SleepingPoliceman

…we test the theory that all press is good press.

Boston.com: Suspicious objects found throughout Boston after morning bomb scare

The discovery of suspicious objects on bridges, near a medical center, underneath an interstate, and in other crowded public places has ignited fears across Boston, snarling traffic and sending state and local police scrambling across the city.

…

Storrow drive was closed at 2 p.m., according to State Police. Thirty minutes later police opened one eastbound lane to traffic.

According to Boston police, traffic from Charles Street is being blocked from entering Storrow Drive while several law enforcement agencies investigate more suspicious objects.

The MBTA suspended service on the Red Line for about 15 minutes between Park and Kendall stations. By 2:35 p.m., the T resumed service on the line.

Statement from Turner Broadcasting

The ”packages” in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger. They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim’s animated television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force … We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger.

Waaaaah-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh. Good job on the guerilla marketing, guys. Nothing makes people want to watch your adult-skewing absurdist stoner cartoon like sitting in completely funked up traffic for an entire day.

Et tu, Meatwad?

We have much to discuss. Reunion II went smashingly well, especially with a fourth wheel to straighten the vehicle out. We must talk of Chapstick mashed potatoes, Lego-headed zombies, the relative worthlessness of Thundercats, JZ’s urban planning models, and Blue Harvest. That’s not even talking about the things I was supposed to get to last week.

But I need to take this moment to bask in this information:

CNN: The Police reunite for Grammys

This was definitely in my top 5 band reunion lists. Probably top 3. Having seen each member individually, I know how high quality they can be. Seeing them together? Likely amazing, even after all this time. Rumors abound that a tour will be announced the day after the Grammys. Here’s hoping Northeast U.S. is adequately covered in dates. And how about a show in London in early July, when I’ll just happen to be there? That would be nice too.

Seriously, 2007 is the year for reunions, huh? Between the Police and Genesis and Led Zeppelin (rumored), you already have three I’m way down for. Throw in acts I don’t care about like Crowded House and Van Halen, and it’s just Reunion City, USA out there. Fantastic.

Roll on February 11…

Apologies for the lack of content this week – it was a hectic one. And it will be a short one, as the lady and I are flying off to sunny F-L-A for the second annual SleepingPoliceman Reunion Bash And Video Game Festival. This time we’re both bringing women, which will somehow make us feel OK about spending hours playing World Of Warcraft on two computers in the same room.

Sad.

Anyway, I have plenty to write about in the near future. In addition to the inevitable weekend review, I have to tell you all about a great night of music I spent at a folk club recently. (Bet you didn’t see that coming.) I should probably talk about the State Of The Union and the post-speech fallout at some point. I also need to discuss my new iPod, which came in the mail today…exciting. I might even tell you about my new job…but just briefly, because I don’t like spreading personal info all over the joint.

Until then, rockers, have a great weekend. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

2007 Academy Award nominee list

I’m going to wait on making predictions until the actual show is closer. But some initial reactions:

I don’t get the Dreamgirls hype. It doesn’t look like it’s that good. I have no desire whatsoever to see it. Not even the idea of Eddie Murphy getting an Oscar for doing his James Brown impression is enough to pique my interest. This seems like Chicago redux. If, you know, Chicago hadn’t been good enough for a Best Picture nomination.

The paltry amount of nominations for Children Of Men is appalling. I guess this argument about the timing of the Oscars and the negative impact it has on more serious films that come out towards the very end of the year has some weight to it. Look, I liked Little Miss Sunshine a lot…but Children Of Men was better. From everything I’ve heard, I’m going to guess it was significantly better than Babel (which looks like the Academy wants it to be Crash: International Edition). It’s…it’s just a shame. It better win Cinematography, and should win Editing too. It better win something.

Leo should have gotten a nod for The Departed instead of Blood Diamond. Just on principle.

And, look, I love Marky Mark in Departed…but why is he being singled out as the supporting actor here? I sort of understand them not wanting to honor Nicholson yet again. But what does Alec Baldwin have to do to get some recognition for his role? He didn’t have that much less screen time, and I don’t think his performance was any less humorous or essential. If he had tissue boxes on his feet, would he have gotten the nom?

Which movie is going to win Visual Effects: Pirates 2 or Superman Returns? Or can they right a past wrong and retroactively give it to Episode III?

Sacha Baron Cohen should have gotten a best actor nomination. Failing that, a “best foreign film” nod would have been pretty outstanding. (OK, OK…how about just pretending to give it a best foreign film slot? Come on, that would have had that 5am press conference rolling.)

It would be interesting if the Academy doing what some film critics groups do, which is to honor the total work an actor does during the course of the year, not just a specific role. So Cohen would be up for Borat and Talladega Nights; Leo would have both The Departed and Blood Diamond; Cate Blanchett would have Notes On A Scandal, Babel and The Good German, etc. I know, I’m just rambling now.

Hey, do you think An Inconvenient Truth will win best documentary feature? Could happen.

Finally, while The Fountain got no love (understandably, though regrettably) the following movies can be blurbed as being “Oscar nominated”: The Black Dahlia, Marie Antoinette, Poseidon and Click. Congrats, guys.

I hate the Colts.

That is all.
/jz

Hot on the heels of Part 1, this is the conclusion of my too-long-delayed journey through my personal bests of 2k6. The top ten list and the awards after the jump.

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(Forgive me in advance for both the lateness of this, and also for the lack of links. I’ll be adding them in as soon as I have the time. edit: links have now been added. Don’t every say I don’t follow through on my promises. Sometimes.)

