In England (and many of their former colonies), December 26 is called Boxing Day and they don't have to work (unlike the Puritans here in America). Whatever... (just kidding - I chose not to take this week off. It's tres quiet around work this week and I can usually get a lot done.)
So, I took a four day computer hiatus. That's right! Four days with my PC turned off. I did check IMDB once and movie times on my phone, but didn't check email or anything. I need to work on a better work/life balance dealythingy. I've been checking email regularly when I'm home - early am, late night, weekends, etc. and then I get sucked in and start thinking and worrying and nothing good ever comes out of that. I end up getting stressed and then I act like someone I don't like. I thought I'd jump start it by actually taking time and having a mini-vacation. I think it helped and I'm going to work on being less computer focused when I'm not working.
So what did I do with my time? Xbox. Teehee. Actually, I didn't Xbox until I opened up my gift from my brother on Xmas eve. He sent me Guitar Hero and it's a super-cool game. My fellow member of the tribe (you know, the chosen people), Shoshanna came over after our initial plans fell through and we played Guitar Hero for many hours. It is seriously entertaining.
I went to several movies as well (after all, tis the season). I really loved Juno. My friend Ken thought it was a bit too hip for itself and I see where he's coming from (the 16 year old had to tell the 30-something year old that the greatest year in rock was 1977 - he said it was 1993!?!), but I thought that the performances were great (I love Allison Janney and I thought the girl who played Juno really nailed the role) and that the kids were pretty much like real kids. There were a bunch of teenagers in the theatre when I saw it and my mom said there were tons of them when she went, so apparently it's resonating with them.
The next flick I saw was Atonement. I really hadn't planned on seeing this movie until it got so many Golden Globe nominations. I had read the book and didn't really remember it very well, but I have read several of Ian McEwan's books and they are always very serious and very adult. They're not adult in a sex sort of way, but in a thinking sort of way. They lead you to question preconceptions and look at grey areas, which can be very uncomfortable. After all, most everyone prefers things to be black or white/right or wrong and he's someone that makes it very clear that there is a lot of ambiguity in life.
Anyways, I ended up really loving the picture. I'm not really a fan of Keira Knightly. She was fine in the role. She's too skinny. However, the story was really interesting, it looked nice (great cinematography and sets) and the performances were good, especially of the young girl. I definitely recommend it.
And the last flick I saw was Across the Universe. I knew that the reviews hadn't been very good, but the previews looked really cool visually, I love the Beatles music and am a big fan of musicals. Look - this picture is a mess, but I really liked it. I understand that this may be confusing to you, but it had great music, hippies, drugs and protesting the government. That's pretty much all the things that make me happy (or used to).
What they tried to do is make a story that is narrated by Beatles songs. They went a little over the top. For example, Prudence climbs in through the bathroom window... It was too much and way too literal. And then the record company that the kids set up in the movie was named Strawberry (not Apple. Get it?). And then the kid's band plays on top of a roof in NYC. Sigh.
Great idea, some great visuals, but they tried too hard. Oh, they did slip in Eddie Izzard which makes me happy. But they renamed Cafe Wha? to Cafe Huh? Was that really necessary?
It starred Evan Rachel Wood, who plays a typical 60's straight blond haired girl who is wooed to the hippy scene (see: Hair, which had way better choreography). She did a decent job, but I was totally distracted by the fact that she's sleeping with Marilyn Manson. My brain works that way.
I really enjoyed the time off and am looking forward to more movies over the next week. I'm planning on seeing The Savages, Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson as they have all opened here.
As if the problem with our Orwellian media wasn't bad enough, the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules that will unleash a flood of media consolidation across America. The new rules will further consolidate local media markets -- taking away independent voices in cities already woefully short on local news and investigative journalism.
Congress has the power to throw out these rules -- and if 100,000 people demand it, they'll have to listen.
Click on the link below to sign the open letter to Congress urging them to stop the FCC and stand with the public interest.
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/sbmopenletter/
(I don't know where the 100,000 people thing came from - they certainly don't have to listen, but I hate the idea of people not having the opportunity to hear different viewpoints or stories cause a large corporate entity owns all the newspaper, tv and radio stations in an area.)
(thanks to Lee)
AFI = American Film Institute, fyi.
