Wow

I'm almost impressed by the Oscars. No Country For Old Men was the best movie I saw from last year, and it actually managed to win. Ratatouille was the best animated film I saw (although I haven't seen Perseopolis yet) and it won. Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem gave my favorite performances by any actors I saw, and they both won. I thought Juno had the best screenplay, and it won too. There Will Be Blood was the prettiest movie I saw, and the Bourne movie had the best editing, and even they won. There's no chance I'll ever see the Edith Piaf movie, so I'll never know if the actress was actually better than Ellen Page in Juno, but on the whole, this was one of the best list of Oscars I've ever seen. I almost wish I had watched any part of the ceremony outside of Stewart's decent-but-not-great opening monologue. Almost.

I'm sure that this will be corrected for next year's awards, and the ceremony can get back to recognizing mediocrity.

Roll The Dice Just One More Time

I actually watched part of the Golden Globes last night, for the first time that I can ever remember. And I thought that the format was actually brilliant. As you might know, because of the Writers' Strike, the ceremony consisted of nothing but people at a podium reading the nominees and then announcing the winner. No red carpet, no speeches by people who I don't care about, no musical numbers. It was kind of awesome, in a boring sort of way. I was glad to see Eddie Vedder finally win something, and I'm glad Extras won an award (how The Sopranos was shut out is confusing to me, and I'm a little surprised that House was even nominated for a somewhat mediocre season.) But the larger point is that it turns out that celebrities were ruining award shows almost as much as the people who vote for awards shows.

Speaking of celebrities, it turns out they, much like our favorite athletes, are juicing. The only named perfromance enhancer I actually respect on any level is Wyclef, and I've only really paid attention to his work with the Fugees (although I believe Keith has said that some of his solo stuff is worth listening to). I'm desperately hoping that when it comes to putting these people into their respective halls of fame, or getting stars on the sidewalk in LA, the voters hold their steroid use against them, because that would be hilarious. The next frontier for drug cheats has to be politics, right? Because juicing presidential candidates will be even more awesome than Ron Paul's remarkably racist newsletters. My favorite part is where he says that young African Americans are brought up to "fight the power". I can only imagine Ron Paul watching Do The Right Thing and cheering when the cops kill Radio Raheem.

I still don't want to talk about what happened in Chapel Hill on Saturday. I still think this team can come together and salvage this season, but... I don't know how to finish that sentence. I do know that watching the knee-jerk reactions at the statefansnation message board was pretty funny. I like the people who want to ditch Sidney Lowe and bring back Herb Sendek best of all.