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I’ve had February 2nd marked on my calendar for a while now, and for a multitude of reasons.  It is, of course, Groundhog Day, one of my very favorite holidays.  Punxatawney Phil did indeed confirm that we’d have another six weeks of winter, but I really didn’t need him to tell me that.  Tonight is the debut of the final season of LOST, which I’ve been counting down to since last May.  But the thing I’m most excited about… the Oscar nominations were announced this morning.

I was more excited this year than I usually am because this year the Academy decided to up the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten.  Part of me assumes this is because there was nerd rage when The Dark Knight got snubbed last year.  It seems to me that us geeks will be pleased, and I’ll tell you why.  The noms for Best Picture are:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
A Serious Man
Precious
Up
Up In the Air

I only saw four of those (Avatar, D9, The Hurt Locker, and Basterds), and really only wanted to see one other (the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man).  I didn’t hear about An Education at all.

Evicting some fookin' prawns

You already know my feelings on Avatar, so let’s get to the other pictures I saw this year, starting with the geek-vindicating District 9.  In many ways, this flick is like the anti-Avatar.  Whereas James Cameron had access to zillions of dollars, South African/Canadian director Neill Blomkamp scored $30 million from Peter Jackson and was left alone by studios to make a feature-length version of his spectacular short, Alive In Joburg. What you get is a film about alien-human relations that tackles some of the same issues, but does so in a half-documentary, half-action thriller.  It’s smart, it’s funny, it looks great, and although far-fetched, it’s much more terrestrial than Avatar.  The film is quite deserving of its R-rating, with plenty of profanity and incredibly over-the-top violence.  The final act is on par with Robocop as far as ludicrous amounts of bloodshed goes, and dare I say, just as much fun.  I’d buy that for a dollar!

I was most excited to see this as one of the Best Picture nominees because, as good as I thought it was, I didn’t expect to see it get picked out as one of the year’s best.  Part of that might have to do with the fact that it also made over $200 million worldwide with its modest budget, but maybe I’m just being cynical.

Hans Landa - Tarantino's most sinister character yet

Meanwhile, where Avatar was the ultimate pet project of Cameron’s career, Quentin Tarantino finally released his own long-in-production opus.  Inglorious Basterds is another film geek’s dream come true; QT’s vision of World War II as a Spaghetti Western, with all of the trappings you should expect from the original Video Store Director.  I’ve seen (and for the most point loved) his films up until this point, and I can safely say that this is his best.  Not as in “best yet,” either.  If you’re here for a serious account of WWII, then you’re sadly mistaken.  QT essentially uses the war as a backdrop, as a way to tell a new kind of story.  It’s rather difficult to really describe Basterds without recounting his whole career, so if you’re not a fan, it’s not for you.

If you are a fan, though, then you’re in for plenty of great Tarantino Brand dialogue, as well as some great characters, such as Brad Pitt’s Aldo “The Apache” Raine, Eli Roth’s Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz, and Melanie Laurent’s vengeful Shoshanna Dreyfus.  But without a doubt, the film’s best performance comes from Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz, playing SS Colonel Hans Landa, known as “The Jew Hunter.”  Waltz plays the villain with true relish, making him at once engaging and repulsive.  Landa’s sinister nature goes beyond Nazism and into the realm of inhumanity.  Whereas some men wore the Nazi armband because they felt they had no choice, Landa is the kind of man who wore it because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Seeing the competition, Waltz should have no problem winning.

Tearing a car apart has never been so exciting

When it comes down to it, though, I would vote for The Hurt Locker for Best Picture if I had the chance.  Not to mention Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow and Best Actor for Jeremy Renner (above).  Set in Iraq in 2004, we follow an Explosive Ordinance Division unit through the final month of their tour.  Their new team leader, Sgt. William James (Renner) is kind of like Mel Gibson in Leathal Weapon: brilliant, yet slightly unhinged.  Throwing protocol out the window, James would rather defuse a roadside bomb by hand than send in a remote-controlled robot that could spare his life and those of his squadmates.  Not to mention bystanders who like to hang out and watch the events unfold in the scorching Iraqi sun… and might be holding onto the detonator, too.  The film’s tagline says it all: “You don’t have to be a hero to do this job.  But it helps.”

