List of nominees for this year's Oscars was released today. It will come as a shock to exactly no one, I'm sure, that I've seen essentially none of the shortlisted movies. Except in the animated feature category. I saw all three of those and I really can't say right off which I'd pick. They were all great. Even just trying to handicap is tough, since both Park and Miyazaki are former winners. Slight edge to Wallace and Gromit, maybe, as Miyazaki won for Spirited Away in this category just a few years ago, whereas Park has only won for short subjects. Corpse Bride was kinda goth-y for mainstream Academy tastes. But Burton has the advantage of being a widely respected and well known director.
I've never been anything like a completist but I'm a bit surprised at how few of the big nominees I have any interest in seeing. Really, until you get down into the art direction type awards, the only films up for anything I wanna see are Syriana and Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room (I should check... I bet the Enron doc is out on DVD already).

Nam June Paik died this past Sunday. Altho (and I think you can get a sense of this just looking at the images on the home page) in some ways Paik's impact is the story of the avant garde and confrontational becoming the commercial and ordinary, that's also a somewhat shallow way of viewing his art. In a way I can't quite articulate, some of Paik's work has always reminded a bit of Rauschenberg. Altho they both ended up evolving in very different ways, I think there's a common thread. Something about juxtaposition of images... that's the best I can do just now.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 29 jan 06) ::

Aparelhagem :: DJ Dolores
Nous Non Plus :: Nous Non Plus
Beleza! Beleza!! Beleza!!! :: Trio Mocoto
Le Pop 3 :: various
Silva :: Vinicius Cantuaria
Akamba Apota :: Cosmos Magaya and Beaulah Dyoko
Trojan Dub Massive, chapter 2 :: various
My Hope :: Anthony B.
Oasis :: Frigg
Introducing... :: Daby Balde

Haven't yet addressed the archive install operation, but I can report that the wireless antenna fix did the trick and I'm now able to move my iBook off the desktop and into another room and still maintain a wifi connection. So that's delightful. Yesterday we did some more yardwork -- battling with the evil invasive yucca. Then we went to dinner at Nana's (a day early for Sarah's birthday). The food, as it's been on both previous visits, was spectacular from start to finish. My only quibble was with the service. It was fine for most of the evening, amazingly good right at the beginning (I'll leave that story for Sarah) and then kind of annoying right at the end. By which I mean that they brought the check without asking me if I was ready for the check. And in fact while I was still finishing my desert. That's definitely the tackiest waiter faux pas I've had happen in any of the fine dining estabs that I've been to locally. I didn't reduce the tip at all, because the experience as a whole was so good, but it does make me think twice about choosing Nana's again for a special occasion, as opposed to Four Square or Second Empire. Maybe it's unfair to let one mis-step by one waiter put me off the whole place. On the other hand, if I'm dropping serious coin for a meal, I do not wanna feel like I'm getting bum-rushed out the door.

And this is what comes of having espresso creme brulee and a cappucino at 9pm-ish... But it was a wonderful end to another wonderful meal at Starlu and thus well worth any caffeinated sleep deprivation that's resulting.
Earlier I had an appointment at the Apple store at Southpointy. The guru-on-call was very helpful. He tweaked the wireless antenna and seems to have greatly improved my Airport reception. He also determined that there's not a hardware problem. Probably I need to do an archive install of the OS (which one of the help pages online had suggested as well for the "can't find iPod" problem) So I'll try that over the weekend and see how it goes.
In addition to helpful tips, we also got a floor show at the Genius Bar, including tips on how loading the wrong sort of country music onto your iPod can kill it. I gotta give the guy much credit. He delivered the line with just enough deadpan to almost sell it. Or at least he might have if Sarah and I hadn't busted out laughing. But the top act in the show was definitely the young woman who went off on the harried Apple store guy (did I mention that it was super busy? I waited about 30-40 min before I got to see someone) about how she'd been waiting for 20 min. HAS-guy was clearly in no mood to be hearing this and said, almost without looking up from what he was doing, that since her appointment time was at 7 then as far as he was concerned, she'd only been waiting 10 min. Causing her to storm away, announcing loudly "I hate the people that work here." Causing Sarah and me to bust out laughing again.

good times...

