Oscars Week, Part III of IV

The Nominees:
Brokeback Mountain
The Constant Gardener
Memoirs of a Geisha
Munich
Pride & Prejudice

What will happen?
John Williams is nominated for two scores this year, Munich and Geisha. I think it's about time he retired, allowing three to four young budding film composers to live on his massive salary. No one will have listened to the soundtrack for Pride and Prejudice because they were all waiting for Kiera Knightley to doff the dress, and I will automatically assume that the Brokeback score sounds stereotypically Western (because I have a degree in music which gives me the right to make such sweeping declarations), so Alberto Iglesias's score for Constant Gardener will win.

The Nominees:

• "In the Deep" from Crash
  "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Hustle & Flow
  "Travelin' Thru" from Transamerica


What will happen?
It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, just because I would like them to sing a song about pimps and ho's at the Academy Awards. There is precedent, since Eminem's Lose Yourself won a few years back. In fact, I hope they make a medley performance of "It's Hard So A Pimp's Travelin' Thru Into the Deep". Where's Randy Newman this year? He should have written a song for Corpse Bridge called "It's Not Easy Being Dead But You're My Friend and I Heart You".

The Nominees:
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
War of the Worlds

What will happen?
There are quite a few categories with only three nominees this year. In my opinion, they should have padded out the categories simply so the voters have more choices. Not enough sound editing choices? Let's add The Polar Express or Leon Markeson's Instructional Sign Language for the Deaf. King Kong will win, because I'm pretty sure they did not simply go to the eighty-ton ape zoo and record a real eighty-ton ape for sounds -- they had to get an actor who just plays the ape on TV.

The Nominees:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha

• Walk the Line
  War of the Worlds


What will happen?
I'd say the mixing in Walk the Line was sound. The rest of the movies had subpar mixing, or didn't even include any mixing scenes in the plot. Give us a cake-baking scene at a bare minimum!

The Nominees:
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
The Constant Gardener
A History of Violence
Munich

What will happen?
Why didn't Proof get a nod here? It was pretty damn good despite its lack of solid resolution. I'm going to take a stab at what the original source materials for each of these movies was before Hollywood distorted them into their current forms:
Donnie Darko II: Donnie reappears out of a shift in time and realizes that only sheep-herding will save the population of Wyoming.
Truman: Traces the coincidences and intersections of various people named Truman throughout history, until a biblical rain of frogs erases any reason to take the movie seriously.
The Occasional Gardener: When his wife dies in a major pharmaceutical scandal, the gardener goes on strike and refuses to fertilize the peonies.
A History of Love: Small-town man is very happy and lives a quiet existence, owning a restaurant and occasionally going bowling.
Turin: The world was not watching in 2006 as 11 American athletes failed to get gold medals at the Turin Winter Olympics. This is the story of what happened next.

Based on this, History of Violence will get the nod.

The Nominees:

• Crash
  Good Night, and Good Luck.
  Match Point
  
• The Squid and the Whale
  Syriana


What will happen?
Squid and the Whale was NOT very good. Crash was good because of its acting and interconnections, not necessarily its screenplay. Good Night loses because of its period, and Match Point loses because a Point is like a Period. Syriana will win, because it's from the same family tree as the previously-winning Traffic.

To be concluded tomorrow...

Oscars Week, Part IV of IV

Thank God Oscar week is finally over. This year's batch of movies were too tame and not very fun to make fun of. At least I've now done it for a full five years, so I can sell off the entire series into syndication. You'll no doubt be seeing reruns of BU's Oscar Picks, weeknights on TBS Superstation at 7 and 11.

The Nominees:
Brokeback Mountain
Capote

• Crash
  Good Night, and Good Luck.
  Munich


What will happen?
This list is identical to the Best Motion Picture category and in all likelihood, whichever movie wins one will win the other. However, I'll put my meaningful vote on Crash, simply because it must have been a pain in the ass for a director to have to work with so much star power on a daily basis. I bet the only thing worse than corralling celebrities in Crash was doing it in Ocean's Twelve.

The Nominees:
George Clooney - Syriana

• Matt Dillon - Crash
  Paul Giamatti - Cinderella Man
  Jake Gyllenhaal - Brokeback Mountain
  William Hurt - A History of Violence


What will happen?
Matt Dillon is too funny-looking to seriously be considered for an Oscar, and he wasn't the greatest of the actors in Crash (although he should probably get an honorable mention for cleverness for managing to star in Wild Things with both Denise Richards and Neve Campbell). Of the remaining stars, I'll narrow it down to Jake Gyllenhaal and George Clooney. To determine which would triumph, I secretly labelled the two cat beds as the Clooney Bed and the Jake Bed (since I was having trouble spelling Gyllenhaal), then I let the cats go to sleep. As you can see, there were 1.5 votes for George Clooney and only the ass-half of a vote for Jake.

The Nominees:
Amy Adams - Junebug
Catherine Keener - Capote
Frances McDormand - North Country
Rachel Weisz - The Constant Gardener
Michelle Williams - Brokeback Mountain

What will happen?
Rachel Weisz and Frances McDormand are both slightly funny-looking. The world may be ready for gay cowboys, but they aren't ready for award-winning funny-looking people (which is why I haven't won any awards since high school). Of the remainders, I'll go with Catherine Keener because she was good in Being John Malkovich.

