oscar hopes with an hour and fifteen mintues to spare

I was pretty rushed with this, so I'm only going to focus on what I want to win, not what will actually win. It was still pretty hard to figure that out though, since there were only a few Oscar-contender movies that I actually saw this past year (Little Miss Sunshine, Dreamgirls, The Queen, Monster House, Pirates of the Caribean: Dead Man's Chest, The Prestige, The Illusionist, Marie Antoinette, An Inconvenient Truth, Superman Returns). As a result, I have to go a lot on what trusted friends and critics have said about these films (and sometimes just titles alone).

Screenplay -- Adapted
Children of Men

Screenplay -- Original
Little Miss Sunshine

Visual Effects
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Sound Mixing
Dreamgirls

Sound Editing
Apocalypto

Short Film -- Live Action
West Bank Story

Short Film -- Animated
No Time For Nuts

Original Song
"Patience" -- Dreamgirls

Original Score
Pan's Labyrinth

Makeup
Pan's Labyrinth

Foreign Language Film
Pan's Labyrinth

Film Editing
The Departed

Documentary Short
Recycled Life

Documentary Feature
Jesus Camp

Costume Design
Marie Antoinette

Cinematography
Children of Men

Art Direction
Pan's Labyrinth

Animated Feature
Monster House

Supporting Actress
Jennifer Hudson

Leading Actress
Helen Mirren

Supporting Actor
Eddie Murphy

Leading Actor
Peter O'Toole

Directing
The Departed

Best Picture
Little Miss Sunshine

stuff i'd like for my birthday

Here are some dvds of TV shows I totally wouldn't mind owning:

The Prisoner
Star Trek -- The Animated Series
Cowboy Bebop: The Complete Sessions
Eerie Indiana
Family Ties
Red Dwarf
The Twilight Zone

I don't have time right now to provide Amazon links, but you shouldn't have too hard a time finding these (with the exceptions of The Prisoner (a weird British show from the 60s) and The Complete Sessions of Cowboy Bebop (I've seen the episodes sold separately for a pretty high fee, but I know they have all episodes on only three discs somewhere).

I also need a zip-up comfortable black ninja hoodie. My old one is really wearing out.

A really really nice thing to do would be to go over to my house, get your credit card out and put some buying points on my Wii so that I can buy some old school Nintendo and Sega games.

There are still a couple of things from my Christmas list that I didn't get (don't get me a Wii or a Zune). Prepare to spend a bundle!

Since I eat out pretty much every day, some restaraunt gift cards would be really swell.

But of course, surprises are the best. You can really surprise me with geeky books or movies of some kind. Most people who know me know I'm a geek. What they don't know, however, is I'm secretly WAY geekier than I let on.

Remember my party this Tuesday!

EDIT: I totally forgot a huge item that I want... another Wii remote. My clan has been aching to play two player tennis since DAY ONE!

catch some v.d. for '07

Hey wow! I just realized that my last post was my 100th! Good job me!

I meant to post the following a week ago. For the record, I had a pretty nice Valentine's Day. I convinced Maria to stay in and we stayed in with takeout and watched Lost (this is the third entry in a row to reference Lost (how pathetic)).

Anyway, for the first time in four years I made a Valentine's cd. It used to be something I did every two years, but for whatever reason I didn't put the effort in since 2003. Here's the playlist. Notice the cinematic and television quotes. Thanks to Garageband, I was able to sneak a few gems of dialogue in. See if you can tell where the quotes come from.

1. ("You're asking me out? That's so cute! What was your name again?")
"Trouble Sleeping" by Corinne Bailey Rae

2. ("It's just void... Maybe she's retarded")

3. "Human Nature" by Michael Jackson

4. ("...this girl's really turning me on!")
"Damn Girl" by Justin Timberlake

5. ("Who're you?" "Whoever you want me to be.")
"Rabbit and the Moon" by Joseph Arthur

6. ("...Besides, you're a Romulan")
"I Want to be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart" by The White Stripes

7. ("I can't believe my grandmother actually... " "What's happenin' Hot Stuff?")
"Into Temptation" by Crowded House

8. ("We're not mass married...")
"I Wanna Get Married" by Nellie McKay

9. ("... we can always get divorced")
"Europa and the Pirate Twins" by Thomas Dolby


10. ("... you're a hottie!...")
"Woman" by Wolfmother as performed by Jon Madsen, the Guitar Hero

11. ("Understand I was in love with the girl... or at least in lust")
"I Got You" by Split Enz

12. ("Let's go talk about our superior relationship...")
"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Nancy Sinatra

13. ("...I have fallen in like with you...")
"My Heart is Breaking Down" by Caesars

14. ("...A-ha! Black panties!...")