AFI MOVIES OF THE YEAR-OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (+1 from Amy)
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (on my list to see)
INTO THE WILD (+1 from Amy)
JUNO (on my list to see)
KNOCKED UP (Best of the year? Really?)
MICHAEL CLAYTON (+1 from Amy)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (+1 from Amy)
RATATOUILLE (on my Netflix list. It had better be really good)
THE SAVAGES (Hasn't opened in Seattle yet. Second tier city. Sigh.)
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (There will be no recall. I can't remember what this is.)
AFI TV PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR-OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
DEXTER (too bloody for me. I tried, but didn't make it through the first episode)
EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS (Not a Chris Rock fan)
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (Not a football inspirational soap opera fan)
LONGFORD (eh? What is this?)
MAD MEN (+1 for Amy)
PUSHING DAISIES (+1 for Amy)
THE SOPRANOS (I think they put this here cause they have to. It was a better season than the last few.)
TELL ME YOU LOVE ME (Hmmm...it was shocking - I saw testicles on HBO. Not sure if that's enough to make it a top show though. I prefer Californication. Showtime is totally knocking out HBO in the series these days)
30 ROCK (+1 for Amy)
UGLY BETTY (recently started watching this and I am amused).
Um...where's Saving Grace and Damages? That makes me suspicious.
Brilliant post on her site today. (I know I'm on a bit of a Huckabee jag, but there's all sorts of interesting stuff going on around him lately for some reason that I can't put my finger on.) Turns out the conservatives of the Republican party prefer to keep their evangelicals close - especially around election time. The conservatives want to say the things that keeps the evangelicals in the tent, but don't necessary want them in charge of the tent. And they are in a bit of a tizzy over Mike Huckabee's recently upswing in the polls:
It's actually fun to watch the consternation. Ross Douthat has dubbed this feeling "Huckenfreude," which he defines as "pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee."
And there is certainly no shortage of outrage among hyperventilating conservative columnists across the country. The National Review's Rich Lowry has coined a neologism of his own: "Huckacide." This is when a national party commits suicide by nominating an "under-vetted former governor who is manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States."
Over at the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer is wringing his hands about an "overdose of public piety," "scriptural literalism," and how the 2008 campaign is "knee-deep in religion."
At the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes worries about the fact that Huckabee "told a producer for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network that his religious background made him most qualified to lead the war on terror," and that he "seems to believe the best foreign policy is one guided by the Golden Rule." Scoffing at the Golden Rule? What's next, attacking the Boy Scout Oath? And what it is about Huckabee's name that inspires a whole new lexicon? The Weekly Standard's headline writers couldn't resist, dubbing his perceived foreign policy shortcomings "The Perils of Huckaplomacy."
Over at the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan frets that the Republican Party of today wouldn't like Ronald Reagan much now that "faith has been heightened as a determining factor in how to vote," and says that voters in Iowa "may be deciding if Republicans are becoming a different kind of party."
...
As Kevin Drum puts it, "mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They're happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn't care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal."
...
Republicans have been running on a faux populist/religiously conservative platform ever since Richard Nixon. It was refined and heightened by Lee Atwater and again by Karl Rove. And now that they have a rising candidate who truly represents that platform, the movers and shakers of the party are doing all they can to kneecap him.
Hmmmm...interesting times.
Lieberman (faux-Democrat) (I know he's now officially Independent, but he calls himself a Dem) endorses John "we should teach Intelligent Design alongside Evolution" McCain. When was the last time Lieberman voted alongside the Democrats for anything major?
New Jersey bans the death penalty. They haven't killed anyone since the 60s. Hmmmm....there's a Jersey joke in there somewhere.
Jay Leno & Conan O'Brien - back on the air without writers on January 2. No monologues. To me, no monologue is a good thing for Jay. I like pretty much anything Conan does though. I just don't think Jay is particularly funny. Perhaps if I was older and lived in the midwest and didn't have...ya know...a sense of humor.
Just because AT&T and Verizon and their ilk helped the NSA spy on Americans' phone calls inside the US without any court orders or something sorta legal that said that they were supposed to do that, it doesn't mean that they should be prosecuted for breaking the law (cause it is breaking the law when you do that without a court order). They were just trying to help. Or that's what the administration (and apparently, the Senate) says. Great news for wiretappers!
