( 8:45 PM )
Act Naturally
I only saw a couple of Academy Award-nominated films this year, so I'm not going to weigh in on the ceremonies tonight. However, two quick things came to mind in watching the opening of the show.
1) I am a long time advocate of women growing their hair long - let it down to your shoulders girls cause it just adds to your femininity. So it comes as a big surprise to realize Halle Berry looks better with short hair than with long hair. I'm not saying she looked bad tonight, because an unattractive Halle is incomprehensible. But she seems to be one of the few women whose beauty does not need enhancing with long locks, so feel free to cut the hair.
2) And the best picture Oscar goes to.....Farenheit 9/11. Thought I didn't see many of the nominees, the movie that moved me the most was F9/11. I was enraged after seeing it. I was more enlightened when I walked out of the theater. And I even laughed. It's not a perfect movie - the segment that tied Bush to the Saudi family and 9/11 seemed a bit of a stretch to me, but overall the pic got me charged up and that's what a good film should do. No outrage here about it not being nominated - Michael Moore would have been a lock for best documentary had he chosen that route, but he didn't, and they didn't. And I don't think it's the politics that made me like it - I saw Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed and didn't get the same feeling. But Moore's point about poor Americans generally doing the heavy lifting when it comes to "protecting" our country should be the new standard by which we choose who will occupy the Oval Office. Does candidate X, Y, or Z have the wisdom and compassion to decide when our troops need to be placed in harms way? And obviously, W is not that person.
Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movies gonna make me a big star
'Cause I can play the part so well
--The Beatles
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( 8:51 PM )
Fox On The Run
Having fun at work -----> here <-----
Fox on the run
You screamed and everybody comes a-running
Take a run and hide yourself away
--Sweet
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( 10:33 PM )
bad
somehow last night i neglected to note the horribleness of the content of the village voice list, so amazed was i by the analysis. but if this list is accurate (as i've kind of indicated it probably is), 2004 was a piss poor year for music and i don't mind having missed it.
The word is out
You're doin' wrong
Gonna lock you up
Before too long,
Your lyin' eyes
Gonna tell you right
So listen up
Don't make a fight,
--Michael Jackson
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( 2:02 AM )
Lift Every Voice
Well, it's music award time again and as usual, instead of paying any attention to the generally nonsensical Grammy Awards, I'm checking out the Village Voice's 2004 "Pazz & Jop" poll.
Chief pollster Robert Christgau's excellent analysis nails 2004 on the head. Tying in the politics to the music, he notes, "This was certainly the first presidential election in Pazz & Jop history to dominate artists' and voters' mindsets. Yet the election's issues and personalities remained all but unaddressed by the music the poll honored." Then he deftly, if not too politely, describes how lame 2004 was musically: "the U2 is the genial front job any reality-based assessment would predict, the Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse are lightweight on purpose without achieving buoyancy, and I'm not the first listener to reluctantly conclude that (the Streets, Loretta Lynn and Danger Mouse) read better than they sound. And then there's (Green Day)...American Idiot was the sole Top 10 album to take a protesty tack, and got much love for it. But to my ears it founders on sodden songcraft...and half-congealed themes."
I still don't know why there's not a big ceremony tied to the Voice list because it's really the only overall arbiter of quality music. Sure music crits are full of themselves (and thus full of shit most of the time), but they're less prone than the music industry to embarass themselves by making Milli Vanilli the best new artist of the year.
There's much more and I encourage music fans to check out the list and read Christgau's take, cause Christgau's the man when he does his year-end, deep think music-o-rama essay. But to my ears and eyes, he gets it right (again). Of course, that's the problem for me, with last year being an intentionally and especially distant year on the music level, I only heard (or heard of) about 60% of the list. But the iPod is changing all that and I'm yearning to get my ears back so that I can do my own wrap-up in the oh-five.
Lift every voice and sing
Till Earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
--James & John Johnson
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( 10:46 PM )
Computer Blue
For the past 2-3 weeks, I've been having problems either with my computer and my phone. Considering that I have a computer at work and a cell phone, neither of these things should have been the massive headache they were. But they were.
No matter how hard you try or how much you know that you should be able to survive without either one, it's nearly impossible for me. I do 90% of my news reading online and when my computer sat there turned on, but doing nothing other than scrolling through the hot babe on my wallpaper, I realized how worthless I was without the Internet. You would think I would take advantage of the opportunity to do some actual writing for 2Walls, but my life doesn't work that way. Somehow I became paralyzed and could not function. I couldn't read the local Pittsburgh papers for news about the Steelers (which considering the end result, was probably a good thing). I couldn't rip CDs because iTunes didn't recognize what the hell I was putting into my computer (and I damn sure wasn't going to type it out). I couldn't check or send email to friends (or even work). And instead of reading or watching TV or getting the hell out of my apartment, I sulked and unsuccessfully tried to fix it. (I won't even go into the stories of calling Time Warner Cable to get help. It was a nightmare and the minute that a decent option/competitor comes along, TW will be gone, gone, gone.)
Anyway, after 10 days of complaining the cable guy came, took one look at my modem, changed it and all was honky dory for a few hours. Then my external hard drive crashed. Don't know why - don't know how - I just knew it wouldn't work. Which was a severe problem because I bought the friggin thing so that I could store my music on it and not take up space on the main hard drive. D'oh. Somehow though, I had a moment of clarity when I came home drunk and stoned one night and realized how to reset the HD. Which ended up being a bad idea because I stayed up til dawn doing whatever it was that I was trying to do when it wasn't working.
But that's not all. The next day my iPod decided to stop talking to my computer. You spend hours and hours loading music onto your hard drive only to have it stuck on your hard drive. The iPod fiasco lasted about a week (luckily I had about 2500 songs on it at this point and wasn't freaking out or anything) until I gave up and called Apple to get the simple solution (another reset).
And I won't even go into the phone issue other than to say I was so insanely mad at Time Warner that I called Verizon to price (and just price) a DSL connection. Before hanging up, I told the operator "do not send me the starter kit." I'll leave it to your imagination as to what happened next.
So I've been in some kind of technical hell and tonight is the first night since I don't know when that all of my gadgets have been working. 3300 songs on the iPod. A new blog through the Internet connection. A quick chat with pops during the UNC/Duke game. An email from Chaz (sorry about da 'Boids) telling me to check out this fun analysis of Bush's budget by Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's fame). Palm Pilot/Clie' updates. And all the porn I can download. Man it's good to get back to normal.
Where is my love life?
Where can it be?
There must be something wrong with the machinery
Where is my love life?
Tell me, tell me
Where has it gone?
Somebody please please tell me what the hell is wrong
Until I find the righteous 1
Computer blue
Until I find the righteous 1
Computer blue
--Prince & The Revolution
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