The Musical Box

joe, ann and bill of "breakfast at sulimay's" with unsuspecting victim caleb followill of kings of leon

Friends have been telling me about Breakfast at Sulimay’s for weeks. But it wasn’t until I was provided a link from another website over the weekend that the program fell into my laptop. If you have 5 minutes to kill, it’s worth a click.

Sulimay’s is a diner “in the heart of Fishtown,” meaning Philadelphia. There, three seniors by the names of Bill (the cheeriest), Ann (the one with the dirtiest mouth) and Joe (seemingly the most introspective; that’s probably why he looks perpetually worried) gather to give capsule reviews of music that is at least one generation removed from the hits they grew up with.

Not surprisingly, they tend to dislike everything. Ann seemed smitten with Bruce Springsteen’s The Wrestler (”for an old man, he’s got a good voice”), but Bill was less than enthused with Kings of Leon’s Crawl (”they didn’t drink enough Jack Daniel’s”).

So far, our makeshift critics have dished dirt on new tunes by Beirut, Sepultura, Animal Collective, Young Jeezy, Beck and Dr. Dog, among others.

The Sulimay’s setting is about as down home and low-fi as you could ask for with waitresses regularly strolling back and forth in front of the camera. And in the last few episodes, two boxes of Girl Scout cookies sat in front of our critics. Perhaps that was their stipend.

Don’t view Bill, Ann and Joe as narrow-minded. Don’t dismiss them as cranks. And for God’s sake, don’t take them seriously. But do pull up a stool, have a cup of coffee and enjoy, at least once, the good hearted generational pop culture clash that is Breakfast at Sulimay’s.