Worst. Oscars. Ever?

I'm not sure it was as bad as Rob Lowe singing "Rollin on the River" with Snow White, but it was pretty close. Ellen DeGeneres was OK as host but just barely. (It almost seemed like Jerry Seinfeld was auditioning for the part when he was giving out the Best Documentary award.) I liked the opening Errol Morris thing, but only because I like Errol Morris and I like Apple (the piece was a copy of what Morris did for Apple's Mac commercials a while back). The other montages were eeeh. The Pilobilus (sp) shadow art thing was dumb. The speeches were boring. I mean, I love Ennio Morricone's work, but does he need to be up there for 3-4 minutes? (I think that's how long he was up there from my clicking through his speech at 30 seconds a hop.) Similarly, the Dreamgirls medley went on FOREVER! Jeez, get the hook already! They didn't even win Best Song, and they had three out of the five nominations! Ugh!

Every year I vow not to watch, and every year I break my vow. At least this year I watched most of it via MythTV and played Viva Pinata instead.

ESR is down with Edgy!

Interesting post to only the hardcore Linux people out there... seems that Eric S Raymond has given up on Red Hat/Fedora and has switched to Ubuntu. I would have thought some of Ubuntu's recent statements concerning non-open-source video drivers would have made ESR hesitant, but apparently Ubuntu works and Fedora doesn't so that was enough for him.

ESR gives up on Fedora

Ooooh, Dancing with the Stars new lineup!

I probably have Dancing with the Stars posts elsewhere here. This is somewhat embarassing, but oh well. They've just announced this year's contestants and the lineup is as varied as you might expect. Interestingly, Heather Mills is in it: I thought she'd be tied up divorcing Paul McCartney, or at least roundly despised because of it. Then again, she'll be the first paraplegic contestant. I'd say one of the odds-on favorites will have to be Ian Ziering, only because Cheryl Burke will be his partner. And I'll be watching for Ric Ocasek in the audience cheering on his hot wife Paulina Porizkova (they are still married, aren't they?).

Oncoming Oscars

Hm, haven't posted in a while and I'm not really sure what to discuss, so I'll discuss this Sunday's Oscars. Don't worry, this will be brief. Mainly because of the movies up for Best Picture, I think I've only seen two (Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed).

I'm adding Babel to my NetFlix queue right after I post this... Maria saw The Queen while I chose to play Gears of War for two hours instead, and I do want to see both the nominated Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers.

I was wishing that Children of Men had done better, as I quite liked the film. Some great technical work in that film. But I, like everyone, will be rooting for Scorsese to finally win a bleeping Oscar, either as Best Director or as Best Picture or both.

Oh, and I guess I hope Cars wins Best Animated Picture. I don't think I put it in my database yet, but both Maria and I DETESTED Happy Feet (I mean we hated that sucker)... can't comment on Monster House... that'd be like the old Bill Murray SNL routine "I didn't see this, so it's out of the running."

Bourdain disses Food Network

Found this with a lowly 12 Diggs but it was pure gold for someone like me who watches Food Network from time to time. Noted chef and author and gadfly Anthony Bourdain goes down the list of Food Network celebs and pulls no punches. Likes: Batali, Giada, Alton. Dislikes: pretty much everyone else. It's always refreshing to see someone speaking candidly like this, and boy is he candid.

Guest Blogging: A Bourdain Throwdown

The huge pinata timesink

The kids got Viva Pinata for Christmas this year. Yeah, the kids. Uh huh. All for them. What a selfless guy I am.

Anyhow, they enjoy the game and have even started watching the series a bit. I enjoy the game too. A little too much.

I'm not addicted to it or anything. I'ts not quite that bad. However, unlike Gears of War (where I can play through a couple of checkpoints and put it away) or UNO (where I can yet again lose an online match and put it away), once I start playing The Pinata, I go into some kind of zone, and before you know it, boom, an hour of my life is gone.

The other day I thought, OK, I'm just going to quickly go in and see what pinatas I need to breed in order to get some more awards. I saw that I needed another shellybean or two. Well, that'll be quick, right? Off to romance them. But wait... the fruit by those bushes is rotting. I should pick it up or sell them off. And that bush doesn't look so hot... I'll buy another seed and plant another one. Hey, my candaries have hearts over their heads! I can finally romance them. Wait, hold still you stupid yellow virtual pinata bird things! Oh, flutterscotches are ready too, but they are also stupid and keep flying around. Ack, Dastardos! Where's my crowla? What? He got broken? Ack!

I could go on like that for hours. And unfortunately, I do. In real life as opposed to a blog.

Steve Jobs -- anti DRM?

Wow, just read an article on Yahoo News saying that The Steve has come out in favor of the music companies selling unencumbered un-DRMed music. Interesting in that it's recently been rumored that the record companies themselves have been considering getting rid of DRM, if only to free them from Steve's iTunes Music Store. Steve seems to be OK with that, at least on paper.

Now, the question is, what's so special about music? Wonder if Steve is also OK with selling, say, Cars or Toy Story online with no DRM attached...

Apple's Jobs Calls on Music Industry to Drop DRM

Cat 5 choker

Saw this mentioned on Geek Brief TV and had to blog it to remember it. I'm not sure the Mrs. would necessarily like a choker made out of Cat 5 unshielded twisted pair cable, but I thought it was cute, as were the resistor-based earrings or the MIDI wrist band.

Fractalspin

Aqua Teen Hunger Scare

Saw this posted first on Daily Kos and I agree 100%... when it comes to baseball, give me the Red Sox over the Yankees any day, but after the insane overreaction to a bunch of Lite-Brites giving people the finger, you have to hand it to NYC over Boston. People demanding that Turner compensate Boston? Charging the two guerilla artists with a felony? Jeez, people really have gone nuts in this country.


NY Daily News: NY Tooned Out Invaders