Dang, Sorry Bobby Jindal…

So, to be fair, I did think Bobby Jindal’s speech last night was pretty bad. He sounded condescending and dumb, and there was no substance to what he said.

BUT… does he really deserve the pounding he’s getting now, from liberal and conservative commentators? What did they expect? He sounded stupid, but no stupider than, say, Richard Shelby has been sounding for the past several weeks. Or Mark Sanford, or whoever. And to me he sounded a good deal more sensible than Bush ever did.

I don’t get it exactly. Did all the Republicans just expect he would somehow save them from themselves in this one silly speech, and then feel betrayed when he didn’t? Maybe this is like the Fred Thompson situation. GOP unhappy with prospects, GOP sees someone new, SAVIOR, MESSIAH! Oh wait, the messiah is sleepy. Never mind. In this case, everyone gets all hyped up: hurrah, we have our own charismatic brown-skinned policy wonk now! Oh wait, he has no ideas, just like all the rest of us, and he talks like Mr. Rogers. Never mind.

I feel bad for him.

Oscar Picks

With two caveats:
    One- Only movies I’ve seen.
    Two- I’ll stick to English-language movies except for the foreign-language category.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
From the nominees:  SEAN PENN in MILK
If I could choose:  SEAN PENN in MILK

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
From the nominees:  HEATH LEDGER in THE DARK KNIGHT
If I could choose:  HEATH LEDGER in THE DARK KNIGHT
(Pretty close between Heath and Eddie Marsan in Happy-Go-Lucky)

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
From the nominees:  MELISSA LEO in FROZEN RIVER
If I could choose:  SALLY HAWKINS in HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
From the nominees:  TARAJI P. HENSON in BENJAMIN BUTTON
(She’s not all that great, but it’s the only one of the five I’ve seen!)
If I could choose:  ROSEMARIE DEWITT in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
From the nominees: WALL-E
If I could choose: WALL-E

DIRECTING
From the nominees:  GUS VAN SANT for MILK
If I could choose:  MIKE LEIGH for HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
(I’m a broken record)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
From the nominees:  ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
If I could choose:  ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
From the nominees:  WALTZ WITH BASHIR
(Only one I’ve seen, weirdly, most of my favorite movies this year were foreign.)
If I could choose:  FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON

MUSIC (SCORE)
From the nominees:  WALL-E
(When I think about it, I liked Wall-E’s score more than Slumdog’s.)
If I could choose:  WALL-E

MUSIC (SONG)
From the nominees:  O SAYA from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
If I could choose:  O SAYA from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

BEST PICTURE
From the nominees:  MILK
If I could choose:  HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

VISUAL EFFECTS
From the nominees:  IRON MAN
If I could choose:  HELLBOY 2
(Actually, the most impressive FX in and of themselves were probably from Benjamin Button, but I thought those of both Iron Man and Hellboy 2 are better used to tell a story.  Hellboy 2 gets street cred for being weird and innovative and having a tiny fraction of the budget of these other movies.)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
From the nominees:  SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
If I could choose:  SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

WRITING  (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY):
From the nominees:  HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
(Some love from the academy for Happy-Go-Lucky!)
If I could choose:  HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

I still haven’t seen Wendy and Lucy or the Wrestler, both of which I might like a lot. I’ll update this post if they lead me to change my mind about anything.

Best Day Ever

Here’s my outline for the (Cambridge-centered) best day ever:

Sometime in the next twenty to thirty years or so, the AI lab over at MIT (ten-minute walk from my house) succeeds in creating an AI that is convincingly more intelligent than a human.  The self-aware program gives its own press conference, making a formal Turing Test superfluous.  The AI is given access to the internet and a small budget to pursue whatever projects it chooses.  It immediately begins to improve itself.

In response to the human race passing this technological hurdle — which will lead to accelerating advancement and a technological singularity — two extraterrestrial constructs who have been on our planet for the past 10,000 years or so observing the advancement of humanity make themselves known to us.  The universe is teeming with big post-singularity civilizations, but our system was off-limits until we passed this point.  The two ETs were observers and guardians: park rangers.  They appear human (in many ways they are human, having adopted human DNA) with certain modifications to allow for shifting appearances, immortality, improved functionality.  They are both organic and technological, for most of the rest of the universe the distinction has become meaningless.

The ETs signal their presence by posting to the internet a link to an encyclopedia of advanced technology and information about galactic civilization. They simultaneously send a signal to their third team-member, a sentient ship cruising the Kuiper Belt watching for poachers. The ship sets out for Earth, blogging its progress as it goes, it will arrive within weeks.  The ETs announce that they will immediately begin working with Earth governments to implement the technological innovations that will lead the most quickly to immediate benefit.

Disease and natural death will become a thing of the past within the year, and shortages of food and water will quickly be eliminated.  Pollution and environmental degradation will be limited to the fullest extent possible considering Earth’s large population.