And Mike Huckabee is definitely Christian, by the way. He wants to make sure everyone knows it. For example, it's very Christian to ask a NY Times reporter if it's true that Mormons believe that the Devil and Jesus are brothers, right? Also, good Christian parents wouldn't raise a kid who tries to bring a gun on a plane or kills a dog (at Boy Scout camp - when he was 18!?!) by hanging, slitting its throat and stoning him. But hey, the kid said the dog was ill. He must have been doing the Christian thing that would end the poor thing's suffering.
(Then again, I was a very very very bad adolescent and my parents have pretty decent morals, so perhaps we shouldn't judge Mike's Christian-ness by his kid's behavior. I'm sure he wouldn't do so of someone else. You know, like the folks with AIDS he says should be quarantined. Oh, did I disparage him again? It's like I'm a crazed Jew who has no chance of getting to Heaven. I'm just jealous.)
He wants to make sure everyone knows. MIKE'S CHRISTIAN! Sigh.
A schoolteacher had been planning to give a copy of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock to his 15 year old son as a Christmas gift, and had taken weeks to find it. "I couldn't wait to spread the jubilance to my son," he rather touchingly wrote in the online auction blurb on eBay. But when he saw his son smoking a spliff in the back garden with some friends, he decided to teach his son a lesson.
One bid of $9,100 later, and the teen's copy of Guitar Hero III was sold to a wealthy Australian buyer. It hasn't turned out all bad for the teen, however, as the father has indicated that he may still buy his son a Nintendo game after all. "Maybe something like Barbie as the Island Princess or Dancing with the Stars. I know he will just love them." – Kit Eaton [eBay via Gizmodo]
Hmmmm....I guess I'll have to put Atonement on my movie list. I enjoyed the book, but for some reason, wasn't very interested in the movie. They got the most nominations. I expected Sweeney Todd to have more - there's been a lot of advance buzz on that. Juno is definitely on my list, but of course, it hasn't opened in Seattle yet.
Keep in mind that the Globes separate Drama from Comedy, so there are a lot more nominations than there are in the Oscars. Also, since the Globes are awarded by the Foreign Press Association (as opposed by the folks in the Academy who are people actually working in the biz), they tend to seriously kiss up to big stars, so sometimes there's a nomination cause they just really like a celebrity. But, it starts to give you an idea of what to look for in the Oscar nods.
I recently saw No Country For Old Men and I thought it was excellent. I don't think I can handle the violence in American Gangster or Eastern Promises though...
As far as the TV nominations go, I'm super happy that 30 Rock was nominated for Best Comedy Series. I think it's absolutely hysterical - if you haven't been watching it, catch up while the strike is on cause there's lots of reruns. Other stuff I enjoy that got nominated are: Mad Men, Damages and Californication (love that show and it made me love David Duchoveny). I'm a little shocked that Saving Grace isn't on this list, cause the show is really good but at least Holly Hunter got a nod cause she just rocks in that show. I'm also a big fan of Weeds and I'm glad to see that Mary Louise Parker got a nom.
Also, notice how if they want to, the category includes more than 5 nominations? They seem pretty flexible about that over there at the Foreign Press...
