Oscar Noms

The Grand has played 4 out of the 5 films nominated for Best Picture. We didn't play Munich, of which I was glad. Since I really didn't like that movie.

Fiscal Responsibility

This section seemed like an outright lie.

The wiretaps

The President believes he didn't break the law. I'm glad he cleared that up.

First, the oil

We're going to ween ourselves off of 75% of the oil in the Middle East by 2025? I'm sorry, but 19 years from now ... we're going to be off of 75% of the oil in the Middle East. They'll probably be off of 75% of the oil by 2025, so it doesn't seem to hard that we will be too. That was pathetic.

And that he wants to by moving to ethanol--basically just a more expensive gasoline as I understand it. What's wrong with wind and solar? We don't think we can get those under control by 2025?

I could probably figure out solar power by 2025.

State of the Union

So I didn't actually watch the State of the Union.

But I read the transcript on the New York Times website, which is a very different thing, of course, from actually seeing it.

Here's the thing. The speech doesn't start out so bad. Bush is dead right that isolationism right now would be very dangerous. And I believe that no matter what you feel about the Iraq Invasion, withdrawing troops from Iraq would be about the most awful thing to the do to the Iraqi people (or, the second most awful thing, depending on how you feel about that other thing).

Anyway, then the speech gets into a really bad area and stays there pretty much throughout. The tone appears to be conciliatory, bi-partisan, etc, but the content gets really really bad. I'll post some specifics shortly.

Late Post

Nothing much today because I've been up waaaaay late these past few nights and accomplishing very little for my troubles. Last night I composed a full column for a newspaper on a movie the Grand isn't going to get. I can't really say why, but sometimes the mood takes me. Until 2:00 in the morning.

The Thin Man ... what alcoholics think they're like

Watched the 1934 film The Thin Man last night. It's a really fun movie with drunk detectives in a screwball crime. Nick and Nora are fabulous because they so honestly are wild about each other and marriage is a rollicking good adventure, despite having separate beds.

The dialogue is snappy and witty, and the drinks pour freely. I get the feeling Albee was trying show that alcholics really aren't so much fun when he wrote "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" since George and Martha match Nick and Nora drink for drink.

I was a fan. (The book is a rollicking good time, too).

Your turn

Sometimes it's hard to fully describe what a Masters in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences means as compared to a degree in Physics, Divinity, History, or International Conflict Resolution (to name a few areas of expertise my friends are studying).

In those disciplines, the degree means that you've spent time on the cutting edge of research, possibly even attempting to add your own thoughts about a certain problematic area. For me ... well, I think my degree is showing me that it pays to listen to other people. I'm not exactly doing original research (although I have come up with an innovative way to save small mining towns and farm towns in the Rust Belt and the Midwest from becoming empty shells--commuter havens and bedroom communities).

So, in deference to those who have made comments and suggestions in the last couple weeks, I'd like to turn over part of the blog to them.

A certain divinity student in Connecticut suggests that Jesus, as portrayed on The Book of Daniel, is not exactly innovative like I had said. He appears mainly to counsel Aiden Quinn on his painkillers, which is all fine and dandy, but it's not exactly religion. After all, shouldn't Jesus be worried about whether Aiden is loving his his fellow man as he loves himself? Maybe Jesus doesn't have to cover that subject because Aiden Quinn is already doing pretty well in that regard. Either way, Jesus as presented on the show is a sort of Jesus-lite, more of the "angel on the shoulder" than a personal savior. This is not to argue it's a bad show, but to argue that my adjectives used to describe it were stretching just a bit.

And a certain Conflict Resolution student in England suggests that the recent assessment of the destruction of MAD (which I discussed before) has sent the academics scurrying to their ivory tower to contemplate what this means. He thinks that China may not be the problem so much as a state like Iran (in a couple years).

If I post in error on some important physics point, I'll expect to hear from Switzerland, and if I my history is bad, I suspect I'll hear from Chicago.

Many thanks to those who have corrected me. I know who to listen to.

Three Cheers for the Washington State Legislature

... who today passed a gay rights bill making it illegal to hire or fire someone on the basis of sexual orientation. We join 16 other states who have such bills.

It's a start. More news on it here.

Friday Follies

First, David Hasselhoff sings "Hooked On A Feeling" in the worst. music. video. ever.

Second, James Lipton from "Inside the Actors Studio" recites the poetry of Kevin Federline's new song "PopoZao." This one is a must-see.

