Oscar Notes

I went to my first Oscar party ever last night. I've been opposed to watching award shows, as they're so undogly boring and I think people take them (and the clothes stars wear to them) WAY too seriously. But I decided to go to one last night, on the stipulation that it wouldn't be one of those parties where you have to be quiet and the ceremony is all IMPORTANT and gaga... And, with the addition of bubbly, I had a great time! So here are the notes I scratched out about last night's Oscars:

Robin Williams looks like a coke addict. If he has become a coke addict, then THANK COD! Because for the first time in a damn long time, he's really FUNNY!

I loved Chris Rock's subtle Bush-bashing of sorts. I must say, it was very unexpected. I have to disagree when he said that Jude Law wasn't a star, though. You don't have to google Jude Law. He's a star. Bona fide.

That new thing they're doing to save time--having presenters in the audience: it's severely lame. Not to mention insulting to the people who won those less popular categories. No wonder they all looked awkward and retarded--the Academy was basically telling them You're shit on national TV and expecting them to gush with gratitude!

Beyoncé did great! I wasn't expecting such a performance. However, I think she was still putting a bit too much soul into the French song. But she did better than most pop stars would in crossing over to musical theater and whatever that French song was. Not to mention she's fucking GORGEOUS!!! (Although that black glitter eyeshadow really looked like tarantula skin glued to her eyelids)

Pierce Brosnan looks great! Does he have a personal fountain of youth of surgery? However, that interaction with the cartoon was seriously tardo

Damnz, Cate Blanchett is pretty! Or at least she was until someone said that she has a husband. Suddenly she's not as pretty now. It was cool to hear her real voice, though--she's always doing character voices so well that I don't think I've ever heard a shadow of her real voice. Incresting to hear it, and that it sounds as good as she looks.

I think the Born Into Brothels woman got her dress at Old Navy. Speaking of women, just who was that woman with the enormous breasts that the camera kept cutting to when Martin Scorswayze was talking? It was odd.

That Counting Crows guy looks a wreck. Is he going for that whole Sideshow Bob look?

I was surprised that I didn't see any image or mention of Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz's daughter. Shocking.

Someone should invent a big piece of plastic that you put around your TV that magnifies it. Kind of like a big magnifying glass, or a big version of that thing old people use for bingo and reading. It would make an ordinary TV look like a big screen TV (duh).

And those are my Oscar notes, and that's the beep for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Read it.Hear it. Buy it. Buy it.

Who let the Beep out?

I have a horrible confession to make. I've been listening to T.A.T.U. lately. Well, only 2 songs: All the Things You Said and Malchik Gay. I'm not proud of it, but you have to admit--their chord progressions are evocative, especially when the acoustic guitar comes in. The songs might would even be moving if they didn't have the abysmal transitions that are in some of them. Their voices get annoying, though. I'm not a big fan of that soprano head voice thing in pop music. I think they would sound better if they stayed in their lower registers. They would prolly sound better if they were, like, 10 years older too. Malchik Gay is a cool song--I first heard about it from someone who thought the title was Malchiki, meaning 'boys.' When he realized it was Malchik Gay, meaning 'gay boy,' he was immediately insulted and declared it homophobic. I don't think he actually listened to the song, though--it's basically about a girl who is infatuated with a gay guy. It's completely innocuous, and I wonder why no American artist has done a comparable song, considering how many adolescent girls here fall in love repeatedly with gay guys. I think the song would be cool if an older man did it, though. It would be unexpected.

And now a weekend update, several days late because I've been glum and stats have been low:

I saw The Gates on Saturday. It's really cool. I think a lot of people are glad it came to New York (unlike the Olympics, where people will be glad if they DON'T come). I'd post pictures, but everyone and their brother already has. And I didn't take any either. Saturday night I had my and my roommate's birthday dinner in the W. Village at an Italian place. Jason gave me TWO(!!) Henri Bendel candles for a birthday gift--Tuberose and White Lily. Those candles are so great, and those are the exact fragrances I wanted. Yay! Predictably I got tipsy from Pinot at the dinner and got all loud, even louder than usual, ending up caterwauling My Funny Valentine on the 9 train. On Sunday I did something or other. On Monday I saw a really pretty girl in Starbucks who I think might be famous, but I couldn't place her. Then I did some volunteering at WFMU and signed up for some time during the marathon. I'll be answering phones on Tuesday, March 8 from 6-8pm and Friday, March 11 from 8-11pm; and more dates that I haven't yet determined. So call in a pledge and you might get to talk to me! Woohoo!

And that's all the beep I can recall for the moment! More news later this week.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Read it.Hear it. Buy it. Buy it.