What makes The Hurt Locker great is the suspense.  Think of your favorite bomb-defusing scene of all time.  Remember how exciting it was?  The suspense, the sense of doubt that the hero can render the device neutral in time, sweat rolling down his determined brow…  Now multiply that feeling about a hundred times and repeat it four or five times.  Now imagine a hero who’s genuinely likable, even though he’s a conventional anti-hero.  Just when you think that he’s a total jerk to his squadmates, he turns around and proves himself a true leader when the chips are down.  But The Hurt Locker doesn’t just deal with the heroics.  When Sgt. James returns home, he has trouble adjusting to civilian life.  Will he stay home after risking his life countless times in a hellish environment… or will he go back to the one thing he knows he’s good at?

If Bigelow wins for Best Director, it would be sweet: she was married to James Cameron from ‘89 to ‘91.  I’m unsure of who the winner will be, to be honest.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Avatar win, simply because of the fact that it’s topped Titanic as the all-time highest grossing film (although ticket prices were higher for 3D showings, etc).  Then again, Titanic wasn’t up against nine other films.  We’ll have to see come March 7th.

Apparently, it’s “Doppelgänger Week” at Facebook.  The idea being that you’re supposed to put up a picture of a celebrity who people say you look like.  Well, I don’t do stupid crap like that.  But if I did, I’d have put up a picture of Ice Cube.

Straight outta Worcester!

Spittin’ images.  I almost don’t recognize myself sometimes.  Okay, so I’ve never actually been mistaken for Mr. Cube, but I always saw a resemblance.  In my family we always say, “You can tell your own.”  I just didn’t feel like going with the old “HEY COSTANZA LOL” treatment this time around.

ANYWAY.  This is just an example of the kind of thing that I hate to see at Facebook.  MySpace was rife with this sort of thing and now it’s creeping up on my cleaner, more streamlined social network of choice.  Soon enough there’ll be plenty of embedded music players and migraine-inducing animated backgrounds.  That’s how this sort of thing starts.  There goes the neighborhood.

I’ve got more to say about social networking… it’s a video I’ve wanted to do for a good long time and once I’ve got a weekend to myself, I just might do it.

For at least a year, the sweating, greasy masses (of geeks) have been speculating amongst themselves about what Apple’s Next Big Thing™ might be.  After the touch-screen advances made by the very cool iPhone and iPod touch, geekdom decried that the next step could very well be a tablet.  Take into account the popularity of Apple’s Macbook,  which has proven that they’re fully capable of making a thin, yet powerful laptop.  Now look at the popularity of the Amazon Kindle and the Nook from Barnes and Noble.  They’ve proven that people are actually willing to read books and newspapers on a handheld device.  The iPhone gave us the ability to surf the web on our phone with relative ease.  Simply put, we are quickly moving toward a world in which we will all have Starfleet-issued PADDs.  Apple, logically, should be the entity to nudge us in this direction, seeing as how they revolutionized listening to music with the iPod and everything that followed.  It was a concept in motion, but it took Apple to make it cool.

Get ready to get told!

We geeks love talking about the future of technology for two reasons.  The first can be seen in the previous paragraph.  We love to look at what we’ve got and where we’re going.  I was fortunate enough to hear the great Leo Laporte on the radio this weekend and he was talking about what he thought this new product might be.  His ideas sounded great, and sounded a lot like what I had in mind for such a tablet-like device.  “The great thing is that Apple really gets our imaginations going,” Leo said.

The other reason we like to speculate on upcoming tech is because we are almost inevitably going to be disappointed, and we take lots of pleasure in that kind of grumbling.  When Steve Jobs emerged with the iPad yesterday, I was left wondering where all of the features I expected to see were.  I expected to see a camera and some USB connectivity.  These just seem to be no-brainers.  The cheapest cell phone has this kind of stuff.  I also figured that there’d be some sort of OSX interface; instead it’s the iPhone’s operating system running things.  But I think that the biggest surprise was the fact that 3G is not standard on the iPad.  In the end, the basic model goes for $500.  So not only do I think it’s underpowered and underequipped, but also overpriced.

