Beyoncé's Finest Night
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2005 10:41 PM
At tonight's Academy Awards ceremony, I went 18 for 24, which may or may not be enough for my Oscar pool—22 won it last year, but the Lord of the Rings made everything crazy. I started off strong—the first seven in a row, but it all went to hell at film editing. I still think Million Dollar Baby was edited so much better than The Aviator.

Live blogging, while interesting, was not my cup of tea and being done by people on-the-spot wittier than I. But I was keeping track of a few choice impressions.

My favorite star was Cate Blanchett , who was stunning. Her dress was beautiful, her hair perfect, and she just radiated that, cliché as it is, “Hollywood glamour.”

On Gil Cates' "innovations," I'd have to say no and even though the telecast was about half an hour short of last year's, I didn't think the changes improved the show. It was weird for the “minor” awards to be doled out with the presenter in the crowd and the nominees seated mere feet away from microphone. The ones where they all the nominees on stage where they had to stand by as someone else got to give an acceptance speech was also wrong somehow.

Scalett Johanssen was on the balcony, why? (“Because someone painted that railing,” Emily suggested.) It was nice they actually got tickets (although did they really have seats?).

Beyoncé was a tad scary on “Vois Sur Ton Chemin” (“Look to Your Path”) from Les Choristes (The Chorus). Girl can't sing in French well. I don't quite endorse Sars' suggestion that we just show a clip of the song from the movie with like a music video, but having Beyoncé “lend” her vocals to three songs (none of which she sang originally) doesn't tell me much about what the songs add to the movie. I longed for the day when they kept the show trim by disrespectfully playing all the nominated songs in a row, in abridged two minute snippets.

Was the swag so good that Pierce Brosnan couldn't bow out? Or was working with Edna Mode such a once in a lifetime experience?

I love Cate Blachett's win—she's fabulous (see adulation above)—and her “I hope your son will marry my daughter” line to Martin Scorsese even if I don't get it.

The best line of the night, while The Counting Crows were playing, we were trying to figure out what the hell was up with Adam Duritz and Grady shouts out “Hey, Kid! Where's Play?” Convulsions of laughter followed.

Lame and cheesy as the Adam Sandler-Chris Rock “Catherine Zeta-Jones didn't show” bit was, I had to laugh. It was funny and I loved the way they continued to go with it even after the utter silliness of it was revealed.

Sidney Lumet & Al Pacino's two-cheek kiss brought simultaneous groans and aws from the crowd in my living room. I'm not sure why the diametrically opposed reactions.

And when Beyoncé came back and freakily sang that “Learn to be Lonely” song from The Phantom of the Opera, all I could think of was Minnie Driver at home going “aaarrrggghhhh!” and clenching her fists in anger.

Salma Hayek and Penélope Cruz presenting together? Who came up with that? A man, I suppose, like the one in my living room who said “Am I the only one happy about this?” And Chris Rock's comment about the next four presenters before the duo came out? Nice.

A little too much crappy Beyoncé, eh? Josh Groban couldn't sing alone the song he sang solo for the movie? I'll admit that Josh seemed to be having a good time, and they made a weirdly cute couple. Was that just me? (The picture doesn't do them justice—he was smiling when not singing.)

On the dead roll call popularity contest, Marlon Brando emerged victorious. (Kind of wish they'd just mute the audience on that.)

Poor Annette Bening. To lose twice—to the same person? Geez.

I didn't realize until the night that all the Best Actor nominees were all doing "voices." That's a sign of talent, right?

And Million Dollar Baby over The Aviator got me to 18, phew! Best Picture was the only category where I saw every film and I genuinely thought Million Dollar Baby was the best. I enjoyed the whole movie—it was solid. The Aviator, took me a while to get into; Sideways was cute, funny, but not quite Best Picture material as I said before; Ray had a performance by Jaime Foxx that was better than the film, though it was a damn fine movie; and Finding Neverland was good, but just not enough.

Yeah, Soft Passwords, That's the Most Interesting Part of the Story
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2005 9:57 AM
So the best thing I've seen about the whole Paris Hilton's Sidekick getting hacked (not that I care or anything) is not the pics and links to screenshots of the address book from Defamer, (and the eight gazillion stories they've done since), not the local connection noted on SFist, nor even the new T-shirt at Glarkware. No, it was a link on CNet to an article about how Paris had an obvious password or at least an obvious password retrieval system (favorite pet? "tinkerbell," genius), how she didn't change it after previous security problems, and how weak passwords are lame. Exciting. But seriously, make your passwords strong ones, kids.