The Nominees:
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote
Terrence Howard - Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger - Brokeback Mountain

• Joaquin Phoenix - Walk the Line
  David Strathairn - Good Night, and Good Luck.


What will happen?
Jokin Phoenix wins this category hands down. I never really liked him after Gladiator, and then I finally realized that the reason I didn't like him was because he did such a good job being unlikable. In Walk the Line he completely became Johnny Cash, and also taught me the song, Ring of Fire. I wonder how they decided that Jake was supporting and Heath was the lead actor in Brokeback Mountain. I guess they just flipped a coin, or wrestled for it.

The Nominees:
Judi Dench - Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman - Transamerica
Keira Knightley - Pride & Prejudice
Charlize Theron - North Country

• Reese Witherspoon - Walk the Line


What will happen?
Judi Dench falls into the "funny-looking" category (as well as the "slightly scary" category, so she's an auto-lose. Of the remainders, I'd like Reese to win, but it will end up being Charlize Theron for tradition's sake. Keira has a few more years of prettiness before she finally dirties up enough to win an Oscar -- but she'll have to think of another role besides a homicidal prostitute.

The Nominees:
Brokeback Mountain
Capote

• Crash
  Good Night, and Good Luck.
  Munich


What will happen?
I am just one man, and a rather small one at that, so rather than continue to fight the tide of favour, I'll vote for Brokeback Mountain to win this category. The only problem with this is that we'll have to endure weeks of insipid news coverage earmarking it as a landmark event in gay rights, or something equally silly. No one said anything about gay hobbits when Lord of the Rings won the first time -- why does this movie winning automatically equate to a deeper meaning than "Hey, this was a good movie"?

Happy Birthday Mike Sharp, a.k.a. Junesy!

Friday Fragments

The Fun Dip of Internet Culture

Yesterday I released an updated version of my Warcraft III mini-game, Micro Frenzy. You can go download it over at www.nohunters.com or right here in the Games section. It's only got a few minor improvements in it, but I figured that I might as well update it since more people seem to be playing it these days.

An off-duty Alexandria cop moonlighting as a security guard shot up an SUV full of college kids who were fleeing without paying their IHOP bill last weekend. Those kids were morons for not paying their bill, but the cop was an even bigger moron for thinking that an unpaid bill required deadly force, whether he felt threatened by the vehicle or not. In that situation, you just write the license plate number down and radio ahead, or even get in your OWN car and pull them over. If, as the kids in the car say, he shot from the side and back, he gets +1 moron points for making up his story, and if, as he said, he stepped in front of an SUV to make it stop then shot at it because he felt threatened, he gets +2 moron points because he stepped in front of a moving SUV.

In other news, parents of a boy with Angelman's syndrome are indignant that they were asked to leave the theatre after their son laughed loudly and longly. This is stupid -- the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that the theatre try to accomodate them, but definitely not at the cost of the other moviegoers' enjoyment. They all paid their $10 to see the movie, and anyone who is raucous, cell-phone-talking, or obnoxious during the movie should generally be asked to leave. The family should have just talked to the theatre about coming to a late or private showing rather than going to a crowded theatre knowing that their son has disruptive behaviours. Otherwise it just looks like you have a chip on your shoulder and are trying to provoke a reaction.

Yesterday's search terms:
perverted old farts looking for sluts, hybla valley violence, home mmm 100 moms mature cathy, tapered dork, the theme from the a-team, what year did wendy's opened its 2000th store, sam spanks frodo -spanking -spank

Oscar Wrap Up Day

Like a flipped coin that can predict the future, the URI! Zone accurately picked the winner in 12 of the 24 Academy Award categories (you can see the official list of winners here). This is a marked improvement over previous years -- take that, everyone who didn't believe my predictions!

On Sunday evening, I moseyed on down to a small Oscar party hosted by Chris and Kathy where I filled out a nominee ballot that actually had some sense of internal logic and managed to guess 14 of 24 categories correctly. I only stayed for the first two hours of the ridiculously long ceremony so I don't know if anything goofy happened after that, but overall, my opinion has not changed about the silliness of the whole charade. It's really nothing more than a four-hour circle of self-appreciation. Maybe it would be more meaningful if they let normal movie viewers vote, or got rid of Sound Mixing.

Here are some other thoughts that went through my head during the part I watched:

Jon Stewart turned out to be a decent host -- he spent most of his energy cracking safe film-related jokes instead of political jokes. Among his memorable lines (which might be paraphrased because of my horrible memory):

[After Cinderella Man lost in the Makeup category] "Imagine how hard it was to make Russell Crowe look like he'd been in a fight... I'm getting pummeled after the show, aren't I?"
[Presenting presenters, Jessica Alba and Eric Bana] "And if there were a nuclear holocaust, these are the two people that I would want to repopulate the Earth."
[After another ridiculously stupid montage of memorable film moments] "I can't wait till later when we see Oscar's salute to montages. We are literally out of clips right now. If you have any clips, please mail them to us."
"Piracy hurts all of these wonderful actresses you see here tonight. Take a look around, some of them can't even afford enough material to cover their breasts!"
"Capote should be acknowledged for its courage in showing that not all gay people are virile cowboys."

What did you think of the ceremony? Did I miss any funny moments? Are you just glad it's all over? Let me know in the comments section!

