Culture

Now I know what to do with my excess books. Money is good, too.

I currently have 13 entries for the Oscar picks, as follows: Kirby, Chris T., dancingshaman, telepresence, michele_blue, doogs19, Chad U., kodi, Wyatt, Cass, Brant, Kit, and twillitts. I’m dead serious about the sponsorship thing. I’m gonna throw up a banner for the winner. There is very little love for one movie as Best Picture, but I won’t tell you which one. Poor thing. I’ll post a summary of entries after the event itself, though.

I got nothing to say about the Oscars this year except for extended bitterness regarding David Cronenberg. That’s OK! kniedzw found an Oscar pool widget, and I thought that was cool, so I set up one of my own. Go here, make your predictions, and wait. The winner will get to be the sponsor of this blog for a week. I hear that’s a big thing.

Sadly, until this Audacity bug is fixed, I’m gonna have trouble getting the Doc Savage podcast underway. At least it’s a known issue.

Is there anything you would like to tell us about the Academy Award nominations (original) this year? “It’s not the first time a Cronenberg movie has gotten a nomination.” Really? Wait — Spider didn’t get nominated. Was it M. Butterfly? “No. Movies about gender issues are in the spotlight this year; M. Butterfly was 1993.” That’s kind of unfair. Hillary Swank’s Oscar for Boys Don’t Cry was in 1999. “OK, yeah, I’m just being catty. Anyhow, it wasn’t any of those Cronenberg flicks. Nor was it Naked Lunch.” ...

The Brattle Line (original) is the Brattle Theater’s new web board. I’ll be poking around there.

This morning I recorded the first chapter of The Man of Bronze (original) onto MP3. Audacity is perfectly functional and perfectly free. My USB headphones worked fine too. So I guess that means I can podcast, huh? I want to get a couple of chapters ahead, but then I’ll start weekly Doc Savage podcasts, a chapter at a time.

Kip Manley (he’s back!) notes that Tove Jansson’s comic book work will be coming into print in the United States soon. … why, the Moomins, of course.

So far the score in the War on Christmas (original) goes something like this: Number of people who’ve told me the PC police will yell at anyone who says “Merry Christmas”: 3 Number of times I’ve been yelled at for saying Merry Christmas: 0 Number of attorneys ready to file suits against people who substitute “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas”: 1550 Number of ACLU employees in the main New York office: 170 (original) (in 2002) ...

It is somewhat unlikely that I will do a best movies post this year, because I fell in love and maintaining an LDR wreaks merry havoc with the movie-going. I liked Sin City and A History of Violence; they make a nice pair of bookends, as one’s a commentary on the memes captured by the other. Roger Ebert’s list (original) looks pretty good, though. I wanted to see most of the movies he lists.