smokerblog

Oscarzzzzz

What a bland awards ceremony that was. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy in my youngish-middle-age, but this year's Oscar ceremony was most notable for the absolute abscence of anything at all exciting/inspiring/surprising/disturbing.

Clint Eastwood won almost everything. The highly restrained Chris Rock attempted a couple of entirely generic Bush jokes. Jamie Foxx's tearful tribute to his grandmother notwithstandning, there were few truly great acceptance speeches. No profanity, no wardrobe malfunctions, no Roberto Benigni.

The only real high/lowlight came with the presentation of the Best Picture award as Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand clung to each other on stage. She: presbyopic. He: apparently drunk.

Dr. Gene Scott, 1929-2005

In the days before cable tv prominence, when the only sitcoms in syndication were M*A*S*H and What's Happening!!, my college roommates and I would stay up after Late Night with David Letterman to watch Dr. Gene Scott on the local UHF station.

Dr. Gene Scott was fascinating. He was a televangelist, although he deeply resented that term. He would sit in front of the camera, usually wearing a massive ten-gallon hat, sometimes juggling two different pairs of glasses, and always puffing on a cigar. He would preach in what was essentially a long, plodding harangue.

His message? Send me money. Seriously, that's all he would talk about. He would quote some scripture, then look into the camera and tell you how the fate of your soul depended on sending x number of dollars to his church by such-and-such a date.

After issuing this proclamation, he would generally slump back in his seat and wave off the camera, a signal for the lackeys in the control room to cut to some footage of his satellite transmitters or horses roaming in a pasture.

So anyway, one of my roommates dropped me a note to tell me that Dr. Gene Scott passed away recently at the age of 75. If you're so inclined to smoke a good cigar and drink a toast to his memory, I'm sure he would appreciate it. Just as long as the check is in the mail.

Random Lyric Check

"Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head."

Only U2 can get away with a lyric like that.

Art or Not?

That's the question on the minds of many NYers re: The Gates. Some say yes. Others say not so much.

Mike has an interesting take on the construction-cone-color of the Gates. And kottke has some nice pictures of the opening.

The End is Near

Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is!

Don't Panic.

Wanda's Gone

Ah well. That didn't last long.

Plus, like an idiot, I missed most of the first 15 minutes of the show. For some reason I was thinking 9:00 instead of 8:00.

At least we got to hear her sing.

Will Wanda Survive?

Don't forget to watch Northern Potter High School English teacher Wanda Shirk on tonight's new Survivor series.

Word is, they will be booting three people off the island tonight, so it may be your only chance to see Wanda in action.

The View From Here

When I wobbled out of bed this morning to let the dogs out at 6AM, just a few flakes of snow were falling. When I got out of bed for good at 7:30, we had an inch or two of accumulation. Which is fine, since I'm home sick today, but hopefully it will melt again so I don't have to shovel (not that I'm able to perform any physical labor today anyway...).

So this is my view for the day:

The Other Football

We get basic cable tv in our house and lately we've been teetering between the ideas of making the jump to digital cable or canceling our cable service altogether. As the salesperson says, "Digital cable is only a few dollars more per month!" But that's a few dollars on top of an ever increasing pile of dollars that we pay for basic cable.

So our dilemma is compounded by the fact that there are only a few things we really want to watch, but we really want to watch them. Most of Kari's interests can be assuaged by Netflix, but one of my main interests can't: international soccer.

Right now there are more Americans playing top-flight professional soccer than ever before. Claudio Reyna is about to come off injured reserve for Manchester City, Brad Friedel's Blackburn Rovers are flirting with the relegation zone, Landon Donavan just got his first start for Bayer Leverkusen, Gregg Berhalter is captaining the Energie Cottbus team, and Damarcus Beasley is making a name for himself at PSV Eindhoven.

Not to mention Cory Gibbs at Feyenoord, Carlos Bocanegra and Brian McBride at Fulham, Kasey Keller at Borussia Moenchengladbach, Daniel Hernandez at Necaxa, Tim Howard at Manchester Unitied, and others. In fact, it's telling that Soccer America seems to have given up on maintaining a full list of Americans playing overseas and now just limits themselves to a listing of the top 20.

Maybe we should get satellite tv instead.

A Joke for Music Geeks

"Mine is a much better silent piece," Batt declared. "I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and thirty-three seconds."
(from a Henry Kisor review, link via aworks)

Unfortunately, the story behind the joke isn't so funny.

Every NHL Fan's Dream Job

I was outside tonight scraping snow off my driveway, carving graceful oval-shaped paths with my shovel, when suddenly I realized one of the tragedies of the all-but-irrecoverable 2004-2005 NHL season.

When kids go to watch an NHL team, what is the one lasting image that they take back home with them? I mean, aside from the flattened face of the left-winger pressed up against the boards whose smeary visage will haunt their dreams for the next week-and-a-half.