15. "You're Gonna Miss Me" by The 13th Floor Elevators

16. ("...Allergic? To Dancin'?...")
"Piano Song" by Erasure

17. ("Flash, I love you, but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!")
"Goodnight Lovers" by Depeche Mode

So if you want a copy of the cd, shoot me an email. Maybe I can gift my playlist to you too.

as long as i'm talking about lost...

So whenever people talk about Lost with me they always ask, "Hey Jon, how did Michael and Walt boat off the island and Desmond couldn't?" I'll now provide the answer even though nobody has actually ever asked me that question.



I've provided a quick sketch of the island below. On it you should see icons representing the two pieces of the plane, Rosseau's house, the hatch and the Others' dock. More importantly, be sure to identify the large mountainy hill in the center of the island, Michael's boat and the black lines representing the electro-magnetic pull emanating from the hatch.

Feel free to click on the image to embiggen it during the following explanation. Desmond could not leave the island because some sort of force, like gravity, kept bringing him back. I assume that this force is concentrated at the hatch. We saw the full potential of the "hatch-pull" when the button on the hatch was not pushed. The pull was strong enough to bring a jet plane crashing straight into the island. Although the effects of the hatch pull are alleviated by the pushing of the button, its reach still has considerable power. While it's not bringing down jet planes, it is preventing boats from escaping. The hatch-pull effects aren't noticeable on the island itself (unless the button isn't pushed, in which case stuff goes flyin' everywhere), but are very noticeable for someone trying to escape. The hatch-pull, like a puddle ripple, actually gets stronger before it dissipates. This is shown on the drawing by the solid black semi-circle outside of the dotted semi-circles. Escape is possible, once outside the influence of the pull.

I used to play a really fun video game called Starcontrol that used a similar phenomenon. In the game you'd pilot a spaceship engaged in one-on-one space battles with an enemy. You and your nemesis always fought around some sort of gravity well, a moon or planet. Every once in a while you tended to get stuck in the planet's gravitational pull and needed to struggle to overcome it. This often brought your ship to a helpless halt while your enemy pretty much destroyed you. As I got better at the game, I discovered that when I could more easily get unstuck out of the gravity well if I thrusted in a parallel direction from the planet rather than perpendicular to it. When I got really good at the game I could actually use the planet's gravity to slingshot me away at a much greater speed than my ship was normally capable of. The Voyager Probe used a similar strategy when it traversed our solar system.

Okay, stay with me a little. Sailors are often in a similar situation when it comes to wind. They can't just sail against the wind, they need to tack sideways back and forth to head in that general direction. It's not necessarily gravity or wind, but I imagine a similar strategy would need to be used in boating away from the effects of the hatch-pull. Most of the hatch-pull could very well be strong enough that this strategy wouldn't work, but its effects might not be absolute over every location. This is where I theorize a large mountainous hill near to proximity to the hatch interferes with the hatch-pull ripple. The force of the hatch-pull still extends beyond the mountainous hill, but its effect is weakened. It might be just weak enough to allow Michael to tack alongside the weak force enough for his escape from the pull. I imagine if he boated directly away from the island, there would still be enough force to bring him back.

Desmond may have tried to tack with the island from time to time, but he would have been unsuccessful unless he did so at the perfect position in line with the hatch and the mountainous hill. Since The Others have control of that area, there is no possible way to boat off the island.

Does this mean that Michael and Walt are alive and well and back in the real world? Not likely. The Others couldn't let him get away and lead anybody else to their location. They at least need to keep tabs on him.

Will we see Michael and Walt again? Yes and no. Michael still ought to face those he betrayed. The kid who plays Walt is probably armpit-deep in puberty right now so they can't bring him back without another plot twist explaining how the kid suddenly became a teen-ager in 40 days. The plot twist would be reviled by the the viewership because it would be obvious that they invented it just because of the inconvenience of the actor's age. So if we hear of Walt again, it will be of his death.

This may all be moot though since the hatch imploded. Maybe that means there is no hatch-pull anymore and Michael got away for THAT reason. It would be hilarious if the hatch implosion actually aided Michael's escape and The Others suddenly have no idea where he and Walt went off to. That also means that the Oceanic passengers can now escape... if only they didn't get their boat taken away.

have i mentioned this before?