As discussed in last year’s review, my biggest problem in putting together an end-of-year movie list is that I never feel like I have seen all the movies I wanted to see or should have seen. In fact, looking back, I see that I still haven’t seen all of the 2005 movies I wanted to. (Someday I’ll catch The Constant Gardener, A History Of Violence and Grizzly Man.) Yet such is the nature of list-making…you have to make do with what you have at your disposal.

With that in mind, I should mention the following movies that I have wanted to see so as to weigh their merits for potential inclusion on this list: Thank You For Smoking, Notes On A Scandal, Cars, Inside Man, The Prestige, United 93, Babel, Little Children, Pan’s Labyrinth, Volver, The Good Shepherd and The Queen. In the future, I may change my tune and want to include one of those (or another movie I haven’t even thought of seeing yet) on some sort of revised list. But they have been excluded for now, having missed my personal cutoff date. (Which I guess is today.)

On to the list.

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Despite my need to save money and unsaddle some debt, I splurged a little yesterday and purchased a new iPod. Well, not a new-new iPod…but one of the “refurbished” older model. Finally, a sweet, sweet 60GB music player. And to think, three years ago I was still using a cassette Walkman.

The reason I splurged was because the refurbished model was pretty cheap ($230 instead of the original $449, or the $349 it is for the current-gen 80GB model). It was extra cheap because I decided to finally cash in a Simon debit Visa gift card that I got for Christmas ‘05. I had held onto the gift card for so long, Simon was starting to charge a penalty every month which was being deducted from the account. (Which is totally bullshit, by the way.) Anyway, now was the time to act, and act I did. I split the order between the debit card and my regular credit card, and ended up paying just a little more than a hundred dollars for the new iPod. Good times.

Except today I get an email saying that they can’t process my order because my payments aren’t authorized. Awesome. I had gone through all the steps of tying the debit gift card to my name and address (so I could use it for an online order), so that should be fine. I went and checked…and what Apple does is charge a damn extra dollar before they run an order. Because of that dollar, the amount on the debit card went under the amount I put in to use the card for (since I wanted to wipe off the entire remaining balance), so it was rejected. Every time they tried (three times), they took another dollar. So I went from having $123 on the card to $120. I called them and spoke to a very nice and helpful support guy named Johnny, who switched around the order so it took $119 from the debit card. And it went through fine.

But…fuck them for charging everyone a hidden dollar. The support guy spoke in vague terms about how that’s how they see if the card is legit or something…which is fine if they plan on taking that dollar off the regular order, or refunding that dollar. But I’m sure they don’t. It’s not that big a deal, because it’s just a dollar (or, in this case, four dollars…jerks). But still, it’s a dick move.

Now…send me my iPod, Apple. Please don’t be mad at me. P.T. still loves you, Apple.

…jz is still the lynchpin of this site. He does a lot of work behind the scenes, and hopefully will some day return to talk to us about Apple news or World Of Warcraft or climate change or something. And today, he turns a million-and-one years old.

Seriously, it’s gross how old he is. Really discouraging. And I can say this, because there’s a very good chance that he won’t be able to read this, because he’s forgotten where his glasses are…so he spends the rest of the afternoon looking for them before realizing they were on the top of his head the whole time. Then he’s tired and he just has to lie down until the early bird dinner buffet starts at 4:30.

Old.

Old!

Happy birthday, sir. I’ll buy you a cupcake at the upcoming SP reunion.

(Introductory sidenote: I don’t know what it says about the content here at SP that all the spam comments today were from random stair-chair websites. The old lady from Gremlins would be proud.)

Anyway, here are two things to do for the holiday weekend.

1. Sign a petition showing your stance on the escalation plans for Iraq.

This is where I was going to be all good and even-handed, and give links to petitions that are both anti-escalation and pro-“surge”. Here are the nays:

MoveOn.org: No Escalation In Iraq
Sen. Ted Kennedy: It’s Not His Decision, It’s Ours

The problem is, I couldn’t find any pro-Bush ones. I’m sure they’re out there. But Google searches for “pro-surge petition” and “pro-Bush petition” just led me to these sites:

Billionaires For Bush: Organizing Billionaire Actions
ConservativePetitions.com

The former is clearly a joke (and a pretty funny one at that). The latter, however, is not. But they don’t have any pro-surge petitions…the Google search landed there because they are a petition site that has an old entry urging readers to support Sinclair, a “rare” pro-Bush media outlet. As of this writing, a selection of the newest and “top five” petitions (which I don’t think will change…all this stuff looks to be a little old):

• TO: Washington state leaders: Don’t pass bill giving homosexual rights
• TO: ACLU president: Defend Christians and Jews against Islamic indoctrination
• TO: Big Brothers Big Sisters: Change mandate that allows homosexual mentors
• TO: U.N. High Commissioner, Secretary Colin Powell: Stop UN’s radical homosexual resolution now
• TO: President George W. Bush: Stop Senate’s bid for UN’s CEDAW treaty

Which looks like a pretty sweet set of values right there. “Don’t pass bill giving rights.” Dammit, state leaders…don’t you know your job is to take away rights? Not give…take!

Anyway, I tried to be, to borrow a phrase, “fair and balanced.” But that didn’t work. So if you’re anti-escalation, sign a petition. If you’re not, eat some Cheetos and watch some reruns of CBS shows…or do whatever it is you do instead of engaging a social issue.

2. Go see Children Of Men.

The movie is phenomenal. The more I think about it, the more I loved it. I’m not saying anything else about it…just go see it and get back to me with your thoughts.

Have a great weekend, everybody.