michael Mascha, author of Fine Waters: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Most Distinctive Bottled Waters, to a lunch where he would pair our courses with different bottled waters, I was doing it To Catch a Predator--style. I wanted to see if the guy who helps restaurants pick their water lists would suggest a coq au Volvic...
...Mascha at Los Angeles' La Terza, which, I was delighted to find out, is one of many restaurants that serve each table with a vessel of tap they carbonate themselves. This guy was doomed. Sensing what I was up to--because, really, it's what everyone is up to upon hearing that he's a water sommelier--Mascha immediately tried to disarm me. He told me about his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, where he specialized in food anthropology. And about how he was a wine collector until he found out in 2002 that he had an alcohol allergy...