Don't you hate it when you see your ideas portrayed on television before you could even break into the medium? I say this in regard of the last episode of Lost. I need to hurry and comment on it before the new episode airs anyway.

When I was a kid I had a lot of deja vu. A lot. Seriously I recognized what it was several years before even learning the term. Of course, just learning what it was called didn't really explain it. Has anyone explained it? As far as I know, the first time anybody tried to explain the actual phenomenon to me was only relatively recently when I watched The Matrix for the first time. So as a kid, it was up to me to explain it. As far as I knew, I was the only one who ever experienced it and I came up with the most logical thing I could think of.

I figured that at some point in my distant future, I would come across a time machine or some kind of space-time anomaly. When you're a kid and the year 2000 was only 15 or so years away, such thinking was not too crazy. So anyway, through whatever time conveyance, I would become a time traveler and choose to go back in time. My reason for this would probably be to meet myself and give myself advice about life or something. Little would I realize that certain laws of matter would need to be obeyed and it wouldn't just be like Back to the Future where during my period in another time there would just be two of me. No. Instead I would just be transferred back into the body and consciousness of my former self, because I'd break a cosmic law of some sort if two of the exact same entity existed in the same universe. Now, since I inhabited the same consciousness as before I would have no memory of my time travel and would then continue my life all over again as if nothing happened. My future self would have absolutely no influence on how I re-lived my life up to the point that I re-discover the method of time travel. I would then make the exact same decision to go back in time and infinitely repeat the process. I would become immortal in the sense that I would never die, but damned to any sort of progression or relief from this life. Even if the universe ended at some point, it would be a point I would never come across.

Deja vu happened not because things merely seemed familiar, but because things were exactly the same. Somehow, in all the infinite loops, some shadows of past perception got clogged up in the mix. Of course, even a small change in perception could possibly lead to a change in action, but the concept itself frightened me a little. Even though my decisions wouldn't actually be determined by anyone but me, a sense of fate still pervaded the entire scenario.

So last Wednesday I see Lost and my concept is pretty much all right there. I'll never get my dues. What's worse is that I'll never get my dues over and over again.

Anyway, I'm curious how they play out this whole fate thing in the Lost universe. Fate really is an uncool device. The decisions characters make have no dynamic when they're supposed to make those decisions anyway. It pretty much takes away all the glee that comes with heroism and all the despair that comes with failure. What's left? Boredom. This whole situation with Desmond is pretty eastern religiony. The point of many eastern religions is that escape from the cycle of rebirths is not only possible, but ideal. Although, it would give me a lot of enjoyment if Lost totally teases the whole "overcoming fate thing" and then pulls the rug out. Suddenly we're left to realize that Desmond can't escape his destiny, Locke really can be told what he can't do and the others really are the good guys... but only because the victors write the history books.

By the way, I still can't explain deja vu, but I hardly ever have it anymore. Does that mean escaped my infinity crisis loop? Did all that deja vu actually change my actions? Did I actually overcome? Strangely, as the world gets less and less familiar, I wonder if whatever I've done has been for the good.

my freecapitalist review of idiocracy (may as well pad the blog with a bit of already seen filler)

A few weeks ago, FreeCapitalist.com reviewed a movie called Children of Men. That particular film involves a dramatic future dystopia about the decline of humanity because of the loss of principles. Strangely, this wasn’t the only film from 2006 to address this particular scenario.
Idiocracy certainly isn’t nearly as highbrow as Children of Men. The most obvious difference is the fact that Idiocracy is actually a straight-up comedy. The film comes from the bizarre mind of Mike Judge, the guy who got famous for introducing Beavis and Butt-head to the world. Idiocracy gets its laughs from many of the common comedic areas of today; i.e. kicks to certain places, certain off-color word usage and more than one joke about a certain place where human waste is consumed. But beyond all that modern comedic sludge, the stinging element linking Children of Men and Idiocracy is the similar principled message both portray.

In Idiocracy we are introduced to Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), a lowly clerk in the present-day military. Joe makes no secret that he wants to just coast through his service and stewardship. He secures a lazy job in a nearly never-visited part of the archives department. Joe’s understanding and attitude are summed up quite well in an exchange between him and a colleague. The colleague comes to inform him that their supervisor is re-assigning Joe to a different department. Joe is distraught. “I don’t understand it,” he says “Whenever I’m asked to lead, follow or get of the way; I always get out of the way.” Joe’s colleague gives Joe one of many lessons he’ll learn throughout the movie, “When he says ‘Lead, follow or get out of the way,’ he doesn’t want you to get out of the way. He wants to inspire you to lead, or at the very least, shame you into following.”

