But the hippie lady said I wouldn't get sick! And she was so cute I believed her!

Dang it.

Best Picture: My two favorite movies of the year, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Before Sunset weren't nominated. Of the five nominated films, I've not seen Ray (no interest) nor Finding Neverland. I will be seeing the latter soon when it comes to the little local theater in North Bend in a couple of weeks. Of the nominees that I did see, Million Dollar Baby is clearly the best. I hope it wins.

Best Director: Didn't see Vera Drake, either. The Aviator is a good flick, and there are some truly breathtaking moments - it feels to me like this is Scorsese's year, based more on his past work than his current film. Comparing what he did to what Eastwood did is comparing apples and oranges. If I had to pick one of these flicks to see again, MDB wins easily, but The Aviator is worthy.

Best Actor: Of the three nominated performances I've seen so far, I have to give the edge to Eastwood. Even though his role in MDB hews pretty close to his "loveable curmudgeon" type, I have to say there are moments toward the end of the film that are unlike anything I've ever seen him do. Leo is great in The Aviator, but he's got a long career ahead of him. Cheadle is great in Hotel Rwanda, and I hear Jamie Foxx is good in Ray. Still, for my money, none of these performances hold a candle to Jim Carrey's in ESOTSM - for which I feel he was unjustly denied a nomination. Unfortunately, he's still got that "clown" reputation, and they don't give Oscars to guys like that until they are 90 and on their deathbed. It's sort of like how so many people can't accept that Steve Vai is real artist because he once played in Whitesnake. Too bad, because Carrey's was the performance of the year.

Best Actress: Bad me, I've only seen two of the nominated performances, but I can't imagine wanting anyone to win more than Kate Winslet for ESOTSM. She only created one of the most startlingly real and heartbreaking characters I've ever seen on a movie screen. She'll never win, but there's no one who was better - he says, without having seen most of her competition (Hilary Swank is very deserving for her work in MDB, though - and I don't say that just because I find her bizarrely attractive).

Best Supporting Actor: Whoa, I've seen all of these! Jamie Foxx was probably my favorite of these, maybe because Clive Owen played a completely irredeemable bastard in Closer (one of my favorites of the year). Foxx will probably not win either of the awards he is nominated for, but it must be cool to get nominated as Best and Best Supporting Actor the same year. My guess is that Thomas Hayden Church will win for Sideways, but honestly to me, his is the weakest performance in this field. I liked the movie, but I think it is severely overrated, and I never believed in THC's character for one minute. He seems like caricature from the first frame you see him in. I'm gonna pull for Foxx or Owen in this.

Best Supporting Actress: Ooh, I saw all these, too! Everyone's gonna pull for Cate Blanchett because she does one of those "transformations" into a famous person most of us remember well... not that she wasn't good, but I feel like that's something of a cheat. Laura Linney was really good in Kinsey (Liam Neeson was robbed for his work in that), as was Virginia Madsen, who I feel gave the best performance in Sideways. And then Natalie. Ah, Natalie, who inspires such naughty thoughts. She was really great, and she is wicked hot, and I'm probably rooting for her, even though she wasn't the best. Sophie Okonedo was just fine in her role, but I don't recall being blown away by anything she did. If there's justice, Virginia Madsen gets this one.

Best Adapted Screenplay: I just want Before Sunset to win something.

Best Original Screenplay: Man, The Incredibles is a great film, but come on - ESOTSM is only one of the greatest films I've ever seen, and it starts with the brilliant script. It won't win (probably The Aviator will), but that don't make it right!

Nobody cares about the rest of them, right?

I said it would get done, and it is in fact finished - the master of half-pint demigod was completed Saturday afternoon. Look for a clip or clips soon.

I had occasion to be inside of a McDonald's this weekend, a rare event for me, I'm pleased to report. I noticed that in almost all propaganda posted all over the store, McD's is using colloquial English. Perhaps this stems from their current excreble slogan, I'm Lovin' It. On the menu, a heading read, "What are you havin'?" By the cash register, a sign whose purpose it was to inform customers whether or not credit/debit cards were accepted announced, "Yep, We Take 'Em!" Another example: "We're Makin' 'Em Fresh!"

SIGH. Am I alone in feeling patronized?

Lots of old loose ends are starting to get tied up around here... and as a result movement on the artistic front will once again be visible. Even if one had pointed a time-lapse camera on my recent artistic movements for the last several months, I'm afraid the resulting film would pretty much look like a still image. But that won't stay true in coming months.

