Keep Chewin’ It

Well, Avatar was denied a Best Picture Oscar last night. I did actually see Avatar, and I enjoyed it for the most part. It is definitely groundbreaking in the realm of effects. But I think most people would agree that the technical accomplishments didn’t really merit a Best Picture win. And James Cameron can still rest on his laurels as king of the gross box office earnings world. And he is now undeniably the king of the special effects world as well.

When I left the theater after viewing Avatar 3D (”Real-D”), the first person that crossed my mind was George Lucas. I imagined him slowly getting up from his seat in a private screening room at Skywalker Ranch. He sends James Cameron a congratulatory message and exclaims how impressed he was by the film. He then quietly slips upstairs to one of his private antechambers.

Quietly locking the door behind him, his hand trembles slightly as it leaves the doorknob. He turns fully into the room, gazing upon shelves and shelves of Jar Jar Binks motion-capture suits, models, and conceptual designs. His growing anger is momentarily tempered when he catches sight of the beta version Jar Jar action figure he mutilated after seeing the first footage of Peter Jackson’s CGI Gollum. But then his gaze falls upon a large animation cel from his final post-production Phantom Menace representation of Jar Jar and his anger boils.

The Skywalker ranch hands hear the screams almost immediately, but it takes them several minutes to actually get through the door and pull Lucas off of the pile of destroyed Star Wars prequel special effects memorabilia. Hands bloodied, the quietly sobbing Lucas eventually comes to a restful state.

I’m going through a little bit of Winter Olympics withdrawal at this point.  Say what you will about NBC’s sucky coverage, at least you could flip between a few of their channels and find some action.  My favorite events were ice hockey, snowboard cross, downhill skiing, and curling.  But I need to share a few thoughts on the figure skating.

I understand why figure skating is so popular and is pushed so heavily by the broadcasters.  Most women viewers seem drawn to it, and they are a tv demographic that is sometimes hard to corner.  Figure skating involves subjective scoring-related drama, co-ed pairs, fanciful wardrobes, lends itself to sentimental backstory exposition, and is basically “Dancing with the Stars” on ice.

I don’t know a lot about figure skating, but I have ice skated enough times to appreciate how difficult it is to do what they do.  I mean, I regularly exclaim how impressed I am with how well hockey players can skate.  And they’ve got nothing on the figure skaters.  But the best thing about figure skating is the aforementioned pageantry.

Music and outfits seem to be almost as important as landing a jump.  My favorite outfits were the German pair that had some kind of clown theme going on (complete with painted teardrops under their eyes).  I also really liked the effeminate lumberjack.  I think he was French, but had “defected” to Italy because he couldn’t crack the French figure skating rotation.  But the United States’ own Johnny Weir really takes things to a higher level.

In a moment that could have been lifted directly from the Will Ferrell template comedy “Blades of Glory,” Johnny Weir emerged on the ice in a black sequined suit with hot pink ruffles and laces tied down in various areas.  The announcers mentioned, with admiration, how Johnny designs his own outfits.  Hell yes he does.

There was also a groundswell of controversy around Weir due to his bitchy showdown with PETA and the launch of his own reality series on Sundance.  The latter appears to be the most flamboyant and groundbreaking reality series this side of Britney and Kevin: Chaotic.

That’s cool, I guess.  But when is a real Olympic hero going to get a reality show?  Maybe Bruce Jenner is available.

I’m not sure I’m satisfied with the snow puns that have been adopted to describe the current situation here in the DC metro area.  The leaders in the clubhouse seem to be “Snowmageddon,” “Snopacalypse,” and “Snoverkill.”  With honorable mention to “Snovechkin,” I think we can come up with something better.

I’ve been tossing around vaguely lame ones like “Snobody,” “Snoholdsbarred,” “Snotorious B.I.G.,” “Snobody’s Fool,” etc.  KJ dropped “Snonuff” on me, which is my personal favorite.  Yep…I think this household is going to rock with “Snonuff.”

We are really lucky in that we haven’t lost our power during this whole onslaught, aside from 4 or 5 instances of minor outages that come back on after 5 or 10 minutes.  I’m hoping that holds up for the rest of the storm.  And I hope those people who’ve lost power get it restored as quickly as possible.

