The Go-To Whine

 We're getting rain today... well, showers, on and off with not much accumulation.  For some reason, whenever rain, or snow for that matter, people envision torrential downpours.  That is rarely the case.  Even the steady rains we get are slow to accumulate.  Rain is predicted for tomorrow as well.  Altogether we'll probably get about .75 of an inch, not enough to cause flood warnings.  On the temp side, ours will be hovering in the mid 40s (F) all day.  By this evening, most of the snow we received will be gone.

And I do have to briefly mention the Oscar snubs among other notes.  I was surprised Greta Gerwig didn't get one, but but Barbie is a comedy and the directors (directors nominate directors) love them their drama.  On Margot Robbie?  I never thought she'd get a nomination; comedic performance.  On Leonardo DiCaprio?  Never thought he'd get one; he played stupid well, but his character was barely 2 dimensional.

On Oppenheimer's 13 nominations?  They won't win all of them.  Adapted Screenplay is going to Gerwig, and production design is going to Barbie.  Costume design will probably go to Napoleon, the voters love period costumes.

Because Ryan Gosling is nominated, as well as his song, there's a good possibility we'll get to see him cavorting half-dressed across the stage singing "I'm Just Ken."  He'll probably lose to Robert Downey Jr, who's black and white malevolence in Oppenheimer was so well played.  

Anyway, this was a really good year for movies, in fact, I might compare it to 1939 when Gone with the Wind was up against The Wizard of Oz for best picture.  Of course, that was also the year before war broke out across Europe.

I baked some Italian bread yesterday, and then made a BLT for dinner.  Scrumptious.

And, of course, the New Hampshire primaries were yesterday and Trump won, as expected, how ever, he only received 54% of the votes.  Looking at the numbers, the only Republicans voting for him are the hard core conservatives, moderates, centrists, and Independent voters turn away.  He needs the Independents if he thinks he even has a chance to win the election.  He's not going to get them, which means he's going to rally as many losing Republicans around him by shrieking Election Fraud.  For a brief moment that was a rally cry, now, however, more and more people are seeing it as nothing more than a rally whine.  Conservatives will never admit their political views don't jive with a majority of Americans, meaning they will need to blame something else for their loss and election fraud is their main go-to whine.

Oscar nominations - no snubs just sour grapes

The Academy Award nominations were revealed yesterday morning and true to form, for me, I slept in and didn't check them out until yesterday afternoon.  Now, don't get me wrong, I like the Oscars, in fact it is the only award show I ever watch.  It's always interesting to see actually gets nominated.  A lot of people out there don't realize how much money is spent to get an invite to the party, so to speak.  Voting members of the Academy are hit with an avalanche of PR.  Some times it works, some times it doesn't, and when it doesn't one of the first words to be spoken with bitter chagrin is 'snub.'  Every year we hear this whine from stupid people who don't know the definition of the word.  What they really should be saying is "I'm a bad sport and I'm pissed."

Webster defines 'snub' as "to treat with disdain or contempt especially by ignoring."  Notice, the emphasis is on either 'disdain' or 'contempt,' not 'ignore.'  If you think the voting members of the Academy think Tom Hanks is contemptible and that's why they didn't nominate him you've got your head up your ass.   Hollywood loves Tom Hanks, most of his films tend to make money.  They don't look at him disdainfully, they think he's a nice guy.  The simple truth is when the votes were tallied to nominate Best Actors, five other people had more votes then he.  There's no snub there.

The sad truth is most people don't know who the nomination process works.  Here it is simplified:  Actors nominate actors, writers nominate writers, directors nominate directors, and so on and so forth.  Every body gets to vote for the Best Film nomination.  There are a lot of names, the one actors is several pages long.  Everyone who is eligible is on that ballot, even Johnny Depp.  That's right, if you were a voting member of the Academy and you wanted to, you could give Johnny a vote in the Best Actor category for his stunning performance in "The Lone Ranger."  You can be he gave himself a vote.

So when the Nominations are revealed and you hear some one claim to have been snubbed, or people whine that a certain film was snubbed, you have to remember this nothing more then shitty sour grapes.  Remember the shit storm of sour grapes Leonardo Di Caprio threw when he didn't get a nomination for Titanic?  He was so upset at not getting nominated he publicly announced he wasn't going to be attending the ceremony.  Like... did he think they really cared?

Oscar Nominations: beating the hell out of snub

So, the Oscar nominations came out yesterday and once again there are a slew of complaints of potential nominees being either overlooked or snubbed.  I always have to laugh at these since most of the whiners simply have problem dealing with the number issues.  There are only so many votes to go around.  Just because your favorite doesn't get enough votes to receive a nomination doesn't mean he was snubbed.  To snub someone to to purposefully stop that person in his tracks because you don't like that person.  By any other name, snubbing is just being rude, or possibly hateful, or maybe viciously angry.  "Lincoln" received twelve nominations, had it only received eleven, with no nod to Spielberg, that would have to be considered a snub.  People need to understand the Academy nominates ten films but only five directors so that means five directors are going to get the shitty end of the stick.  Are they being snubbed?  Hell no, they just got less votes then the five who were nominated.  The truth is people don't want to be considered losers so rather then admit to that they take a bat and beat the hell out of the 'snub.'

One of the biggest and loudest whiners of all time was Leonardo Di Caprio when he failed to get a nomination for "Titanic."  His problem was he believed his own press, that all those millions of people going to see the film did so because of the love story.  This is pure horse shit.  The world loves disasters and Hollywood understands this quite well; they've been making mega bucks off of them for years.  I went to see "Titanic" with a date and I can tell you, walking out of the theater afterwards, we were not having a heart to heart conversation about the love story.  Hell no, we were talking about how neat it was to watch that ship sink.  Of course no one would ever want to admit that, so the love story became the hook.  Watch the movie again and you'll realize how wooden Di Caprio's performance really is.  He didn't get a nomination because the real star of the movie was the Titanic itself, not him.

Clint Eastwood complained that he'd been hobbited by Peter Jackson's win for "Return of the King."  Only a man who talks to chairs would have failed to realize Jackson got the Oscar for directing a 17 hour (if you count the extended version) magnum opus.  Still, for Eastwood it was a snub.  

Last year Meryl Streep won Best Actress and a lot of "people" thought Viola Davis had been snubbed. This is horse shit, too.  These "people" evidently don't know their Oscar History.  Any actor who gives a good performance playing a real person, whether living or dead, is an odds on favorite to have their name called on Oscar Night.  So, if you're an nominated actor up against a Margaret Thatcher or a Truman Capote you might as well go and enjoy the evening for what it is and remember, you're not being snubbed.

My predictions for Oscar night?  Lincoln will get eight, Les Miz will get three and The Avengers will win what ever it's nominated for because it made so much money.