wildyams

Since I haven't blogged in a while (I figured I'd leave that last one up there so you could all play some fun games ), I run the risk of having a rather exceptionally long blog entry to fill in the blank space. However, I'm going to restrain myself and instead just try to fill in some stuff here and there later on if anything strikes me as particularly interesting. The short version of my weekend is that I went to the Laker game on Friday, just in time to see Kobe back on the injured list (this time with a cut hand that he put through a window), and just in time to see the short-handed Lakers lose to the vastly improved Minnesota Timberwolves. LA has had the most snakebit season I've ever seen this year (in addition to Kobe going back on the IL, the word is Malone is out till at least the end of March, Shaq got suspended for swearing on live TV, and now Kareem Rush joined everyone else on the injured list tonight by spraining his ankle). On Saturday, inspired by my last blog entry, I tracked down a couple fun games from my youth and played them in emulation on my computers here at home (Ms. Pac Man, Galaga and Metroid for the NES, specifically). Sunday was the Superbowl party, and I did my best to keep the lather I worked myself into over it on the inside so as not to make everyone else uncomfortable Actually I spent the whole game either hanging around outside with people, or inside learning how to play Texas No Limit Hold'em poker (thank god we didn't play for money, I'd have lost my ass). Today was work (whoop-de-doo), but to celebrate me finally getting the Stanley Kubrick Collection, I thought I would share with you all a rather good (or at least interesting) flash movie that gives a good interpretation of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (and yes I know this was on Daypop a year ago or so, but it's good nonetheless). Also, because today is Groundhog Day (Steve-o's favorite holiday) and because Lost in Translation comes out on DVD tomorrow, I figured the Bill Murray pic was appropriate

Man, a whole lot of nothing going on today, yet here I sit, your faithful blogger, strapping on my gear, girding up my loins, grinding my axe, as I prepare to take the field of battle and vanquish the foe that is Writer's Block (those analogies were for you, Lambro ). I could rant about the sorry state of the Lakers, or go off on a political entry chastising the powers that be for whatever they're doing to screw us all over this week, or piss and moan about movies or something.

Or I could just shut up and show you a side-by-side comparison between Wynona Judd's mug shot and John Travola dressed up as Terl from Battlefield Earth:

I've been doing a lot of blog work the last couple days. Because of a bunch of stuff most of you guys don't know about or care about (or care to know about :wink), at Dave's request I updated Jon's, Steve's and John's blogs to the newest version of Movable Type, and installed various protective measures (detailed in this article here if you're actually interested in this kind of stuff). I also de-spammed Steve's and John's blogs (I still have to do Jon's), as both had been spammed here and there at various times, but hopefully those guys blogs should now be protected from that nonsense, at least for a while. Now tonight I have added a new feature to my own blog, which took quite a while to figure out, actually: I now have 'smilies' in my comments. Anyone making a comment will now notice a collection of smilies (or emoticons or whatever else you want to call them), and if you click on them they will pop the text necessary to make that particular smiley in the comment (you won't see the smiley show up in your comment till you either preview it or post it, however). Some of you will like this and some of you will hate it, but I'm all about functionality, so I hope you guys like it. If you don't, then don't use it. Unfortunately for some reason this feature doesn't seem to work in Safari or Firebird, but I suspect it's some kind of Javascript setting or something that I'm not gonna investigate right now. In any event, this is clearly one of my more tedious and dull entries, and for that I apologize, but I wanted to point out my new feature. Trust me, I'm probably as bored as you all are. And on that note, I'm off to bed :yawn

Today at work, Josh and I were talking about this new trend of remaking movies from the 80s (which is a different trend than making movies out of TV shows from the 80s). First about a year or so ago they re-made the movie Manhunter (released in 1986) when they put out Red Dragon, then they remade Can't Buy Me Love (released in 1987) into Love Don't Cost a Thing. Now I see they are remaking Man on Fire (released in 1987) with Man on Fire which is due out this year; and also they are doing a loose remake of Vacation (released in 1983) with this summer's Johnson Family Vacation, and Josh told me that supposedly there is very possibly going to be a remake of The Breakfast Club (released in 1985).

