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And The Oscar Goes To

side_oscarAs they finish polishing up the statues for tomorrow’s awards ceremony, it’s time to finish up our predictions with the major categories.  So, without further ado, we begin with:

Best Picture

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fablemans
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking

I’ve seen a grand total of one of these, but that one isn’t going to win so I’ll go with Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Best Actor

Austin Butler, Elvis
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Paul Mescal, Aftersun
Bill Nighy, Living

Having seen none of these, I’ll hop on board the Brendan Fraser comeback bandwagon.

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett, Tár
Ana de Armas, Blonde
Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Again, I’ve seen none of these, so I’ll take a stab in the dark and pick Michelle Yeoh.

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Doing My Civic Duty

This past Monday, I was summoned to appear at the Will County courthouse for jury duty.  This was my fourth time being called overall, and third in Will County.  All previous sessions have ended without me making it onto a jury and, considering I had plans to attend Purdue’s opening game in the Big Ten Tournament earlier today, I was hoping for more of the same.  Alas, it was not to be.

The call for a jury pool came late Monday morning and, after an early lunch, we had to report back at 12:45.  Which we did, but nothing happened.  Eventually, we were brought up to a courtroom to wait some more until the judge and attorneys were ready for us.  By the time we made it into the actual courtroom, there was not enough time to complete voir dire.  After returning to the courthouse on Tuesday morning, the jury was selected: twelve jurors and two alternates.  I was the second alternate.  At this point, we were told that the trial would take about two days and should wrap up by Wednesday afternoon.

And then we waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  The trial started Wednesday, so I figured I was still safe for Friday’s game.  But then there was more waiting.  After two witnesses, we had to wait for the third, who had left the courthouse to pick up her children.  Which, I will say, is understandable.  But the jury was told to make other arrangements for child care, so I don’t know why the same standard didn’t apply to the witnesses.

More delay tactics on Thursday morning, including calling all of the jurors back in one by one to ask if we had been deliberating before the end of the trial, which then led to a wasted afternoon as the judge had prior commitments and necessitated our return on Friday.  After closing arguments, we deliberated for far longer than I had expected to come up with the verdicts: guilty on four counts of domestic battery and not guilty on one count of resisting arrest.

The good news is that I’m unlikely to be called back for jury duty in the Will Country Circuit Court for some time.  The bad news is that I am already on the docket for Federal District Court next month.  Hopefully, that goes more smoothly and doesn’t take up another entire week.

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And The Nominees Are

side_oscarThe 95th Academy Awards are going down Sunday night and, after a year break, my woeful predictions are back.  I don’t know that I’ve heard of many of these movies let alone seen them, so, with less basis in fact than most years, here’s my uneducated predictions for the non-acting awards.

Best Original Screenplay

Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Steven Spielberg and Tony Kusher, The Fablemans
Todd Field, Tár
Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness

I’ve seen none of these films, but Everything Everywhere All at Once seems to be the hot property, so I’m going to go with that.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, and Ian Stokell, All Quiet on the Western Front
Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Kazuo Ishiguro, Living
Screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie; Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks, Top Gun: Maverick
Sarah Polley, Women Talking

Who doesn’t love a good war movie?

Best Animated Feature

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
The Sea Beast
Turning Red

My best guess, having seen none of these fine films, is that Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio wins the day.

Best Cinematography

James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front
Darius Khondji, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Mandy Walker, Elvis
Roger Deakins, Empire of Light
Florian Hoffmeister, Tár

Seems like I’m going all in with the war movie.

Best Costume Design

Mary Zophres, Babylon
Ruth Carter, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Catherine Martin, Elvis
Shirley Kurata, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Jenny Beavan, Mrs. Hamm Goes to Paris

Well, I’ve seen one of these films, so let’s go with that one.

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Book 10 (of 52) – The Winners

The Winners – Fredrik Backman

A storm that rolls through Beartown and Hed and the death of a local barkeep bring old faces, and old grudges, back to town.  The destruction of Hed’s ice rink seems to be the final piece of the puzzle to help the backers of Beartown to convince the council to shut down Hed’s team, but a plan to shut down both teams and start from scratch threatens both towns.  Meanwhile, survivors of a two-year old rape and its fallout find themselves tested again when a young kid attempts to get revenge for a different crime.

Fredrick Backman returns with The Winners, the third and supposed final entry in his Beartown series.  Had I known that before starting it, I may have put it off, since I haven’t read any of the others.  But he does a good job of introducing all of the characters for new readers and telling a story that, while it builds upon what I assume occurred in the previous works, stands on its own.  Now that I have an inkling of what the novels are about (Beartown, as a title, pointed me in an entirely different direction), I will have to circle back and check them out.

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Fitbit IX – Week 6

Another disappointing week, though showing some signs of improvement.  Things got off to a decent enough start on Sunday as I managed to come just 7 steps away from recording 4300 steps.  Monday fell off quite a bit, finishing with just 3300 steps.  Tuesday was the low point of the week, falling to just 2600 steps.  Decent weather and a quick walk around the block on Wednesday pushed me to the week’s high point, ending the day over 4700 steps.  A slight decline on Thursday put me back down to 3800 steps.  Another slight decline on Friday left me with 3300 steps.  Being on Michael duty on Saturday left me 3 steps away from 4700.

