Tuesday, March 30th, 2004

One Liner: casting judgement down from the moutain Time of Death: 4:07 pm.

Listen I'm gonna shoot you straight here, I wrote an update a few weeks back about my obsessive compulsion to collect DVDs and never throw away magazines, the post is an abomination and is scrapped at least for now. In the story I mention that I get Blender magazine but never care enough to read it. If there is a photo spread I flip through it but if I ever get my mind set for reading its usually a novel for a class and if I have time for a magazine it's never Blender, but the subscription was free so I'm not complaining. The reason I'm telling you about this is because I made a photo about sad little Blender, unloved and ignored on the island of misfit toys and I felt like finally using it. So i decided to flip through this past month's issue of Blender to find something to write about so I could use the photo and I came across a short interview with Johnny Knoxville. Let me preface everything with the disclaimer, I am judging public image and careers, not people, I don't know these people from holes in the walls. Johnny Knoxville can currently be seen in Walking Tall with the Rock, is starring in the next John Waters film, and is set to star in the next Farrelly Brother's film among a few other upcoming roles. On top of this he's just started his own record label, named creatively enough Johnny Knoxville Records...the label only has one recording artist, which is conveniently enough his cousin. I don't like Johnny Knoxville, I can't for the life of me understand his appeal, I don't know where he came from exactly but I wish he would go back. There's just something so tacky about him. I was a big fan of Bam Margera and the CKY videos back when they first came out and I was a kid who liked to make mischief and spent a lot of time skating, badly, don't be fooled, I never got any good. When the Jackass humor exploded onto MTV, I'm not going to pretend that I tuned out right away, I was a little rabbit nibbling up all I could get, But I never liked how Johnny Knoxville seemed to leech his way into the limelight of the series when his only contribution was hurting himself, anyone can do that, masochism is not original. Bam and the CKY guys were talented at something at least, the crazy stunts were offset by their skating and biking prowess. And they were funny, creative, original guys...of course their humor can get tiresome after a while too, when it seems they are trying too hard, but they weren't like Knoxville. Knoxville only participated in gross out stunts involving shit, someway of injuring himself, or some sort of painfully planned out stunt for shock value. Lighting yourself on fire for less than 10 seconds, after being prepped by professionals and consulting doctors, while in a fire retardant suit, next to a pool, with an expert armed with an extinguisher present, is not incredibly interesting Johnny. That's an amateur attempt at stunt-man work and it's not funny or shocking but yet an actual profession. Not long after the mainstream Jackass explosion it was ruined for me. That type of cheap humor gets old and fast...When the mainstream masses are copycating things that were only funny because they were creative, then its time to hang it up. And I'm not talking about the copycats that hurt themself, in fact one of my friends lit himself on fire and of course something went wrong, enter some hospital time. He's ok now so we can laugh and laugh, and then shake our heads sadly. To be honest, I did some of the CKY type stunts and things, some new ideas and some copycat, but when it was fresh, when it was still new and crazy, before MTV. When I still see kids, years after Jackass has been on MTV, still thinking that they are the coolest kids alive after videotaping crashing a shopping cart into a bush, I just don't get it, do people not have any creative moral standards? I don't mind that style if it's your thing, just think of something new to do. So I'm past it, turned off by it but I doubt that I'm very much more mature. But I don't hold any ill will against the guys involved, but Knoxville is soured in my mind because he never did anything that interested me in the slightest and here he is reaping the rewards, gotta say good job for his agent I guess. Creativity should be rewarded, not Cliche...but then again Johnny Knoxville seems to be doing ok without any original ideas or talent, maybe that's his draw with fans. :I'm a coward by nature (Johnny Knoxville)

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Monday, March 29th, 2004

One Liner: watch in horror as I go all LiveJournal on you Time of Death: 11:19 am.

