and the oscar goes to…

Ahhh, the Oscars. Such a glorious time. I guessed 11 correctly which is pretty good for me.

Things I’m pumped about:
-The Departed winning 4 awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and a much deserved Best Director for Martin Scorsese (finally!)
-Alan Arkin blowing everyone away and upsetting Eddie Murphy for Best Supporting Actor
-Pan’s Labyrinth winning a bunch, except for the all-important Best Foreign Film
-Little Miss Sunshine winning a few

Things I’m a tad bummed about:
-United 93 not winning anything
-Monster House not winning Best Animated Feature (Happy Feet sucked!)
-Children of Men getting royally snubbed

Things I’ll look forward to:
-Mark Wahlberg, Ryan Gosling, Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet all winning much deserved Oscars in the future
-Martin Scorsese’s next movie

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the results this year. Ellen DeGeneres was okay…Jon Stewart needs to come back. The Will Ferrell/Jack Black/John C. Reilly number was the highlight of the show, and Martin Scorsese kicks ass.
Here are the must-sees of 2006:
United 93, Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, The Queen, Half Nelson, Children of Men, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Prestige, Thank You for Smoking, Babel, Borat, Monster House, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Blood Diamond…just to name a few. Do yourself a favor and see these films in an medium. Then call me up so we can talk about them.

lifestyles of the rich and the famous

To fans of music: Rock stars/musicians/bands are in no way better than you. There seems to be a universal acceptance of a rock star’s disrespectful and arrogant attitudes and actions, but I find this unacceptable. My guess is a lot of kids start bands because they want to be famous and have people love them. This is a natural human desire and that’s probably why we keep on idolizing bands and artists, even if they have little or no talent.

As a musician in an aspiring rock band, I meet a lot of fans (who are awesome by the way). They like to express their feelings towards our music and I really appreciate it when they do that. But when liking our music goes as far as basically worshiping us, I don’t want any part of that. At the risk of sounding pretentious (Joel), I don’t want to be worshiped. That goes against everything a “rock star” should think, but I’d rather chill with fans after shows and really try to get to know them. We’ve met so many awesome people all over the place as a band and I don’t think any of us would want to trade that for pseudo-praise or a hedonistic lifestyle.

So in conclusion, I want to make it known that I am not against voicing your thoughts to your favorite or least favorite bands. I have many favorite bands that I would love to meet and talk with. But just watch how much effort you put into over-complimenting and worshiping your favorite band. They might deserve that praise for their talents, but on the human level, they are the same as you.

wrap it up…

Allow me a rant…

People need to learn how to have a conversation. I’m sick of listening to uninspired, uninteresting, and basically unimportant stories people feel they have to tell in order to sustain conversation. Here’s an example to make myself more clear:

Storyteller: “I think it was yesterday…no wait, two days before yesterday… (laughs)…I was walking my dog, who is a black lab, and we get to a stop light where there are no cars except for a beige Taurus. Maybe there was another car but I don’t remember. My brother would kill me if he knew I couldn’t remember all of the cars! (laughs again) So anyways, my dog starts barking, which is something that he does a lot, especially when they are cars around. I say, “Fido, what’s wrong?” which is something you would think I wouldn’t say because I know he barks at cars a lot. But anyways, I see that there is a cat across the street. I wonder to myself if it has an owner so I look at its neck to see if it has a tag and it does. Then I….blah blah blah blah……….”

SHUT UP. Nothing happened. Why did you tell that story? Probably because you thought that the current silence was awkward and that the people around you actually want to hear about the mundaneness of you and your dog’s lives. But in fact, we don’t want to hear about those things. There will always be one or two people like you that humor you throughout the story with affirmative nods, “mmhmm”s, and “really?”s, but in reality, they care as much as I do. If you’re going to tell a pointless story, tell it like this:

“So I was walking my dog and he found something really cool…”

See how easy that is? No bull, no uncontrolled tangents; just get to the point and everyone will be happy. I suppose it happens to introverts more often because we actually THINK BEFORE SPEAKING. Just try it out once, for me and every other person out there who thinks you’re boring. Believe me, there are more than you think.