It's a Friday, people. You've had a long week. You owe yourself these two videos.

Monsoon Honeymoon

Went to the Monsoon Room in the Hilltop last night and had a super-strong super-good drink there. It's a hip take on a tiki bar and it's one of two cool new places around MLK & 11th (the other is Tempest).

Also, the best Happy Hour in town has got to be at the Sea Grill at 15th & Pacific. Big strong drinks with 5.00 appetizers. For ritzy atmosphere at really good prices I don't think they can be beat.

T-Town is the place to be right now.

Funny Posters

The Grand is starting to auction off its posters (as it used to do until sometime in 2002). Since we have so many that have piled up, we are auctioning off old ones, too, including posters for movies that we never played. So right now we've hung five posters in the lobby for sale: March of the Penguins, Before Sunset, Cowboy Bebop, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Girl Next Door. As movie selection goes, that's about as eclectic as I think you can get. Which is part of the fun, of course.

On a final note

Of course, everyone's doing life, too, so I gotta be pretty happy about that. As Mr. Keillor says, "Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough."

Random Celebrity Gossip

This is out of the ordinary, but I honestly believe that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have gone up a few notches in my esteem list. Really.

I appreciate that for all intents and purposes they have ignored the media that is so desperately trying to cover them. There have been no interviews about how great Brad is with Maddox or how Angelina has changed Brad's view of the refugee situation in Pakistan. They do their thing, the gossip-mags try to keep up, and all is right with the world.

It's certainly a sight better than what Cruise and Holmes have tried to do. I'm not saying I think they're all well and fine, but let's face it, as celebrity romances go, they actually have retained some semblance of class and respectability. Not bad for the two most attractive people in the world (depending on which issue of People Magazine you're reading, of course)

PS

As long as I live long enough to see whether the castaways get off the Island in "Lost", I'll be fine. I'm rooting for you, Hurley!

So I was thinking about death in the grocery store today ...

... and it was depressing. I was like: "Man, death sucks. Where are the Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits?"

Roasted Garlic, Rosemary & Olive Oil, and Garden Herb are all really good Triscuit flavors by the way.

Anyway. So I was thinking how much death sucks, and then I thought back to all the people that have died before me who maybe I would hope to meet later and whatnot. And then I realized something very important. This may be an original thought. I am quite proud.

Do I really want to miss out on something that everyone else is doing? Everyone dies. Do I want to miss out? Do I want to be left alone? Heck, no! Sign me up!

People always say that you die alone, but that's not right. When I go out to a bar I drink alone (I'm not drinking for someone else) and I like to be surrounded by other people drinking. The same is true of death. If everyone else is dying, I may as well, too. When in Rome ...

It's like the peer-pressure view on death. I can picture old folks in a retirement community going, "C'mon, just one death. Everyone's doing it."

I know I sound flippant right now, but considering I was contemplating my own death in the grocery store, this thought actually made me feel better. People always say 'everyone dies' as if that's supposed to make me feel better that I will, too. But if I think that 9 billion-some-odd humans have died before me, then I think that I don't think I want to be the only one that doesn't. That sounds almost more lonely than dying.

So put me on the cool kids list. Cause I'm cool too. And if Billy jumps off a bridge, I'll follow. ...

Man, if I could just put this to verse I'd be a modern-day John Donne.

Pixar Picks the Mouse

They've decided to allow Disney to buy them out. In terms of the animation, I'm pretty much OK with it, since Pixar made some darn good films working with Disney.

The Book of Daniel Closed

"The Book of Daniel" has gone the way of many shows--obscurity and early cancellation.

Ostensibly, the show was cancelled because of ratings, not because of the boycott by some organizations of the religious right. Those groups are claiming victory right now.

They are wrong, however. The show, which I have TiVo'd has only been aired a few times, did fall on its merits not because of the boycott. It was a noble attempt and a noble failure. The show always seemed to be about two steps from brilliance, which is, of course, far more respectable in my book than settling for half-baked mediocrity.

What is most frustrating is that its best aspect was its full embrace of Christianity and all its tenets rather than just a few passages from select chapters. Jesus (on the show) was unconventional, insightful, funny, and always challenging Aiden Quinn to do better and to do right. That the show was criticized for its most obvious strength is a testament to how dumb its critics are, and how apparent it is they haven't even watched the show.

Capote: Redux

After finishing "In Cold Blood" I went to see Capote again today. My dad joined me and the movie was, once again, very very good. Still very highly recommended.