Cat Media Tuesday

Amber likes to sit on things and dangle her front paws off the end, as if she were sitting on the edge of some imaginary community pool that allowed cats. She also likes that rockin' red sweater I'm wearing, and goes out of her way to find it in the laundry basket when it's warm out of the dryer. Perhaps if I put my clothes away faster it would help minimize the cat hair, but my laundry generally stays unfolded for three to four days after a wash.

I think Booty may need an Intervention. It started out just on special occasions like birthdays and bar mitzvahs, but she doesn't know any Jewish cats, so the birthdays have been increasing. If I am to believe her, Amber is now 284 years old. Booty also gives two paws up for Ecco Domani Pinot Grigot.

When Amber is not sitting in my lap, or sitting on the couch, or running away from invisible demons with pink horns, she's curled up in the sink in the hallway bathroom (which luckily does not see much hand-washing traffic, since I don't use the bathroom myself and all my frequent visitors are dirty non-hand-washing heathens). You can see more pictures from this series here.

Last month, we all went over to Vu's house to help him store the last of his possessions so he could move to San Francisco and rent out his house. Up on his mantel, he had a psychedelic singing flower that reacted to loud noises, singing "You Are My Sunshine" to anyone who'd listen. The kids were attracted to this flower like a mix of Pavlov and Pied Piper. Every time they'd get bored, I would clap my hands again, starting the flower up. This would make them all turn around and come back. These are not cats, but they are just as cute. You can see more pictures from this night here.

This is a picture of the last snow storm we had, which dumped a foot of snow all over the Washington area and then melted the next day like a global warming advocate's wet dream (...). This is the "sun room" at my parents' house, which was one part of the standard "our kids no longer live here" improvements that took place after high school.

Package Day Redux

Two weeks ago, I posted about my latest Amazon bundle of treats and toys . Today I will post short reviews of all the goodies, so you can better spend your tax refunds on useless middle-class garbage.

KT Tunstall: Eye to the Telescope: This is an excellent CD -- probably one of the first CD's I've completely enjoyed since Muse's Absolution in 2004. Despite her occasionally interesting pronunciations, KT has a solid, agreeable voice, whether she's singing high or low, on ballads and over beats. If you think of Norah Jones as the jazzy-blues Norah Jones, then KT would be like the country-blues Norah Jones -- slightly more poppy with nothing ridiculously avant-garde, but all solidly done. Here's one of my favourite tracks from the CD (besides the radio-happy Suddenly I See) called Heal Over (2MB MP3, reduced quality). By the way, people think of me as the hip-hop-funk Norah Jones.

Movie Day

Kathy came over on Tuesday night for Totino's Pizza, Booty, and movies -- an ancient tradition originally started in Tallahassee in 2002 when Booty was crazy and ran around in circles throughout the movies. The Pledge was this week's pick because Kathy found it on the shelf, so it was $4.50 cheaper than going to Blockbuster. It's a Sean Penn directed film starring Jack Nicholson that came out in 2001, even though I'd never heard of it before. The movie had great acting, including Jack who is always good despite every role being "Jack playing Person X" instead of just "Person X". It starts out as a crime drama and ends up as a character study, but it's just slightly disjointed. As the ending faded out, it felt like we were supposed to come away with some grand message, but I really couldn't think of one. In this case, I think playing with the preconceptions of the genre actually hurt the continuity of the movie, and the ending Penn provides doesn't really flow from his starting point. It reminded me of an eager beaver math major who tries so hard to prove a theorem and then unwittingly ends up at a completely orthagonal solution that really has nothing to do with what he started with.

Last night, I went out to Kim's to see Capote at the Shirlington "We Are Incapable of Providing the Correct Showtime In Our Movie Ads" Multiplex, which tends to show artsy flicks and movies that have outstayed their welcome at other theatres. The movie was excellent, and Philip Seymour Hoffman definitely deserved the Oscar he got for his role. His portrayal of Capote made me completely forget that he was acting, much like the leads in Walk the Line. I don't think Caroline Keener's role was really Oscar-worthy though, so I guess it was just a slim year for nominations.

I also had a Cheesy Bacon Cheeseburger at TGIFriday's for dinner. The "Cheesy" part of this burger is separate from the "Cheese" portion. You get a cute little pancake of fried cheese stacked on top of the bacon, in addition to the normal cheese oozing across the meat patty. I thought it was a fish filet at first, though it also could have been a very odd onion ring. Luckily it was none of the above -- extra cheese is always a plus!

Happy Birthday Mark Connor!

Friday Fragments

Where pop culture and no culture collide

Samuel L. Jackson's next movie, Snakes on a Plane is coming out this summer. What a great title .

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I managed to claw my way into second place at Saturday Night Poker With Special Guest Appearance By Florida People, despite a pokerial advisor who constantly told me that the smartest investment was to go all-in, and the time I folded a pair of threes which became three of a kind on the river. This was the first game I'd gotten higher than 3rd place in the Poker Night 2006 series, which allowed me to get my ten bucks back and break even for the night (or as even as possible after all those eat-monsters ate all my popcorn and cookies).

I bet I could actually be pretty good at poker if I ever applied myself, since I have a math minor from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and I got a B+ in that math class about the woodpeckers and the holes (maybe it was pigeons). The problem though, is that I find it more exciting to play dangerously so I rarely ever play it smart. And on the nights where I do play it smart, I'm thwarted by all-around bad cards, who apparently don't want me to win.