MOTION PICTURE
DRAMA
American Gangster
Atonement
Eastern Promises
The Great Debaters
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
COMEDY
Across the Universe
Charlie Wilson's War
Hairspray
Juno
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
ACTOR (DRAMA)
George Clooney - Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood
James McAvoy - Atonement
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Denzel Washington - American Gangster
ACTRESS (DRAMA)
Cate Blanchett - Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie - Away From Her
Jodie Foster - The Brave One
Angelina Jolie - A Mighty Heart
Keira Knightley - Atonement
ACTOR (MUSICAL OR COMEDY)
Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd
Ryan Gosling - Lars and the Real Girl
Tom Hanks - Charlie Wilson's War
Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Savages
John C. Reilly - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
ACTRESS (COMEDY OR MUSICAL)
Amy Adams - Enchanted
Nikki Blonsky - Hairspray
Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd
Marion Cotillard - La Vie En Rose
Ellen Page - Juno
BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE
Tim Burton - Sweeney Todd
Ethan & Joel Coen - No Country For Old Men
Julian Schnabel - The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
Ridley Scott - American Gangster
JOe Wright - Atonement
SCREENPLAY
Diablo Cody - Juno
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen - No Country for Old Men
Christopher Hampton - Atonement
Ronald Hardwood - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Aaron Sorkin - Charlie Wilson's War
ANIMATION
The Bee Movie
Ratatouille
The Simpsons Movie
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The Kite Runner
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Lust, Caution
Persepolis
ORIGINAL SCORE
Into the Wild
Grace is Gone
The Kite Runner
Atonement
Eastern Promises
TV
Best Drama Series
House
Mad Men
Big Love
Grey's Anatomy
The Tudors
Damages
Best Comedy Series
30 Rock
Californication
Entourage
Pushing Daisies
Extras
Best Performance By An Actor - Drama
Jon Hamm - Mad Men
Hugh Laurie - House
Jonathan Rhys-Myers - The Tudors
Bill Paxton - Big Love
Michael C. Hall - Dexter
Best Performance By An Actress - Drama
Edie Falco - The Sopranos
Holly Hunter - Saving Grace
Glenn Close - Damages
Sally Field - Brothers & Sisters
Kyra Sedgwick - The Closer
Minnie Driver - The Riches
Patricia Arquette - Medium
Best Performance By An Actor - Comedy or Musical
Alec Baldwin - 30 Rock
David Duchovny - Californication
Steve Carell - The Office
Ricky Gervais - Extras
Lee Pace - Pushing Daisies
Best Performance By An Actress - Comedy or Musical
Christina Applegate - Samantha Who?
America Ferrera - Ugly Betty
Tina Fey - 30 Rock
Anna Friel - Pushing Daisies
Mary Louise-Parker - Weeds
Best Performance By A Supporting By An Actor In A Supporting Role in a Series/Miniseries or Made for TV movie:
Ted Danson - Damages
Kevin Dillon - Entourage
Jeremy Piven - Entourage
Andy Serkis - Longford
William Shatner - Boston Legal
Donald Sutherland - Dirty Sexy Money
Best Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role in a Series/Miniseries or Made for TV movie
Rose Byrne - Damages
Katherine Heigl - Grey's Anatomy
Rachel Griffiths - Brothers & Sisters
Samantha Morton - Longford
Anna Paquin - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
Jaime Pressly - My Name Is Earl
Some background for you: The Office of Legal Council (OLC) is where the White House goes to get final determination on what is or is not legal. This administration's OLC is staffed by "good Bushies", often from Regent University, which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1978. US News & World Report ranks Regent University School of Law as a Tier 4 school, so we've got subpar lawyers making these decisions for our country. But, at least they're "good Bushies".
Anyhoo, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (from Rhode Island), who is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence recently spoke on the floor of the Senate about a law that was passed last August that gives the administration unfettered ability to spy on Americans. I strongly recommend reading his entire speech (click here to read), but here are a few choice excerpts:
For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.
...
To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.
1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.
3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
...
In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:
1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”
2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”
3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”
I gave up eating at fast food joints (other than Subway) many years ago (except for an occasional french fry excursion), but if you still need a reason to avoid these places, here's one man's recent experience:
Three bites into his Southwestern Whopper sandwich Van Miguel Hartless knew something was wrong.
"It had a sour taste and I felt something rubbery," the Fair Haven man said Thursday. "I immediately spit it out and ran to the bathroom to vomit."
Hartless, 24, contends that what he bit into in his Burger King sandwich was a condom — unwrapped and possibly used.
...
Hartless said he was also insulted by an insinuation he said the manager made about the possibility that he might have put the condom in his own burger. Since the incident, he said he has submitted to a polygraph test administered by a professional contracted by his attorney.
...
About a week after he bought the hamburger, he said he received a letter of apology from Burger King he said was vague and ended with the optimistic phrase "Hope you come back and have a more pleasurable experience."
Mr. Hartless is now suffering from PTSD - he's having all kinds of nightmares about things turning into condoms...
Vermont man alleges he found condom in Burger King burger [The Rutland Herald via Consumerist]
One of my friends who I haven't spoken to in a long time just called to wish me a happy Pearl Harbor Day.