Cake to Make Nothing

It was a sunny but mostly unhappy weekend - someone was going on about her 'existential crisis' on Friday, and I caught it. So I had to nurse myself with lots of rest and cookies and what not. It didn't help that I rented The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was even further depressing. Not the story, though - the backdrop of beautiful seaside Italy and the characters' luxurious dolce far niente lifestyle. Sigh... (Yes, I already knew that phrase; doesn't it just roll off the tongue: dolce far niente, meaning the sweetness of doing nothing. Ahhhhh) Watching it was almost like sitting outside on a bright sunny winter day here, and wondering why exactly I left Florida. Again, sigh...

Since there's nothing to note from the weekend, here are some blips:

The Gates opened in Central Park over the weekend. I didn't see it yet. It'll be there for a coupla weeks, just enough time for me to forget to see it entirely and then just shrug. My roommate saw it and got a piece of the saffron-colored fabric. It's a purty orange. I'm going to pretend the whole thing is just for me.

I saw Masculine Feminine at Film Forum over the weekend. Their screens are small, I must say. I don't think I've ever seen anything there--I was going to see Blue Angel, or whatever that Marlene Dietrich film was called, but the line was so long I said BUMP THAT! The movie was really funny compared to the other Godard films I've seen; that said, I don't understand the abrupt ending. My favorite line from the film was when Paul was in a cinema and said to someone making noise: Can it, Trotskyite!

So Xtina's getting married. I heard it on the news--it broke for commercial and said something like 'Big news from this diva' and I knew it immediately. The biatch is getting married, I bespoke. And sure enough... What a damn disappointment. Not only was she the big sexual provocatrice of the moment, but I hoped she would have been the type to challenge all that humdrum pazzlegawazzle about getting married and having children and all that crap. Oh well. Guess we'll have to look to the future, which I guess at this point is Ashlee Simpson. The future is not pretty. Speaking of marriage, Laura Kipnis has a beep in Slate today related to Inside Deep Throat. Go read.

I picked up this magazine called Sly over the weekend. It's a lifestyle magazine by Sylvester Stallone for the over-40 man. It strikes me as a one-issue-only magazine, cux apparently Sly is the one doing the interviews, etc. and I can't imagine that he would have time to do that every month. Ordinarly I would assume that staff are doing all the articles, but from the looks of the stuff I actually read, I really think that Sylvester Stallone is doing it himself, cux it's not exactly the best work I've ever seen. In fact, the editing isn't great either: at one point he refers to the season of winter as 'the month itself.' Outside L.A., winter lasts longer than a single month. We'll see if it lasts. I do like the title, though; it's got more flair than Oprah or Boutros-Boutros.

There have been a lot of plays of Back to the Crack Shack from soundclick over just the past few days. I think someone linked to it. I just wish I knew who. Then again, maybe not. Maybe it's someone saying something evil about it, in which case I might not want to know. Well, I guess it will come out eventually, when google spiders it.

Lastly, here's a shout out: This girl makes unbelievable cakes - really moist and decorated uncommonly beautifully. Check her out at www.Sweet-Treats4U.com. Oh, and another shout-out: I got what I thought was my last bday present, but apparently may be my penultimate present (making Mark's my antepenultimate one - SLAMN!): A Smencil from Corey. A Smencil is a scented pencil; he got me orange, in the spirit of Celeditude. Thanks!

And those are the big bad blips for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Read it.Hear it. Buy it. Buy it.

Umatilla Dreaming

Every since someone I know (I can't for the lice of me remember who) told me that she used to sit and talk with Uma Thurman regularly in some park (either about kids or dogs, again I don't recall), I find myself daydreaming about meeting Uma Thurman, usually in the West Village. I even chant about it: nam-myo-ho-ren-ge-ky-u-ma-thur-man... Damnz, I wanna meet Uma Thurman! But actually, I should qualify that, cux when I thought about it, I realized I don't just want to meet her (cux really, what would I say? "OMG, you're Kill Bill!" Really think about just how stupid that sounds).

I want to run into her in a park or some preposterously unlikely place, and I want her to totally fall in love with me, in the falling-in-love-without-the-love-per-se-love kinda way. Which I guess means that I want her to just adore me, in a way kind of similar to the way I love the cat; maybe in a more doglike way, or in the way someone loves a precious, beautiful alien from another world. Yeah, kinda the last way, I guess. Anyway, I want to sit and chat with her, and have the sun hitting both of us at that golden, near-sunset angle that washes everything out, and then we go walking and describing could shapes and maybe have a who-can-piss-the-farthest contest or something, when she tells me that she's actually a citizen of Spain and wants to marry me and talk me away from all this to her oceanfront house there. Of course I go and we live there for a while, and one day I'm looking in the bathroom mirror and I turn to her and say, "Uma, something weird is happening to my hair--look how it's this yellow color here." And she says, "It happens to everyone. It's this place, you see; this life. When you live here, like this, with the sea air and the flowers and the sounds of angel dogs playing in the surf and the wind whispering through the verdant trees, your hair returns to its original innocent blond, like a golden boomerang. You see my hair? It used to be darker than chestnut, but now it's like yellow gold. That's all that's happening. Embrace it like a pillow of scented toilet tissue." And we smile and strings swell in the background.