I'm going to start keeping track of who wins and loses again even though all of last year's stats met an untimely demise in a freak accident involving an eraser and the dry-erase board. I could create a bunch of complex tables and pie charts and then take pictures of everyone who wins, but that gimmick's already been done on other sites and everyone who comes to my games hates getting their picture taken anyhow. I don't understand why though -- aren't these the hottest men and women you've ever seen outside of a magazine spread?

Happy "Amber has lived here for one year" week ! Last year at this time, I was taking my yearly week off from work and staying home in Sterling, since Anna and Ben screwed up our annual OBX week by getting married and all that. As if Jamaica was that much better than Duck. This year's OBX week is thankfully alive and well -- only nineteen more weeks to go!

Things I Remember

I remember watching cartoons on USA, where the opening animation was a bullet train (maybe the Cartoon Train) choo-choo'ing through the countryside and going through tunnels.

I remember the Nickelodeon station identification commercial where a set of false teeth gobbled up everything on the screen, and there was a different sound effect on each upbeat. The last two upbeats were filled with "Nick" and "olodeon!", followed by a springy sound and laughter.

I remember watching Dennis the Menace on Nickelodeon and wholly disapproving of the fact that there were two different actors playing Mr. Wilson. Joseph Kearns was the only good one.

I remember playing at my next door neighbour's when we were both about 4. We were hiding under the bed from her brother and she announced, quite proudly, "I can pee in the trashcan!" and then proceeded to do so, all while hiding sideways under the bed.

I remember falling out of a tree in their front yard, and getting the scar that's still prominently featured on my nose today.

I remember owning Construx before Legos were popular. One day I had to clean up whatever I'd built and I didn't want to, so I threw a tantrum and threw the Construx at the pine dresser, leaving permanent scars in the woodwork.

I remember picking up a cool toy at the Taney Avenue Mile Long Yard Sale which had four compartments and a series of levers that you moved in different directions to make a marble fall through every compartment. It always smelled like vomit, but it only cost me 25 cents.

I remember hearing this song ad nauseum in the car on long trips , or trying to fall asleep in the Nissan Stanza with my parents blaring Phantom of the Opera through the back speakers.

I remember that Senor Don Gato was the only worthwhile song we ever sang in elementary music class, because on the recording there were some ladies who sang the "meow meow meow" part.

I remember when one of our pregnant fish died so we dissected it and put it on slides so we could use the new microscope we'd gotten for Christmas.

I remember the Fugue Monster, a small rubber finger puppet that Mike gave me after one of Dr. Spencer's Fugue classes in 2003.

I remember that today is Annette Norstrem's birthday. Happy Birthday Netty!

What Celebrity Do You Look Like?

Over at MyHeritage.com , you can upload a photo of yourself and see what celebrities you most resemble. It's lucky for you, gentle reader, that I had plenty of free time last night:

Among some of the matches not pictured, Kim resembles Annette Bening, Anna resembles Alyson Hanigan and Jada Pinkett Smith, and Mike resembles Mother Theresa. I apparently look like Halle Berry, Heather Locklear, and Michael Vartan. Granted, all of these were less than a 50% match for me, and I just don't see any resemblance -- maybe it's recessive. After I uploaded Kelley's picture, I got tired of copying all the matches for my update, but surely this fun tool will be quite beneficial to your slow day at work today.

LOST tonight is a repeat, but next week is a new episode!

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From IMDb:
uri! is the latest in a line of high production value biopics from the studio that brought you Ray and Walk the Line, documenting the life and times of musician-blogger, Brian Uri!. From his early days as a small Asian boy to his later years as an older Asian man, you will laugh and cry at the fecundity of human spirit. The talent slated to be in this movie include:

The Family
Young Brian . . . . . . . . Ke Huy Quan
Adult Brian . . . . . . . . Daniel Dae Kim
Old Brian . . . . . . . . . Pat Morita (through CGI)
Mom . . . . . . . . . . . . Sally Fields
Dad . . . . . . . . . . . . John Goodman
Ellen Uri . . . . . . . . . Lucy Liu
The Pre-College Years
Young Jack. . . . . . . . . Macauley Culkin
Young Kim . . . . . . . . . Dakota Fanning
Ed Cannon . . . . . . . . . Ryan Stiles
The College Years
Kelley. . . . . . . . . . . Owen Wilson
Dave McGarry. . . . . . . . as himself
Philip. . . . . . . . . . . Tom Cruise
Shac. . . . . . . . . . . . Luke Wilson
Doobie. . . . . . . . . . . Jon Heder
Jason Chrisley. . . . . . . Heath Ledger
Dave McKee. . . . . . . . . Richard Dreyfuss
Dan Shiplett. . . . . . . . Ryan Phillipe
Madeleine . . . . . . . . . Reese Witherspoon
Paige . . . . . . . . . . . Sandra Bullock
Nikki . . . . . . . . . . . Sofia Coppola
Liz . . . . . . . . . . . . Fran Drescher
Rosie . . . . . . . . . . . Rosie Perez
Jason Mirick. . . . . . . . Hugh Grant
The Florida Years
Mike Catania. . . . . . . . Adam Sandler
Kathy . . . . . . . . . . . Glenn Close
Alex. . . . . . . . . . . . Ben Stiller
Rob . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Lesko
Mark. . . . . . . . . . . . Philip Seymour Hoffman
Peter Spencer . . . . . . . as himself
The Adult Life
Anna Ahlbin . . . . . . . . The RockNatalie Portman
Ben Ahlbin. . . . . . . . . Bruce Willis
Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . Scarlett Johannson
Rachel McKenzie. . . . . . Joey Lauren Adams
Jaood . . . . . . . . . . . Jaleel White
The Millionaire Years
Alyssa Milano . . . . . . . as herself
Rachel McAdams. . . . . . . as herself
Jason Chrisley's Hot Tub. . as itself
Butler. . . . . . . . . . . Christopher Hewett

Coming to theatres this Summer!