I’m sure that this is only the beginning for the iPad, though.  The iPod has been improved upon numerous times.  The iPhone had a newer, better version released only a year after the original.  It’s how Apple does things.  Only this is the first time that it makes me kind of angry.  I love Steve Jobs, but I feel like this is really the first time that he’s actually holding back on consumers.  Did Apple not flesh this thing out on purpose?  Is there a grand plan to come back in a year with a superior version?  I can hear him now…

“Oh… and one more thing…  I know that a lot of you weren’t all that enthused about the iPad when it launched.  You didn’t think there were enough features.  You didn’t think it was powerful enough.  Well, we listened to you, and that’s why I’m proud to present the newest generation of the iPad.  We’ve literally been working on it since launch of the original.  And it’s remarkable.”

Search your feelings.  You know it to be true.

Of course, I haven’t gotten my hands on this puppy.  Maybe it is cool.  Maybe it’s a great little gadget to have and a lot of fun to use.  But $500 to $829 for what pretty much turns out to be an underwhelming accessory is pretty steep.  I hate to say it, but Apple’s winning streak may have come to an end.

It’s been about a month since Christmas and I’m still getting a real kick out of my favorite present. When I heard that there would be a new side-scrolling Mario adventure, I knew I’d had to get it. Call me a purist, but I think that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the series’ zenith. All these years later, downloading Super Mario World on the Wii was an incredibly underwhelming experience. This was it? This was the game that so many people I knew thought was so great? I don’t need to ride a cute dinosaur to have a good time. Give me a leaf that turns me into a raccoon, that’s all it takes to make me happy. I haven’t even bothered trying Mario 64 or any of the other 3D adventures since. That’s why New Super Mario Bros. was the one to watch.

Oh, HELL yes.

The thing that makes NSMB so good is that it gets right back to those basics while incorporating new elements in a seamless fashion. I’m too inept to deal with more than two buttons when I’m playing as Mario, so it’s great to know that stuff like the spin jump were not mapped to the buttons, but instead could be activated by shaking the Wiimote. Another thing I was VERY happy to see was the long-overdue addition of the wall-jump. Now I can save myself from dying in pits fifty percent of the time rather than watch helplessly as I drop off the screen.

The entirely new stuff is also a ton of fun to learn.  For instance, some new mushrooms have been added (as far as I can tell), like the Ice Flower, which lets you throw snowballs that freeze your enemies, the Propeller Hat, which lets you fly with a shake of the Wiimote, and my personal favorite, the Penguin Suit, which includes the snowballs and also lets you walk easily on ice or slide on your belly.

Of course, the game’s biggest selling point is the fact that you can now play with up to four players on the same screen simultaneously.  I initially assumed this would mean the game would use the Wi-Fi capability of the Wii.  It doesn’t, and now that I’ve played it with my sister, I can see that there is serious trolling/griefing potential with this game.  When it comes to Mario, you don’t want to piss anyone off, you just wanna have fun.

And believe me, there’s plenty to be pissed at when you’re playing.  Not in a bad way.  It’s just that the game is just diabolical enough to make you curse and try to throw your controller, before you remember that you strapped your Wiimote to your wrist.  You did read the safety advisory, didn’t you?  But you’ll be back.  You’ll come back, you’ll plan your jumps and maybe even get your friends in on the action, but just remember… when you’ve beaten one Koopa kid, there’s always another lying in wait.

I haven’t beaten it yet.  I only get the time to play a little here and a little there.  But I kind of like it that way.  I don’t like sitting around and plowing through a game, especially when there’s no replay value.  But even when I’m done with it, I’m sure that I’ll be ready to start all over again.  There’s always more hidden treasures to find when you go back.  And since I’m playing without a walkthrough right now,  I’m sure there’ll be a lot of good stuff waiting for me on the second run.

If you’re a Mario fan, you’re doing yourself a big disservice by not playing this.  If you’ve got kids, they’re going to love this game, too.  Play it with them and show them a thing or two about stomping goombas and dodging Bullet Bills.  It’s time to pass it on to another generation!

I don’t often talk politics in this space, but I have to give props to Scott Brown for winning the open senate seat in Massachusetts, effectively bringing the healthcare reform bill to a screeching halt and loosening the Democrats’ grip on Washington.  In doing so, Scott is now in the very early running for the 2010 Golden Troll Award.