so this is what i've come to, when I'm bored and/or pumped full of life for no good reason, I sit at my computer and write stuff down? It's a beautiful day here in Virginia, I'm done with classes for the day at 10am, I didn't sleep last night, no good reason why not. I'm full of beans as they used to say, zestfully clean and brimming with a happy feeling and I'm dancing around my room for half an hour trying to think of something to do to pass the time before lunch. I know I have to study for a test tommorow but this is bouncy time, not study time, plus if I start reading and come down off this adrenaline kick, the lack of sleep will hit me and I'll be out for hours and without lunch, o me or my. The screen, only two or three feet from my face, is blurry as my contacts, dry from extended use, are giving me lip. I put on my lacrosse gloves and had a toss with myself against a wall for a few minutes on the only wall that I am sure that no one is on the other side of, this wall sadly is in my room and I have to put a pillow over my monitor in fear that an errant ball would smash its flat LCD screen to smithereens. This game of catch soon turns to a series of dances involving my lacrosse stick and then ends. Reluctant to sit this one out but I concede, visibly beaten, and return to my old failsafe time passer, the computer. Hey lets talk about something, give me a topic and I bet I can ramble on about it, hmm...you're not being very helpful today? Wait is there even anyone here? O man, I have definitely alienated my core audience with my recent half-assed perfomances. Well if you really know me and you really know my site, when things have gotten stale, it usually takes one of these boring emo-esque ramble catharsises, pardon me, catharsi, to open the flood gates of creativity and get the kid rolling again. Stick with me, the goodstuff cycles on and off like an athlete on steroids. :...I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. -You're not that far ahead...

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One Liner: so galikinookis is not the butler? Time of Death: 6:05 am.

Before Christmas I had bought a few semi-gag gifts to throw into the white chinese auction gift swap that was being done among friends. I left for home before the actual gift giving, in order to get ready for florida, and was subsequently left with a test-tube of bubbles that harden when blown instead of popping, a soft fluffy ball shaped chicken that made bawk bawk bagawk sounds when you hit it and a 5 dollar DVD of something called Pingu, the adventures of a claymation penguin. (hahaha harden when blown, i just got it)... I finally got around to watching the DVD tonight and truly had a Super Troopers moment laughing in the dark at the incoherent flickerings of my television. I was laughing way too much for something so terribly not funny. Had I been under some sort of influence, my behavior might have been justified but I was quote 'sober as a bird.' This Pingu program contains no actual talking, at least not anything I could understand. But it's not like Charlie Chaplin/Mr. Bean/Mr. Bill funny or anything, I assume it's just a kids program that is described on the DVD case as 30 minutes of fun with the charming and cheeky penguin. The language Pingu speaks is nothing more than a series of squeaks and mumbles and the occassional honking noise, so it must be gibberish but it sort of sounds French. His parents definitely speak in a more traditional word and sentence format that I can only assume is French-ish even though the back cover says that everyone in the village speak Penguinese a universal language. Apparently Penguinese is mostly laughing, honking and French mumbling. The "thirty minutes of fun" consist of Pingu hanging out with a mentally retarded seal, arguing gibberish with other baby penguins, helping his father deliver the mail on his exhausting route of five residences, playing tennis with a fish instead of a ball and acting as penguin-boy-servant to an elderly organ grinder who seemed like a typical child-penguin-molester. Evidently the creators thought so much of this project that they couldn't be bothered to create a DVD menu, because when the DVD loads it goes right to the cartoons and then when it ends it goes right back to the beginning again, no menus in sight. The back cover says award-winning but within the claymation continuity errors abound, things appear where they werent before, but who wants to nit pick? However the Pingu website is surprisingly well done for such a shoddy franchise. And the theme song is short but quite sweet, french children sing to a uptempo beat: "meennp meeenp, Pi-Pi-Pi-Pi, Pi-Pi-Pi-Pi, Pingu, Pingu."

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Sunday, March 28th, 2004

One Liner: The Best Deceptions Time of Death: 4:48 am.