Anyway, with all the 80's movies being remade, it made me wonder what 80's movies I'd really like to see them remake (cause let's face it, if Can't Buy Me Love can get remade a mere 16 years after it was released, then pretty much any movie from the 80's is fair game). Here's my short list of movies I'd love to see get remade (add some if you can think of any):

- Just One of the Guys (put Brittany Murphy in it and maybe she'll vanish like Joyce Hyser did)

- Weekend at Bernie's (maybe Jack Black and Vince Vaughn in this one)

- Soul Man (this could be particularly funny if it got the "urban remake" treatment like Love Don't Cost a Thing did: imagine a black guy having to pretend he's a white guy like Eddie Murphy did in that SNL skit)

- Zapped! (they'd have to try to work Willie Aames into it somehow)

- The Legend of Billie Jean ("Fair is fair!")

I just wanted to wish my sister Rebecca a very happy 24th birthday. 5 years ago when I was her age I was working the graveyard shift at Good Guys, and looking back that feels like it was a lifetime ago. I'm going to see Rebecca soon and take her out to dinner to celebrate and I talked to her on the phone, but I wanted to say something here cause of course I love her and she means an awful lot to me. So Happy Birthday, Rebecca! :grin

I just got back from a screening of Fellowship of the Ring a little while ago, at which Peter Jackson (the director) stayed around afterwards to do a questions and answer session for all of us nutty fans. The film was the theatrical cut, not the extended one, but that was fine with me as I hadn't seen that version of the movie in about a year and a half. The movie of course was great as always, but it was really cool to see it at the Egyptian Theatre, and especially cool to hear what Peter Jackson had to say. He showed up in what appears to be pretty typical garb for him: shorts, a somewhat baggy polo-style shirt and a big, puffy jacket. Film critic and MTV personality Chris Connelly was there as well to act as moderator. Peter Jackson had some cool things to say and he seemed like a very down to earth, easy-going guy. I won't go too much into all the stuff he said (it was mostly encouraging people who were interested to get out there and make movies on their own), but the two Return of the King related items he conveyed to us all were that the extended edition on DVD was finished editing and that it came in at 4 hours and 10 minutes long; and he also said that the "Scourging of the Shire" scene was never even filmed, so it's obviously not going to be in the movie. So there you go: it will be 50 minutes longer than the theatrical version was, and almost none of that will be more stuff at the end (so for everyone who thought the ending went on too long, you get a reprieve I suppose, in that it won't get any longer :lol). Tomorrow I am going back to the Egyptian to see The Two Towers with Sean Astin and Frodo (nÈe Elijah Wood, but from now on simply known as Frodo) introducing it; and then on Sunday I'm going to see Return of the King with Peter Jackson again and the producers introducing that one, so it seems that yet again I'm turning out for the biggest Lord of the Rings dork-a-thon type events, because, well I'm a Lord of the Rings dork :wink

I went to see Return of the King with Cookie and Amy and her boyfriend Andrew, and at which Peter Jackson (the director), Fran Walsh (writer), Philippa Boyens (writer), Mark Ordesky (executive producer), and Robert Shaye (head of New Line) all spoke. Yesterday I saw The Two Towers at which Elijah Wood (Frodo), Sean Astin (Sam), Howard Shore (composer), and Ngila Dickson (costume designer) all spoke. At both events the panels of people all spoke for about an hour or so, and both times there were some interesting things that were said. Here's some highlights:

I saw this and this on Daypop (where else? :wink) and thought I'd share it with you. This is for anyone who's looking for some good Valentine's Day cards that are in bad taste (like the one you see below). Share them with someone special :grin

I no longer feel like my apartment is that messy, and maybe that is the whole point behind seeing something like this. That link, which takes probably 20 minutes to get through, is hands down one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It is a series of photographs that a college student, who lives with his mom, took of his mom's house, and how utterly cluttered and clogged it is with random junk that she either refuses to throw away or acquired on eBay or various yard sales and whatnot. Honestly, this is a case where a picture really is worth a thousand words, because without all those photos there would just have been no way to truly convey what a disaster that house is (although the student's accompanying text is quite hilarious as he explains what all that crap is). If you have a little time to kill, I highly reccomend you check that link out.