Then one day Uma asks me, "Ed, how would you like to be a movie star, like me?" To which I reply, "I'd love it, Umula! But I don't want to put in that kind of work!" And she says: "You don't have to, my love bean! It's all digital these days. I just go in and they take a Polaroid of me and I quack a few times into a microphone, and the entire movie is built from that. So you see, we really don't even have to leave our Shangri-La, except to attend premieres." I agree to it, and then she does a musical number, something akin to Just Around the Riverbend, from the popular Disney film Pocahontas. And then one day we're sitting on the grass outside, watching the sunset drinking Yoohoos and huffing whiteout with Parker Posey, and she says to me: "Ednerbean, what we have here is more than any human being could ever want. I simply couldn't interrupt it by having another child. Tell me you won't ask me to have another child, and I'll promise you that you never have to eat imitation crabmeat again." I say, "I promise you, Umatilla." And she says, "Really?" Then I say, "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.*" Just then Parker Posey throws up, and we laugh and laugh...

Sigh, so that's what I think about sometimes, especially on days like last weekend. Talk about beautful! So much sun--it felt like one of those long summer days that yawns into oblivion like a sinkhole. I had a great time just hanging out, until I got bored on Sunday afternoon and then was all blasé. But all things considered it was a great coupla days.

And today I got my (presumably) penultimate birthday present! Mark Baratelli got me a digital voice recorder, which I've been having fun annoying people with today, but will come in handy for recording ideas whenever they pop into my mind. Yay!

And that's the beep for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Read it.Hear it. Buy it. Buy it.

Happy Celeditude 2005!

Happy Birthday to me!

Today I'm 1,087 years old. Or I would be if I were a vampire that had been born in 1822.

It's been a good Celeditude this year. Yesterday I was taken to lunch at Brasserie (not 8 1/2 but the one on 53rd), and that was the bomb. The food there is phenomenal--I had a seafood crepe, the salmon and a mint chocolate mousse thing for dessert, all of it unbelievable. The atmosphere at Brasserie is interesting as well. It looks like it could have been ripped from the celluloid of A Clockwork Orange, Gattaca or maybe a dark scene in Barbarella--there's even a short-haired expressionless woman there doing nothing but walking around the restaurant in her pantsuit. I was pretending she was an android. And that's just the main area--the bathroom is just as dystopian--it smells of ozone or chlorine, and is minimal with that Gattaca feel to it. And there's a message above the sink too, which reads:

TOWASHISTOPURGEISTODENYISTOWASHIS

What the helvv does that mean?! I'm beginning to wonder whether is was some hallucination a la A Beautiful Mind or The Ten Commandments, cux it was backlit and no one else remembered seeing it. Is it a message from Christina (Aguilera) to me?? Hmmm. Anyway, that was Brasserie.

Today I got taken out to the Indian buffet that I love so well. So now I feel like I usually do after those buffets--so full I'm about to burst and debating the idea of purging 'just this once...' Yeah, just this once--sure.... I also got a present today--a bottle of Chanel Pour Monsieur, which fits perfectly with Celeditude because it has topnotes of citrus and neroli (orange blossom), which are traditional for Celeditude. I also got a gift cert. for Target, which I can't wait to spend.

I guess I should give a brief description of the traditions of Celeditude. First of all, the word Celeditude--it doesn't mean anything. I made it up in haste one year and it stuck. So there it is, sticking. But this is why orange and orange blossoms are traditional: I was born in Feb. 3 in Florida. On Feb. 2 the year I was born, a freak snowstorm blew into Florida, blanketing the state in snow. Of course, when snow is forecast in much of the South, people just start running off the road immediately, so the hospitals filled up quickly. My mother went into labor in the wee hours of the morning/late hours of the night, and by the time she got to the hospital there were no beds, and ended up having me and my twin sister in the waiting room, just before sunrise. The sun came out and melted all the snow, and the orange trees burst into blossom. Since there were no beds in the hospital, a nurse went outside and broke some tender branches off an tree and made a makeshift bed that way, so my sister and I were laid on a bed of orange blossoms. And that's the story, in very brief form. I'm actually writing it out in longer form, but knowing me and writing, it probably won't be finished for about 3 years. To this day there are still sightings of me in the orange groves of the city, or in produce departments.

So that's been the birthday so far. No big plans for tonight, the day of, but I have a li'l dinner I'm having in a coupla weeks, to celebrate Celeditude and my roommate's birthday as well, which also falls in February. No big plans for this weekend either, although it's supposed to be sunny both days(!)--that seems like it could be too good to be true, though. Hopefully it's not.

And that's the beep for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Read it.Hear it. Buy it. Buy it.