Ok, I meant to get to this after spring break, but you know thats how much I care about you, that things like this can just go untended to, stagnate and die. Lets try and get it's heart pumping again, clear. This is only one problem that I have with Atkins, and its take-over of the American food landscape. But this post is not about Atkins, its about Mayonnaise. yeah Patty Mayonnaise, moron. i'm so sorry, thats what i first thought about too. Over the break while preparing and consuming one of many many sammiches I noticed a nice big red circle on the mayo label. Hellmans has the audacity to advertise on their jars that their mayo has 0 carbs as always. So what? If you're trying to lose weight, maybe cutting down on carbs is a good idea...but the answer does not in any way involve mayonnaise. This is the main problem with Atkins, people are so carb crazy, that any food that is not high in carbs is being adverstised as Atkin's friendly. Friendly is nice, i like friends, but 1 teaspoon of mayo has 100 calories and 11 grams of fat...Now as a guy who has been lucky enough thus far to be thin and have a high metabolism, these numbers don't mean anything to me, but it doesn't seem like its good for dieters trying to lose weight. This Atkins crap is so out of control and consuming everything in its path like a wild fire and people are just stupid enough to think that Mayonnaise is healthy. Here's a little help, its not. Lets examine the contents: Soybean oil, whole eggs, vinegar, water, egg yolks, salt, sugar, lemon juice, natural flavors, calcium disodium EDTA (used to protect quality). That shouts health conscious to me. Now I was thinking, who the hell thought of mixing these ingredients together, looked at it and said that looks good, lets eat it. Well when they grabbed a handful and glommed it down they must have felt sick, right? So who decided to stick with it and just spread a little on a sammich? And if this is the recipe for mayo and it has stuck around for such a long time, were their earlier prototypes that were less edible? And what must those have been like? Actually all the answers can be found here if you're so inclined. The Hellman's jar also lists their trademarked properties, which include the name Hellman's, the slogan "Bring out the Hellman's, and Bring out the Best" and the blue ribbon. So Hellmans has the rights to blue ribbons, so watch out sucker unless you want to get sued. And as if to further divide the east coast and west coast, Hellman's is sold as Best Foods Mayo west of the Rocky mountains, The same corporation packages their mayo under the Best Foods label instead of Hellman's. So for anyone on the west coast reading this that doesn't know what Hellman's is, just pretend I said Best Foods "Doug decided that after all Patty really wasn't the one for him. and Skeeter was" (x).

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Friday, March 26th, 2004

One Liner: TJPdc Time of Death: 12:48 am.

Listen, baby, I know I haven't been giving you my full attention lately. It's not fair, and I'm kinda sorta sorry...No don't hit, listen to me, I would be more remorseful if I wasn't so nuts about this new attachment. I didn't mean for it to happen this way, and I couldn't think it would be fair to ignore you any longer without some answers, you deserve that much....No, you deserve so much more, you're right, but this is something I have to do. I'll understand if you never speak to me again but I think I have the energy to devote my full attention to you and maybe see my Goomah on the side. Thats not good enough? Well that's going to have to do. You knew the deal when you got involved with me, you've seen webmasters before me, lose interest and entertain themselves elsewhere, but you still wanted all that I could give you. I'm not trying to turn this on you, but I've seen you making eyes at some other sites, and if they weren't located out of other countries, they'd be toast. The fact is this, I've had this sideproject that I've been working on only for the past few days, its not unusual for webmasters to take side projects, all the greats do, and even some schluubs like me get the urge to dillute what little genius they have, and spread themselves thin, and put their eggs in too many baskets and then they're like where are all my eggs, i can't find that blue Robin's Egg, and who the hell ate my Cadburry Cream Egg? It's like Eddie Vedder kept working on Pearl Jam but teamed up with members of Soundgarden to form Temple of The Dog. They had a hit or two, but fizzled quickly. That's what I'm thinking, but really I'm full of hope thinking this new site will be bigger than anything ever in the world. woohoo Well the new site is called TomJonesPants.com and came out of nowhere after I listened, really listened to some of Tom Jones's songs, most specifically Sexbomb. Tom Jones is famous for his voice and his tight pants, he's an icon for Las Vegas and a lust filled sexual predator. The site originated as a bit of a joke of a fansite, even though I have recently become a crazy obsessed fan, I'm still just joking around. But the sky's the limit. There is no real author, anyone can write for TJPants and I hope you do. Right now we are accepting any stories about tom jones, but the future holds unlimited possibilities. My hopes is to have TomJonesPants DotCom be a mecca for writing of both factual and fictional natures. The subpages are not yet finished, but most of that for now will consist of Tom Jones fan stuff most of which can be found by clicking the TomJones links at the end of the Navigation bar. "Listen, occasionally you might learn something."