Brown would only comment by saying, "Cool story, bro."

For me, this is like winning the World Series all over again.  I’m a registered Republican and a Yankees fan living in Massachusetts, so the last few months have felt pretty sweet.

Here are some things that I can say that I’ve learned from this election:

• The Democrats have been rebuked only a year (nearly to the day) after Barack Obama took office.  The evidence of this is that this happened right here in Massachusetts.  I’m sure that the election would have been decided by a slightly wider margin in any of the traditional “battleground” states, so this was pretty much a Republican landslide in terms of MA elections.
• We need more term limits.  I’ve always thought this, but for Christ’s sake, if you have to literally wait for your senator to die before you can get him out of office, there’s something wrong with the system.  Sure, you can make the argument that anyone can come along and challenge the incumbent, but the point that I am trying to make is that once someone has been in power for a long time, voters tend to just let them stay there.  Eventually, would-be opponents don’t even bother challenging, and that’s where you can run into very serious trouble.  Inaction is the deadliest mistake a population can make and this sort of apathy is the cause.
• Negative ad campaigns are a surefire way of pissing voters off.  Martha Coakley just assumed that trying to make her opponent look bad was the best way to get ahead when Brown stared to pick up steam.  But when all you do is remind people he’ll vote against the healthcare bill (albeit with scary music), that only furthers the likelihood that people will vote for him.  Maybe she should have looked at some poll numbers before hammering that note home.
• On that note, Coakley’s ineptitude about current events and local lore was appalling.  For one, she seems to not know who Curt Schilling is (the now-infamous “He’s a Yankee fan” remark), and also seems to think that the war in Afghanistan isn’t worth fighting anymore (thanks to a soundbite I recently heard of her saying that “the Taliban are gone” in the region).  Do your homework, lady.
• On Wednesday, no matter what happens, the ads stop playing on TV and the radio.  Thankfully.  Which makes me wonder why the winner doesn’t take out ads that simply gloat about their winning.  “I’m the Wiz!  Nobody beats me!”

What will the rest of the year hold for politics?  Will this be a harbinger of things to come this November?  Will the president finally start working from the center, as he said he would when he was running?  We’ll have to see.  I don’t get paid to think about this sort of thing and as I said, I don’t usually write about it, either.  I just saw the efforts of a good guy who managed to troll the bluest of the Blue States this week and had to write about it before it wasn’t news anymore.

Crush LIVE

I’m thinking that this is going to be a much better way to post stuff from my flickr account.  I really didn’t like the way the layout translated to my blog,  so I got the old hotlink going.  I hope flickr doesn’t have a problem with that.

Worst Fortune Ever, originally uploaded by newpageone.

I was intensely disappointed. At least the cookie itself was tasty.

BTW, this is kind of a test post from Flickr. I didn’t even know you could do this. I love how interconnected everything is these days. I don’t like how it looks though, don’t know if I’ll keep this up.

Way back in NP1 history, I posted a story about having some trouble with a bathroom vending machine.  I wasn’t really “blogging” yet, but I knew that this little adventure had to be chronicled.  Since re-doing the whole site, I stumbled over this gem and knew I had to bring it back out into the light.  Originally posted circa winter 2002-03.

I recently paid a visit to the KFC/Taco Bell in Gardner for lunch.  I’ve been here a couple of times before and I try not to make a habit of it.  Not that the place makes bad food.  It’s just that the food is bad for you.  I may be known as the George Costanza of my circle of friends, but just because Jason Alexander tells me to eat at these places a lot is no reason to do so.  Ah, well.  Anyway, on this particular day I didn’t have much to do.  I was killing time in the worst way.  I had studied quite enough and had to stay in town to see a play for my music class.  So when lunchtime rolled around, I decided to take my time with some tacos and chicken strips.  The meal was a satisfactory journey, although these guys should add a Super Size option to their soda.  However, my hands were, well, greasy.  This lead me to the bathroom to wash my hands, where I notice this…

"I got all kinds of crazy crap!"