Steven (the one I work with, not Steve-o) likes to bait people, and he's pretty good at it. I myself have been known to bait people on occasion (ask Koga :lol). Anyway, the bait that Steven's been dangling recently is that he's been walking around trying to tell everyone that Terminator 3 is the best of the three Terminator movies. Now Steven, like Steve-o, is a tough nut to crack sometimes, so I don't know if that's really what his opinion is or not, but it's pretty obvious that he's been saying it as much as he has to try to bait people into debating it with him. I make it sound more sinister than it is, it's all just in fun, it's not an ass-holish thing to do (and even if it was I'd be a hypocrite if I said so since I do it too). Anyway, all that talk about Terminator 3 made me want to see it again, so I borrowed it from Steven about 2 or 3 weeks ago and watched it again. I gotta be honest, I really did like it. I mean, when I saw it in theaters last summer I liked it then too, but I liked it a lot more the second time. I still like the first two more, but Terminator 3 is damn good. I expected the second time around that a lot of the paradoxes or flaws would show up, as is almost inevitable with any movie that has to do with time travel, but it really seemed pretty solid and pretty well thought out. As such, I'd recomend it to anyone who was a fan of Terminator and Terminator 2.

I took Rebecca out tonight for her birthday after I got off work. I picked her up and we went to Hamburger Hamlet for dinner. This is the second time I've been there this week, and neither time was at my suggestion, but what the hell, I like the Hamlet, and it was her birthday dinner, so it was her choice, so that's where we went. Since Cookie will want to know, I got the mini-cheeseburgers again (although our waitress must have been almost 70 years old, and got my order wrong and brought me the sampler plate instead of the one I asked for, but it didn't matter), and afterwards Rebecca and I split most of a piece of chocolate cake. During dinner Rebecca and I had a great conversation, as we tend to do; and then we went over to Tower Records (which just filed for bankruptcy I see) and I got Rebecca Nine Inch Nails And All That Could Have Been DVD, because she has never had the pleasure of seeing NIN in concert, and of course because she picked it out :lol

The newest planet in our solar system?

Since everyone (read "Koga and Steven") are upset about the end of Terrible Fridays, I felt inspired to do something movie-themed for Friday; so I figured why not do a review of a totally random movie? So I looked at my collection of DVDs and for some reason was drawn to two Michael Keaton movies: Multiplicity and The Paper. Now, The Paper is the better of the two movies, in my opinion, but I'm going with Multiplicity for this random review nonetheless. In addition to Keaton, Multiplicity stars Andie MacDowell, Richard Masur and Eugene Levy, and is the story of a contractor who is married with two kids and who discovers a doctor who will clone himself so that he can help give himself a hand with all the duties a contractor with a wife and kids evidently has. Naturally once he has cloned himself (not once, not twice but three times) this causes problems, and that is where the hilarity ensues. For me I've always kind of seen Multiplicity as the younger, forgotten sibling of Groundhog Day, probably because it's another comedy that features the same director (Harold Ramis) and same female lead (MacDowell). Also, much like Groundhog Day, the main appeal of the movie is the comedic value of it's main actor (Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, Michael Keaton in Multiplicity). I may be the only person out there who thinks of these two movies in the same way, however, so if you're a fan of Groundhog Day that doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Multiplicity. Maybe I'm just crazy or have bad taste (you can probably drop the 'maybe' from that last sentence). Nonetheless, Multiplicity cracks me up every time I see it. I think Michael Keaton is at his best playing a guy who is just in over his head (his character in The Paper has that same problem, by the way). In Multiplicity Keaton gets to play 4 totally different and distinct personalities and all of them are very funny, both individually and when they are interacting with each other. The first personality he plays is just his normal self, or as we see later is somewhat a combination of the other personalities but more "middle-of-the-road" in comparison to the other three. The second personality is a real macho version of himself, which loves working construction, drinking beer, making a mess and talking tough. The third version of himself is like a male version of Martha Stewart: fastidious and anal while being a whiz in the kitchen and also is a guy who is "very in touch with his emotions". The fourth version of himself is basically like what maybe a 3 or 4 year old version of himself might be: no manners, no common sense, no social skills and a huge apetite for junk food and screwing around. Unlike Groundhog Day, Multiplicity doesn't really have that "feel-good" type ending, and is really just much more of a straight comedy (well it does have some of that, but it's not the focus at all, and really comes across more as background filler), but it's really not bad for what it is.

