Can I Get a Witness?
2005-02-28,

One of my guilty pleasures - the Oscars - has been sated. You'd think that the over-the-top opulence - not to mention the demolition of a beautiful song ("Al Otro Lado Del Rio" by Jorge Drexler) by the over-operatic and somewhat-greasy-looking Antonio Banderas - would set my bourgeois hackles akimbo. But then, Chris Rock's 4-minute tirade on Bush - at one point comparing poor fiscal maintenance and the rush to war to working at The Gap - at least partially made up for it. Funny, we're not hearing much about that in the news; it's mainly just 'blah blah too long blah blah dresses blah blah Paul Giamatti should have been nominated blah blah'. You'd think the Republican Attack Blogs would have been all over that. But then, Mr. Rock does have a penchant for equal time; he gave Tim Robbins a nice verbal whap in the head during introduction.

Meanwhile, I got my Kate Winslet fix as well. We'd finally watched Eternal Sunshine... the night before. I've been fascinated since Heavenly Creatures. I still can't explain it: so continues my unfounded fixation for Women With Accents. Well, not every kind of accent really, mainly it's British-based accents, from Australian to Indian to the Southern Belle. Maybe it's experience-influenced, or maybe it's some sort of tonal frequency thing.

Something someone pointed out - a disproportionate amount of movies were about real people. Four out of five of the Best Actor nominees were portrayals of real people. Is this yet another example of how all the good ideas are gone? Is it a result of the 'reality' craze? Either way, it's disappointing to think about. This world needs a few more Charlie Kaufmanns and Sofia Copellas and Quentin Tarantinos to keep things interesting.

Want a good way to freak yourself out? One of my favourites is something to do while driving down a busy highway. Just pick a car going in either direction and focus on it, if only for a second or two; try and imagine who they are, where it is they're going, what they're generally about. Then do another. And another. Then widen your scope and try to take in all those cars, all those people, all those destinations, all focused in a direction, all with some (perceived) purpose. It's pretty mind-blowing: all those people, all those intents, all those lives in motion, and you're only seeing a tiny portion of just the fifth (last I heard) most populated country on the planet. Whenever the world starts to feel small, I try and do this. It works for me, in lieu of traveling and actually experiencing the world to make it seem larger. Call it a cheap fix.

Oh god, the office music is looping again. This time it's "Do You Believe In Magic", "Wouldn't It Be Good", some stamp-press Motown tune by the Shirelles, and "Some Kind of Wonderful". Could be worse, I suppose. I have this strange affinity with "Wouldn't It Be Good". I know it's not really all that great a song, and I don�t relate to it in any kind of meaningful way. I just remember, I was riding in someone's car the first time I heard it, and I had that deja-vu-ish kind of feeling, like I'd heard the song a long time ago, even though it was relatively new. Easy enough to attribute it to some sort of synaptic misfire that happened while listening to the song, I suppose.

Now, of course, it's lumped in with those songs that spark my love-hate nostalgia for my days of youth. I have no wish to go back and relive my lonely, aimless childhood, but hey, it was still my childhood. If only I had that kind of time on my hands these days. File it under 'if I knew then what I know now'. It becomes ever more true as time goes on: youth really is wasted on the young.

Ennui: activate.

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