Big Gay Al and the Seahawks

Now, normally I'm not one to question the News Tribune, Tacoma's local paper. But didn't anyone who works there wonder about their sports-page Seahawks coverage today?

The article is about the post-game celebrations and what all the players, coaches, employees, and former players did as the Seahawks counted down the last five minutes of Sundays game with a clear victory in front of them. The headline over the article, though, was "Super! Thanks for asking"

... because everything is super when you're gay?

It's a bad sign when a paper is quoting song lyrics from South Park, but to steal Big Gay Al's song is just very odd. But it has the word super in it, so they'll use it. I expect to see the following headlines before the S-Bowl:

"Alexander is a SUPERman"
"Holmgren uses SUPERlatives to describe team"
"Walter Jones evicted by SUPER"
"Hasselback offered SOUP OR salad at Olive Garden"
"Paul Allen says seahawks no longer just DUPER"

OK I'm done.

'Wing' Clipped, as they say

So 'The West Wing' is leaving. I was looking forward to seeing a new president, and seeing the show continue, but I guess that's not an option. Ah well.

Yahoo!

This is not a plug for the search company. But my January Board Meeting is over and it was a success. So three cheers for being done with all that!

The Squid and the Whale

I popped in to "The Squid and the Whale" on Friday. It's billed as a dark comedy, but there's a lot more dark than comedy, though you wouldn't know that to watch the preview.

The movie is depressing all around, but it works because it strikes true on all notes. Great performances from everyone, especially Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney.

The movie's screenplay is its best sell, however. The film stays firmly with the world view of the elder child, Walt, and transfer our sympathy from from his father to his mother (what sympathy we have left).

It's expertly written and the single best scene is where Walt is brought into a counselor's office to discuss why he claimed to write a Pink Floyd song. "I felt I could have written it, so that someone wrote it before was a technicality." It's a very touching scene that is both depressing, tragic, and very funny.

Up on Brokeback Mountain

I was very impressed with the film. I would have a hard time writing a good review of it, I feel, but suffice to say it was emotional and tragic in a way that few film can match. I believe it's a shoo-in for Best Picture at the Oscars, though I don't know that it's the best film of the year, but it's still incredibly good.

Heath Ledger creates an incredible character in Ennis and his acting is top-notch (though Phillip Seymour Hoffman Capote was probably better). I know Michelle Williams is getting a lot of attention for her supporting role as Ennis' wife, but Anne Hathaway stole the show from her. She should be getting the attention and the buzz, I think.

It's a beautifully-shot film, and deeply felt by the end.

Our Blue Origin

I'm a little ahead of the gun here, but this Forbes article is a good example of what's been going on behind the scenes that hasn't made too many headlines.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, has launched Blue Origin, a company that already has land in Texas for a private spaceport. And Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson's creation, has cut a deal with the State of New Mexico to build the first public space port.

(In case you're wondering why these are all in the South, it's because being closer to the Equator will give your space ship a faster trajectory and save on your fuel costs. We are spinning faster at the equator than at the poles (naturally) and therefore the rocket or ship will get an added boost. This is one reason that Brazil has become a site for a couple major space ports.

The Cradle

Funny. On the day I post about protecting the species, an article appears on space.com about the need for putting humans in space. Money quote:

Robotic planetary exploration is important, as it prepares the way for men and women. However, only humans in space will excite the imagination of the world and only this can protect us from eventual extinction. Our species is at risk as long as we keep all our eggs in one basket, all our progeny on one fragile planet. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said, “Earth is the cradle of mankind—but one cannot live in the cradle forever!”

The author suggests a National Space Lottery, where a $1.00 ticket gets you the chance to visit space, and the proceeds go toward funding future improvements to get us off this blue rock.

On a lighter note

Olympia just beat the record for consecutive days of rain. 34 days and counting now.

I'm glad I live in sunny Tacoma where we stopped after 27 straight days, skipped two days, and now are starting the count over.

At 36,250 miles per hour ...

... it will still take the New Horizons spaceship nine years to reach Pluto. Crazy, man. I'm all for it, though, and I still say we need to get some residents living on the moon and on Mars sometime soon too. It's our moral obligation.

