One of the few upsides about being late for your headshrink appointment is that you have plenty of time to read the magazines you almost wish you subscribed to (but that you know you’d never get around to reading.) In my guy’s waiting room was a fresh copy of Newsweek (February 18, 2008) which normally has a liberal bent, but from the cover and article inside about McCain it almost felt like a Rovian trick to get moderate liberals considering a vote for McCain.

The article went into detailed descriptions of why the CMC are spewing hatred at the presumptive GOP nominee. Rush, Coulter, Hannity, you name ‘em — they have all said that a vote for McCain is anti-Republican, anti-Conservative, anti-Regan, and anti-American. Oddly enough, though, the polls show that America thinks he’d do a good job as POTUS despite all that.

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that McCain’s spin doctors snuck this story onto the lead of Newsweek to flush out on-the-fence voters for their candidate. The optimist in me — which has a much smaller voice — thinks that Newsweek is simply covering the kind of topics that it’s readership want to know about. What confuses the whole matter of whether Newsweek has become a shill for McCain is this picture from another story supposedly about the campaign trail and Obama.

p.s. The only weekly magazine I make time for these days is Entertainment Weekly…and sometimes it takes me 8 days to finish it.

Another one for the WDYLIA files – the recent showing of Semi-Pro live at the Alamo Drafthouse, with Will Farrell in person. The fabulous Tim League insisted that we all show up in full Flint Tropics uniforms, which made for some pretty hilarious photos. (Note John’s beautifully feathered hair and my turquoise eye shadow – thanks, Sandy!)

Semi-Pro is now my 2nd favorite Will Farrell movie (after Anchorman, of course). It’s laugh out loud funny, fast paced and kindof sweet. 

Every post I’ve started in the last few days reflects the bitter mood I’ve acquired since it’s become clear that my Power Mac G5 will never boot with Leopard. The $3k upgrade looking me in the face taints my mood. Keep that in mind while I (hopefully) finish a post full of vitriol.

My dear friend Cynthia “starred” this blog post discussing some crackpot’s idea of spending one night a week without staring at a screen.

“One night a week, I am going to completely unplug from anything with a screen,” Stallings writes. “This means no computer, no cell phone, no movies. I plan to focus instead on the other things I like doing like writing letters, crafting, organizing, dancing, going for walks, cooking and making tea, writing in my paper journal.”

<queue Lewis Black whine>I’ve got a better idea. Spend one night a week without the a/c or heat turned on. While you’re at it, how about you just decide to spend one night a week sleeping in the forest naked? Or, if you’re not that adventurous just spend one night a week eating uncooked meat. Technology is obviously the problem, so you should eschew all of it.

…and stop walking upright that night, too.

The Oscar Pick ‘Em system is done and I’ll be updating it live on Oscar night. At 6:30pm Central, there will be a new stats page showing the Oscar winners as they are announced plus the Rollerfeet.com Oscar Pick ‘Em players by rank, and the voting page will change to showing your pick against the Oscar Winner. Until then here’s a summary of the things I’ve seen lately…including a new (obviously) non-Oscar nominee.

The Drafthouse — our favorite theater in the world…in case you haven’t noticed — was one of the lucky theaters to show all of the Oscar nominated shorts. The first thing that strikes me is there is only one film in each category that could be considered American and the animated one is considered Canadian while the live action is a Western based on a US short story shot in the UK. My belief is that Americans have stopped making movies simply for the sake of connecting to the audience at a personal level. Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth are the icons of American cinema, feeding on the visceral appetites of their LCD audience. Upcoming American filmmakers want to make an action movie, or a zombie movie, or a whatever movie. No one here wants to just make a movie and it’s sad to me.

Here’s a breakdown of the Live Action Short nominees and why I think the do and don’t have a chance at winning an Oscar.

Here’s a breakdown of the Animated Short nominees with the same treatment.

This week’s escape from Oscar was the chick flick Definitely, Maybe, and I use the term “chick flick” because the power behind this film definitely lies with the women, even though the draw for women in the crowd maybe Ryan Reynolds. The media (and his publicist) want you to think of Reynolds as the new Tom Hanks, but he’s just not that good. Isla Fisher, on the other hand, is the next Meg Ryan — funny, talented and beautiful — and Abigail Breslin demonstrates that she’s good for more than one movie. Great film, especially for families that need to explain to their children about divorce.

I’ve been getting into running again (err – I went for a run yesterday, and liked it), so I did what any sane person would do and registered for this and this. Yep, a half marathon one day and a full marathon the next. That’s 39.3 miles in 2 days. Sweet!

Right in the middle of our spare room remodel we suffered a forced remodel in the bathroom. One evening I shut off the water as I was finishing washing my hands and a trickle could still be heard…then the leak frog went off. I ran my hands around the pipe — that’s not a metaphor — and it seemed clear the water was only coming from the very bottom of the J trap. I removed it and (as you can see in the pictures) could see right through the corroded pipe. You think this story’s over, but it’s ready to begin.