Some interesting things to point out:
- This movie re-united Keaton and Glenn Shadix, who were in Beetlejuice together (Shadix played 'Otho' the medium in that)
- The guy who played 'Q' on all the various Star Trek shows and movies, John de Lancie, plays the closest thing to a bad guy that this movie has
- In another Groundhog Day tie-in, Bill Murray's brother, Brian, starred in both Groundhog Day and Multiplicity
- As Jon loves to point out, the construction site they are at when Eugene Levy's character gets fired in the movie is called "Vista de Nada" which means "View of Nothing" in Spanish

So there you go, that's my half-assed review/ramble about a random movie. I haven't seen Multiplicity in a while, but I'll wrap up this entry with my favorite quote from the movie: "My life's a shambles. I need pie." :lol

Here's a little something to get everyone excited for the upcoming release of the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD:

Click to Enlarge

Well it was a rather interesting weekend for me. Friday night after work we all (except for Cookie) went to a surprise birthday party for Paola that her roommate had been planning for a couple weeks. We all showed up there about an hour before she was due, meanwhile Victor (one of my co-workers) had taken her out after work to keep her occupied till it was time for her to show up. When she showed up, we all got quiet and when she came in we yelled "Surprise!" and she truly looked shocked. After she realized what happened, we all sang Happy Birthday, and then just hung out and shot the shit for a while. Her roommate had also gotten a karaoke machine so a bunch of people did that while we all cheered and laughed, and around midnight the party broke up and I went home.

A word of warning: this is gonna be a purely Lakers-related entry, so if that bores you, you should probably skip it :lol

Tonight the Lakers got a win at their first home game since the Minnesota game I went to with my Dad back on January 30th. The Lakers played the Portland Trailblazers tonight, and I have to say that for stretches anyway they looked the best they have since early December when they were still steamrolling the league when everyone was still healthy. The Lakers are getting healthier every day, with Shaq and Kobe back out there and looking pretty good, and with Fox back and rounding into form as well. LA is still missing Karl Malone, who should be out another month at least (or that's what they say anyway) and Brian Cook, who is basically the 3rd or 4th string power forward. LA got the win tonight by only 3 points, in spite of almost non-existent bench production and a lot of turnovers; but for a couple stretches LA looked really dominant out there. They have a tough game tomorrow up north against Golden State, who always plays the Lakers tough, but I think if LA can scrape out a win there it will be a real good sign that they are maybe getting ready to turn the corner here and get ready for the stretch run before the playoffs.

I can always dream, at least :grin

I've seen this before at some point (though I don't remember where), but when I saw the Geek Hierarchy again this morning on BoingBoing, I thought I'd share the link to it, so everyone can try to place themselves on it. Here is a link to the full-sized (and printable) PDF if you want a real close look at it. I'll give my guesses as to where everyone is and you tell me if I'm right or not:

Me - I wouldn't really consider myself a "Video Gamer" at present, because I probably average less than an hour of video games played every month, so other than that the only other thing on this list I'd qualify for is "Sci-Fi/Fantasy Literature Fan"

Riggs - The lowest things on here for Riggs are probably either "Trekkie" or "Anime Fan who uses the term 'Japanimation'"

Steve-o & the Bomb would either be "Video Gamers" (but probably not) or not on this list at all

John - The lowest one for John is probably "Comic book fans who read Superhero comics"

Koga - Koga really needs some more categories on here :lol, but for this list his lowest point is probably "Pokemon fans over the age of 6"

