83rd Oscars.... why don't I have one yet?

The Oscars are over. 83 of them, of which I have seen….well…. less than 83. Piss off.

First of all, Anne Hathaway was wonderful. She was funny. The “Inception” themed homage to the top films (and Alec Baldwin) was pretty well done. A few moments lagged; certainly nowhere NEAR the equal of Billy Crystals Hannibal Lector montage…. However, once they got on to the stage…. is James Franco really an actor?

I know Brando refused to learn his lines, and worked only off a teleprompter. Ray Doherty once told me, when I corrected a line he delivered in a show I was stage managing “Anyone can read a line the way it’s written...”. OK, that was Ray. He was a good actor. Franco looked like he was not only reading off a teleprompter all night, but like he had no desire to be there, and had missed dress rehearsal as well. I ask you, if you got to work with Anne Hathaway and rub elbows with Hollywood royalty all night, would you not want to look like a pro? Or at least a talented amateur? They should have left him under a rock. He was so stiff he might have forgotten to take the hangers out of the rented tux.

Enough of that. Franco sucked (except for a brief moment in the Marilyn ensemble). Hathaway was brilliant. And cute. Always a plus. I still miss Steve Martin, and Billy Crystal, and Greg Proops on the runway with Melissa Rivers. Sue me.

I picked 7 out of 21 tonight; I should have placed wagers online on my Vegas book. Oh well. I didn’t see any of the Documentaries this year (again) so they don’t count. I thought Natalie deserved Best Actress for “Black Swan”, “Alice in Wonderland” for costume design (only “The Tempest” was surreal out of all of the rest, which were just…clothes) “Inception” for sound editing (nice work Tom O’Connell!) “The Lost Thing” for animated short, “Wolfman” for makeup (the only GOOD thing in the film) and “The King’s Speech” for Screenplay and Best Picture.

Melissa Leo over Amy Adams for Best Supporting was a toss-up. I confess, having a crush on Amy ever since “Enchanted” and “Doubt” ( why do I STILL not like Meryl Streep??) and “Julie and Julia” (and again…WTF?) I wanted her to win. Plus she was prettier than Melissa in the film. OK, in real life also, but Melissa is not exactly a drab…
In point of fact, there are only two I disagreed with strongly. One was “Inception” for Cinematography. To me, Cinematography is the brilliant filming of sweeping vistas, incredible scenery, awesome sets and gorgeous sunrises or sunsets. I picked “True Grit”, and they chose “Inception”, which owed most of it’s setting to CGI. Meh.

Christian Bale over Geoffrey Rush? What The Fuck? (notice, no subtle acronym). Seriously? This is like putting Justin Bieber in a commercial with Ozzy Osbourne (OK, they did that…) and then saying Justin is the more legendary. Christian BALE? CHRISTIAN Bale? Over Geoffrey Rush? Jesus H Christ on a crutch, are these the same people that elected Bush for a second term, is that why? Arrghhh. Everyone seemed surprised that I think a whiny egotistical tantrum throwing foul mouthed unprofessional violent antagonistic threat making piss-ant doesn’t deserve a nomination, much less an AWARD….. Christian Bale represents everything I find amateur in actors. I don’t care HOW good he looks or sounds on screen. If he behaves like a prima donna off screen, especially with the crew and production teams, without which he would be on a street corner busking… OK, wait one, BRB, my venom is melting the letters off the keys…

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I love Mumms.

One of my favorite moments was Kirk Douglas. I had two feelings here. At first I felt like having him up there when his speech is so impaired from the strokes was mean and degrading. Then I see him look over at Anne and say “You are lovely!” and I realize I am wrong. Plus his teasing of the Best Supporting Actress nominees… he didn’t slur any worse than Harrison Ford a few years ago….. and thank you Melissa, for the F-Bombs. I also really liked the set; the use of digital screens to allow projection in any scope, or lighting/stage visual effects was wonderful. We use them in rock shows often.

In summation; If you have NOT seen at least 50% of the films nominated, you are short changing yourself. If you are an actor or actress and have not seen at least 80% of the films, you are missing out on very cheap acting lessons. And if you think Christian Bale deserved an award, you are an idiot. Phhhbbbbfffttt.

In my opinion... you should change yours

You are entitled to your opinion. I firmly believe in this. Regardless of any “guarantee of free speech” this is something that I personally hold to be self evident. That being said, since I accord you the respect of listening to yours, I insist on the same in return. Quid Pro Quo. Tit for Tat (for those of you lacking a classical education, or who are not arrogant multi lingual intellectual snobs. Like me.) The minute you begin to shout me down, interrupt or otherwise heckle, you lose that privilege. Check page 2 of the rules. I don’t have many; that is one of them.