Friday O'Fragments

with guest appearance by Molly O'Malley the Llama

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While listening to a CD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at my parents' house last night, I was struck by the plethora of nonsecular music that has accumulated over the last thousand years. We have millions of songs and hymns about Jesus and dreidles, angels flying high, and chariots swinging low. It seems like there's a piece composed or invented for virtually every important religious scene or feeling and every religion has a few ditties that you can sing on the street which everyone will join in on. However, there is one religion that, sadly, does not have any uplifting music to go along with it. What is that religion? Scientology!

I thought at first I must be mistaken, because every religion has some variation on the theme of Buddha Loves Me, so I did a quick search of the Internet and only came up with three matches: One Man: A Scientology Music Video Celebrating L. Ron Hubbard's Birthday , We Are The Auditors -- A Scientology Music Video , and The Road to Freedom, with selections performed by John Travolta, Frank Stallone, Chick Corea, and L. Ron Hubbard himself . This is a very sad state of affairs, because as everyone knows, when people are shopping around for a religion to convert to, they always check out the tunes first. If composers don't feel the spirit of the religion enough to put it to song (see also, The Vatican Rag by Tom Lehrer 685KB MP3) then why should any layman be interested in what that religion has to say?

I, for one, would be very interested to hear the workday hymns hummed by the early Scientologists as they rocketed out of the volcano. To fulfill this aural need, I've decided to put my composer skills to work. Here is an excerpt from my first major work, We Shall Overcome Xenu (138KB MP3). I can't publish any more than this right now, otherwise the Church of Scientology might sue my ass.

The next movement is called ARC of Life and is written purely with a Tone Scale.

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You are bidding on the authentic lunchbox discussed in the February 15th edition of the famous URI! Zone blog . This is the ONLY "lunchbox owned by BU in the late 80s" available for public consumption, and was recently rediscovered in the basement of his childhood home. The front of the box features Gizmo next to his carrying case, and Billy Peltzer in the background. The back of the box shows Gizmo speeding through the hardware store in the climactic final scene and also has an authentic lime scratch n' sniff sticker in the lower right corner. Amber the cat not included. The Thermos is a veritable treasure trove of Gremlins lore -- the front says, "Stripe is a Gremlin" and has a picture of the devious villain from the first movie. The back says, "Gizmo is a Mogwai" and has a cartoon likeness of the lovable troll-looking motherlover that's very similar to the millions of mass produced plasticine dolls produced around 1986. If you spin the Thermos around very fast, it looks like Gizmo is turning into Stripe, which didn't really happen in the movie, but COULD HAVE IF GIZMO HAD EATEN AFTER MIDNIGHT!!! You can tell this is the real deal because of the signs of wear inside the lunchbox. The hinges and metal edges are corroded from years of milk and mushy apples, although the do-it-yourself instructions for placing the Thermos inside the lunchbox still shine as brightly as the day it was bought. Removing the Thermos lid reveals a thin layer of sediment around the threads, obvious evidence of multiple years of milk, crusted and flaked like dead skin on an old guy. This is a once-in-a-lifetime buy. You could be a part of history by owning BU's lunchbox! Proceeds will go to the BU Foundation for Writing Scientology Music. Bid now! And don't get it wet!!!!!!!

Congratulations to Kathy and Chris, who are now engaged! I enlarged the ring to increase my female readership, since that's the part they care about the most.

BU's Thoughts While Watching Harry Potter 4: Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom

If you've never seen it, you should watch the SNL parody of Hermione's boobies: .

Happy Birthday Aaron Ulm and Jen Graves!

New LOST tonight!

The Cost of Being BU

Everyone hates bills, except for the kinds with Rights written on them (in which case they pretend to love them but really hate them anyhow). The problem with monthly or periodic bills besides the way they prevent you from buying that horse ranch in Utah is that they're spread out just enough so you don't realize how much you're being nickel-and-dime'd to death. You get in the habit of writing the account number on that check and grumbling, but never really stop to think about how much it's costing you and what you're getting out of it. Today, I'm going to break down the bills of a young American middle-class worker bee to provide an object lesson in the hemorrhaging of cash. Of course, I don't yet have to worry about such insanities as day care and poopy diapers, and I won't bother with groceries and leisure, but the outcome is eye-opening, regardless.

Car Tax: $0.24 per day, $90 per year
A tiny, yet palpable rip-off. Stop taxing my little Honda and just apply a massive yuppy tax to anyone who owns an SUV but does not have 8 children or a logging job in the Alaskan tundra.

HOA Fees: $0.40 per day, $147 per year
This is just enough money to keep the street lights on and the common areas mowed, but not so much that the HOA could actually get nosy and intrude in my personal affairs. I wholeheartedly approve. This is probably the cheapest HOA fee in the metropolitan area.