Total steps: 26,889

Daily average: 3841.3

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Yet Another Mix Tape Monday – Volume 8

33 years ago, during my sophomore year of high school, I put together the first of what would eventually become a nearly 20 volume collection of mix tapes, containing my favorite songs that I had gathered either from the radio, a cassette tape, or (eventually) CD.  Today, we revisit those mix tapes for the fourth time and see how, or if, the soundtrack of my youth still resonates in today’s digital world and how much has changed over the past four years.

Volume 8 features the first appearances on these cassettes by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Metallica.  All three should have shown up much sooner.  Metallica’s self-titled album, known colloquially as the Black Album, was released in August of 1991.  Five singles were released, from July of 1991 through February of 1993.  All of which should have made their way to these collections.  But for whatever reason, only the last one made it.  By that time, it was ok for me to admit that I liked a Metallica song, even though I already owned the CD.

A similar situation occurred with Nevermind, the second album from Nirvana.  Released in September of 1991, it took until the fourth single to make it on to these cassettes, despite the fact I was rocking out to Smells Like Teen Spirit alongside everyone else.  The same thing happened with Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten, which split the middle, being released in August of 1991.  The first two singles somehow never made it here, despite being listened to more than some of the songs that did.  I don’t really have a good reason as to why I excluded them, or why, with this volume, I decided it was the time to let them all in.

Anyway, here we cover the winter and into the spring of 1993 and the second semester of my freshman year of college. The alternative influence starts to become more noticeable alongside old mainstays like Poison, Bon Jovi, and Def Leppard. Besides that, we are treated to a lot of hip-hop and hair metal, with a small sampling of pop, as always.

Side A

Bell Biv Devoe – Gangsta

The intended first single from the second Bell Biv Devoe record, which flopped so bad it was dropped from the album and now is lost to history.

Pearl Jam – Jeremy
iTunes stats: 15 plays, most recently on 1/4/2022

The belated first appearance on these tapes by Pearl Jam, the song, which VH1 ranked as the 11th greatest song of the 90s, saw a modest 3 listen increase over the past four years.

Wreckx-N-Effect – Rump Shaker
iTunes stats: 31 plays, most recently on 9/8/2022

Charting as the ninth biggest hit of 1993, the biggest song for butts since Sir Mix-A-Lot saw a healthy eight play increase.

Boyz II Men – In The Still Of The Night
iTunes stats: 19 plays, most recently on 12/22/2022

The cover of the old doo-wop classic, recorded for the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream, added five plays in the last four years.

Arrested Development – People Everyday
iTunes stats: 27 plays, most recently on 11/23/2022

Peaking at #8 on the Billboard charts, the second single for the Atlanta-based group added an additional six plays over the past four years.

Nirvana – In Bloom
iTunes stats: 25 plays, most recently on 12/8/2022

The winner of the Best Alternative Video VMA in 1993 picked up seven new plays since 2019.

TLC – What About Your Friends
iTunes stats: 25 plays, most recently on 7/8/2021

The third straight top 10 hit from TLC’s debut album added eight new listens to its total over the past four years.

Side B

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Travelling The 50 States – South Carolina

Over my 48 years, I’ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn’t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning.  Working in alphabetical order, we continue today with the 8th state to be added to the Union: South Carolina.

State: South Carolina
Joined the Union: 1788
Visits: 1

I’ve made a single visit to the Palmetto State, during the ill-fated road trip to Disney World through Virginia back in 2016.

Around 300 miles into the 750-mile journey from Roanoke to Orlando, we decided to stop for the night at the Hampton Inn in Orangeburg, South Carolina.  Once again, we got three hotel rooms and, since everyone was feeling relatively good and it was still pretty early, we decided to order in some dinner.  Our first attempt failed when the BBQ joint did not have a dinner-time vegetarian option, so we ordered Papa John’s, threw Pitch Perfect II on the television, and then decided to call it a night and retreat to our separate rooms.

The following morning, we enjoyed the free breakfast before heading out to try and finish up the remaining 450 miles to get to the Reach For The Stars conference on time.

Will I return?  Possibly, though there is nothing specific drawing me back to the state.

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25 Rings

What was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Purdue men’s basketball team, following the loss of Jaden Ivey, Trevion Williams, Eric Hunter, Sasha Stefanovic, and Isaiah Thompson, turned into the program’s 25th Big Ten Conference championship.  Matt Painter and company last won a share of the conference title in 2019 and last won it outright in 2017.

Their 25 titles are the most amongst all Big Ten schools.  Indiana, of course, is second with 22 championships.  After closing out the regular season against Illinois tomorrow in West Lafayette, Purdue comes to Chicago next week as the #1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament at the United Center.  A deep run should guarantee them a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament as they try to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1980.

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Fitbit IX – Week 5

A disappointing week through and through, as I failed to break the 4000-step plateau any day of the week.  Things got off to a poor start on Sunday as I managed to record 3800 steps despite traversing downtown Lafayette to attend Danny’s band concert.  Monday was easily the low point of the week, finishing with just 2700 steps.  Tuesday saw a slight improvement, jumping up to 3500 steps.  Wednesday saw another improvement as I ended the day over 3900 steps.  A slight decline on Thursday due in part to a morning of PI Planning put me back down to 3400 steps.  The high point of the week came on Friday, as I finished 7 steps shy of 4000.  Despite a trip out to get the car washed and my hair cut, Saturday finished just over 3000 steps.

Total steps: 24,443

Daily average: 3491.9