Matt & Steven - Probably just "Video Gamers" or for Matt, maybe "Comic Book Fan", although they are good friends with a guy (Trent) who would qualify for the lowly "People Who Buy Expensive 'Replicas' of Fictional Fantasy Swords" (Jason would qualify for this as well)

I've left out a bunch of people, but either I couldn't really pinpoint where they would be on this hierarchy, or I figured they didn't really belong on it at all. If you know where you belong, let me know in the comments. By the way, I'm very lucky this Geek Hierarchy didn't include movie geeks, otherwise I'd be in real trouble. Also, if there was a wrestling geek area, Koga, Cookie and John would probably be hurting :lol

I saw this article about how spammers get away with sticking spam recipients with the bill for all their spamming, and it made me want to say a few words about spam. The gist of the article is that the guy is saying that following economics, spam is just a cheap way for companies to advertise their products, saying that first companies used to spend all this money on "traditional" advertising methods (TV ads, radio ads, magazine ads, billboards, etc...); then saying they went to the cheaper method of telemarketing, and have now gone to spam which costs so much less cause there is no postage paid. That part is right, I don't disagree with that, but he says the following and it did bug me:

flummox ('fl&-m&ks, -miks)
verb [T] INFORMAL
to confuse someone so much that they do not know what to do:
I have to say that last question flummoxed me.

flummoxed ('fl&-m&kst, -mikst)
adjective INFORMAL
to be so confused by someone that one does not know what to do:
He looked completely flummoxed.

I'll probably come across as an idiot on this one, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this might not be the first time that's occurred, so I'm going ahead anyway. See, I'm a very inquisitive person, and always have been. I usually end up getting mocked for it, but I think that's kinda funny too. Anyway, one of the best things about the internet, for me anyway, is that now usually when I have a question about something I just look it up. However, in this case I either feel too lazy, or too stupid to look this up, so I'm just gonna throw this out there: how come people in different countries drive on different sides of the road, and have the driver on the opposite side of the car? I would assume the driver being positioned on the side of the car that is closer to the center of the road is because you want to be closer to the cars coming towards you, so I'm guessing that the opposite sides of the road thing came first and that the positioning of the driver is just a function of which side of the road the cars drive on. But then, when did some countries decide to drive on the left side of the road and some on the right? Does this go back to carriages or horses or something, and when people switched to cars they just didn't want to adjust to some kind of standard on the subject? Or did people in different areas of the world pick a side of the road before they knew anyone else had chosen the other side? I mean... what the fuck!? Who decides this shit? It's like the metric system vs. whatever we use over here. Why can't we all just get along? :sad

PS - Candy makers ain't gonna get my hard earned dollars if they flavor their candy with fucking CURRY of all things! :evil

Yesterday was Steve and Dave's 30th birthdays party over at Dave's parents' place (thanks to them for letting us use their house). Almost everyone showed up, which meant it was a little crowded because it was pouring outside and there wasn't really any place outside that was well-sheltered, so we all hung out in the living room area all night. All in all it was a lot of fun, and was pretty cool seeing all these people that I've hung out with here and there (being that they were all good friends of either Steve or Dave), but never really seeing them all together at once like that. Anyway, Happy Birthday you two :grin

Today was kind of an up and down day, so I guess that's better than just being middle-of-the-road boring, right? The best thing that happened to me today happened right when I got to work this morning. I got there and an email was waiting for me from Dave letting me know that he had given me the soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Now I don't know if any of you ever played that video game, but essentially the "plot" was that you were a car theif who stole cars and shot at people and all kinds of naughty things like that; but one of the best things about the game was that when you were in a car there were seven different radio stations to choose from that all played different genres of 80's music (the game was supposed to take place in Miami during the 80's). You could change the channels, and each channel had about a 15 song playlist and even had commercials (which are hilarious, by the way). So this soundtrack came out and it is essentially a seven-CD compilation of all kinds of great music from the 80's, from New Wave to Metal to Rap to Rancheros to New Age, and the commercials are even included. Needless to say this is an awesome compilation, so naturally I filed it under "Compilations" (if anyone was interested in looking at it listed on my list of mp3s :wink).