This whole experience has been pretty exciting.  Definitely something a person remembers for the rest of their life.  It also reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Simpsons episodes, where Homer and Monty Burns are buried in a cabin during an avalanche.  “Ah…206 bones, 50 miles of small intestine, full, pouting lips.  Why, this fellow is less a snowman than a god!”

Upon additional consideration, I probably should add that we are really just hoping that our new family member does not decide to arrive in the next 48 hours.  Although I will be ready to dig out and get to the hospital if that is the case.  Snowbody puts baby in the corner.

Stay safe and warm out there!  And remember this piece of sage advice.

So apparently CBS didn’t sell much advertising space for last night’s Super Bowl.  They took this as an opportunity to cram as many ads for CBS tv shows down our throats as possible.  It seemed like every other ad was a promo for some CBS show that I’d never heard of (or at least never watched).

Here are the basic concepts I gleaned from the glut of CBS tv ads:

• 90% of their programming is made up of crime dramas, most of which are geographically specific (i.e. CSI: NY; NCIS: Miami; NCIS: LL Cool J; Criminal Minds: Fresno; ad nauseum
• The other 10% of their programming consists of Charlie Sheen’s Two Men & A Kid and a show about Shelden (a loveable geek!)

The Shelden ads were my favorite.  They seemed to be hell-bent on establishing this character as a household name.  They were particularly forcing the issue when Shelden climbed out of a graphic and said something about hacking his way into the Super Bowl.  And then Phil Simms playfully shrugged and delivered some canned line to the effect of “That’s our Shelden!”  Awesome job, CBS!

Also, Survivor is apparently still aired.  Who knew?  I thought it had just been superceded by Real World Road Rules Challenges.  I would be remiss not to mention that MTV needs to get the ball rolling on integrating its Jersey Shore characters into those RW/RR Challenges.  Bunim-Murray: Strike while the iron is hot!

Oh yeah, and congrats to the Saints!  It was nice to see one of the perenially downtrodden franchises (and basically forsaken cities) get something to cheer about.  I still haven’t been back post-Katrina, but everyone tells me it is still in rough shape down there.  So hopefully this is a pleasant distraction for a while.

Back when Gibbs v2.0 was entering year 3 here in the DMV, I was really hoping we’d cut bait with our QB situation and sign Drew Brees.  But I don’t think the Skins even considered him.  They were already all-in with Brunell at QB (a defining choice of the second Gibbs era) and had pre-emptively traded up in a clumsily telegraphed move to get Campbell.  Pretty odd that both Brees and Brunell got SB rings last night.  And Chase Daniel, for what it’s worth.

I’ve been oversaturated for the past several months with the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song “Empire State of Mind.” It seems like ever since late summer, this song has been following me. Its omnipresence wouldn’t really bother me, except that I have ultimately realized how much I dislike this tune. And I can pinpoint it to one specific reason.

I will caveat this by saying that I generally have favorable opinions of both Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. Jay-Z is certainly not in my pantheon of great rappers, but he is one of the better mainstream rap artists of the past 15 years or so. Some of Alicia Keys’ stuff is overproduced, but not to the extent that the majority of contemporary R&B music is. And she seems like she has pretty good songwriting and piano chops. So I really do find both of them pretty likeable.

But I digress. The reason that “Empire State of Mind” sucks is Alicia Keys’ enunciation of the word “Inspire” as a three-syllable word. This is done prominently in the song’s main hook and is amazingly annoying. Judging from its linchpin location in the main chorus, I should probably blame the deployment of “Inspire” as a 3-syllable word on whoever the actual songwriter is. I’m sure it doesn’t bother many other people out there. But maybe, just maybe, my pointing it out to you will now ruin the song for you. If that doesn’t work, you can just focus on the playing-piano-while-standing-up-and-bouncing part.

Also, Jay-Z rapping about New York is becoming about as inspired as Anthony Kiedis singing about California. I’m waiting for someone to come along and dedicate all of their creative efforts to idealizing Rhode Island. Wasn’t that going to be somewhere in Sufjan Stevens’ 49-state follow-up to Illinois?  Get on it, dude!