This Saturday, Darin DiPietro and I will finally, FINALLY lock down the master for half-pint demigod, the album of Any Raw Flesh? remixes that Andre LaFosse delivered to me (choke) almost three years ago. I make it sound like we've been toiling over it for those three years... that's not so. In fact, it was just last week that I called Darin about getting the job done, and the work on it has been a breeze. The album sounds terrific, and I am reminded forcefully all over again why I was really excited about Andre's work on the remixes in the first place. It's a great album. I can guarantee you that it will see release sometime in 2005. Right now its release date is contingent on when the debut Half Zaftig album gets done and put out there - but if for some current unforeseen reason that project gets delayed, this may not remain the case. Andre himself told me last year that he thought a new album of new material should be my main priority, and right now, it is. So we shall see what happens. But half-pint demigod will come out in 2005. That's all I'm saying. I'll put up a medley of clips once the master is finished, and I'm gonna dig out and re-post the recordings of conversations that Andre and I had and posted back (in 2001!) when he was in the thick of his work on the remixes.

I do that thing, too, where I talk about how I'm gonna update content on the Web sites, and then I don't do it. Huh.

All in good time.

I think today is the day I go check out Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. Though I'm worried, critics in 2003 slavered all over themselves praising Clint's Mystic River and I thought that one was only... OK. So I hope this one isn't too overhyped. Apparently Morgan Freeman is doing his "benevolent narrator" thing again, and how can you go wrong with that?

This year's mix disc is done, and I like it, maybe as much as any of them since I first started in 2001 (that year's disc remains my favorite that I've made). I need to type up my yearly liner notes for it and post them somewhere like in past years. Maybe later tonight.

I've been listening a lot in the last few days to Meshuggah's new, uh, EP, er... song? Well, it's a 21-minute track called I (pronounced EYE), and it's just... well, it's more Meshuggah, that's what it is. If you like what they do, you'll like it. Just astonishing virtuosity. There's some drumming which I'm just trying to wrap my head around on there - let alone appreciate. Did you know the guys in Meshuggah play custom 8-string guitars? Now you know.

This is just one of the reasons (can you guess the other three?) that Peter Jackson is my favorite filmmaker in the world these days. So. Freaking. Cool. You might need to carve out some time to watch all that stuff. But it's awesome.

I finally felt mortal in 2004. I became aware, truly aware for the first time, that I come with an expiration date. And I also became aware that I don't take that knowledge very well - in fact, it scared the ever-loving shit out of me. The implications of this discovery (which feels so new and all-fired important, when of course it's exactly neither of those things) are still being sorted out. The question that comes to me more often than any other lately is: am I making the best use of my time?

I can feel that 2005 is going to be about trying to get at the answer to that.

Random Musings, Part 1 - Joyful Abandon

He was, frankly, making a spectacle of himself.

And when the bus stopped, he leaped aboard, and still swaying, and smiling, and occasionally air-drumming, made his way down the bus aisle, until he stopped and sat directly in front of me.

For the next 15 minutes or so, until we reached my stop, Happy Man continued his exuberant enjoyment. I got a look at the cover of one of the jewel cases in his left hand, it was the Beatles Beatles For Sale. I don't know if that's what he was actually listening to or not. I looked around the bus and noticed other passengers pretending not to notice this display. Of course, I had been doing exactly the same thing, but I actually started to admire Happy Man - he was having himself a blissful experience, and he didn't care who noticed. I got really mad when we were stopped at a light, and I looked out the window at an adjacent car full of high-school kids. Happy Man was so demonstrative that he had gotten the attention of these kids, and they were pointing and laughing and mocking the way teen-agers do. Happy Man himself finally saw the kids, and you know what? He turned it up. He banged his head even harder, smiled wider, and even as the teenagers made their mocking "air-guitar" and goat-throwing gestures at him, Happy Man returned everything they did back at them, with even more intensity.

Happy Man got off where I did, but he was waiting for another bus while I went to my car. As I drove off, I saw him waiting there at the depot, hands raised up, dancing and smiling to what was clearly the best song he had ever heard.

Keep rocking, Happy Man.

Random Musings, Part 2 - Happy Carnivores

Random Musings, Part 3 - Job Insecurity

The company I've been working for hired me for a certain project back in August. When I reported for work in September, they put me on a different project altogether, which just released on the 18th of December.

They've now informed me that the original project that they hired me for has now been cancelled. There may be some work for me there for the next couple of weeks (but maybe not), but it's certain that my contract will end sooner than the original end date, which was April 28th.

Oh well. Here we go again.