Moral, you say? I say absolutely. It has been proven to me time and time again, it seems, that all life is one life. 'do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee' and so on. I even stumbled on to some book in college that suggested that humanity represents 13.7 billion years of history finally thinking about itself. In a sense, we are the consciousness and the conscience for all living things on the Earth and for the universe as well (since we do not know whether we are unique in the universe or not, we may have to simply assume we are)

I know at this point you're thinking I've gone druid on y'all, but I think there's more of this in Christianity and Catholicism than many would suspect. Anyway. If this is at all valid, it means that all the consciousness is locked up on a tiny blue rock that is vulnerable to asteroids, super viruses, and our own stupidity (read: nuclear holocaust).

Therefore, we have a moral obligation to protect ourselves and our brains and get off this tiny rock.

(posted half in jest and half as an excuse to start some exploring).

Tennis in Britain

I am very very eager to see Match Point this weekend. I only wish we were opening it at the Grand. But we've brought back The Squid and the Whale, which is supposed to be one of the top films this year (or, according to some staff members, was the best film of the year).

Speaking of movies, Capote was my number 1 film the Grand played this year. I'll be going back to see it just as soon as I've finished reading In Cold Blood.

No, Joe, We Didn't Know ...

It was a new revelation.

Kudos to the Pope Meister

... which should be the official title. Pope Meister Benedict XVI. Anyway.

In the recent edition of the official Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano, this statement appeared:

"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another. But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science. It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."

Muchas gracias, Papa Benedicto.

Sullivan on the Colbert Report

Andrew Sullivan appeared on the Colbert Report tonight. Funny stuff. I've never actually heard him talk. He sounds British, which makes sense, because he is. But I guess I didn't expect that.

Bed time.

Working Late

I'm working late at the Grand tonight as the house manager. Hound-doggie!

Hmm . . .

Never post in anger.

But the truth is I think that just about any film we play at the Grand, R, Unrated, or NC-17 is going to be better for kids than what you could find at the multiplex. Capote versus Bad Boys II? A movie where violence has consequences vs. mindless death? Yeah, I'd pick Capote.

On Movie Ratings

I got a call today complaining that we let a 14-year old girl into Brokeback Mountain, even though it's rated R.

This touched on one of my big hot buttons: that parents get more upset about kids seeing nudity than violence. Last spring Mary and I saw "Sin City", one of the most violent films I have ever seen.

In front of us was a family with two young children, who should in no way have been in that film. It was very very very violent. And yet when a topless woman walks into the bathroom, the mom in front of us covered the eyes of her small child. I wanted to shake her and ask her why she didn't cover his eyes when a man got his ear blown off, or the prostitute got her head cut off. Or a million other graphic violent images that had preceded the nudity scene.

I still want to ask one of these parents: if you believed your child is going to emulate what they see in the movies, would you rather have them see a film with lots of violence or lots of sex? My guess is people would still say lots of violence, which is very depressing. Because I think every child should know how to shoot people, but God forbid they see two people in bed together.

16 Miles of Cars

16 miles of back-to-back cars prevented me from skiing today. So I had a big breakfast in Enumclaw with Phil, Krista, and my dad. And then I fixed Phil's computer. Cause I'm a tech whiz.

Esta Lloviendo

It is raining--27 days straight now. But!! The good news is that none of it seemed to touch Tacoma today. Seattle got drenched as the Seahawks game proved, but we had dry streets and some blue sky.

Tomorrow: nieve en las montanas. I'm going skiing to practice up for my--quite accurately described--Alpine trip in Feburary. It's going to be packed. 67" of snow at the base and 111" at the summit.

Oh, by the way ...

Yeah for the Hawks who had a dangerous game (six injuries, I think?) and a tough battle to keep a slippery wet ball from popping out of their hands, but they won. 20-10.

Prediction: Tomorrow's headline: "20-10 Vision". I'll take odds.

Turns out ...

That my first TV appearance was rather successful. I saw a recording of my 30-min guest appearance on "Business Matters" and I didn't do too badly at all.

And it appears more people watch TV Tacoma than I thought, because I've gotten not a few comments about it too!

I've been spotted!

On TV Tacoma, Channel 12. Apparently my spot on Business Matters is airing. I have yet to see it, but I'm guessing I come off as very suave and sophisticated.

Put the Blame on Mame

I watched "Gilda" tonight, Rita Hayworth's most famous performance. She was quite a looker, actually. And that was about all I knew about the film going into it. She flips back her hair and everyone in Shawshank prison goes wild.