It’s one of those men’s room vending machines.  You usually expect to see these at night clubs, hotels, interstate rest stops, bars, and the like.  They typically carry stuff like condoms and aspirin, sometimes band-aids, all sorts of stuff you’d expect a guy could get at CVS but doesn’t care to actually purchase in quantities that would leave them thinking that they now have to use the WHOLE thing.  These dispensers are the perfect solution.  However, today I stumble across one at a KFC/Taco Bell in GARDNER.  If you’ve never been to Gardner or the ensuing Route 2 region, this might strike you as funny, but after I thought about it, I realize that people in this area are far away from anything interesting to do and they probably lead a boring lifestyle that leads to the use of the type of stuff these things give out.

But I could tell that today I had come upon a vending machine that is much different from any other I’ve seen.  First of all, this one says MEN’S SHOP on it, but it seems to feature a picture of what looks like a woman trying to pass as a guy.  Look at the lips, people.  Tell me that’s not effeminate.  But there was another thing I couldn’t help but notice sticking out at me.  Perhaps you noticed as well.

What a find!

That’s right, this one sells GLOW STICKS!!  How cool is that?  Now, I’m not into the whole “raver” culture or anything, but I love glow sticks.  You never know when one is going to come in handy, but I can’t help but think of how ravers have sort of tarnished one of my favorite trinkets.  Still, I can’t help but want one, and if it’s only gonna set me back one dollar, I’ll give it a shot.  Maybe I could use it at the play later that night to dazzle my classmates.  I mean, we were seeing Funny Girl, this would have been almost as much fun as getting a laser pointer and shooting it at the stage for a while.  Or I could have used it to read something more interesting while the houselights were down.  The possibilities were endless, and it all began here with this machine.  I had found the evening’s salvation in a fast food restroom.

Ka-ching!

I had  $1.63 of change in my pocket, which not only was a lot for my normal day, but I could also purchase a whole glow stick and 2/3 of another, or perhaps the glow stick and half a dose of Tylenol.  I didn’t really have a headache, though, and vending machines are hardly ever open to reason.  I also figured I didn’t smell bad, so I could care less about whatever types of cologne might be dispensed by this thing.  So I plopped in four quarters and PUSHed the glow stick button button firmly as the sign told me to.  Nothing happened.  I was upset.  Where was my glow stick?  I checked the little window to see if there was indeed a “zero” there, but there was nothing to be found.  Either this thing was there to only give me false hope or to completely mislead me and steal my money.  Sure, from just me it’s one dollar, but if there are others, then this could be quite the scam going on here.  That’s when I started to panic.

Umm... this is sort of perverse, now that I think of it.

I ended up sticking my HAND into the machine to see if I could disloge anything, but to no avail.  Now I had to wash my hands again.  I proceeded to smack the machine and bang away at the coin return button, and nothing worked.  Damn you, Men’s Shop vending machine.  Damn you, Mendy’s Scandinavia, Inc.  You’ve messed with me for the last time.  That’s right.  Just once is enough with me.  When I am denied a glow stick, or anything from a vending machine, I’m one tough cookie.  I mean, I let it slide the night before when I wanted a Twix and got a Hershey’s out of the machine at school the night before, but that’s because I was partly to blame.  (Hmmm… Twix… I think that’s another Costanza reference, don’t you?)  But this was different.  I should have thrown a fit at those guys behind the counter.  I should have written letters to the estate of Colonel Sanders and to the Taco Bell Chihuahua.  I’m tight with him.  But then I realized that all of those people/dogs have other problems that they hardly have time for, let alone my plight about a vending machine in an outpost restaurant like this.

Not happy... Man, I've lost a lot of hair.

And so I just plugged on, back to school, knowing that I was one dollar short and had no glow stick.  But big deal, right?  This, too, shall pass.  Tomorrow’s another day.  Maybe I’ll discover a machine that gives out flavored toothpicks at a Pizza Hut.

Click Here to Play the Game

I was recently introduced to a very addictive Flash game.  At first glance, it might look boring, but play a couple of rounds and you’re probably going to be hooked.  It’s just a simple aim-and-click game where you shoot baskets.  Might not look so tough, but if you like to actually play basketball, you’re going to see how realistic it feels.  Not to mention maddeningly frustrating.

... but Sega Genesis has Blast Processing.