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Thursday, March 18th, 2004

One Liner: floggin daniel patrick Time of Death: 12:45 am.

its been a while since my last drunk update, and as I've been drunk all day I thought I would go for it. hey it was st pattys today, I bet you needed me to tell you czuz your a moron. moron. Hey guess what I went to class in the morning and then I around 12:30 was drinking in Fox Hills. We were driving golf balls into a huge net and the un-explored woods respectively and drinking like Irish Fishes, Karp? Bass? ahahha Basss. Yes. loaves and loaves of Irish Soda-Bread flooded the party as people ate, drank and were pretty much merry. Me and Luis started up a game of Wiffleball in the parking lot which eventually ended up as a huge girls versus guys battle Royale. Girls got 5 outs and guys had to bat one handed with a beer in the other hand. Goostuff. Mike was in style in his kilt, throwing the daniel patricks day bash. Hwere are we now? well fast forward, I leave with Smitty, wait no I beat Shaun in Skins in Tigre Woods, no big deal, it was close, hes the man still, but it happened why wouldnt I tell you what happened. I'm in the truth telling business. Ok so I leave and I'm playing NBA live 2004, I'm the KNicks and I'm in the Finals game 3 against the Mavs. I'm up 2 to nothing, yea for me. So I play a half and then watch Around the Horn and PTI. Then I finish the game, I win, and oooops look at the clock its time for class, my three hour macro class. I go to class, visibly inebriated, I stumble in the door, not so dramatically, but late, damnit I'm late. Now someone was in my seat. My fucking seat, so I'm like a dear in headlights just standing, well maybe swaying, I'm drunk shutupayourface. next move is to survey the room for a chair, not so much luck, so the teacher is now been interupted and now he decides that he shoudl disturb my quest for a chair. An exchange took place that would normally be quite embrassing which caused the class to laugh at my expense. So he says something like can I help you, Which is justified, I'm sure I seemed out of place and he doesnt know me as we only meet once a week, I explained that I wanted a chair, and he said something about me being late and I got a bit more flumaxed in my drunken stupor and asked if I should leave, and he said that I should go, it would be best since I had already disrupted the class. So great, Well I probably wouldn't have made it through 3 hours or economics drunk off my ass, but I was gonna give it a shot, and I got as far as I could. So then I went back to party and told the story, hit some golf balls and drank much much more. "if i was outside, i would just find a comfy bush, ans sleep ther" (mike).

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Wednesday, March 17th, 2004

One Liner: daniel patrick's day Time of Death: 8:39 am.

My middle name is Patrick, I'm a little bit Irish. Sounds like cause for celebration. Next round of drinks is on me...hey well actually I'm a little strapped for cash so maybe eveyone should buy their next beer themselves and I'll owe you each individually. People say, you're not Irish, whats with this whole Irish out of nowhere dan? I'll tell you, I'm mostly Polish and Italian, more Polish than Italian, but as most of the major players on my Polish side of the family are deceased, we only celebrate Italian traditions and spend all the holidays with my mother's side, because my grandfather came over from Italy. But my grandmother is mostly Irish, and a little English and German. So there you have it I am 1/8 Irish and was actually named after my Irish great grandfather. So at least one day a year I have an excuse to acknowledge my Irish heritage and give props to great grandy with nice cold one. I can't be any worse than the rest of the fakers, who just like-a the booze "And a one that isn't cold, is barely a one at all" (strong bad).

