Month: February 2008

I’d like to thank the Academy…

For whatever it’s worth, here are my picks for some of the big winners at tonight’s Oscars. I think, like always, this is a combination of what I think should win and what I think will win. Anyway, here they are:

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
Best Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood
Best Actress: Laura Linney in The Savages
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There
Best Original Screenplay: Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay: Atonement
Costume Design: Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Original Score: Atonement
Original Song: “Falling Slowly” — Once
Best Makeup: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Best Visual Effects: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Best Animated Feature Film: Ratatouille
Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters — Austria
Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight

I make no claims to be any good at this — my skills as a prognosticator are reliably fallible — but we shall see.

I’m thinking about maybe live-blogging the show — I’ve never live-blogged anything, that I can remember — but that mean I’d actually have to watch the show.

With a song in your heart

That was then. And this:

  1. “Air” by Talking Heads, guessed by Eric B.
    What is happening to my skin?
  2. “Apple Scruffs” by George Harrison, guessed by Eric B.
    You’ve been stood around for years
  3. “The Birds Will Still Be Singing” by Elvis Costello
    He wants to kiss you. Will you condescend?
  4. “Peace in the Valley” by Alabama 3
    She spends too much time with herself every night
  5. “FM” by Steely Dan, guessed by Eric B.
    Kick off your high heel sneakers, it’s party time
  6. “Love Is Nothing” by Liz Phair, guessed by Eric B.
    You thought I’d totally excite you
  7. “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Paul Simon, guessed by Eric B.
    I seem to lean on old familiar ways
  8. “Mortal City” by Dar Williams
    You know I don’t even know your brother
  9. “If There’s Such a Thing as Love” by the Magnetic Fields
    (also, apparently, “Cool Love” by Wanda Jackson guessed by Eric B.)
    Now the clock is striking one
  10. “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix, guessed by Eric B.
    The traffic lights, they turn blue tomorrow

is now. Starting to see a pattern here? Guess the lyric, win no prize. As always, best of luck!

A day late, $500 billion short

George Bush on why he didn’t send troops into Darfur:

“A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive. In other words, people came from other countries — I guess you’d call them colonialists — and they pitted one group of people against another.”

Whew. I’m glad he learned that important life lesson before he got us involved in a pointless bloody conflict overseas. Obviously we can’t go sticking our noses, all nation-buildin’ and whatnot, where they don’t belong. At least, not when it’s just human rights violations and genocide that’s the issue. That there would be colonializin’.