It turns out Joe’s new assignment is to test out the military’s new cryogenics program. He’s scheduled to hibernate for a year, but something goes awry, the cryogenics program is discontinued and Joe wakes up hundreds of years in the future. Joe quickly discovers that the world is now inhabited by the dumbest humans in Earth’s history. A question on the IQ test Joe takes shortly after arriving asks him, “If you have a two gallon bucket and a five gallon bucket, how many buckets do you have?” After getting in trouble with the law, Joe escapes a prison sentence by informing the prison guard that he’s actually supposed to be in the line of prisoners getting OUT of prison, not in.

Not only are these people not intelligent, but they have no familiarity with the concept of people as assets. This is evidenced by Carl’s Jr.’s slogan of the future: “Carl’s Jr… F*** you, I’m eating.” They also seek for something for nothing at every possible turn. Hospital waiting rooms contain slot machines that pay out free health care if the user is lucky. One member of the president’s cabinet got the job by winning a contest. Society has the false assumptions that productivity is not a standard and that their collective action actually has authority. Because of these philosophies, the world’s crop supply is dying because the people spray them with a Gatorade-type energy drink instead of water.

Joe soon realizes that the idiots he’s dealing with are the descendants of people with attitudes just like his. Through Joe’s vivid object lesson, he also learns that he’s tended to neglect his own self-value and society would actually struggle without his nurturing of his own stewardship. Soon, rather than coasting along in this new world, Joe attempts to bring principles and intelligence to the people for their benefit as well as his.

Obviously, this film, like most science fiction, is meant to be a commentary on today’s society and where we’re headed. Like Children of Men it teaches that people are assets. It also points us toward making the best of our own self-interest and thereby improving society rather than leeching from it. Of course, there are a lot of fart jokes on the way there.

Jon Madsen is the sound engineer for FreeCapitalist Radio and co-host of The Abel Hour.

don't trust me seven days from now

My birthday is exactly one week from today. Please come to my house on Tuesday the 27th to say farewell to the last aspects of whatever youth I have left. This particular event will be a propaganda message t-shirt party. Wear a t-shirt with a message on it. If you don't, one will be provided for you(it might not be a message that you uphold, so you'll be better off if you're not a killjoy). Feel free to bring extra t-shirts to help us out with the lame-os. Drinks (probably water) and hors devours (probably condiment packets) will be provided. If you have any questions, talk to me or Maria.

*sigh. Seven days left. Hoo boy.

pillage of the damned

I have been buying way too much stuff lately. Way too much.

I finally flipped out about it when I bought the iPod on Saturday. Maria pointed out that I haven't actually regrat (it's a word, c'mon!) any specific one of my purchases. I've only regrat the entire catalog of purchases as a whole. Every huge purchase I've made in the past few weeks has been in contention to be the best purchase of my life.

1. Guitar Hero II for the Playstation 2: Maria's already discussed this in great detail.

2. Guitar Hero II wireless guitar: Hey, how can I play Guitar Hero without wailing on someone to show off my dominance? Of course, Joe constantly beats me and that severely affects my manhood.

3. 24-hour fitness gym membership: My goal is to have the arms of a human being.

4. Those sunglasses you see in the previous post: I can't board in goggles! I've got an image to maintain.

5. As-yet-unnamed-iMac: Finally, a computer free of spyware (at least that I can tell)! Was it worth the money? Not sure yet, but at least it looks cool.

6. An all-in-one HP printer/copier/scanner: It's for my new computer and it's free once I figure out the rebate.

7. jO-jO the Wii: I haven't mentioned that with Maria's extreme dedication, I finally got my hands on a Wii. It's also totally the party that you've been hearing about. I took Maria's advice and decided to name it jO-jO (with the emphasis on the Os) because it's small and scrappy. Maria talks about it here.

8. Warioware Smooth Moves: Wii Sports is fun enough, but Warioware smooth moves is trippy enough to continue to keep me away from illicit drugs.

9. Wii Lan adapter: Now my Wii can connect online and and I can buy old school Nintendo and Sega games for between eight and ten bucks a piece. Nothing like purchases that give me opportunities for more purchases.

