Problem World

David Roth: I wish William Friedkin would make a gritty, rainy-looking movie about the greenie-soaked MLB clubhouses of the 1970s. Gene Hackman wearing a hat and a cheap suit with Sanka stains on it. Interrogating Bake McBride about something.

David Raposa: To Live and Die in Three Rivers Stadium.

David Roth: Roy Schneider is miscast as John Candelaria, but does his best.

David Raposa: John Cazale would be a brilliant Kent Tekulve.

David Roth: Doomed, vulnerable, wearing sunglasses in the shower. It is good casting. There’d be a dangerous-seeming chase scene with bullpen golf carts. And in the end Dave Kingman somehow gets away with it, because that’s the way it works in the big city.

David Raposa: I like movies that make you think while making you side against Dave Kingman. And it’s a good thing you picked Billy Friedkin; imagine the budget if Cimino was behind the camera? While I’d love to see a Russian Roulette sequence featuring Bert Blyleven in his “I [HEART] TO FART” tee, I would also like to not cause a double-dip recession in the process.

David Roth: Harmon Killebrew yelling things at him in Vietnamese. It would be harrowing, but not as harrowing as photos of Michael Cimino himself. He looks like Linda Hunt playing David Bowie.

David Roth: The New York edition of Zagat’s is so suffocatingly New York. The diner-contribution stuff is all from people that think nothing of saying, out loud, “I feel like I should be writing New Yorker cartoons.” So every review is them being like “It’s GREEK TO ME why anyone would go anyplace else for Greek food do you see what I did there with the Greek thing.”

David Raposa: This quaint Italian bistro has food that’s TO DIE FOR, with portion sizes that could KILL A HORSE and PUT ITS HEAD IN YOUR BED WHILE YOU SLEEP. I’m totally in, right?

David Roth: Nino’s official website has music. Oddly, it’s “Snakes For The Divine” by High On Fire. Just kidding, it’s totally a MIDI-file version of George Benson.

David Raposa: God this classy-coke soundtrack is ensorceling. I feel like I’m in the highest-budgeted “Red Shoe Diaries” episode ever.

David Roth: Kiefer Sutherland Music. AKA “N**gas in Paris In 1988 At A Lounge.”

David Raposa: “[Owner Nino] Selmaj has culled a large, loyal following with his magnetic personality, dashing good looks and impeccably tailored suits bearing a bejeweled American flag on his lapel.” Rudy Giuliani wept.

David Roth: And ate there several times a week, presumably. So a second take on the Zagat review would be: With “the raw sex appeal” of a young Mario Batali and a flag pin you “won’t want to miss,” Nino is the “host with the most” if you’re “a star shortstop trying to hump as discreetly as possible” in hopes of not getting “goofed on by two doofuses” on the internet. Also the star shortstop “has an edge.”