I'm so blessed.
Ready to blow off some steam after a very productive week? Sure you are. It's Friday, which means it's time to whip a handmade origami star at your cubicle mate just to wish him or her a happy weekend. Wikihow runs down the instructions for transforming a simple piece of paper into a four-point ninja (shuriken) star. Looks like another good way to entertain young kids for under a buck. Just don't poke anyone's eye out.
How to Fold an Origami Star (Shuriken) [wikiHow via Lifehacker]
Heh. (click on the pic to see the video)
This is my favorite bit:
Dana Perino: Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position bestowed upon you by your colleagues to make such statements. This is. It is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room, and to suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.
Helen Thomas: Do you know how many we have since the start of this war?
(thank you Jezebel)
Thanks to Consumerist, I saw that Balducci's on 8th Ave at 14th St (Manhattan, of course) had ham on sale for Chanukah. Hmmmm...what's wrong with this picture? You'd think that in NYC, someone would have a clue about the chosen people, but I guess not.
Anyways, thanks to everyone checking up on me. All is well here. It is awfully wet, but my house is fine and last I checked (when I left for work this morning), I still had power.
The rain has been pretty monumental and in some areas, it's a huge mess. On the news this morning, they were showing this area down south where houses will flooded to the roofs. It looked like New Orleans. Apparently a dike gave at midnight last night. (That's a funny sentence, isn't it? Heh.)
But as far as I know, me and my friends are all okay. Thanks for asking!
It snowed here over the weekend. Where I grew up, when you have big flakes of snow, it means it won't last for long, but here it snowed for hours like that! I was walking through the snow and it was pouring snow. For some reason, I kept getting giant snowflakes landing in my right eye. It's quite unpleasant, btw.
On Saturday, I was in downtown Seattle, and ended up hanging out for a while in the library, which is a totally windowed building. It was pretty cool to watch the snow falling there. It's a beautiful place - there's a little cafe where I picked up some chai and they have an area called the "Living Room" with comfy chairs and lamps, so I hung out there and read my book for a few hours. There seemed to be several homeless men around me, but they were leafing through magazines and nobody bothered them until one fell asleep, which is apparently against the rules. You can't stay in the library and sleep - you must stay awake. Everyone kept to themselves and no one smelled (that I could notice), so it was a nice place to hang out for a while.
Overnight, the snow changed to rain and it was teeming all day yesterday and through the night. Apparently, it's rained more than 6" since midnight in some areas (which, according to my calculations would be something like 700 feet of snow) and we're under some sort of flood watch. Oh yeah, plus big winds, which if my experience is to be believed, means that my house is going to lose electricity. Again. I'm getting one of those automatic natural gas electric backup systems as soon as dang Home Depot sends me the stinkin' coupon I requested. We lose power a lot where I live, which becomes rather unpleasant after a while. (You know, lots of big trees surrounding power lines + big wind = trouble.)
I know what you're thinking - it's Seattle - you people are used to rain! However, most of the rain here is more of a misting type of rain, so this is somewhat unusual (we did have big rain and flooding about two years ago, I think). Anyways, I have no excuses - I live 1.5 miles from work, so I'm about to go shower and head in. I'm sure everything will be all disrupted today though for folks who live in more remote areas.
Just want to make sure that you're up on this very exciting moment in my life.
12:26pm - updated to note that we're getting 1/4" of rain each hour. Here's what the Seattle PI has to say: Landslides, a sinkhole and deep pools of water all plagued streets in and around Seattle early Monday, leading to road closures and snarling traffic as a powerful storm dumped a steady rain around the city.
...
The culprit is a very strong jet stream of subtropical air originating in Hawaii that hits the mountains here and "wrings all the moisture out," he said. "It's like a fire hose aimed right at us."
In Seattle, wind gusts of up to 50 mph are possible, although the strongest wind events have been at the coast, he said.
...
Thirty-hour rainfall totals included 5.72 inches at Shelton, 5.33 at Bremerton, 3.50 in Olympia and 3.31 at Sea-Tac following snowfall ranging from dustings of an inch or less to as much as a foot in the outer suburbs east of Seattle on Saturday and early Sunday.\
Posts
All Comments