Something's hinky with my iBook. Neither iTunes nor Finder can see my iPod when I plug it in (so I can't update the playlists on the iPod which I'm wholly tired of, plus there's way too much Xmas music on there). When I try to download software updates it's getting stuck at install (waiting for local disks). Disk Utility crashes instantly whenever I try to open it. Tonight a CD got stuck in the drive and wouldn't eject. I had to boot into firmware to get it out. Boy howdy was that a thrill ride... At least it worked. So I guess I'll have to take it into the shop, as it were. Hopefully it's only a minor meltdown and not some terminal illness.

feh!

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 22 jan 06) ::

Aparelhagem :: DJ Dolores
Le Pop 3 :: various
Beleza! Beleza!! Beleza!!! :: Trio Mocoto
My Hope :: Anthony B.
the In-Kraut: Hip Shaking Grooves Made In Germany 1966-1974 :: various
Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil-up :: various
Oasis :: Frigg
Rolas de Aztlan: Songs of the Chicano Movement :: various
Akamba Apota :: Cosmos Magaya and Beaulah Dyoko
Silver & Gold 1973-1979 :: Prince Far I

(vegetarians, y'all can skip ahead to the next 'graph) So, last night we fired up the meat grinder attachment to the Kitchen Aid. Amazing. Fresh ground meat... and it's just that simple. I suppose it's even economically sensible -- as chunks o' meat generally cost a bit less than ground meat. But I think there are also freshness/quality and safety factors that argue in favor of grinding at home. I'll probably want to experiment with just grinding meat for a few times. If that continues to work out, I might try making sausage

Some bits of oddment I've been wanting to mention:
1. this is quite possibly the scariest food product I've ever seen. Yes, even scarier than the 8500 cal. super-sandwich (previously blogged here)
2. the question is, if your dog will run after treats, why do you need one of these? (the answer, I assume, is because everyone needs a goofy treat-shooting gun)
3. Miyazaki art car!!

Busy weekend. Party with the art crowd. Gallery opening. Party with the football crowd (well, at least the first game and the barbecue were real good, even tho the Panthers game was an epic bludgeoning). And somewhere along the way, we watched Buckaroo Banzai. Which I hadn't seen in years and years. Man, I'd forgotten how much I love that movie. Bonus to watching it in the early 21st century -- in addition to being a fun ride, it's also an astounding catalog of bad 80s fashion.

Rainy and gray today. Not cold (that's not coming until tomorrow) but with the week just past, enough to set me into a daylong blah. Which might not be the worse thing as, starting tonight, we're off onto the mad social whirl thru next weekend.
Here's a pic (a bit too dark but I got tired of trying to get the lighting right) of one of my recent scores. With the Amazon gift certificate I got from Sarah's folks for Xmas, I got One Kiss Can Lead to Another. 4 CDs of girl groups from the 60s from the fine folks at Rhino. Not my usual thing, it's true, but I was impressed by the reviews I read. Plus the ultraswanky packaging. Hatbox to hold the CDs (which look like compacts) and booklet (like a diary)

Wrapped up the week with two Miyazaki films. Last night we re-watched Spirited Away and tonight we watched My Neighbor Totoro. Which I think I mentioned was the last of the Miyazaki's movies I hadn't seen. By now I'm sure everyone knows just how delightful Totoro is so I won't go on and on saying those kinds of things. They're all true, of course... One thing I found interesting, esp. seeing the two back-to-back like I did, is how many echoes of Totoro there are in Spirited Away. Chihiro is in many ways the antithesis of Mei and Sasaki. Visually there's a bit of a resemblence between the smaller Totoro's and the fat little mouse that Zeniba turns Baby into in Spirited Away. And of course, the soot.

Here's the playlist from last night's show. Which might have been the last weekly show for a while. Or maybe the last Wednesday night show for a while. Or maybe not. The shoe of scheduling has not dropped for the spring session yet. Anyway, a pretty good couple of hours, I think. Still didn't come all that close to rocking out, but I felt like my energy level was up just a bit from last week, which if it had gotten any much mellower it would've ripened and rotted. I stayed on for an extra half-hour tonight when the midnight DJ didn't show. Mostly to play a couple of Fela tracks.

there was more i wanted to say but i'm tired and i can't remember what it was...

Okay so this is clearly the story of the year. Well, maybe just the story of the day, since it is only January. And no, I have no idea whether it's true. Not that it really matters. Well, it's possibly slightly funnier if it's true. But only slightly...

