Don't Mess With Shatner

Howard Stern has been playing this hilarious clip of William Shatner messing with a producer while recording a voice over for something. It's even better than the "sabotage" clip. This one goes on for about 4 or 5 minutes. It's pure gold.

Best Oscars Ever

Never, not even once, since I've been watching the Academy Awards has my favorite movie actually won Best Picture. Sure, a few times I would concede that "the best of the nominees" won, but my #1 favorite film of the year, nominee or not, NEVER wins Best Picture... until now. Yes, it was the Scorsese show all the way this year, as not only did he win Best Director as expected but The Departed also won Best Picture. That might not seem so surprising considering Best Picture and Best Director often go hand in hand, but Best Picture was actually up in the air this year with many of the pre-Oscar awards going to the equally deserving Little Miss Sunshine, and the Golden Globe going to Babel. But no, the Academy got it right this year, ignoring their own ridiculous track record of passing over such dark and gritty films as GoodFellas or Pulp Fiction in favor of fluff like Shakespeare in Love or Chicago. I thought The Departed was the best film of the year, and for once the Academy agreed. And this will never happen again, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can.

Golden Globe + DGA = Oscar.

Martin Scorsese won his first Director's Guild Award the other night for The Departed. This is good news because historically the DGA winner is virtually guaranteed to also win an Oscar, plus everyone in the world agrees it's ridiculous he hasn't won one already. And most importantly, The Departed actually is the best film of the year, so it won't just be a "sorry we've snubbed you before" pity Oscar like it would have been if he'd won for The Aviator. If The Departed was someone else's film, that person would deserve to win. But it's not someone else's film, it's Martin Scorsese's, so he'll win and he'll deserve it.

Instant Update

I bought The Illusionist...




And I bought a new shelf...




And I'm a dork...

2 Months and 50 DVDs Later...

I don't intentionally not update this blog. It really doesn't feel like that long ago since I sat here and forced a meaningless two sentence post out of myself, but I guess it was my birthday since that actually happened. So what's happened since then? "Nothing" is pretty much my standard answer, mostly because I don't think any of the mundane things I do are interesting to anyone but me, but just for the hell of it I'll pretend I'm writing to myself and try to tell myself what I've been doing for the past two months.

First off it's becoming very clear that I'm going to have to buy a new shelf for my DVD's. As of my birthday I had 400, and as of today I have 450. I have one fairly large shelf already with a smaller shelf on top of it, as well as one 3-level shelf on top of a bookself. I've already overtaken part of that bookshelf and they're still spilling over into Jody's CD stand, so not only would a new shelf make more sense, it would look better too because my overflow would actually be all together.

As for what movies I've actually been watching, I've been trying to make an effort to watch stuff I've never seen before, which so far is working out well. I watched The Last Detail, an old Jack Nicholson movie that was pretty good but I probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy it. The Illusionist and The Night Listener both come out on Tuesday and were both good, but I'll probably only buy The Illusionist. I like Edward Norton. Joyeux Noel was amazing. Sabah was equally good. And The Proposition was much better than I expected it to be. I also watched Primer at Jordan's place over Christmas, which I wasn't all that entusiastic to actually sit down and watch at the time, but it's really stuck with me and I'd love to see it again. We don't carry it at my store anymore (grrrrrr!) so I'll probably just throw it in with my next Amazon order. All I've got at the moment still in transit from Amazon is Kill Bill vol 1 and 2. You may be asking yourself why the hell I, who has had an undying love for Quentin Tarantino since high school, don't own the Kill Bill movies. Well I did, but I got rid of them as part of my vow to get rid of every DVD with a billingual spine because they're all so ugly and look disgusting on my shelf, and I'm just now getting around to replacing them.

Jody and I also got a new TV. Our last TV (which we had for less than a year) stopped working and Future Shop wouldn't do anything because we didn't buy their service plan, so rather than making a big thing out of it and going through the company, we just bought a new one. The one that broke was pretty cheap, I think $250, so how long could we have expected it to last anyway? Our new one was a little more expensive, about $800, but it's much nicer and I'm happier than if we'd have gotten our other one fixed for free. It's LCD, 27 inches (I was more partial to the 32 but it was unreasonably more expensive for such a short leap in size) and looks like a bigger version of our computer screen. Here's a blurry, discolored picture of it taken from a webcam about 3 seconds ago. Trust me it, and everything else you see, looks much better in person.



Other than that, work is going pretty well and I still enjoy it, but... well, I sort of hate to admit it, but as much as I like working at Blockbuster (it's easy, I'm surrounded by movies, they pay me more than enough to cover rent, food, and my DVD habit) I think it might be time to move on. At the very least I'm going to start working towards something else. I can't picture myself being a lifelong manager of a local Blockbuster Video. Jody and I are already planning to at least start volunteering at a funeral home for a while before committing our time and money to Mortuary School only to discover we hate it, so I'll keep you posted on how that's going. If it goes bad, I might be forced to return to University and at least get my degree, even if I don't directly apply it towards anything. I might as well.

Best Birtday Present Ever!

I was hoping my 400th DVD would be something epic, and sure enough it was. Jody got me Season One and Season Two of the TV show Fraggle Rock. It shocks and saddens me that Jody is actually too young to remember this show, but I guess a 5 year gap in kids years is like a lifetime. She'll be getting her Fraggle education in the weeks to come. I love this show!

The Obligatory "I Love My Apartment" Post

Well we've survived our first month in the new apartment. It's beautiful. I love it here. I haven't written about this earlier because I've been waiting to get pictures to put up here, but I'm lazy and still have no pictures, so you'll just have to use all of your imaginative powers and visualize me sitting on my ass with a beer in my hand. The place is awesome. It's a relatively new building, and certainly looks it. All of our appliances, furniture, and even this computer are brand new as well. The living room and kitchen are joined together into a big open space, which I like, and the bedroom and bathroom are even bigger than I had in my mom's house. This is the sort of luxury that only a Blockbuster salary could get you... or possibly MacDonalds.

The best part is just how different (in a good way) it feels to actually have my own place. My DVD's are the centerpiece of the living room rather than being crammed away in my bedroom. I can lay in bed until 4 p.m. without a sarcastic comment from my mom. And best of all, I can get out of the shower without having to get dressed right away. Hell, sometimes after a shower I just lounge around, make a snack, turn on an episode of 24, and let myself air dry. And who's going to stop me? YOU?? Ha!!

Anyway, this is a great place, and I love it. We had a few minor snags along the way, most notably the fact that it took Rogers six phone calls and about three weeks before they finally showed up to hook up our phone. And our first power bill was obscene, but that was to be expected. We called NB Power ahead of time and they said nobody even had to do anything, all they were going to do was switch the existing power out of the former tenant's name and into ours. So we get our bill and it breaks down as follows: Power used = $38. Service Charges = $162. Mmmm Hmmm. It costs $162 to change the name on the account? Whatever. We expected it.

A lot of other stuff has been happening too. There's a lot of drama going on at work that I don't even want to get into. And there was a whole messy situation involving Jody, my mom's car, and a crash that I will leave for her to tell on her blog if she ever wants to write about it. Long story short: $4000 worth of damage, but it was the other driver's fault, and my mom's insurance is not affected. But there is WAY more to it than that. Jody can tell the story if she wants to.

Fin.