Popeyes: $0.65 per day, $240 per year
My life would not be nearly as fulfilling if I didn't have Popeyes for lunch every Friday. This is a necessity in the strongest sense of the word.

Water: $0.71 per day, $260 per year
Loudoun County water tastes good and makes me lemon-fresh. I approve of this bill.

House Insurance: $0.91 per day, $333 per year
This is my kind of insurance. For less than a dollar a day I protect all my useless crap. A+

Phone Service: $1.41 per day, $514.65 per year
This amount gets me a land line, caller ID and call waiting, and is the smallest possible account type you can get with Verizon. Since I don't have a cell phone, I'd say this is worth it, if slightly expensive -- the only people who call me are my family, a couple friends, work, and an ass caravan full of telemarketers. It would probably be less expensive to just string up a tin-can-phone between the two other people I talk to regularly, and it would mean fewer imbecilic political surveys as well!

Cable Television: $1.47 per day, $536.55 per year
Since I grew up in suburbia, I equate television with a "necessary utility" but it's really not, especially at this price. I honestly can't remember the last time my television wasn't tuned to ABC, FOX, Comedy Central, Animal Planet, or the WB (since Kim is easily 42% of their viewership). With the exception of new episodes of LOST, I probably wouldn't even notice the TV was gone, and there are millions of shows on DVD to fill the void. I look forward to the day when they have à la carte programming, where you only order the channels you want, but the cable industry will probably find some way to screw that up too. If I ever fall down a well, break my typing hands, and have to cut back on my lifestyle while on disability pay, I bet this would be one of the first things to go -- and I would probably start Netflixing too.

High Speed Internet: $1.57 per day, $576 per year
After electricity (and maybe water), this is easily the most necessary of the necessities. I would probably even pay more for this. The Internet is so ingrown into my life now that it actually is a utility feature. I would not move somewhere without Internet service that's reasonably priced and has consistent quality. I hope never to have to bounce the signal off my barn and through Bessie's trough.

Trash Pickup: $0.88 per day, $324 per year
Such a rip-off. it's scientifically proven than small Asians generate less waste. Trash gets picked up twice a week (recycling once), and I barely ever have enough trash to do one pickup bimonthly. The only reason I keep it is because it would be a bigger pain in the ass taking garbage to the dump myself, and I wouldn't want to put trash in my car.

Car Insurance: $2.53 per day, $924 per year
Huge rip-off. My car's never been in an accident and most trips are the 7 miles to work and back. If stuff doesn't happen, you should really get your money back.

Electricity: $2.63 per day, $960 per year
It seems a little steep until I consider just how much stuff I have plugged in and how useful it is. In the winter the monthly bills shoot up to $120, and I thought that was horrible until my coworker mentioned that his Fairfax gas bill was $800 once. Thank the Lord for electric heat pumps.

House Tax: $8.54 per day, $3120 per year
Such a rip-off. I've never had a fire or a burglary or been rushed to the hospital in an epileptic fit from playing Warcraft too long. Plus, they said if I tried to play on the elementary school playground again during school hours I would have to register as an sex offender. I want 80% of this cash back -- the rest they are allowed to use on road improvements.

Mortgage: $46.02 per day, $16800 per year
Steep, but totally worth it. For the same price I could get a queen-sized bed at Super 8 for the night with nary a coin leftover for the escort service. Seeing this number gives me the urge to appreciate my house a little bit more though -- I probably appreciate it $38/day or maybe $40. I guess I could hug the wall or something.

Health Insurance:
I can't really count this because it comes directly out of my paycheck, and money never seen is money never spent in my opinion. I bet I pay way too much for it though.

Grand Total: $68.01 per day, $24825 per year
It is a sobering thought to realize that every hour of my time costs me $2.83. When I sleep through the night, that's twenty bucks down the drain! To help defray this cost, I will now be charging a $1/hour "social fee" to be your friend or go to parties. I will probably also favour bodily functions over social functions, because then at least I am using two out of thirteen of the above services!

Friday Fragments

You need a Chiquita Banana sticker on your forehead

There are now rumours that Isaac Hayes never actually left South Park, but that he has been recovering from a stroke and the Scientologists quit for him. I wouldn't put it past them.

Go Go Gadget Gadgets

In the 1997 movie, Conspiracy Theory, Jerry Fletcher tells Alice that he has an uncontrollable urge to periodically go to the bookstore and purchase a copy of Catcher in the Rye but doesn't know why. As a larger life lesson from the movie, I think this applies to all men and their gadgets. We're always obsessed with the latest and greatest doohicky at Brookstone and go through electronics like women go through shoes. I am pretty good about resisting the little voices that tell me I should own an iPod Nano and an iPod Pico, but I'm not completely immune to this gender-based syndrome (see also, my Roland SC-8850). I can go for months without a new gadget, but once I've finally made the decision to blow my cash on one, I purchase quite quickly.

Having never owned a handheld gaming system since the original monochrome Gameboy (complete with two vertical bars of pixels busted right down the center of the screen), I'd had my eye on the Gameboy DS for a couple months now. I was originally going to wait until the "Nano"-style version came out, but the latest word around the Nintendo water cooler pegged it for a June release, and I could have died in a tragic tuna fish mishap by then. So I picked up a Gameboy DS this weekend when I was sorely in need of a break from Java Certification work (which is progressing right on schedule).