I also feel that in order to have an opinion you, yourself hold worthy, you need to have done some research. You should fact check. See if the opinion holds water. Just because you find a Flat Earth Society on the web does not mean that is true. “I heard it on Fox News” should cause everyone to look around. OK, cheap shot. IMHO, Fox news has all the accuracy of a dart thrown by a drunken blind man with cerebral palsy in the midst of an earthquake while standing on a medicine ball and being chewed by an alligator. Regardless, you might swear by them. Goddess knows lots of MY friends swear any time they hear the name Fox associated with the word news…

Have the self respect to look yourself. If you refuse to listen to anyone else, why do you blindly follow everything that Rush Limbaugh says? Does Bill O’Rielly hold the only true answers? Unless you are afraid your gods have feet of clay, I challenge you to use the internet to dig around on your own. Fact check. Sure, the San Jose Mercury is a hotbed of liberals trying to brainwash the poor people of Silicon Valley. Is every paper and news team other than Fox part of the conspiracy? Seems unlikely to me. If Bill and Rush are the sole bastions of truth, justice and the American Way, why have the godless minions, those Communist Liberal Abortionist Muslim Satanists (C.L.A.M.S. check out our logo…)not simply wiped them all out?

Taken our horrible mind-bending psychedelic stash of illegal drugs and brainwashed them? Waterboarded them until they confess they collect copies of the Koran, and back issues of Classics Illustrated? Plagiarism being the most sincere form of flattery.

Here is our lord and master, devouring a helpless conservative housewife. Stay home and raise that family! We know where you live!

This is so simple for us! We must simply be too stoned, sitting back in our hammock chairs and wearing pink leather while eating Organic Grown products from Whole Earth and watching Teletubbies to get this weeks secret gay message.

Wait. That’s odd. Not one of the Enron executives was in our club. The head of Tyco indicted for embezzling and fraud was Republican. The CEO’s of Merrill Lynch, Cargolux, VIA, Bayer, InkStop, Olympic Pipeline… wow, NONE of these guys are liberal pinko terrorist commies?

The day I hear about a Wiccan mother loading her four kids in the car and drowning them to “protect them from the evils of the world; they are with god now” I will give serious thought to changing my beliefs.

Until then, in my opinion, a lot of people out there have their heads up their ass. Call me a faggot pinko Satanist to my face, and I will gladly PROVE your head is up your ass. Just don’t kiss me afterwards for showing you the light….

Stuff of dreams

I have no idea yet how the story will start, or what will be in the middle: I do know this is how it will end. The names may change....

He walked in through the door of her fathers shop, just before closing. She was there towards the back, cleaning off the workbenches, brushing the small bits of wood, leather and metal into a bin with a small brush. She continued for a moment, unaware of him standing there behind her, watching.

A small smile turned up one corner of his mouth. She had changed even less than he expected. Her long dark brown hair, with hints of deep red catching the last of the sun like subtle fires hidden deep. Her smooth olive skin, the slender figure and soft curves of her, all still there. She stepped up on a short stool to brush off the top of a cabinet; and then like a feral cat she froze, aware of eyes on her. She turned her head and saw him.

“Hello, Marge.” he said softly. “It’s been a long time. You look lovely.” She stared at him for a long moment, unwilling or unable to speak. Her face gave away little after the first look of shock; but her eyes revealed the welter of emotions she fought to control. She turned away from him and began again to briskly clean off the cabinet. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was steady. “After all this time, you came back. No word, not a letter, nothing. Then you walk in as though it was yesterday.”

He leaned his staff inside the doorway, slid the pack off one arm and set it there as well. Carefully he began walking towards her. He could all but feel her emotions now, like heat radiating from her body. Anger, distrust, pain and betrayal…. and was there still, buried under all that… yes, there was. He moved closer and she stepped down quickly and moved away from him. She tried to hang the brush up on a small nail, placed a little out of reach for her. She had to stretch on tiptoe to hang it there. Her hands were shaking ever so slightly now, though her voice remained tightly controlled. “What do you want? Why are you here? Do you think nothings changed?”

Smiling again he stepped in behind her, letting his chest touch her back lightly. Marge went rigid as she felt him touch her. Knowing that she would know he was laughing a bit at the unsubtle innuendo, he reached over her shoulder and helped guide the nail into the small hole on the brush. He placed his cheek gently against hers, breathing in the warm smell of her as he did so, the scent of her hair and her skin filling him with memory.

“I’m here, little one. You have never, in all this time, been out of my mind. Or my heart. I’m home.” She relaxed against him suddenly, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her there. The first of many hot tears rolled down her cheek and onto his, though she made no sound at all. For the first time, she knew without a doubt he loved her. It did not matter if it was months or centuries, he would never leave her side again while she lived.


This was a dream I had this morning; powerful, emotional, evocative. I often dream of total strangers, perhaps taken from faces seen on TV, or passing in the streets. I sometimes dream about friends, rarely about former lovers, and even less often about current romances. Marge was my girlfriend in High School and for a year afterwards; we had a brief romance again three years after that. I have not seen or heard from her since. The woman in the dream was her, beyond a doubt. She looked exactly as memory says she did that last date. I was me, but not with the face or body I (ahem) usually inhabit. As sometimes happens, the "me" in dreams is not the physical me.