It's the Zamboni driver.

C'mon, tell me that you don't secretly want that job. As soon as the players shuffle their way into the locker room, out comes the Zamboni driver precariously perched atop the glorious machine. For that brief space of time between periods, that guy is the coolest cat in the world. You can just tell that if it weren't against regulations, the guy would be swigging a beer and maybe even have a cigarette dangling from his lip.

And that clear, shimmering sheet of ice he leaves behind. Tell me that you don't feel a pang of dismay when the players come back out on the ice at the beginning of the next period, their skates gouging at the glasslike surface.

So raise a glass and toast the Zamboni driver. The real victim of the NHL lockout.

Questioning Authority

I'm sitting here reading email and drinking my morning coffee and listening to the Prime Minister's Questions on BBC radio. Every time I listen (or watch on CSPAN) to this weekly British political tradition, I wonder what American politics would be like if our President had to face Congressional questioning every week.

Despite the obvious political poopsmithing, this practice seems like a relatively easy way to promote accountability in our government. I have more to say about this, I think, but now it's time to go to work.

Super Bowl Extra-Large

Now that the least-exciting 3-point Super Bowl win ever is a thing of the past, it's time to look forward to next year's follow-up to Super Bowl XXXIX.

The pressing question: when will the NFL give up its obsession with Roman numerical numbering?

I'm hoping that something is done before we get to Superbowl 59. Not to mention Super Bowl 509.

(yeah, I know, I shouldn't have mentioned it...)

gMail Invites For Sale

Last week I noticed that my meager 4 remaining gMail invitations had suddenly become 50. Anyone who's using webmail through yahoo or hotmail or some such should really take a look at gMail. I use it for a couple of different mailing lists that I'm on, for which the organization of conversations by thread is especially handy.

So if you're interested in receiving a gMail invitation, just leave a comment. Priority goes to the 12 people that I personally know. Anyone else will be invited in an order indicating my confidence that you aren't some mass-marketing spammer.

Kari's Been Stressed Out Lately

As she sits in a semi-lotus postion with a cat on her lap, I ask:

"So, do you think you'd make a good zen student?"

"Why?"

"It might have a calming effect on you."

Kari pauses.

"No. I think I'd make a good kick-boxing student."

iPod Tips for Audiophiles

I was recently considering the optimal format for encoding my cd collection and settled on 160kbps AAC. So the question remains, if I were to shell out $250 for an iPod or $100 for the iPod shuffle, how do I get the highest quality sound while bopping around town with my entire music collection strapped to my bicep?

The answer: easy, just spend $1000.

Never having listened through $900 earphones, I can't tell if this guy is 100% full of it, but his couple of paragraphs on encoding contain a detectable traces of horse manure, so take his advice with a heaping shovelful of salt.

(via kottke, of course)

A Rodent, or a Sandwich Spread?

Thanks to Linda, I was recently reminded of Marmite, a yeast-extract-based spread. I haven't had the pleasure of trying it myself yet, but someday I expect to.

The general opinion of Marmite seems to be split just about evenly between revulsion and addiction (even according to the official website), but I would guess that those who are repulsed are reacting to the rodent-like name as much as the term "yeast-extract-based spread." In fact, based on the name alone, I used to think that a marmite was some kind of British rodent, such as a mole or a badger or something.

Now, I've had the converse experience. Upon hearing of someone's plans to attend a Mardi Gras costume party dressed up as a "nutria," I had a mental image of an ungainly costume celebrating some kind of energy bar or sports drink. It turns out, though, that a nutria is a rodent, a native of Argentina, that has been laying waste to Louisiana marshes. Incursions of the prolific rodent are destroying the vegetation that prevents the erosion of marshland, thus threatening the ecosystem of the Mississippi delta.

This situation has created turmoil within environmental circles as animal rights activists are pitted against ecologists in a battle over whether to save the rodent or the marshes. It's apparently impossible (i.e., too costly) to save both. Meanwhile, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee has gained local notoriety for his organized SWAT-team raids on the nutria.

Although you might think that local hunters would generally need few excuses to ride around shooting things, the government has seen fit to step in and offer subsidies to encourage greater nutria population control since market forces are no longer providing sufficient incentives.

In 1998, in a mid-'90s spike in demand from the Russian market, hunters and trappers harvested about 360,000 at an average of $5 per nutria pelt.

But again in 1999, devaluation of the ruble raised the price of a nutria coat from about $700 (U.S. dollars) to $2100, he said, "destroying the market."
...

The monetary incentive is also needed since there's not much sport to hunting nutria.

"They're not the most exciting thing to shoot," Linscombe said. "They will run, but you can get right up on 'em."

Maybe I can help. After all, Louisiana farmers in the nineteenth century developed my dog's breed to help them hunt swamp animals. Except, ummm, I'm guessing that these are not the kind of creature they had in mind.