The Oscars!

I love the oscars. it's not because i think they important or significant the way, say the nobel peace prize is, but i do love movies, and i love competitions and trivia, and i love seeing beautiful people in dresses i cant afford and which oftentimes are totally ridiculous. it also gives me a free activity and excuse to party with friends and make up nicknames for our snacks that are tenuously related to movie titles and actors names and whatnot. so, without further ado:

the weekend started with charity and me watching as many oscar nom movies as possible before the ceremonies. started with half nelson and the prestige on friday. half nelson is a good movie with no ending. the kind of movie my father would rail against, mostly because he gets sucked in and feels screwed when he has to make up a happy ending instead of having it shown to him. i feel similarly. that said, shareeka epps is adorable and heartbreaking and ryan gosling is the same. can a movie be good w/o a happy ending, am i some simpleminded idealist? no. but, a) it has to be more compelling than the nightly news on which every single day ends shittily, and b) it has to be worthwhile. this brings me to saturday when chares and i debated *endlessly* about whether to watch united 93 or go see letters from iwo jima in addition to seeing babel--see, in both united 93 and iwo jima you have real events in which everyone dies. we can only take so much total annihilation in one night. to spare you the patheticness, we ended up settling on babel and united 93, which my family owns. united 93: best movie i've seen this year. period. paul greengrass is amazing and was my sentimental pick for director. marty should have won for the aviator but hey.

the tv coverage started with this horrifically awkward red carpet commentary by richard roeper and some other totally forgettable dude who kept yelling the stars names to get them to come and do their obligatory interviews. It was during this painful segment that Ryan Gosling overcame the awkwardness of unmemorable guy and richard "i should never have done this, please stop yelling at the actors, you are *humiliating me*" roeper. ryan came up with an assortment of lady relatives, i believe, and shared about a pin he was wearing to be auctioned off to help rehabilitate child soldiers in uganda where he had just been last week. I believe this is when Charity and I shared a moment of "my love for ryan gosling has reached the level of bursting physical pain!" at which point forget-o man said "so this whole night isn't about the jewelry and the dresses and glamour is it, ryan?" to which ryan gave an awesome look saying, "you are a total effing moron" and then he hiccoughed and said "no."
Fast forward to Ellen's lackluster opening. I really wanted a billy crystal-esque performance where she is in all of the best picture noms. still, at least she wasnt awkwardly offensive. she was sort of adorable throughout. her standup is hilarious, but the oscars have to try and make everyone sort of milquetoast.

jack nicholson is bald, diane keaton finally isnt wearing damn gloves and some magician suit with necktie, she looks gorgeous, they flirt--they need to end up together in real life like they did in something's gotta give.

the best part of the ceremony was the song by will ferrell and jack black, "i thought i'd get to have dinner with jeremy irons..." and "ryan gosling you're all hip and now, but i'm gonna break your hip, right now!"

hi, i'm jennifer hudson's breasts.

alan arkin won for best supporting actor! and sunshine won best screenplay and the writer says his family actually did drive a broken down vw bus one summer and it was the best family vacation they ever had.

all in all, another fun year.

oscars, but mostly my ipod, i guess

I just finished listening to my BBC world select daily podcast--shameless plug-- and i'm now listening to a playlist that i, myself, entitled "chill" and i find myself listening to "are you gonna go my way" by lenny kravitz. while i am a big fan of l.k., "chill" is not really the word i would use to describe his music. except that clearly at some point i did. not really matching with the verve and the mellow songs from buena vista social club. oh well. one of the only things i don't like about the song White Flag from Dido is how, in the beginning, the sound travels from left to right multiple times on my headphones. i'm sure it is supposed to create some kind of atmosphere but i just feel like my headphones are effing up or like my inner ear has given out. okay, now i think i am bearing sonic witness to my own insanity...my chill playlist has now given me "sweetness" by jimmy eat world. a great song, again, but absolutely not chill!

well, enough about that, of course, because it's Oscar week!! woohoo!! charity and i are planning on catching up on as many movies as possible before the blessed event sunday night. Thus far I have seen 3 of the 4 nominees for best movie, little miss sunshine, the departed, and The Queen. Thus far my vote is for Little Miss Sunshine even though i am almost positive it won't be winning anything. well, i have had work all day straight and now must bid adieu with this short update.

cheers!
julie

grammys

my task box is mercifully empty for a few moments. despite the presence of better other things to do in life i have decided to blog about the grammy awards.

when tony bennett was up with stevie wonder and kept repeating "stevie wonderful" like a weird robot, i predicted that SNL would spoof it within the next few weeks. i am testing the water to see if i have the gift of prophecy.

so you're the dixie chicks. and you are winning every award for which you are nominated for an album that was considered a politically charged protest, a risky country/rock piece of fabulousness (the album *is* actually really good imo). you are introduced by Joan Baez herself. and you get up and say...nothing? the best you can come up with is a simpson's quote (albeit funny). you have this amazing platform to speak out for peace and justice and you instead get up and let natalie maines act retarded in the most godawful dress ever created? take a cue from the freaking awesome mary j blige and thank 400 people on notecards and then just murmur "thank you father, thank you jesus" or anything more dramatic than what you did. say something like " i hate war, but i love texas."

you might protest christina aguilera's lyrics, subject matter, existence, and the fact that she unnecessarily trashifies many of her songs--and the world would probably be a better place if we all did, mrs. aguilera i am talking to *you*--but, damn, the girl can sing. *duh-amn*.