Here is a picture of the DS on the desk in the electronic cortex of my home, the office. To give you something to compare its size to, I have placed it next to a frozen Banquet Chicken Pot Pie. If you are not used to judging size through frozen food products, the Gameboy DS is roughly the diameter of a reasonably healthy grapefruit picked at the height of the growing season in late October. The number and orientation of buttons matches the old Super Nintendo controller, and thankfully uses the old-fashioned cross-shaped pad for directions, rather than the retarded "thumb joystick" that all of today's game consoles employ, which requires such precision when moving that Mario will run off every cliff and be eaten by a mountain lion, even if you compensate for the horrible 3D camera obviously coded by a one-eyed monkey.

The DS stands for "Dual Screen", because its gimmick is a two-screened fliptop. The top screen shows the action, while the bottom screen provides ancillary information like maps and stats (some games also use the bottom screen as a touch pad and the DS comes with a stylus for writing chat messages over its Internet connection). There were three major reasons I decided to purchase this now instead of four months from now:

• Nintendo consoles work on a set schedule: The first two years see regularly released fun games, with few bad apples (think Mario Trout Fishing or Donkey Konga 4: Play with your Feet!). The next year sees very few games released, yet the company president assures everyone that he hasn't forgotten about the console yet. After that, the latest console is unceremoniously dumped for the next generation model, which probably won't come out for another two years anyhow. The GameCube (which I own) is currently in the latter period, so it's become increasingly hard to find worthwhile games to play.
• Now that I come home from work and do Java Certification work, I regularly spend ten to fourteen hours a day on a computer. This does not make my hands happy, so it's medically worthwhile for me to have a gaming outlet that puts my hands in a different orientation from mouse/keyboard.
• No matter how fun it still is, you can only play so much World of Warcraft in a given day. (I now have a level 31 warlock that I started last week).

I'm sure the DS Lite will be so cool that I'll buy it as well, but I can justify that by giving this one to a friend and then playing head-to-head Tetris all day long at the beach (seventeen weeks left!). In the meantime, I've been taking breaks from coding with Mario Kart DS which is just as fun as the original Super Mario Kart was. I also have Mario and Luigi and Nintendogs shipping out from Amazon, because I have to abuse my Amazon Prime trial membership to its fullest. I purchased Nintendogs because it's gotten great reviews, and I figure it'd be nice to own a dog but never have it jump on me and be able to turn it off whenever it annoys me. Maybe it will also give me dog-practice for Kim, who lives in an apartment and seems to have an insidious master plan to make me get a German Shepherd with visitation rights since she can't own one at her place.

I am onto her tricks though.

Untitled Post

I had to work onsite at Bailey's Crossroads yesterday so I took the opportunity to stop by my old high school and visit with my former Crew coach (who's also an eleventh grade English teacher). It was the first visit I'd made to the school since 2002 when I offloaded several hundred pounds of "Drum Major Teaching Materials" on the desk of the latest revolving-door band director, who may have been named Josquin, but perhaps it was Palestrina.

T.C. Williams High School from the west looks exactly the same as it did when I went there, right down to the list of State Championships won (which makes the not-so-subtle point that the school hasn't won one in over fourteen years), but the west side is being devoured by a fungal monstrosity that's already taken over the senior parking lot and promises to be the new, bigger-and-better replacement school for next year (if another welding fire doesn't set fire to the entire roof again). My coach's classroom looked the same as well, right down to the "Which College Should I Go To?" student reports hanging on the walls and the plethora of vocabulary words on the chalkboard. It was just like old times, except that I was dressed in my sexy "I'm interacting with people outside of the company" clothes and did not get mistaken for a lost student even once!

My coach plans to retire at the end of the school year -- he and his wife are selling their Burke house of 24 years and moving to a cozy Bay house with a pier near Yorktown. He expressed his relief that he was finally getting out of the school-biz, because (in his words), "the kids are getting stupider every year. It must be something in the water". He also mentioned that Alexandria's "Laptops for Every Kid" effort was a total bust because all the kids did was check their email and play games through class. He banned them from his classroom with impunity since he's a fossil and on his way out, but said that all other teachers in the school system had to do at least two lessons per quarter (4.4% of the year!) revolving around the laptops, so the school board could say they were being used. In another highly intelligent move only possible through the quick wit of a school board: all students take the Reading Comprehension Standards of Learning (SOL) test on their computer, using a split screen program that shows the text on top and the questions they answer on the bottom. The Writing SOL? They still take that by hand. For some interesting thoughts on NCLB laws, go read Kim's post . For photographs of Mike looking forward to being attacked go read his blog .

After trading war stories about school drama and Crew drama, I said my goodbyes and drove down to Skyline Center where I paid $9 to park for three hours. Parking fees are such a rip-off. I am paying someone for the privilege of storing my car on a slab of concrete where it might get stolen or broken into without liability. At the least, they should wash it for me, or feed it and take it for a walk. This is why God invented company expense reports and gas reimbursement plans.

Po Po Platter Day

List Day: One Things I Learned About Birds

Movie Review Day
Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown was "okay" -- not groundbreaking and not horrible. My ass informs me that it was about twenty minutes too long (my ass often informs me of such things) and I think Natalie Portman was a better "quirky love interest" in Garden State than Kirsten Dunst was in this movie.