But the movie was actually pretty good. A film noir, with shady characters and lots (truly, lots) of innuendo. A good plot with fun twists. All in all, very good. And Rita sings "Put the Blame on Mame" which pretty well sums up the misogyny of the film. Which, I should have mentioned, is the most trying part of it. There's redemption, to be sure, but, man, those men are scared witless by Rita. It's one of those films that you try to figure out whether the film is criticizing an issue or whether the issue (in this case, misogyny) is so intertwined in the times and the story that it is only 60 years later that we see it for what it is.

I'm tempted to think that audiences even in 1946 knew these two men were misogynists and knew that was not good. It is a film noir, and heroes are not supposed to be good, so I would bet that their fear of women is part of that. The first toast the trio drink wishes "disaster to the wench that wronged our Johnny." As toasts go, it's well said to the point of poetry, though since the wench was Rita Hayworth and since she drinks to the toast, it's not well-taken.

Good flick.

Grace and Patrick

Got to spend time with Aaron and Erin's new pet, Grace, a beautiful jet-black puppy. Patrick, their orange tabby cat with a big head (that I swear is gay), is suitably unimpressed, of course, as cats usually are.

But pets certainly are a lot of fun . . . and easy to miss. :(

Lost Returns

I watched DVDs and iTunes downloads of Lost for two weeks straight, pretty much and now I'm caught up with the rest of the viewing public on Lost.

It's wery wery good.

The Ringer

So I saw a movie last night that was in poor taste, but not that bad, really. In fact, it was rather sweet and treated disabled people with more affection and respect than most films that try to tackle the subject.

Johnny Knoxville was a great choice, as was Brian Cox. Katherine Heigl has not really improved as an actress since she was in My Father The Hero way back when, but apparently she's on Gray's Anatomy now as Izzy. I can only assume she's better there than in the movies because I seem to be only person I know who doesn't consistently watch that show.

The movie was funny all around.

And one more thing

Apparently the Bible Code predicts that 2006 is the year that we will come the closest to the end of days.

If you don't know what the Bible Code is, this guy found that if you arranged the Bible into one long string of Hebrew characters you could arrange the Bible into a grid that would help you find vertical occurences of words. And once you've arranged the Bible to find Rabin or Twin Towers or Arafat then you search around that word like a cross word puzzle and find that when you search for Rabin you find the word assassinate (or something like that). Or the words United and American and Bin Laden when you search for Twin Towers.

The problem, of course, is that first these words are not just like a cross word puzzle they are frequently very far apart. So Bin Laden is found diagonally, where each letter is two letters down and four letters over from the last. Because that's somehow supposed to mean something.

Not only that, but no one is searching for irrelevant words. So when you arrange the Bible around the words Twin Towers, you don't search for purple, mango, sunshine, poinsetta or teddy bear. So it's dumb. I hope. I'm not a mathematician, but it sounds dumb.

But it's hard to forget that the Bible Code says 2006 is going to be our worst crisis. Of course the author says that the Bible Code is a warning, which means that this crisis could be averted, which means that on January 1, 2007, he can thank all the world leaders for listening to him and averting the crisis. Again, it's dumb.

Anyway.

One word I am fascinated by is "eschatology" which means the study of the end of the world. This means, of course, than the eschatologist will have to live on Mars, but for now those who practice it are looking forward. I hear that the number of people who believe the world will end in our lifetime is higher than you would expect.

With crises like the tsunami, the earthquake, etc, it's not hard to see why someone might think this. Of course, Pat Robertson believes Ariel Sharon's stroke is punishment for dividing Israel, so who knows what people will choose to believe.

MAD

In other news of disaster, the RAND corporation now predicts that the cold-war theory of Mutually Assured Destruction that kept the US and the USSR in a state of detente is now obsolete. The US could conceivably launch a first strike nuclear attack on China or Russia and win. See the Atlantic for more.

In response, this imbalance likely means that China will get their deterrence back by putting nuclear weapons in the hands of field generals using a de-centralized military strategy that severely increases the risk of unauthorized or accidental use of nuclear weapons.

Cause that's what we wanted to hear.

I'm expecting my pal Caleb to figure out a solution to this asap.

To keep you up at night ...

Bryson also says that if an asteroid or a comet ever hit the Earth we would likely get no warning at all. The air directly under the comet's entry would increase to about 60,000 Kelvin (ten times the surface temp of the sun) in the space of about a second. Every living thing within 150 miles would be killed by the shockwave. And within a thousand miles people we be flung about like rag dolls. Everyone outside that range would have to deal with flying pieces of rock and debris. And within the first day about 1.5 billion would be dead. And that's before the ash shuts out daylight for 10,000 years.