Once again, a haiku-based catalogue of my bibliophilic exploits from
the past year…

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

A really good yarn
Like Carnivale, minus the
Supernatural

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

Inspirational
Anecdotes for living life
From a dying man

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Objectivism!
Philosophical novel
Rand’s manifesto

The Underpants - Steve Martin

Stage adaptation
A raunchy, ribald update
Of an obscure play

A Confederacy of Dunces - J.W. Toole

Ignatius Reilly!
How did I never read this?
Brilliant and funny

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

19th century
classic saga of revenge
became a sandwich

Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

Banned for three decades
A true landmark work of art
And, yes, X-rated

I resolve to blog more. Seriously.

Just making sure this thing still works…

Every now and then, I’ll circle back on an album or movie or book that I really enjoyed at an earlier age. Sometimes I will blog about it. In this case, we’re about to get bloggy on the 1992 EP “Sap” by Alice in Chains.

A few friends and I were all over Alice in Chains the first time we heard “Man in the Box.” We pretty much wore out Facelift, their debut CD. I actually remember when another friend had gone to see Van Halen in concert, and Alice in Chains was the opening act. I was confused why they would be asked to play with Van Halen, but I was really excited to hear about Alice in Chains. His review was basically something like “they were really weird and the lead singer just laid on the ground the whole time.” This made them even more appealing to me. But I was really floored by their next release, the EP “Sap.”

Listening to it again, I can see why this is the one that hooked me for Alice in Chains. It really shows diversity from the hard rock/grunge milieu. “Sap” is very stripped-down, using a lot of acoustic guitars and really bringing their vocal harmonies to the forefront. It isn’t necessarily an unplugged album, but it is a big departure from the bombastic first album. They would follow this pattern for a bit, releasing a “heavy” album and then a more stripped-down one (Facelift > Sap > Dirt > Jar of Flies).

There are some really good tunes on the EP. “Brother” and “Got Me Wrong” are pretty much the ones I think of when I think of the “Sap” style. “Right Turn” has some great layered vocals in the outro, even though it pulls in Chris Cornell in some kind of Seattle All Stars deal. I still like this tune a lot, even though it inevitably makes me think of AudioSlave now, which is just horrible. Ugh. The last song on the album gets chaotic and circus-like and includes such quotable lyrics as “Rae Dawn Chong” and “Kiss the Midget.” So yeah, I dig that one a lot.

My music tastes evolved a lot over the years, as most people’s do. But I always held a soft spot in my heart for these guys. I was sad to hear that Layne Staley (the lead singer) died. I recently heard a rumor that the remaining band members were getting back together with a new singer, which seems really ill-advised. The harmonies were such an integral part of their sound, and his distinctive and haunting voice is part and parcel with that.

Anyways, I guess the verdict is that I still really dig “Sap.” I can see why it had such an impact on me back then. I was still a young grasshopper, and hadn’t yet sat down to dissect Crosby Stills & Nash’s “Deja Vu” and really learn rock vocal harmonies 101…but I could definitely point to what set Alice in Chains apart from their grunge brethren. A lot of crappy bands have tried to emulate this stripped-down Alice in Chains hard rock sound over the years, but none of them pass muster.

Official Ruling - Adult Steve says “Good taste, adolescent Steve!”

I had a minor run-in with a nasty PC virus, but I’ve actually been rebuilt and back online for quite a while now. I’ve just been too busy/lazy to blog. Following up on my earlier summer-related post, I just went to two Nats games in a row this weekend. Both losses. Have
another one lined up for Thursday night, so I guess I’m a total glutton for punishment. At least Jim Bowden is finally gone. That was like a nightmare that seemed like it would never end. He makes the Vinny Cerrato/Dan Snyder brain trust look like the Patriots front office!

Speaking of which, football season is coming up, which I’m considerably less excited about than I usually am. My distaste towards Snyder is really starting to pollute my actual love for the NFL season. In fact, I’m already marking many games to just up and sell my tickets this year. That will be a first for me.

But I’m sure I’ll be stoked once training camp starts. In honor of that, I’ll soon be posting my 2009 Redskins Mock Draft. Stay tuned!

My friend Frow may soon be on tour with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I’m fairly certain he has been the understudy for the guy who just dances. That guy could conceivably blow out an ACL, and Frow would take the opportunity and run with it! I anticipate he would usually be stage-left, in a vintage suit, doing the running man.