There were at least a dozen trips to some version of a hardware store over the next week. I’ll summarize the issues which all generally stem from trying to do plumbing repair on a 50+ year old house: the modern J trap pipe is an inch shorter than the one I replaced, the sink was mounted to the wall with an iron bracket that was covered in 50 years of rust, the screws holding on the bracket were set in wet concrete (50 years ago) and even the As-Seen-On-TV screw extractor couldn’t remove them, so I had to cut the bracket off the wall going through three standard cut-off blades on my rotary tool before I found the heavy duty metal cutting blade (which was still reduced by at least 1/3rd when I was done), and even then I had to use a vise-grip and a lever to get the screws out, the drain on the modern sink I put in (final pictures coming soon) was 6 inches taller than the old one so I had to get an extension, the fittings on the water supply pipes are an obscure 50 year old iron pipe size that required adapters…that didn’t come with washers requiring another trip. …I’m losing my temper just dredging it all up again.

It was a nightmare project, but it’s almost done. I just need a better set of washers — the ones I installed restrict the flow too much — and to seal the sink to the wall. Big thanks to Becky for putting up with the mess and cleaning up occasionally.

Sidebar: The leak frogs were purchased on woot , of course, and not for the reasons most people purchase them. Our dog “springs a leak” on the (thank goodness it’s tile) bathroom floors and I was hoping to use these as a deterrent.

Thought this was interesting, particularly in light of recent conversations.

If you’re wondering about that empowering smell every time you’re near me?

I came across some old Nokia phone pics today and thought it would be fun to see the mobile phones I’ve owned all in a row. (scale is purely estimated.) 

On NPR’s Morning Edition today Renee Montagne made a brief apology for calling Africa “The Dark Continent” on a previous show. According to Wikipedia Dark Continent refers to:

A 19th century expression previously used to describe Africa, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. As little was known about the continent’s interior geography, map-makers would often leave this region dark.

I think I have similar conversations on a regular basis with my friends and am always assured that I am insensitive and wrong-thinking, but I have to take umbrage at a society where correct usage of a word/phrase is a firing offense and I wonder why Montagne felt the need to make this apology. Anyone taking offense at the phrase is only showing their ignorance. Every socially-conscience PS3 user can tell you why Africa is called “the Dark Contient” even without Wikipedia’s help.

I have always marveled that Africa is one of the few areas of land mass on a world-wide map that has almost zero participation in the Folding@home, and every night map I’ve seen of the planet makes it clear why this particular phrase is in reference only to the lack of penetration from Western civilization.

Take this as an opportunity to tell me (again) why I’m wrong. :)

One month and 17 days ago an Austin friggin’ institution closed it’s doors.

I suppose that it is a true sign of the times when an arcade in Austin, right across the street from the University of Texas, can’t generate enough business that arcade gaming is over…until the holo-intranasal-simulators are available.

So …. uh …. apparently, in 1973, Chairman Mao offered 10 million of his country’s women to Kissinger.  They were a problem, see, because they were having too many babies, making China poor.  Damn kids kept taking up all the resources.  Kissinger: “we’ll think about it.”

I’m still undecided, but if I were basing my vote on these photos of the candidates, Obama gets it, hands down. 

The love of my life (no, not you, Bryan Thompson) completed her college English requirements by writing a paper on Lolita. So, it is for her that I present this web page which purports (admittedly with almost zero statistical validity) to show a correlation between college SAT averages and favorite books.

…but not in that order. I figure I should hit you with the unpleasant, almost shocking, revelation then I will tell what I think of In Bruges.

My wife doesn’t allow musicals to be played in our home because I love them and can’t stop myself from singing along. When Moulin Rouge was released, I’m sure she dreaded seeing it with me but at the time she liked it more than I did…and I actually didn’t like it at all. It was hard for me to get past the stink of Baz Luhrmann. Last night during the previews at the Drafthouse, they played a trailer for their Moulin Rouge! sing-along and I was suddenly struck by the Broadway-esque stylings of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. I actually got little chills at the idea of singing along loudly.

I just felt the need to confess that.

In Bruges — which oddly rhymes with Moulin Rouge! — has been taking a lot of flack for it’s lack of blending. At times it is a dark soul-searching tragedy, then a wide-eyed romance, and even a Tarantino-esque absurdly funny talk-fest. It is true that these pieces don’t transition smoothly but I really enjoyed the script and all the performances. It was funny, thought-provoking, and surprising. Colin Farrell, standing in the shadow of three Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire actors (not to mention the 10 crew members also in common), is the least of actors in the cast but he doesn’t detract from what I consider a brilliant film.