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Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

One Liner: creating the noise that seems to fascinate Time of Death: 7:22 pm.

Check out the newstands, flip through some magazines, and ask yourself a question. What does the teeny-bopper magazine YM stand for? Maybe you already know. Maybe I'm a loser for not knowing, but then you're the one with the subscription to YM, not me...good for you, loser. I apologize, I'm the loser, if for no other reason than the fact that I'm devoting several paragraphs discussing this rag. Anyway, I always thought I knew what it stood for. I was positive that I had heard or read somewhere that the 'zine was called Young Miss. I thought it a stupid name, but figured it had been around since the first days that boys had been deemed cute, way before Tiger Beat came stomping on the scene. But that's not it, It's not Young Miss, and now another thing that I had rested easy in thinking that I knew has been proven untrue. Maybe they changed it recently, right? Maybe. So what does YM stand for? Well, Yao Ming is getting pretty popular, but not really amongst teen girls, probably not that. How about Youth Movement? No. How about looking at the subject matter, cute boys and makeup tips. Well then it could be Yummy Men, or Your Make-up. But those are wrong too. Damnit, there are only like two pages in the dictionary for words starting with Y, so this shouldnt be so hard. Teen girls want to be treated like princesses, so how about You're Majesty? Any of these sound good?: Yawning Malcontent, You're Malnourished, Yanking Monkey, Yearbook Mania, Young Maneater, Your Monthly, Yeast-Infections & Mammograms, Yak Milk. In Japan, YM is a magazine, bordering on soft core pornography, that features pictures of young girls. It's called Young Magazine, but I don't think the core audience is the same demographic of young girls as the american YM consists of. Well get this, it says what it stands for on the cover, seems I was trying to hard. YM stands for Your Magazine. Thats it. Click for Proof. It's your magazine, the one for you, your one and only, everything you think or want to learn more about. Thats really a very simple title, but might be a bit on the presumptious side. See, I'm holding this in my hand and it says it's my magazine, but really thats not all that true. I had nothing to do with production, I don't see dime one from the profits, and when I tried to leave the store without paying I was arrested. Apparantly pointing at the cover was not enough proof of ownership for the police. "Obviously, doctor, you've never been a 13-year old girl" (virgin suicides).

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One Liner: everyone's watching, for animals crossing Time of Death: 1:03 am.