i totally get why everyone (me and millions of 14 year olds) loves justin timberlake, but he really didnt deserve to perform two songs, especially not the super retarded one in which the tvaudience picks which woman will sing a duet with him like 2 seconds before said duet actually starts, leaving the two other girls to sit in the audience, rejected, watching the girl who beat them in their quest for 15 minutes of fame gyrate with JT. a new form of cruelty.

in other news, i am currently using eharmony. yes. i know, almost no one will ever admit to this, but since my cousin, miss florida, found her husband on eharm, and so did like 10 other people i know, it doesnt bother me. not to mention that it seems like lots of people are really interested in how it works. and you can definitely email me if that is the case. so, a trend i've noticed is that the korean guys always have the funniest profiles. my profile says that i am funny, but isnt actually funny itself, so i wonder if that is why i have been closed by all the funny koreans. could also be the fact that the average korean woman is super hot and has had plastic surgery to make herself even more corneasearingly gorgeous and so the julie cannot compete. anyway, who wants to date someone whose ancestors were douchebags who got destroyed like 400 times by the japanese? *sigh* or maybe it's the fact that i have studied up on china, their former imperial master and friend of the north. whatever. damn you, funny koreans.

i have two new cheeses for your consideration: st. andres and expolater. both creamy soft and fabulous, a tad salty. bellissima.

i love kevin pics

yesterday when i was pulling some docs off my flash drive i found all the pics we took at ORTV when kevin had cancer and jamin and i organized the i love kevin project. so i posted all the pics online. if you are an ORTVer now and want to see pics of coworkers from 2004, or if you are a former ORTVer and want to get nostalgic, check out this link! you also get to see the hilarious results of my cultural faux pas in which i made a sign that said "i love kevin" in white and black and cindy said "white and back means death" and so, while i made a new sign in yellow and red, jamin photoshopped the old pics and turned the black lettering of "i love kevin" into red lettering. red. vivre. life. let this be a lesson to you all.

are you an astronaut going to scarborough faire?

pictures are on hold for yet another day or so, but worry not, i yearn introduce you to my fabulous peeps.

okay, so charity has introduced me to slate's feature "blogging the bible". i love it. and he's using the nrsv, which is the shiznit of translations, in my opinion. for a refreshing look at the book of ezekiel, go to http://www.slate.com/id/2159016/?nav=fix . look for the awesome biblical hip-hop innovation in the first few chapters. it's totally stellar. i'm eager to see what his take is on the rest of the chapters, esp in ch 22/23, in which we see israel's nasty version of ridin' dirty.

may i also say that the fact that my hair is soft, shiny, and fabulous today doesnt really seem to be ameliorating the sense of yukkiness i feel from this bizarre returning illness i am suffering from. it's not bad enough to go back to the doctor, but every night my throat feels like it's constricting and my ears feel weird. like, inside my ears, not outside. in any case, the work i am doing right now is super tedious so,, as john-mark said "you can either sit and feel mildly crappy at home or you could come to work and sit and do mind numbing work and feel mildly crappy and get paid for it" the latter being the superior option, that goes without saying.

my mother and i have recently been totally disappointed by the shenangians at deal or no deal which see people get very excited about life changing amounts of money only to go home with like 200 bucks, just enough to buy the fam a meal at Friendly's (that is julia's illustration by the way for the amount of royalties her dad makes every year from having published some astrophysics book). so we have taken to watching a PBS show called rosemary and thyme in which two landscape designers quirkily solve local msyteries while they garden.

may i also say that it is just shameful and dreadful how we use our technological capabilities to pry into the private lives of others and..that being said, if we are going to be faced with it and indulge in it anyway, isnt this astronaut thing your favorite scandal ever? oh my gosh. diguises, love, diapers, astronauts. it's phenomenal. i was hoping that this shipman lady was also an astronaut, but i don't think so. Cuh-Ray-Zee!! and they just replayed the Monk episode where the astronaut kills some lady b/c he is running for office and she is going to expose him as an abuser. prescient, really whatwith it's unveling of evil astronauts. the gavin newsome thing is just sad in comparison. i mean, it is sad. affairs are sad. don't have affairs. affairs bad.

saving my time!

I've talked before about the two hours of my life that I lost watching Miss Congeniality 2 and how i haven't been able to claw them back. Well, yesterday i think my officemate John-Mark (JM)may have gotten them back for me. I have been slowly applying for jobs and seeing what's out there and i got an email from this company saying they'd like to interview me. so we set up a phone interview. between the time i set up the interview and the actual interview itself JM saw the job descritpion on my computer screen and he said "oh, i interviewed with them once and it took like 2 hours and was horrible and i left feeling like my soul had been sucked out" and told me about how it is this really cutthroat place where people work 24/7 and are expected to like it. so when i got the call from the HR woman i was like "so, i heard your corporate culture is pretty intense" and she said "yes it relaly is, but if you want to advance and work harder than you ever have in your life then you'll fit in here." and she said that the group i would be in wasnt that busy, actually, and only work about 50 hours per week. hahahahha. i said "actually i'm in graduate school" and she said "oh" and i said "yeah. and she said "well, call us back if you are ever interested." so i told this to JM and he said "see, i just saved you two hours of your life." and i was like "ohhh my gosh! i think that accounts for the 2 hours i lost watching miss congeniality 2! i never thought i would get those back." it was relaly beautiful.

in other news, today at lunch i went with some of my coworkers to a place called downtown johnny brown's where we played table shuffleboard which is sort of like curling, actually, but with no one shaving ice around you. it was super fun and i lost terribly.

i had my big birthday shebang last sunday and hope to have pictures up soon so that everyone can see their beauteousness and so that you from afar can see the wonderfulness i returned home to.