Spuddy, we hardly knew ye

In the words of Bart Simpson, I didn't think it was physically possible but this both sucks and blows...
(but then I got to go home and things slowly started improving)

And from the dept. of wow -- next Monday as part of Duke's Screen Society, there's a screening of Electric Edwardians a collection of documentary films made in the UK in the early 20th century. Which sounds like it'll be amazing. Plus the music for this release was done by In the Nursery. I note from their website that they've also done scores for Man With A Movie Camera and Page of Madness both of which I've seen -- for me, it'd be hard for them to top Cinematic Orchestra's score for ...Movie Camera but I'd love to see Page of Madness with a better score. I wonder if there's a DVD version with their music.

Grr... snarl... yes, I am definitely Bad Mood Guy this weekend. Which had a few up sides. Made it much easier to burn thru the backlog of review CDs for XDU to be able to quickly make judgments about a disc's utter craptacularity. Not even two excellent Miyazaki movies could do much more than provide temporary diversion. Nausicaa was as good as I remembered. And Laputa: Castle in the Sky was even better. For whatever reason, when I watched it for the first time it didn't really grab me and I'd remembered it as definitely a lesser work. But it's a full-on ripping yarn. With some stunning visuals. And air pirates!!

Check out these awesome new stamps. Set includes a Wild Thing and Curious George!! Right up there with last year's Muppet series for utter coolness.

So there are things going on but they're all hanging unresolved. And it's mostly work stuff, which I don't wanna write about (cos I like my job and even tho I doubt I'd get fired for blogging, well, people get fired for blogging so...), or stuff that involves other people's bizness (which it ain't my bizness to be writing about). Meanwhile, life goes on. It's freakishly warm, which seems to happen a lot here in early January. If nothing else, it's a fine incentive to put away all the holiday thoughts and holiday stuff until next year. In other exciting news, this weekend I'm planning to re-alphabetize all the CDs now that I've put the 4th Ikea rack in place. Exciting, no?
I'm sure everyone else on the planet has already seen Overheard in New York but I just did the other day. Lotsa fun, in that found-object way...

(actual snowman would've melted away in the unseasonable warmth and fogbanks we're having around town tonight)

Here's tonight's playlist. Another 2 hours of steadfastly refusing to rock out. The XDU spring schedule starts next week-ish. Hopefully I'll be on at the same time but every other week. I've enjoyed the weekly shows but the coming months look to be busy enough that I can use some more slack.

Back in the groove, perhaps just barely. So let's re-cap, shall we... I drove up to Staten Island to see the fam last Tuesday. Made insanely good time (about 7.5 hours door-to-door). For several reasons, the trip was shortened a bit so I didn't have the chance to socialize or sightsee much. I did run into Manhattan early Thursday to see the Rauschenberg combines at the Met. Amazing! Highly recommended if yr in the NYC area over the next few months. Headed back over the weekend and stopped in Maryland. Hung out with the kids. Went over some of the wedding/travel/Vegas plans with Pru. Watched Serenity (just as good the 2nd time around) and Wedding Crashers (kinda fun, even though it is massively stoopid -- any movie w/ Walken always has something going for it). Stopped at Ikea on the way home and got some more CD storage, another file cabinet (hey, almost all the piles o' stuff are gone from the floor under my desk now), and the bathroom mirror that Sarah and I had looked at back in November but which was outta stock. Work goes on. Life goes on. The weird are definitely turning pro.
Question for today: which is a more sucktastic car name -- Aspire or Esteem?
Finally, here's an awesome website: Vegas, baby

And there was heat (and there was much rejoicing...)

the Lounge will be closed for the rest of the week. Talk and/or drink amongst yrselves, folks.

The current rumor is that our furnace should be fixed within the next 3 to 5 hours. That will be very nice indeed. Other than the previously mentioned wonderful dinner party, we spent the weekend mostly in denial, willing ourselves to believe it wasn't that cold. And watching TV. We got thru all 3 discs of the first season of Project Runway (fabulous!) and then several episodes of the Mythbusters marathon. I was planning to cook last night but around 6 was overwhelmed with ennui and fatigue (dammit, sitting around on one's ass all day takes a lot of energy). Fortunately, Neo China saved us.

(note: pictured here are my new pair of Tredairs which just arrived and the snappy Homer Simpson pajamas that Sarah got me for Xmas)