Comic for Friday, January 23, 2009

Posted: 6:30 am, Friday, January 23rd

Back to the normal stuff! The gang doesn't sing karaoke enough. There's been talk of the teachers I work with getting together for karaoke, to which I say, eek. By the way, let me know if this is not anything like any of y'all's high school experiences. Wednesday, I was in my room trying to grade some finals, and I stepped out for about five or ten minutes, and when I came back, four kids were jamming on their guitars. All of a sudden, a session had broken out in my room. For like an hour. What the hell? That's strange, right?

I have not seen Benjamin Button, but this video makes its point very well, cherry-picked as it may be. Can anyone speak to this?

I'm thinking Revolution Road v. Slumdog for the Oscar. I think if the nods had come out two or three months ago, Batman would've gotten a nod, but, meh. Also thought it was weird that Wall-E wasn't nominated at all (I guess they've decided they just won't do that). And one of my buddies at school pointed out that Milk has a better shot than you may think because of the Grand Brokeback Shafting of a few years ago. Oh, wait, look at that, Revolution Road isn't nominated. OK, let's go with Slumdog and Milk, then. Never forget, dear readers, I am a tool. (One of my kids asked me what that meant the other day.)

Oh, geez, forgot to mention Lost. First hour: awesome! Second hour: Meh. A lot of running around the island, although I firmly endorse any action involving flaming arrows. Hurley's surrender at the end felt like it was just the writers being, like, "Here's a way we can drag this out!" The AV Club says next week's is available to the press already, and it's a humdinger. So that'll be nice. I'm hoping to finally catch up with Battlestar tonight, and my TV-watching life will be fully revived! Ish.

Was a certain reader present for this?

Absolute disaster yesterday, as Cablevision dropped both Monsters HD and Kung-Fu HD from my cable package. I'm not kidding, I would happily switch to another carrier, if only cable providers weren't set up like monopolies.

Hey, New York has two Senators again. That's good to see.

bullfrog

2.0 -- Friday, January 23 2009, 07:10 am

2.0 to Bullfrog: I have some bad news. They dropped Mosnsters HD.

Bullfrog: Nooooo. Channel 777! Go to 777! Noooooo.

It was a sad day at HQ.

Do you teach the high school from "Fame"?

Not at my HS. The Gestapo would have taken your guitar and called your parents.

I think what it is is that home sucks so much for these kids that they'd rather hang out at school. As for the guitar, I have no idea what that's all about. One of the social studies teachers came in and basically played anything that was on Jed the Fish's Out of Order countdown from 1991-5, which was awesome because it was music from 91-95, and also because they were really bad at guitar and he was not.

That happened when I subbed in for the Architectural Drafting teacher at the local Vo-Tech school. I let it go, probably because I was a terrible substitute.

Is it wrong for me to be happy for Marisa Tomei getting another nomination after all the crap she took for winning for My Cousin Vinny? Good for her.

Zero

Ah, Patti Lupone, the pride of Northport High School, my alma mater.

As for Benjamin Button, I saw a bootleg of it and I distinctly remember thinking, "wow, this movie is kind of like Forrest Gump", around the part when he went on the fishing boat and started traveling all over the place. That clip was right on. In sort of Benjamin Button's defense, I think it was based on a book written in the 30's or something. (too lazy to look it up)

Monster HD? Is that one of those Voom HD channels? (I don't have cable or satellite, but the Equator HD channel that Voom has fascinates me. (Along with all of the sports channels in HD. I'm disappointed in the Weather Channel HD. Doesn't seem so spectacular.)

Button was a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald, if memory serves.

Zero

I wasn't there for Patti's outburst - to my everlasting regret.

(But the rumors are true: It was indeed a press photog who'd been invited to come and take photos.)

Wow...

http://www.npmarathon.com/

MJ - you might get me to do another MCM, but not the north pole one!

What about Philly? It is about 2 weeks after MCM.

Someone might have wanted to tell Patti that, eh?

Patti was informed. She just forgot, that's all. Whoops.

Thanks for the BUTTON-GUMP posting. It shocked me to see that and realize how similar they are. Especially in terms of their Oscar representation!

Seriously, here's the nominations BUTTON got this week:

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Achievement in Art Direction Achievement in Cinematography Achievement in Costume Design Achievement in Directing Achievement in Film Editing Achievement in Makeup Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) Best Motion Picture of the Year Achievement in Sound Mixing Achievement in Visual Effects Adapted Screenplay

And look what GUMP got back in 1995; same categories are ALL IN CAPS with wins marked with a '#':

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE # BEST DIRECTOR # BEST EFFECTS, VISUAL EFFECTS # BEST FILM EDITING # BEST PICTURE # BEST WRITING, SCREENPLAY BASED ON MATERIAL FROM ANOTHER MEDIUM # Best Actor in a Supporting Role BEST ART DIRECTION-SET DECORATION BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing BEST MAKEUP BEST MUSIC, ORIGINAL SCORE BEST SOUND

That's 11 categories they share! And if BUTTON wins the same ones as GUMP...

My God, the sheer audacity...

Sorry, the listing got jumbled above. Didn't format it right; I'll find a way to repost the data in a neater form elsewhere

No worries, man!

So you're saying that Buttons is it's Forrest Gump with a Sci-Fi twist?

That sounds sort of right. Both men go through all these adventures over a long period of history, but in "Button" it's played as tragedy -- basically because he can't be with the woman he loves; there's nothing tragic (or even all that interesting) about Benjamin himself -- and in "Forrest Gump" it's played as comedy because he doesn't recognize history as such. I think I preferred "Forrest Gump," actually, because more interesting things happened; the only interest in "Button" was watching Brad Pitt's makeup job.