Everything's Jake

For every home game, the Chicago Cubs always have some guest conductor, they call it, lead the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and the person generally gets interviewed on radio and then in the TV booth.  Today, it was Jake Johnson, an actor I tend to enjoy..

They were talking about him being from the Chicago area, and then added that he went to New Trier High School.  I had absolutely no idea.  This might mean nothing to most people, except that that was the high school I went to.  (I've mentioned in the past that they have an illustrious list of alumni, including Charlton Heston, Ann-Margaret, Bruce Dern,  Virginia Madsen, Rock Hudson, William Christopher ('Father Mulcahy' in M*A*S*H), Ralph Bellamy, director Ed Zwick, novelist Scott Turow, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, singer-songwriter Liz Phair, American League Rookie of the Year John Castino, college basketball coach Ben Braun, famed restaurateur Charlie Trotter, Nobel Prize-winner for physics Jack Steinberger, 12-year president of the National Academy of Sciences Bruce Alberts, superagent Ari Emanuel, former Sen. Charles Percy, Sen. Mark Kirk, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  So, I'm in good company.  Okay, but I digress...)

It turns out that, to his great credit, Jake Johnson is  a huuuge Cubs fan, and was very excited and knowledgeable in the booth, talking about going to 200 Cubs games growing up there.

I sort of gave up on the New Girl series he's in -- I like Zooey Deschanel and his work in it, and I enjoyed the show well-enough but for my taste, they ran out of stories early on, and it just became much too thin.  However, a few weeks ago I saw the movie he both starred in and wrote, Digging with Fire that’s being released now.  The movie was well-done, and I liked what it was about (sort of an effective metaphoric looks at a happy marriage, but where the husband and wife search for ways to not feel trapped in it) , and each individual scene was good – but it was too much an “actor independent movie,” very talky slice-of-life. 

Here's the trailer.  It does a good job of getting across that it's well-done and very talky slice of life.  Albeit with a very good cast, in including co-star Rosemarie Dewitt, and Orlando Bloom, Anna Kendrick, Sam Rockwell, Ron Livingston, Sam Elliot and others.