Musical Musing

The timbre of Beth Orton's voice makes me want to take my migraine medicine in an intravenous drip turned all the way up. Her shaky vocals are literally the musical representation of car sickness (718KB MP3). I cannot understand why so many people went to hear her at the 9:30 Club or whatever local venue she recently visited. It's not that the music is so bad, but goodness, couldn't there be better singers out there somewhere?

Newsday Wednesday
A local plumber on a month long quest finally discovered a $20,000 engagement ring that had fallen into an auto-flush toilet by prying up a manhole. First, kudos to the plumber for his dogged pursuit. He is like the Javert of missing expensive crap flushed down the toilet. Second, $20,000 for an engagement ring? Really? Isn't the rule of thumb "two months salary" (or make it out of trumpet pieces if you are an unemployed trumpeter still in school in New York)? I guess it's feasible that a former professional baseball player turned high school teacher could make $120,000 a year. I know I don't. Finally, the fiancé is now my hero for joking at the critical moments of loss, "Is your arm caught in the toilet? Because if it's not, stop crying. Well, that was a short engagement." That takes major balls since you never want to mess with a woman and her engagement ring.

Wednesday Fragment

Cat Media Wednesday
Even if you hate cats, you will love this video, submitted by Anna (2MB WMV). There is inherent comic value in any movie where babies get beat up by cats, in my unbiased opinion. In fact, I will train my future child from an early age to eat catnip and chase Booty around the house and then submit it to America's Funniest Videos for the big cash prize. For good measure, here is a video of me pissing Booty off with a feather on a string (1 MB WMV). There are also new cat pictures at the bottom of this page and non-cat pictures from Poker Night and St. Patrick's Day: . I only have a few, not because my friends are so unphotogenic, but because they are highly recalcitrant when it comes to being happy go-lucky photo subjects.

New LOST tonight!

Randy Scouse Git

There's an article on CNN about the prevalence of profanity in society and the percentage of males and females who disapprove of it. To me, the context-appropriate use of a swear word is a wonderful thing -- it crystalizes your immediate feelings on stubbing your toe or falling down a well in a universally understood way that crosses all social boundaries. A comedian who delicately inserts appropriate profanity at key points in his shtick is guaranteed to be funnier than someone who tells the same joke without it.

I have no problems with people who swear around me, and don't even flinch at gangster movies which have perfected the art of converting single swear words into every part of speech and dangling participle known to man. Of course this doesn't mean that I swear in front of small children or polite society, because while I wouldn't mind a bit, I know that it's more an issue of other people getting offended. But what is the root of being offended? It's just an ingrained response learned from your parents and your environment that has little bearing on anything relevant. If you flinch when you hear a bad word, it's because you've been taught that the word is bad, even though it's just an arbitrary string of letters and syllables that could have all sorts of other connotations. One of Anna's sisters' toddlers made up an imaginary friend whose name was a swear word -- he had never heard the word said in life, he just put together a word from his imagination and it happened to be naughty.

The best thing to do would be to just let profanity run its course until the naughty words are no longer naughty. All words evolve, and the words that see frequent use are the ones with the most ephemeral connotations. Consider the word 'gay' which started out as 'merry' and became a slur against homosexuality, before becoming a legitimate term to describe homosexuality to the point where dictionaries regularly have this definition as the first one in the entry. Everywhere you go nowadays, you hear people say "[My teacher/my job/playing trmpet/this situation] is so gay", and offended bystanders get up in arms about how denigrating it is to associate homosexuality with negative connotations. I bet that in a vast majority of those cases, the word "gay" has simply morphed into a general-purpose word of negativity and has nothing at all to do with homosexuality, or that person's views on gay people.

Another good example is the word 'rape' which has become universally forged into a word that video gamers use to describe how well they did against other opponents or enemies in a game. "I just raped you in that game of Starcraft!" These kids are not trying to trivialize real rape -- the word just has a branched evolution and they're using a tamer game-oriented version of it. To make a big deal out of it would be as useless as bringing up slavery when another gamer says "You just got owned at NFL Blitz 2001!"

The solution here is obvious. We need to bring back Roseanne, the first show that dared to utter the word, "bitch", on primetime television and write an episode called "The One Where Roseanne Has Tourettes Syndrome". Once Roseanne says every possible naughty and off-colour word out there, all barriers will fall and twenty years later those words will be part of our daily vocabulary. After we've reached the point where there's absolutely no shock value left on television, the world will enter a new Golden Age of Enlightenment and all will be good.

Life is too short to get offended over anything you cannot control.

Friday Fragments

Where to come for all your weekend fragment needs

You can now purchase the soundtrack from LOST and support Michael Giacchino, the talented composer of The Incredibles and Alias . I will be getting it simply because I like orchestrated scores and they're a rarity on television shows in this day and age.

"If nothing else, I am so happy to be a part of the show's finale. Drew Goddard and Jeff Pinkner are writing the final script, and the final two hours air back to back. It's perfect. It's brilliant. It's exactly the way the show should end. And sitting around that table with people I've worked with for five years, and watching as we hash out the last hour of the series was such a powerful experience. 'Alias' was like getting my doctorate. Because of the accessibility of the producers and writers, I've learned more in five years on THAT show than 100 years in college. And it's nice to have five box sets of DVDs and point to it on a shelf and say, 'that is the work that I am most proud of.'" -- Chad Darnell on the upcoming series finale of Alias