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Published: Aug 26, 2009

Patton Oswalt doesn't push it. The man who dubbed KFC's Famous Bowl a "failure pile in a sadness bowl" prefers simply to stand there riffing on the mundane and basking in his own nerdy glory. This is a big week for Oswalt. His newest special, My Weakness is Strong, is released on DVD and he's getting his first big-screen starring role (unless you count the titular voice in Ratatouille) in Big Fan. (Go to citypaper.net/movies to read a Q&A with Oswalt.)

 

Last week I sat around World Café Live drinking and co-judging the finale of the Beta Hi-Fi Fest. It's an annual weeklong battle-of-the-bands type of thing. No slouches made it to the last round, but the three acts that really won our hearts were the ones that rocked the loudest: Saudia Arabia, Levee Drivers and The Beekeepers .

After seven years, Mr. Monk — the OCD-empowered detective/star of the one-hour show on USA Network — is solving his last few murders. I'm sad to see the quirky, character-driven comedy come to an end, but pleased to get some sneak-tweet-peeks of the final episodes from the set by co-producer Doug Nabors (twitter.com/douglasnabors). Check out that pic of Monk and Natalie's stunt doubles.

You know Zoe Strauss for her annual "Under I-95" photography show, during which she sells super-cheap photocopies of her warts-and-all representations of our city. Her blog, zoestrauss.blogspot.com, gives us a taste of those stellar life-in-imperfect-motion capturings we've come to expect, but it also reminds us that nobody nails it every time. Of a recent zoomed-in photo of water ice, Strauss says, "When I was making it, I was looking to show something disconcerting ... which is fucking nuts because it's a cup of water ice." And that's refreshing.

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