That was pretty much the biggest news today (as you can see, wall-to-wall excitement today), but I also wanted to post a link to this hilarious, and yet, very depressing and discouraging story I read today (or you can download the text file if you prefer) about what life is like working in a call center doing tech support. I probably found it more interesting than most people would because I actually did work for a couple months in a call center doing computer tech support a couple years ago (and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the company the guy who wrote that describes it). The gist of the article is that the author works for this company that hires people who know nothing about computers and the only training they give them is to try to get the customers off the phone as soon as possible, mainly by telling them "we don't support that." See, the company (like the one I worked for) was outsourced from the real company (which could be Dell Computers, or Intel or Microsoft or whatever) so that when people call they don't know they're just getting a generic call center, but think they're getting the actual company technicians or something. Anyway, the outsourcing company gets paid based on how many calls they take, so it is in their best interest to move as many calls along in as little time as possible, not to make sure the customers' questions are answered. You can read it and get discouraged about technical support, but for me it was really just another example of capitalism marginalizing everyone by having the companies place profits ahead of products and/or customer satisfaction.

On that note I'm gonna go listen to a little V-Rock (Volume 1 of that aforementioned box set :grin).

The last two days one of my co-workers, Steven, has been out sick. We were thinking it was pretty serious till we found out the real reason he's not here:

Click for fullsize

Just wanted to write a quick Laker entry tonight after watching one of the most exciting games the Lakers have played this year. LA was playing the Nuggets in Denver tonight, and Denver is a very good team, especially at home. The Lakers, as you may recall from my earlier entries, had hit a slump back in early December that really has continued almost till now, what with a rash of injuries, of which I have never seen before, that had beset the team, starting foremost with Kobe, Shaq and Karl Malone. LA still had managed to win 4 of 7 on a recent roadtrip, which is not great, but not awful; although the last game of that trip was a humiliating loss to the Houston Rockets in which Shaq was outplayed by Yao Ming in a straight up battle, with Yao scoring more points and getting more rebounds than Shaq, and with Houston winning behind Yao's 15 fourth quarter points. But the next game that Shaq played in was the All-Star game, and there he was the MVP.

Ever since then, the Lakers (and Kobe in particular) have looked pretty good, having now run their win streak to 5 straight games, and tonight's was extra nice because of the way they won it. The Lakers had not led in the game since being ahead 25-24 near the end of the first quarter, and they had even been down by as many as 15 points in the second half. But the Lakers overcame an 13 point lead with just over 7 minutes to play, to pull to within two points with about 20 seconds left in the game. On a rather disorganized looking play, the rookie Luke Walton drove to the basket before kicking it out to a wide-open Kareem Rush (in only his second year, and who was hardly seeing any playing time two months ago) who buried the three pointer to give the Lakers their first (and only lead) since that one at 25-24. The Nuggets had 3 seconds to inbound it and dribble full court to get a shot, but they bricked a half-court desperation attempt at the buzzer and the Lakers escaped with the win. Tomorrow night LA squares off against their perennial rival, the Sacramento Queens back here in LA at Staples Center. The Queens are missing some of their best players due to injuries and suspensions, so LA should have a good shot at winning it. Man, what a game tonight though! :grin

Today as I was leaving work (in the pouring rain) I noticed that I had finally received a three disc CD set that I had ordered on Amazon about a month ago, which apparently got backordered. The three CD set was the soundtracks to all three Lord of the Rings movies, because I figured I do really like the music in the movies, and if I was gonna buy one I might as well buy all of them. So anyway, I've added that as well as three Eurythmics albums to my music collection.

I also wanted to point out a link I saw today on BoingBoing which goes to the website for a Japanese movie coming out called Casshern. Now, I know nothing about this movie other than a small blurb about it that I found online, and the website (and trailer) are both in Japanese with no subs, but if the trailer is any indication, this looks to be one of the most visually stunning movies ever (the trailer is on the movie's site or you can just download the high res Quicktime version of it here). I'll see if I can find out more about it from some of my Japanese-speaking co-workers tomorrow, but for the time being here is the blurb I found about it online:

Made for 5 billion yen, "Casshern" tries to address the idealistic question proposed in Shakespear's "Hamlet" (Why do people fight with each other?)