Pretty.

Some Trivia

On my parks adventure last year (more on that later) we visited a place called Jack Hyde park, a former mayor of Tacoma. Reading Bill Bryson's recent "A Short History of Everything" I discovered this line:

Almost the only person who believed that [Mount Saint Helens might explode laterally] was Jack Hyde, a geology professor at a community college in Tacoma. He pointed out that St. Helens didn't have an open vent ... so any pressure building up inside was bound to be released dramatically and probably catastrophically. However, Hyde was not part of the official team [studying the mountain] and his observations attracted little notice.

I'd say it would be justified naming a park after him for this reason alone, but I suppose being mayor isn't too bad a reason, either.

On the St. Helens topic, the landslide that preceded the eruption "was the largest in human history and carried enough material to bury the whole of Manhattan to a depth of four hundred feet" according to Bryson.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

... is a bizarre book, all the more so because it's non-fiction, and about a wonderful writer, Ken Kesey. I would put it very very high on a list of the best non-fiction I've read, up there with Helter Skelter, the essays of EB White and Susan Orlean (both for the New Yorker, coincidentally), and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I've probably read some other very good non-fiction I'm not remembering now, especially in the biography category (Anwar Al-Sadat's auto-bio comes to mind there), but that's not the point of this post.

Kesey's son, Zane Kesey, is trying to get the Merry Pranksters' bus "Furthur" back on the road. I doubt the LSD will come with it, but maybe they'll be able to sneak that by Gonzales and the Justice Department.

And now for a big thanks

to mi papa, who helped me install two cool lights over my new island in the kitchen. Actually, I helped him install them, to be acurate.

They look awesome!

On Tacoma's Museums

Earlier this month I had a meeting with the Tacoma Art Museum's director, Stephanie Stebich. She did a pretty good job getting me to be a TAM member, and since she's a member of the Grand, well. Fair's fair.

Tonight I'm visiting the Museum of Glass for a short reception for the Tacoma Arts Commission, who gave us lots of money this year. I don't know that I'll be joining there, too, but the museum is a sure-fired stop when I bring out-of-town friends in, mainly because everyone thinks the hot shop is awesome. Which it is, of course.

Speaking of Bizarre Trailers

Mr. Kreuser posted a link to the on-line trailer for the original Star Trek series, which is truly odd. And it has inspired me to link to this must-see trailer for The Shining. Of course, the Shining is a disturbing, blood-soaked movie. But this trailer makes it look like a cross between "Sideways," "Spanglish," and maybe "Adaptation." If you ever needed proof that a movie's advertising has nothing to do with the movie itself, this faux-trailer is all you need to see.

Practically Mid-twenties

Congrats to my friend Angela who's made it to the fine age of 25 today. According to Jessica Simpson, that's practically mid-twenties.

Good for you, my friend. It shows real courage to make it to this age. And now you can rent a car without paying a surcharge for being too young. So there you go.

Oscars 2006

It was announced yesterday that Jon Stewart was going to be the host of this year's Oscars. I think the Daily Show is about the smartest show on television right now so basically I'll be in Daily Show Bliss. It's a good place to be.

Another Leave of Absence

I'm going in to UWT today to take a second leave of absence from school. I'll be out for the winter and will rejoin in the spring for the Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences capstone and maybe even an elective!

Not only were there no classes this winter, but leaving for the Olympics for ten days in the middle of class didn't seem like a good way ahead, either.

Back in T-Town

While my five night vacation was awesome and a well-needed break, I've returned a little sick. Ah well. It's actually nice to be back in town. I kept fretting about work while I was gone, so it's kind of nice to be back and to be able to actually do something about it.

On the plus side, I found out today that my $790,000 budget for the Grand Cinema will end with a small net income of about $2,500. Whoo-hoo for me!

From the Great State of Minnesota

I'm posting from my old haunts in Northfield. Weather is pretty much as it was before: cold (though 31 is a good twenty degrees warmer than it was when I was here before) and very very nice, when it really comes down to it. There is something about this kind of weather that makes you really take note of your environment. It is a feeling I know I miss in the Northwest. Things are a little bit more comfortable, and that requires less attention.

So what to say about this extended vacation? Lots of movies, hanging out with Carls, it's all good. I think I needed a good break.

I've come back to Carleton for the 4th time now since I graduated. Although it's going on four years since I graduated, too. Which means that by June I will have been out of college for as long as I was in it. Now that's freaky.