When I drove home for my spring break last week, yes just home, (picture me with empty pockets pulled out smiling sadly), I was as I just said driving, in my car and I flipped off a cop. Thats the hook, hopefully you continued to the next paragraph, this being that one. So the story goes that there was some asshole on my rear bumper, riding me like he's toby maguire and I'm seabiscuit. I was already flying and I couldn't move over so I just kept speeding up. The light brown mitsubishi eclipse or something was really being an asshole for a few minutes and I was pushing my ancient gray buick to its limits, doing near 90 (my speedometer stops at 85, but the needle disapeared into the dash so I assume it had to be near 90). Quick note, my car is an '87, and it only has 67,000 miles on it. Sure the odometer doesnt have a sixth digit so if I ever tried to sell it, most people would assume it had reached 99,999 and rolled over, but this is not the case. I know for a fact grandma only drove to church, bingo, and the Elk's club where her seniors group would catch buses for field trips to fudge factories. Eventually I was making gestures to the effect of "whoa man, calm down" and after which I got pissed and shot my pesky friend the bird. When I was finally able to get over to let the jerk pass he just sidled up next to me boxing in, and honking his horn. I just focused on the road and ignored the hothead to my left assuming that he just wanted to make nasty gestures at me. Eventually when he layed on the horn I looked over, and sure enough it was a cop in uniform. He put his hands up in front of him and mouthed the words "Slow Down." And then took off. What? I get off scott-free? really? Maybe the cop was off duty and not undercover, his eclipse didn't have any extra radio antennae that most undercover cop cars have. So continues my streak of never having recieved a ticket for a moving violation. I speed all the time. Who doesn't. I am fascinated that I haven't gotten a speeding ticket before. The fastest documented speed that I've achieved was 105, driving an Escalade, how about that? You ever drive an Escalade? yeah, well how about over 100 mph? Oh yeah? You owned an Escalade and had it up to 120? You sold your Escalade cuz it bored you? Really? Well I'm embarassed, serves me right for bragging, shown up once again like a chump, like a chump. The closest calls previous to this old fuck you to the cop have been two warnings, one written and one verbal. Once I got a warning for rolling through a stop sign, no biggie. The written warning is more interesting and came when I had first gotten my license. Me and Matt were in a quick check and I saw a state trooper and we stood one aisle from him and I started talking about a balloon of drugs in my ass loudly to make sure the cop could hear. We left the store laughing it up and apparantly he followed us. It was dark and he was riding my ass causing me to speed, I don't know how I missed the lights on top of his car in the rearview but I did. I sped, cut through a parking lot to avoid a light, sped in the parking lot, crossed a two lane highway recklessly and got airborne over the rounded highway and pulled into a parking lot across from the one I had cut through. The cop parked behind me so I couldn't leave the space and then chewed me out for driving recklessly and making a mockery of his profession by talking about drugs in my ass. But then still no ticket. No ticket. Visibly enraged that I had insulted him, he let me off even after commiting at least 3 moving violations. Why am I lucky? I can understand on the road in my old buick, left to me by my grandmother, I don't catch the eye of the police. They probably have a hard time believing the car can even achieve speeds that are illegal. "remember kids, if you're going to smoke weed, be prepared to laugh a lot with your friends" (Strangers with Candy)

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Thursday, March 4th, 2004

One Liner: Spring Break Non-traffic Time of Death: 8:56 pm.

Once again Spring Break is upon us, or at least me and lots of people I know. I'm too poor to go anywhere, I had to fall even deeper into debt with my folks by asking for some gas money to even get home, so thats how little cash I have. But since it's break and my normal schedule and responsibilities get a vacation I doubt I'll be posting for the next week or so. Chances are, that if you, the current reader, are also on spring break, you won't be reading this anyway. come to think about it, maybe nobody is reading this. If I'm the only one here, maybe I'll get naked and strut around, shouting ethnic slurs, why not, no one will ever know. Spring Break isn't actually during the spring, which starts March 21st. The expression "Pull yourself up by your boot straps" seems impossibly difficult to accomplish (see picture). "Discuss."

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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004

One Liner: piss test Time of Death: 6:02 pm.

now this is none of my business, at least not at this time, but lets talk about pregnancy tests. I have no experience in the matter, and I'm thinking if I were to perhaps have gotten a girl pregnant, that she would hold the little tester under her piss, without needing much input from me... but maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is a couple type thing like taking a salsa dance class...maybe its as invigorating and freeing as a swingers social at the local Elk's club, so if I'm way off on the golden shower and little stick ceremony of commitment, then feel free to tell me so. I was in class today and during some discussion about whether you would choose to know the future if you could, somebody asked if you would have to know everything about the future or just a similar amount relative to the extent that a person knows the present. The professor said indignantly "no you can't have your cake and eat it too, its all or nothing, you're not somewhat pregnant, you either are pregnant or you're not." Which got me thinking about the commercial that I had seen just the other day for a new pregnancy test. This commercial began with "Now it's possible to be just a little bit pregnant!" Really? What new technology can do nowadays is really remarkable. Well good marketing, you got my attention and I'm not in the market for baby-detecting pee sticks. Apparently their are at least two new pregnancy tests available that can detect pregnancy up to four days before you, and by you I mean me, miss your period. Both First Response Early Result and Clearblue Easy Earliest Results test claim that they tell you if you are pregnant earlier than any other brand. I don't know how both can claim such a thing, they can't both be the quickest. In other fascinating pregnancy test news, their are now digital displays that spell out "Pregant" or "Not Pregnant" which is good I guess, clarity is key, but that signals the retirement of all those generic sitcom jokes about how no one can tell if its one blurry blue line or two blurry blue lines, or a pink colon or a red semicolon. "Apu & Manjula: [as symbols appear on the tester] Baby ... baby ... oh, lemon" (simpsons)

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Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004

One Liner: No shirt, no shoes, no dice Time of Death: 3:41 am.