A riot occurs within the robots that were made to clean up environmental pollution. As a result, a professor of robotic engineering revised his "son" Casshern to calm the riot. (link)

Here are a couple screenshots from the trailer if you've got a slow connection and don't want to wait for the trailer to download (click on them to see the full-size pics):

Needless to say, I am definitely looking forward to this movie, if and when it ever does come out over here in the US.

I'm fucking pissed. On top of the Lakers losing in embarrassing fashion to the Queens tonight, I just wrote out a rather long entry which I have been thinking about for a while about the recent rise in biggotry that I'm seeing around these days, but the fucking server timed out as I tried to preview it and now it is lost forever. So as a result, I'm going to write a shorter, less eloquent version with a bunch of bullet points:

The rise in anti-semitism recently sucks, whether it is because of the movie The Passion of the Christ or not; and shit like this church in Colorado posting this on their marquee is just asinine:

Koga sent me a link today which at the very least is a very entertaining read. It is a link to a website which documents a rather strange occurrence that happened on the internet about three years ago on a message board. What happened was someone said they were a time traveler from the year 2036, and they made a series of posts online, then abruptly stopped after about 4 months and was never heard from again. Now, obviously, the most likely explanation for this is that it was just a hoax, or some crazy person or something, and I certainly don't want to say that I definitely believe the guy who made the posts; but like I said, at the very least it is an entertaining read. He gives photographs and diagrams of his time machine, explains how it worked, talks about what life in 2036 is like, talks about why he traveled through time, and talks about events in the future (and considering it is already over three years later, some of these things seem to eerily have come true or look like they might really occur). I wanted to share one quote of his here, because even if it is a hoax or even if he is nuts, there is a lot of truth in some of what he says here:

Growing up might have been a vastly different experience for me than it was for most of you. Personal responsibility, determination, honor, friendship and self-reliance are not just words we try to live up to or fantasize about.

Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that. - "John Titor", Nov. 2000

Well it's hard to be too unhappy with the Oscar winners tonight when I posted my wishes and everything I wanted to win did in fact win except for 3 categories, and two of the winners in those categories were from a movie I haven't seen yet. The biggest disappointment for me was that Bill Murray didn't win for Best Actor, but seeing as I haven't seen Mystic River, I can't really argue that Sean Penn didn't deserve it more. The same argument applies for Tim Robbins winning over Alec Baldwin for Best Supporting Actor. The only thing I can really complain about with any legitimacy is that Naomi Watts didn't win over Charlize Theron for Best Actress, but Charlize did do a great job, so I can't be too upset. I just am a little disappointed because I think that her makeup probably is what won most people over rather than her acting, whereas Naomi's performance was without the crutch of false teeth and freckles. Oh well, as I said, Charlize did do a great job, so I'm not really upset about it. Not like when Julia Roberts won, now THAT was absurd!

Man, Return of the King winning everything it was nominated for, 11 awards in all (ties the record). I would guess that most of that was probably not simply for Return of the King, but for the entire trilogy and the fact that Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers only won 6 Oscars between the two; and I feel that maybe the Academy didn't want to have what appears to be a legenday film trilogy go largely overlooked by them. Nonetheless, I know that Jim Rygiel, whom I saw speak back in December after I saw Return of the King for the first time, must be quite happy having won the Oscar for Visual Effects three years in a row as a result of these movies. I was also glad to see Master and Commander and Lost in Translation win the awards that they won, as those were two of my favorite movies last year.

I see that the trend of young actresses having success at the Oscars continued this year, as we still have to go back to 1998 to find a woman who was over 40 who won either a Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress award (10 winners in all). However, I have to say I'm happy Diane Keaton didn't win because her performance in Something's Gotta Give I found to be very irritating. Oh well, in any event, it was one of the better Academy Awards ceremonies I can remember, just because I was actually in agreement with almost everything that won. What more can a guy ask for?

Two items of note: footage from The Last Action Hero made it into the show, and Ron Perlman was thanked in an acceptance speech.