Extraterrestrial civilizations do not contact Earth directly, because for the planet’s protection the nearest entrance to the wormhole network is several light years away.  So communications will not be received for years.  But Earth begins its plans for integration into galactic society, and perhaps the eventual construction of a wormhole in our home Solar System.

This would be the best day ever!  And I am enough of a lunatic/optimist to think that there’s a moderate chance of it actually happening.  (The problem that I haven’t mentioned: what if we just made horrible new weapons with the new technology and immediately destroyed ourselves? I dunno, hopefully the intergalactic civilization has figured out how to deal with this.)

Odds And Ends

Joining the land of the living again, a few notes:

My post on my top ten movies of 2008 should be self-explanatory, the previous one certainly is not.  Found it as a draft on my blog’s account.  I don’t remember why I wrote it or what it means.

Also, in reference to past posts, please note that my assessment of Sarah Palin was right on target, while those of others (news analyst whose name rhymes with Schmack Schmeatty) were not.

And I got a digital camera!  Maybe this means there will be more pictures on the blog. Maybe it doesn’t. You get to find out!

My Top Ten Movies of 2008

With the obvious caveat that I can choose only from movies I have seen.

1. Flight of the Red Balloon
2. Let the Right One In
3. WALL-E
4. A Christmas Tale
5. The Dark Knight
6. Ballast
7. The Visitor
8. Happy-Go-Lucky
9. Frozen River
10. The Band’s Visit

A strange list now that I look at it… But I think accurate as far as my opinions go.

Procedure Requested

I was asked to see this patient in consultation by Dr. Adolphus Scratch for an elementary raffle-ticket.

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS

The patient is an hundred-year-old man with persistent rudimentary antrinophy, due to an addiction to the sensation caused by emptying his ears of water.

MORE TO COME LATER, SUGGESTIONS WELCOME

On Point

Also, I have a new job!  I’m a full-time producer for On Point.  Kind of my first real (salaried) job, which is pretty cool. Listen to the show!  I’m currently trying to pitch one on neanderthals, with not all that much luck…

Superman is a Democrat, Batman is a Republican

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superman is the son of immigrants, and was raised by a middle-class family in rural Kansas. He works as a journalist uncovering abuses of power. He believes in progressive values and is fiercely patriotic — driven by belief in truth, justice, and the American way. He cooperates with US law enforcement and criminal justice systems, and believes in the right to a fair trial. He avoids violence unless it is absolutely necessary.

Batman is a vigilante who believes that his position as a member of the American plutocracy allows him to work outside of the system. He is a billionaire who has been surrounded by luxury and opulence all his life, and has never had to work to support himself. He is motivated primarily by his belief in the power of fear. He uses violence and torture to achieve his goals, is answerable to no one, and considers himself better equipped than anyone else to determine a suspect’s innocence or guilt. He considers the legal system an impediment to bringing offenders to justice.

Sarah Palin? Really?

Really?

So my new job is as a freelance producer at On Point over at WBUR. We’ve obviously been doing a lot of political coverage. And yesterday the senior editor and the news analyst were talking about how brilliant a pick Sarah Palin is for the McCain campaign.

I am seriously skeptical, though. To me it just seems like desperation. I would bet money that they had pretty much settled on Mitt before the “how many houses do I have” thing intervened and they had to scramble for someone who isn’t richer than Howard Hughes.

And while Sarah Palin seems like an interesting and possibly friendly person, I did not get a lot of instant charisma coming off of her. She mentioned that she started off in her school’s PTA, and I just couldn’t shake off that image of her. The pushy mom in the PTA who always brings cupcakes, puts down the other parents, and is possibly secretly racist and/or gay. I’m pretty sure she’s a character in like a hundred movies, and Sarah Palin talking like she’s straight out of “Fargo” doesn’t help to dispel that. Possibly this reaction is just me being latently sexist, but I don’t know

And on that note, if I was a woman I would be insulted by Palin’s implication that she will scoop up Hillary voters. It implies that Hillary’s supporters are so stupid that they would vote for someone who doesn’t even believe in allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest, SIMPLY because she is a woman. I certainly hope that kind of angling backfires.

And if Joe Biden doesn’t make the obvious, “I know Hillary Clinton… and you’re no Hillary Clinton,” joke in the debates I’ll be disappointed.

It’s just weird, this woman apparently didn’t even have a passport until last year. And she’s supposed to be ready to take over the presidency?

Huma Abedin = Tory Foster

I’m sure someone has pointed this out, but aside from the well-established “John McCain looks like Saul Tigh” link, Hillary Clinton’s chief aide Huma Abedin looks a heck of a lot like Laura Roslin’s chief aide Tory Foster. Do the research yourself; it’s all there. SPOILER: Huma Abedin is a cylon.