Love Sweet Love
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2005 9:23 PM
I'm kind of indifferent to Valentine's Day—never sad when I was single, not reveling in it now that I am not—but it's still a fun holiday as a people-watcher. The J was filled with guys and bouquets, from an old guy with the classic combo of a red, heart-shaped box of chocolates and a single long-stemmed red rose to young guys with assorted pre-made bouquets of roses and baby's breath and occasionally stargazer lilies.

At work, there were cookies and candies about and some people passed out cards, which kind of reminded me of elementary school Valentine's Day celebrations. You know, the perverse ritual of everyone getting everyone else cards in the lower grades, symbolizing that we all loved each other? And how the ritual evolved into something more passive-aggressive in the upper grades with kids selectively deciding who to give cards to such that some people only got pity cards, which was kind of sad in retrospect, but part of the cruel hierarchy and shameless status-seeking of grammar school.

Education, Celebration . . . No Strings Attached
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2005 4:15 PM
So yesterday, I was looking for a random product and visited UncommonGoods, an online store with some really cool stuff, and I saw that there was a link at the bottom left that said "UncommonGoods celebrates Black History Month!" I clicked it, thinking cyncially 'What are they selling for Black History Month?' The answer? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! The link takes you to a page featuring a primer on Black History Month and a list of unheralded African Americans in history. Pretty cool, I thought.

I'm Beginning to Miss AC Transit
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2005 10:26 PM
I'm not saying that AC Transit is perfect. And I know that fares have gone up to $1.50 since I left Oakland and there have been service cuts, of course, but I don't quite remember hating AC Transit as much as I loathe MUNI.

Now, I get that it's passé to detest MUNI because, well, yes, it sucks. The consensus is a well documented (here, here, here, here, here, oh and here too). I've accepted my daily adventures with the J line not running on anything remotely resembling the printed schedule and the 48 line tricking me into "figuring" out that it always comes 3 to 5 minutes early (or 7 to 9 minutes late) by doing that for the first month I rode it but then suddenly showing up on a wholly different erratic schedule. But on days like today, I can't help but rant.

It all started when I checked NextBus and found that there were J-Church streetcars arriving at the Embarcadero Station in 3 minutes and 29 minutes. I usually get on there because the trains are empty going outbound and I can always get a seat or at least a good standing spot. As it takes about 8 minutes at a fast clip to get to the station, I decided to talk a K, L, or an M line streetcar, whichever came first, and hop on a 24 Line bus at the Castro Street Station to get the rest of the way home. I figured that even if I had to wait out in the cold a few minutes, I'd still get home way sooner.

Fool am I. I should have clued in on the fact that there were an awful lot of people on the platform. I haven't quite adjusted to the rider traffic pre-7 p.m. so I couldn't tell how bad it could be. I've learned that the J is super-crowded around 6 p.m. because of all the students taking City College classes at James Lick. So I stayed at work a little later, but that didn't seem to help much.

After an N-Judah rolled by, many people got on, so I figured I was getting on whatever came next. Uh, except there were no trains coming. For several minutes. So finally an L comes in going backwards—a "nice" thing they do sometimes when the trains are late. It comes from the same direction as an inbound train but on the outbound side so we don't have to wait for it to turn around in the tunnel. (They announce that as taking 3 minutes, but it's usually about 5.) A lot of people were waiting so a whole herd of us crammed onto the L. And I mean crammed. It was like when the Amazing Race goes to India and the teams are jammed into train cars. Except for the ass-grabbing and the smell. Well, I can't actually say it smelled better in the streetcar because my face was in an armpit.

I decided to stand because I was getting off in a few stations. Not a great idea because I ended up standing really close to the driver's door. Normally not a big deal, but the entrance doors were stuck open and we spent a good 10 minutes smushed together in the stationary car while the driver kept yelling at us to stand clear of the door until another MUNI employee pointed out that the door was actually broken. A mechanic had to come on board to fix it. If this was the J line, the driver would just start going with door open and advise passengers to warn those getting on to "watch out." I guess drivers on the other lines don't have that same reckless abandon.

We finally got going with me jockeying to stand something close to straight up because a guy next to me decided that when I leaned and stood off balance to let the driver through, I was indicating that I wanted to stand forever in that awkward pose with my arm twisted in front of me, bent over a seated person. Comfortable.

When we got to Montgomery people looked annoyed and pushed to get on. We went through the whole door-won't-close bit again as the newcomers sighed and rolled their eyes. I told the woman in front of me we had already gone through this for ten minutes at Embarcadero. More eyerolling and sighing.

At each stop, people fought to get off. New riders tried to squeeze on and had the nerve to accuse those already uncomfortably on the streetcar of not making room. Which, yeah, there are a lot of idiots out there.

I was pretty happy when I finally got off at Castro. The only upside to the trip: I only had to wait about a minute and a half for the 24 Line. Sometimes you get lucky (but mostly, you don't).

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