Hi...I'm surprised to see you here. Let me explain. I had gone to the ATM and requested a balance inquiry a few days ago, and it showed that I only had $13 in my checking account. No big surprise to me that my balance had not changed since the last time I had checked. Well today I got my online end of the month bank statement and it showed that I had $38, with no new deposits. Why is this any of your goddamned business? Because $13 dollars wouldn't be enough to pay my server for this here website for the month of March. I was pretty sure that I was gonna have to take 'er down, and wasn't planning any posts, but the magic of computer error has provided me another month in which to unsuccessfully look for employment and bore you with drivel. Lucky you. but enough about me, lets get to business. The Oscars were on last night. Karthik likes award shows. There was nothing else on. So we watched it . But we did take an hour and 15 minute break in the middle for Dream Job. We weren't missing that, no matter how many not even mildly clever arias Billy Crystal sang about the best picture nominees. I hate award shows. Right? Who's with me? It's a poor excuse for a ratings spike, the lure of everyone's favorite star in the same room, something for everyone. That's why there is an over abundance of award shows, because people watch. Why do people watch? 4 hours of boring speeches thanking people we don't know, a few cliche awkward jokes read off teleprompters by presenters, and a Billy Crystal montage to open the show, in which he was naked in half of the scenes. And he has not weathered so well, that is to say he had sagging man boobs. I have nothing against reading who won what award in the paper the next day, but I can't stand watching award shows. I will of course make an exception in the case of MTV award shows, [except when the Wayans Brothers hosted, you could hear the crickets (but Tim from Rage did climb that bit of scenery in protest which was cool)] just because there is usually a pre-filmed movie spoof or scandalous event worth seeing. If even for a moment, it makes sitting through the monotony almost worth it. And the boring monotony is mild, because they dont include minor technical awards which have a tendency to stretch the show to nearly 4 hours. LOTR swept, which sucks, when the DVD comes out for the Return of the King, then hopefully all the fanfare of these films will go away. I fell asleep during the first Lord of the Rings and had vowed never to see any of the others just for spite. Just because I can't imagine getting that involved in this fantasy epic world. It's probably not a great way to go through life, to shun things that don't immediately catch my fancy, and that the general masses flock to, but for now I'm taking a stand. The last time I took a stand not to see a movie, it was Titantic, I held out for like 4 years and finally submitted, because I was trying to watch every movie that had ever won the Oscar for Best Picture. I got about halfway through and gave up. If I ever get around to completing the list, then I'll have to watch LOTR 3, and if I want to understand it, I should see the rest of one and then see number two first, i'm not looking forward to it. I was very happy for Sophia Coppola, first lady of artsy filmmaking, (daughter of Francis Ford, and married to Spike Jonze) for winning Best Screenplay for Lost in Translation. I really like Lost in Translation but I liked Virgin Suicides, her first film, so much more and it's good to see her get some well deserved credit. I was sad for Bill Murray for not winning Best Actor, now I didn't see Mystic River, and I know Sean Penn is a good actor, I got misty eyed watching I Am Sam, he was very believable. Even though my favorite role of his will always be Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High. I was rooting for Murray, he has come a long way as an actor, and is very talented, but I was afraid that since Penn had been nominated and lost before that he would get it. Also Murray's role in Lost in Translation was maybe a little too close to his real life self, to earn a little gold man. He goes into seclusion between films and on Letterman he cried while talking about his kids, but then was still witty with a quiet humor that has become more evident of him in his recent films. Denise: "Danwho, you look healthy" me: "Hi, haha I'm not healthy" Brad: "What else is new, right haha."

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