Buy Or Don’t Buy

Yes, One Laptop Per Child is a great nonprofit that helps tons of children worldwide. Yes, Yoko Ono said it was OK. That doesn’t make this ad any less weird:

When has digitally reincarnating a dead celebrity ever been a good idea? At best it makes people confused about whether said celebrity is alive or dead. At worst, it’s ugly, creepy and disrespectful. Right, Orville?

Exactly.

Now, this is one of those things that it’s the worst when it happens to you, but when it happens to other people, especially famous people, it’s kinda funny.

So this showed up Fox News’ Twitter.

And then this on Britney’s Twitter:

And finally Rick Sanchez’s, a reporter for CNN, twitter:

So first, calling homophob Bill O’Reily on extremely right wing Fox News gay is a small stroke of genius and reporting at 1:03pm, it is still up. Then with Britney, (the blurred word is vagina) completely mocks her “triumphant” return to morality as once again as a slut. (That has been removed). And finally, Sanchez, who has been boasting about how he uses his Twitter and even shows it when he is on air, is reduced to a crack head. There is also a bonus buy. As a PR major, everyone is talking about Twitter is the bestest, newest, coolest, hippiest PR tool evaaa. And here it is… the bestest PR tool producing a major FAIL (it’s like the Beluga Fail Whale.)

This also serves as a public service announcement. Don’t go typing your password anywhere… apparently, some interns didn’t know that.

(Images court: TechCrunch)

Around this time every year, fantastic films are shown in mainstream theaters nationwide. The violent and explosive blockbusters are put to the side as Oscar-worthy films are projected on the big screen. So what happened this year? Am I missing something?

What’s out there?
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button? Too long of an effort-full epic drama. The Dark Knight? A semi flawed, over hyped eulogy? Doubt? Even Meryl Steep doesn’t believe in that project. And Slumdog Millionaire? A trite coverage of the slums of India with an under-developed love story. At least Wall-E, in my opinion, is worthy of a win.

Where’s this year’s No Country For Old Men? Or Departed?

Wait, come to think of it… the past years were equally disappointing. I can’t think of a season in recent years where there were multiple releases that I just had to see. Look at the last couple years winners and even nominees. The movies and the celebration of movies just aren’t what they used to be. Now I sound like Mickey Rooney, a cranky, complaining, old man.

I’d like to hear what you think is worthy of an Oscar.

By most accounts, 2008 was a pretty bad/horrible/disastrous year. After spending the whole in a recession, our economy went into total meltdown in September. Name any industry, it’s failing. We lost almost 2 million jobs. Unemployment is just under 7%. From January to December, the Dow-Jones dropped 30% in value.

Aside from the economy, we still had the wars in Iraq  and Afghanistan, as people stopped caring about the former and continued not caring about the latter, despite record-setting levels of violence there. Even worse was what we had to tell ourselves not to care about. China got the Olympics and we had to pretend that all our debt was held by a friendly world power instead of an autocratic police state. Those of us on the left had to pretend that Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers weren’t huge jerks. For a while, we even had to pretend that Sarah Palin was a viable candidate for national office but luckily that wore off fairly quickly.

» Oh I’m buying this…

Seriously. How is this not considered the greatest song of the 20th century???

Did you know Ryan Gosling has a band? Who knew he could sing? I didn’t. The band is called Dead Man’s Bones. And from the looks of this video, it’s a 2 piece band made of hot men. (Seriously, is that Ashton Kutcher on drums??)
In The Room Where You Sleep

Now, why do I care more about Ryan Gosling and his band as opposed to Joaquin Phoenix who “retired” from acting in order to pursue a career as a musician? Here. Let me tell you.

1. Ryan Gosling is super fine. (Beard and all.)
2. He can act… and sing!
3. In the video: He gets along with children. (and while I would hit the one that got up and did something that people consider cute, he didn’t.) And for some reason men that like kids is appealing to me on an evolutionary and biological level.
4. His voice is deep and manly.
5. The music is good, earnest, organic and only slightly pretentious.

The reason why this is a buy right now because he hasn’t become a prima donna (yet.) But once these 2 get signed, I gonna go ahead and say they are gonna be over marketed (think Coldplay, only good looking), hate children, and end up using Autotune and become the next Kanye. But until then, look at this… » Oh I’m buying this…

From all of us at BODB (I think), we wish you a merry Christmas, a good December/January/New Year, a happy Hanukkah and just good wishes in general.

(L:R: Sara, Nate, Ryan, Caroline, Alli)

As this year wraps up, year-end lists are popping up. And unlike Alli, I can’t say I buy/don’t buy all of them.

So let me not buy this one: The Merriam-Webster’s Word of The Year. The results are measured by how many hits the word got on their website. So what’s my problem? It shows how dumb we are. (We being Americans, which I am assuming is the main visitors of the page) Take a look at the words:

10. Turmoil
9. Misogyny
8. Rogue
7. Precipice
6. Trepidation
5. Bipartisan
4. Maverick
3. Socialism
2. Vet

and…

1. Bailout

So what’s my problem? Let’s look at this psychologically. When does someone use the dictionary, online or otherwise? When they don’t know the meaning of a word. What does that matter? Well, that means a lot of people did not know what those words mean. Sure, misogyny isn’t used everyday, so that one I’ll excuse (FYI: it means hatred of women). But rogue, vet, maverick? Those all revolve around Sarah Palin. It makes me feel dumb trying to understand how people don’t know those words.

And the number one word… Bailout. Really? Really? No wonder why America is in such deep shit? We don’t even know how deep we are in because we can’t even understand the words that express how much crap we are now in.

Worst day ever?

Maryland’s Attorney General, Douglas F. Gansler, announced an agreement with MillerCoors that will result in the nationwide discontinuance of the country’s top-selling pre-mixed alcoholic energy drink, Sparks.

As part of the agreement across 14 states, the mega brewer will not produce any caffeinated alcohol beverages in the future. Sparks future was in doubt when light was brought to the Attorneys General that the beverages were being marketed to an underage audience and used misleading health-related information to help sell more cans.

14 states? Which states? Nationwide? When? There are so many questions that are left unanswered.

I ask for a moment of silence. We just lived through a period of time that will go down in the books, people.

Did not see this on the ballot. And we call ourselves a democracy. Never voting again.

For someone who’s rather disorganized, I really like lists. I like making them, and I like reading them. So when the end of each calendar year approaches, I get very excited about all the “Best of” lists that I know are waiting in the wings for publication.

And 2008 has not let me down! Time Magazine in particular is a veritable goldmine of lists. Seriously - Top 10 Financial Collapses? Top 10 Outrageous Earmarks? If I wouldn’t hate myself for doing it, I’d compile the Top 10 Top 10 Lists By Time Magazine.

I have to say, though, I’m a little disappointed with their movie selections. WALL-E was #1? Really? I’ll admit: I haven’t actually seen it. But no matter how many raves I heard, I could not drum up a single iota of interest in watching a near-silent film about a robot. I also have a hard time believing that a movie longer than 6 minutes by Guy Maddin is actually watchable, let alone the third best film of the year.

Finally, let’s not forget that our very own webmiss Sara has also posted her Top 50 Albums of 2008 to her blog. (Although there is no way Deerhoof put out a better album in 2008 than Jenny Lewis, Death Cab for Cutie, Kanye West, or Elvis Costello. I hate Deerhoof.)

Anyway. If you have any fantastic year-end lists that you’ve just gotta share, post them in the comments!