Yeah, that’s it.  But things get better… because it’s multiplayer.  You can play the game with plenty of other people online, but like most online games, people are going to figure out a way to cheat.  Therefore, it’s more fun to play with people you know, or at least the ones who don’t cheat.  Essentially, it’s like playing Diablo.  That’s why I set up a room for the good people of NP1 Nation to play together.

When it comes down to it, this basketball game is a lot like the old classics “Gorillas” and “Scorched Earth” without angles and wind to judge.  Just pick a trajectory and let ‘er rip.  Scoring is simple enough, as the ball is placed in a random spot and it’s worth more depending on where the ball is placed.  If it goes in “nothing but net” it’s multiplied by two.  You have two minutes to score as much as you can.

Baines for two!

Hope I see some new high scores soon.  Good luck, suckers!

(PS, Fran pointed out how the scoring works because I’m rather oblivious.)

I love bad movies.  In order to enjoy a good movie, you have to know how to enjoy a bad one.  In fact, I think that any film appreciation class you take in college should not focus so much on Eisenstein and Welles as they should on Wood and Corman.  It doesn’t hurt to have had Mystery Science Theater 3000 on television when you’re a teenager, either.  But tonight, on the eve of my 27th birthday, I do believe that I have now seen the best bad movie ever.

Thrill at the empty stare of Tommy Wiseau!

If you know a thing or two about bad movies and the Internet, then you may have heard about The Room.  If you haven’t, then it honors me to inform you.  Long story short, the film was released in Los Angeles in 2003 and quickly became one of those LA inside jokes that fascinate me.  I just don’t understand what makes Los Angelenos tick.  Anyway, it was written, produced, directed, and starred in by a strange, foreign man named Tommy Wiseau.  Wiseau is most likely French, but like all great eccentrics, his true origin is unknown.  And that’s just the beginning.  There are plenty of mysteries to be found in The Room.

The story is like something Tennessee Williams would have written in junior high.  Wiseau plays Johnny, a San Francisco resident who seemingly has it all: a fiance, some kind of a bank job, a parade of friends who may or may not have names, an apartment with a rooftop to hang out on, and a lot of hair.  Things seem to be going very well for Johnny, until one day his fiance, Lisa, decides she no longer loves him and decides to start an affair with his best friend, Mark.  All of this while lying to everyone she knows, saying that Johnny hit her.  Mark seems to constantly want to call off the affair, but he is written badly enough that he goes ahead with it anyway.  The story essentially follows Johnny’s downward spiral as Lisa’s antics continue.

This of course, is only the main storyline, and is really the only one that is followed through to its completion.  Several subplots are created and then never revisited, such as Johnny’s “adopted” “son” Denny, who lives in the building and owes a drug dealer some money.  After an encounter on the roof with this dealer, we never hear about it again.  Or Lisa’s mother’s breast cancer.  And in a later house party scene, we are left scratching our heads as to why an as-yet-unseen (and unnamed) character should have the moral compass to tell Lisa to come clean to Johnny about her infidelities.

The best part of it is, The Room takes itself entirely seriously about 90% of the time.  Wiseau has gone on to say that the film was always intended to be a “black comedy” as it took on cult status as a midnight favorite in LA and New York.  The cast and crew said otherwise, but you have to wonder if indeed, Wiseau was pulling a fast one on everyone involved.  There are moments in which the film switches gear from super-serious to improvised hilarity in seconds flat.  Watch it and you’ll probably agree.  Sometimes true genius can be unassuming.

So why do I love The Room so much?  There’s plenty of reasons.  For one, it suffers from an identity crisis: is it a melodrama or a so-called comedy?  Or maybe it’s a San Francisco travelogue, thanks to all of the lingering shots of the skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Another key to success is quotability.  Any movie that has a line like “You can keep your stupid comments in your pocket,” or an impassioned “YOU’RE TEARING ME APART” is a surefire classic.  And don’t forget to watch it with someone you love, because you’re in for not one, not two, but FOUR of the creepiest, most awkward, and unsexiest love scenes ever committed to film (or HD video, whichever Wiseau felt better about).

If midnight showings of The Room do not make their way to Boston, I’m going to have to raise the funds to bring it to Worcester myself.  I have to see this with a roomful of people.  You probably should, too.