10. 80 gig Video iPod named Yvette: Hell has frozen over with this one. I've been an iPod hater for years now. I don't really like the flywheel, I don't like the lack of radio tuner, I don't like the lack of a line in, I don't like the lack of a microphone and the small size never really impressed me. Alas, the new iMac does not recognize my old mp3 player. Plus, I caved because I think Apple is a company to trust when it comes to video. So since, I've got the video one, I now have the option of downloading TV shows and music videos for two bucks as well as the opportunity to download movies for ten bucks. The only problem is it's got an internal hard drive rather than a flash drive. The hard drive holds video and way more stuff than a flash drive, but it can possibly skip as well as get damaged during movement. That means I'll probably be buying ANOTHER mp3 player just to take to the gym and snowboarding. I named it Yvette, because the "ette" on the end draws attention to the petite-ness of the thing (thanks for that one Mike).

Could I live without any of the above purchases? Sure. Would I bother? No.

post #1 from a mac

The iMac is up! And I'm pretty sure things are running smoothly. Here's a picture of the little boy:



The computer took a picture of itself! Isn't that cute? I only wish I owned a mirror. Those are new sunglasses too, though. This could very well be the worst Mac ever and I wouldn't know it, since I've never used one before. If anyone has any tips, let me know. I figure my computer curse will be broken now that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. All I really know for sure is that now the computer's gonna be doing everything for me -- audio, video, word processing, labor (both mental and manual), eating, sleeping, killing, etc.

Also, I need help naming this thing. It needs a girl's name or maybe a gay man's name. Suggestions?

my earliest super bowl memory (so glorious!!!)

To celebrate "Da Bearsss" upcoming Super Bowl effort I have unearthed this wonderful gem from the last time they were there. The fusion of football, drum machine beats and intense state-of-the-art video editing make this a vibrant collectible well ahead of its time. I constantly find myself defending my favorite decade. I think this clip should put all you 80s hatas in your place.


Super Bowl Shuffle - video powered by Metacafe

Hey that reminds me of my favorite joke from 1986:

Ditka and the Bears were all gathered in the locker room before the big game. For team unity, Ditka asks William Perry to say The Lord's Prayer. Jim McMahon leans over to Walter Payton and says, "I bet you 100 bucks The Fridge doesn't know The Lord's Prayer." Perry then begins the prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep..." The Bears say amen and are polite to The Refrigerator. About five minutes later McMahon hands Payton a hundred dollar bill and says, "I could've sworn he didn't know it."

the game is afoot!

If you're a friend of mine, no doubt you've heard of this:

http://marmaladememoirs.blogspot.com/2007/02/robbers-are-lame.html

http://landoflauralot.blogspot.com/2007/02/fah-who-foraze-dah-who-doraze.html

Unfortunately, the only beings dumber than the robbers in this tale are probably the cops. That means that we need to recover the stolen articles ourselves.

If I were a robber, no doubt I'd sell the items on eBay. I wonder how much stuff on eBay is hot. It would sure explain the availability and surprising condition of certain things on there. I don't think this is the case in our current matter. Any crook who passes up a brand new iMac probably doesn't actually know how to use a computer. Strangely, I would assume such low-lifes do know how to use a Playstation 2, but whatever. Anyway, If we happen to find the exact items stolen on eBay and originating at or near Salt Lake City, we might at least have a case. The beauty of it is that we'll have the offenders' information. Like I said though, eBay probably isn't their method in this particular case.

If there's one thing State Street in Salt Lake City is known for it's its impressive amount of pawn shops. I'll bet the items are all within one of these shops. There's a real good chance that the thieves waited a couple of days to pawn in order to avoid suspicion. If they hit the shops soon, there's still a chance that buyers for the items haven't arrived yet. If we split up, we can probably get the correct one before too many of the items go out the door. Perhaps we could question the shopkeepers about the details of their clientele while it's still fresh on their minds.

Of course I also realize that the vice community of thieves probably works some kind of middle-man technique in order to make the hot items less traceable (just like in the legitimate business world too I suppose). Still, though, it'd probably be nicer to get the actual items back for cheap rather than new unfamiliar items expensively.

i thought of two different funny titles for this entry but they were both really offensive and inappropriate

I had a really weird, bizarre thought today. If I weren't involved with someone, I wonder if Sheri Dew would date me. I'm not saying I'm particularly attracted to her or anything, but how desperate do you suppose she is? What would she be like on a date? I bet she's potentially crazier than we would think.

a convenient truth

I'm in the process of getting a new expensive computer, it's close to my birthday and my mom's favorite hobby is writing me checks. As a result of all that, Mom wrote me the second check in a week yesterday. As I went to the bank for the second time this week the thought occured to me... why haven't I arranged my matronly finances into some sort of direct deposit?