the pod bay door

¦¦ I’ve spent an hour wrestling with HTML coding for tables, trying to create a 4 column by 9 row table to list my Oscar predictions, deserveds and sentimental favourites. Alas, I am HTML-challenged. So I’ll do it the old fashioned way, one line at a time.

I’ve seen every movie nominated in these eight categories this year excepy Y Tu Mamá También, for Best Original Screenplay. My picks are listed as Will Win (W), Deserves to Win (D), Hope It/She/He Wins (H):

Film: Chicago (W), Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (D), Gangs of New York (H)
Actor: Jack Nicholson (W), Daniel Day-Lewis (D), Daniel Day Lewis (H)
Actress: Renée Zellweger (W), Salma Hayek (D), Julianne Moore (H)
S Actor: Chris Cooper (W, D, H)
S Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones (W), Meryl Streep (D), Catherine Zeta-Jones (H)
Director: Martin Scorsese (W), Rob Marshall (D), Martin Scorsese (H)
Original Screenplay: Gangs of New York (W, D, H)
Adapted Screenplay: Adaptation (W), The Hours (D), The Pianist (H)
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¦¦ Some years ago I asked my mother if she remembered first hearing about the start of WWII in 1939. She was 7 years old at the time, and said she did. She was playing outside, bouncing a ball against a wall, and heard another kid say the war had started. Tonight I was in Safeway buying some groceries, and while standing in line at the checkout, heard a staff member say, “We’re at war. Started about 20 minute ago.” She then began bagging my groceries for me. I’ll probably remember that moment for the rest of my life.

¦¦ The link to Michael Moore’s letter to “Governor Bush” is spreading through blogdom like a virus. But it’s a virus worth spreading.

¦¦ Of interest to me is the bashing being absorbed by Natalie Maines and The Dixie Chicks, after Maines’ comment at a recent concert in London, England: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” Shortly after her comment made it to the shores of the USA, The Chicks issued a statement clarifying her earlier comment, and two days later, Maines issued an demeaning apology, most likely with the pressure from and the urging of The Chicks’ record company, as fans began steamrolling their CDs and country music stations stopped playing their music.

I give props to Maines for having the guts to speak her mind, perhaps unaware of the consequences, but having done so despite that. It’s unfortunate that she had to issue an apology that reads like she got a spanking and was sent to her room without dinner for being a bad girl. Oddly enough, on her website (or a website devoted to her, I can’t tell), is a different message: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. ***Theodore Roosevelt***” Strong words, but words that do not seem to apply to the Bush Administration.

I think I will buy their new album.

¦¦ Two fish cutters slaughtering live carp in NYC heard one of the fish began speaking in Hebrew about the imminent end of the world. Fact or fiction? You decide.

¦¦ From Blogcritics.org: I will preface this (first) review by noting that it will be quite biased. Jessica Owen is also known as The Artist Formerly Known As Jessica Schoenberg. The review is biased because when Jess lived in Edmonton, I performed alongside her for a couple years (93-94), and played guitar on and arranged most of her first album, Sounds Like A Plan, released on cassette only.
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¦¦ The world will get more complicated and frightening this week. One of my colleagues mentioned “war anxiety” today. I’m thinking I’d like to lighten things up a bit, so I’ll mention the upcoming film A Mighty Wind, which features the legendary 60s acoustic group, The Folksmen. The first I heard of The Folksmen was in the mid-80s on SNL, when they reunited to sing their Top 70 hit from 1962, “Old Joe’s Place.” Be in line on April 16th! (BTW, any and all feelings of deja vu re: Spinal Tap, is intended.)

¦¦ The new Steely Dan album, Everything Must Go, the follow-up to their Grammy-winning Two Against Nature, will be in the stores on June 10th.

¦¦ The Beatles Anthology will be released on DVD in a couple weeks. The Beatles’ web site is dedicated to this release, but it’s a bit frustrating to have to move the cursor around the screen to locate the “hidden” video and info nodes.

¦¦ In other news, McDonald’s outlets in three US cities will offer one hour of Wi-Fi to customers that buy a combination meal. Geoff, we’ll have to check this out in NYC in June.

¦¦ I guess it can’t be all fun all the time. Read this scathing indictment of the US education system, Learning To Be Stupid In The Culture Of Cash. The author laments the absence of awareness and knowledge geography, history, philosophy, and political science among her students. This may sound familiar to Albertans. In the early days of Ralph Klein, our current premier and de facto King, some members of his political party, at a convention in Banff, seriously considered having the philosophy and psychology departments at universities in Alberta closed down, because they didn’t generate money or wealth. Dumbing down, anyone?

¦¦ The Edmonton Journal published a feature on blogging in the Friday 14 March 2003 edition. Written by Mairi MacLean, the two pieces feature comments from a number of locals, including Geoff, Robert (in Lethbridge), Jen, myself, and a mention of Kelly‘s site as well. Given the small amount of coverage available in a newspaper, I thought Mairi did a good job introducing blogging to the EJ readers. My only quibble: the URLs for the websites mentioned were not included in the print or online(!) versions of the articles.

¦¦ In the world of You-Gotta-Be-Sh*tting-Me, a woman in Germany began emerging from a 6-year coma when her parents took her Regensburg to listen to a Bryan Adams concert. My favorite take on the story left me in tears from laughing. Previously Bryan Adams was known only for Waking Up The Neighbours, not comatose fans. Meanwhile, in Kenya, sadly, three people died trying to retrieve a mobile phone that fell into an open-pit latrine.

¦¦ It’s unfortunate that you need to subscribe to read stories from the NYTimes Magazine online. The March 9 issue features three fascinating articles on: face transplant surgery, “smart-mobbing” the antiwar movement, and a disturbing piece on Mel Gibson and his father, orthodox Catholic theologian Hutton Gibson. Discussed is The Passion, Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, with the actors speaking in Latin and Aramic only. There will be no subtitles. “Gibson has has said that he hopes to depict Christ’s ordeal using ‘filmic storytelling techniques’ that will make the understanding of the dialogue uncessary.” (NYTimes, 9 March 02, p53) The publication of the article has infuriated the younger Gibson. What is disturbing about the article in the NYTimes Magazine are some of Hutton Gibson’s beliefs such as: the Sept 11 jets were not flown by Al-Qaeda operatives but were remote-controlled, and that the Holocaust never happened.

¦¦ Why are there not enough hours in the day to do what you want to do?

¦¦ Forthcoming project: to record in a notepad every song that appears in my head in one day from wakeup in the morning to going to sleep at night the same day.