The Smarmy Carny

And the winners are . . .

I made my annual Oscars predictions again. For the second year, I am opening myself up and showing exactly how horribly I do on these predictions. Last year, I went 13 of 24. This year, I improved my record by one: 14 of 24!

I missed many of the odd categories, as do most people. I also missed the huge upsets that many, many others missed. I missed on my upset predictions, too, which didn't help much.

1. Best Picture
   Winner: Crash
   My Pick: Brokeback Mountain
2. Best Actor
   Winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
3. Best Actress
   My Pick: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
4. Best Supporting Actor
   Winner: George Clooney, Syriana
   My Pick: Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
5. Best Supporting Actress
   My Pick: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
6. Best Director
   Winner: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
7. Best Original Screenplay
   My Pick: Crash
8. Best Adapted Screenplay
   My Pick: Brokeback Mountain
9. Animated Feature
   My Pick: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
10. Art Direction
    My Pick: Memoirs of a Geisha
11. Cinematography
    Winner: Memoirs of a Geisha
    My Pick: Brokeback Mountain
12. Costume
    My Pick: Memoirs of a Geisha
13. Documentary Feature
    My Pick: March of the Penguins
14. Documentary Short Subject
    Winner: A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin
    My Pick: God Sleeps in Rwanda
15. Film Editing
    My Pick: Crash
16. Foreign Language Film
    My Pick: Tsotsi
17. Makeup
    My Pick: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
18. Original Score
    Winner: Brokeback Mountain
    My Pick: Memoirs of a Geisha
19. Original Song
    Winner: "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," Hustle & Flow
    My Pick: "Travelin' Thru," Transamerica
20. Short Film, Animated
    Winner: The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation
    My Pick: The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
21. Short Film, Live Action
    Winner: Six Shooter
    My Pick: Ausreisser
22. Sound Editing
    My Pick: King Kong
23. Sound Mixing
    Winner: King Kong
    My Pick: Walk the Line
24. Visual Effects
    Winner: King Kong
    My Pick: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I would also like to report that I was able to (intentionally) incorrectly guess 22 of the 24 categories. I accidentally picked the winners for Original Song and Animated Short Film.

Head to Arby's on Thursday, March 9, 2006 between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. for Free Chicken Tender Day! From the looks of it, they are promising "a free Chicken Tender," so I believe you only get a single nugget-sized piece, though I could be wrong.

Head over to the Arby's Chicken Naturals page for more details. While you're there, click on "TV" and check out the fun Hulk Hogan commercial they've got.

Jason McElwain, a Greece student, is also the student assistant for his high school basketball team. He is also diagnosed as "highly functioning autistic."

After Jason's team gained a substantial lead, Jason entered the game and promptly airballed a three-pointer. He then missed a layup. After that, however, Jason hit six three-pointers, tying a team record in just ten minutes of play.

You can also view another video report at break.com

Tonight, I discovered a neat project that goes on each year in the Buffalo area called Faces of Buffalo.

First, you print out a 2006 Self Portrait Response Form. Then, create a self-portrait of your face using crayons, markers, paint — any media other than photographs. The 1,000 or so self-portraits are then combined into a mosaic of a buffalo. Be sure to check out their website to see and order past year's mosaics. Sales benefit charity.

Creativity is encouraged, but skill is not. The nature of this project is not to obtain the highest quality self-portraits, but instead to create a high level of participation in this community project. In fact, the website states that "Brian Nesline was inspired to create a bridge between artists, non-artists and art itself."

I think I'll try and participate this year. Perhaps I could roll this into my practice to create some abstract art this year.

This week's site is What Should I Read Next?

Though the interface is clunky and the results are questionable, the idea is fun. You add a list of your favorite books and the site suggests some additional reading material for you. If nothing else, brainstorming a list of your favorite books is worth the trouble.

One awful thing about the site as it is currently set up is that when you search, you get just one result. Thus, if you search for a book with the word Love in the title by an author whose name you have forgotten, typing "Love" in the title field returns only one entry: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This is almost certainly not the selection you were searching for. Even more distressingly, if you leave the title field blank and enter "Kurt Vonnegut" in the author field, you still get only one result: Slaughterhouse 5. It would be much more useful to display a list of Vonnegut classics to select all at once.

One nice feature is the ability to pick and choose which of your favorite books you use to generate your list each time. You can pick only the sci-fi comedy books to see what type of results you get, or you can choose to select all of your favorites for a grab bag of suggestions. I find that the results seem to be much more useful when selecting a large number of favorites. Selecting one book rarely brings up additional books by the same author, for some strange reason. It seems perfectly natural to me that if I select a Douglas Adams book that I might want to read more of his work.

Perhaps I'll write to the site with some of these somewhat-constructive criticisms. What Should I Read Next? has the potential to be something big — no, something huge. Despite my issues here, I visit there regularly, and I suggest you do the same . . . particularly if you're looking to build a reading list for yourself.

As for my issues with the site, I encourage you to read the post comments. Andrew Chapman, who is affiliated with What Should I Read Next, has posted a response to some of my complaints. It's certainly worth reading.

When your two young sons stay up too late to watch a scary movie, what is a parent to do?

Serve them the cold dish of revenge, of course!

These parents found their two sons huddled in the same bed with all the lights on after watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so the mom got out the video camera and the dad got out the chainsaw and a mask.

I don't know if you've ever been woken up via chainsaw before, but it's likely an experience you won't forget.

(Be sure to watch even more great videos in the Video category!)

If you'll take the time to notice, the one boy jumps to the end of the bed, reaches out to the wall, pulls the blinds down, and falls to the floor behind the bed in the process. The boy utters an expression that I'm sure I'll hear plenty from my two boys: "What's wrong with you?!?"

Scotty Pelk, the film geek

Film Geek seems like a fun little independent film for recreational and serious film geeks alike. Watch the trailer on the Film Geek page or on Apple.com and decide for yourself.

The Oregonian suggests that Film Geek "just might be this year's 'Napoleon Dynamite,'" so don't miss out.

Film Geek is a hilarious new comedy about Scotty Pelk, a socially inept video store clerk with an encyclopedic knowledge of film. He runs a website, scottysfilmpage.com, which receives zero traffic. He annoys his customers. He annoys his co-workers. And when he is inevitably fired from his video store job, Scotty finds refuge in Niko, a downtown hipster who teaches him a thing or two about love and life. But Niko’s smarmy ex-boyfriend Brandon won’t go away quietly. As Scotty’s first love turns to obsession, his life begins to change in profound ways.

The trailer includes a hilarious scene with Scotty and a customer looking for a movie that might have "Heaven" in the title. Scotty immediately starts rattling off at least ten such movies of various genres. In fact, once he gets started, he ignores the customer and continues with his list, almost as if he has been challenged. Good times.

The film geek, Scotty Pelk, is played by Melik Malkasian, who played a tribal shaman in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The female lead, Niko, is played by Tyler Gannon, who also appeared in Thumbsucker, another movie previously featured on Trailer Tuesday.

Film Geek was acquired by distributor First Run Features. As it is a small independent film, It ran in a couple theatres . . . one in Portland and one in New York City. Hopefully, we'll see it soon in theatres or on DVD.