There is a movie coming out starring "Larry the Cable Guy", who has managed to parlay one phrase into a series of comedy specials, compact discs, a book, and now a movie. I keep waiting for him to pull a Bart Simpson a la "I Didn't Do It" and just all of a sudden stop being funny, but the NASCAR crowd seems bound and determined to ensure that both he and Toby Keith stay in the public eye until the end of time.

I haven't posted much lately because I've spent most of my waking hours working for the past 2 weeks. We had a big project roll out on Friday night so I got to go in at 8 PM and stay until 4 AM, which put me in a half-asleep haze for most of the day yesterday. But now I'm back to normal, just in time to go back to work tomorrow.

I don't post much about work, because the spies are everywhere and they're always watching, but it is going well. Working with a bunch of geeks like me is not much different from going to school except with far fewer Linux World Tour t-shirts or people forwarding around ASCII art of Tux the Penguin eating Bill Gates.

But now that I get a bit of a break from long hours, I will hopefully have time to post about the important issues, like Lucas' major upset in the Most Hat-Centric Movie of the Year awards (come on now, the entire hype around the Star Wars movie was waiting for him to put that damn helmet on, that sounds pretty hat-centric to me).

Last night after finally watching Napoleon Dynamite (clearly overhyped, quite slow, and with very few funny moments) I realized that I've totally had it with the 80's nostalgia that has spread through every aspect of our lives like a virus.

You can't go to Target without seeing aisles and aisles of ugly striped polo shirts, which were unattractive when they were popular in the 80's and even more unattractive now. 80's music is almost as en vogue as knockoff 80's-style music by new artists, and even television commercials are trying to jump in on the action by featuring 80's music and that distinctive grainy film quality that is the signature of the period.

Well I've had enough. And even more disturbing is the next era in line for a comeback: the early 90's. Neon clothes? Parachute pants? The New Kids on the Block? Is this what I have to look forward to once people finally get sick of 80's nostalgia? If I see even one Hypercolor shirt at Target I refuse to shop there ever again.

It's Oscar night, which means a whole evening of mindless celebrity adoration, boring musical performances, an attempt to try and make this past year of really bad movies seem compelling, and awkward "who are you wearing" questions about expensive clothing.

Right now the always-painful red carpet show is on, which means awkward interviews and shameless fawning over celebrities. As much as I have no interest in any of the movies nominated this year, I'll keep a running diary of the happenings. I hope to god Jon Stewart keeps things moving along, or this will be a very boring blog.

7:13 PM: Ouch. An uneven beginning from Jon Stewart, who looks a bit nervous now that he's not in front of hordes of cheering adoring fans. His jokes were standard Daily Show fare, but the audience didn't seem too enthusiastic.

7:16 PM: And here we go, the first of many Oscars for movies I've never seen, or really heard of. Did head-shaking Clooney just zing Jon Stewart with his "I'm proud to be out of touch?" comment? It wasn't nearly as funny as Sean Penn (complete with the roadkill on his head) ripping into Chris Rock last year.

7:50 PM: Sorry to duck out for a few moments, I was eating dinner. In the meantime, Hollywood showed us its dark side as we got our first evidence of a fix. Those animated badgers totally god robbed. Are you telling me that a short film about badgers got beaten by...anything? I find that very hard to believe. Clearly the Academy really is steeped in cronyism. Fix! Fix!

8:15 PM: And we just had our first Jon Stewart appearance in nearly half an hour. I guess after Chris Rock last year they want to make sure the host attracts the younger, hipper audience they're looking for without actually poking fun at any of the poor, rich, stuffy actors and actresses present.

8:20 PM: What exactly is that on Charlize Theron's shoulder? It looks like another dress on there.

8:25 PM: Is that a real fire on stage? Is there a chance that Charlize Theron's shoulder-dress will get caught in it? I have to say, I enjoyed Dolly Parton's upbeat number a little more than fire, people looking pensive and walking around slowly, and lyrics that may or may not be in English.

8:40 PM: Here we go, some good old-fashioned Hollywood self-congratulation! Remember the Stonecutters episode of the Simpsons where Homer learned that the Stonecutters society controls the world and, among other things, keeps the metric system down and the martians under wraps (as well as rigging every Oscar night, which we know is true from the Badger Atrocity)? Well here we learned that Hollywood actually caused the civil rights movement, the acceptance of people with AIDS, the impeaching of Richard Nixon, and every other radical thing that's happened in our country in the last 100 years. Jon Stewart made a little quip about how ridiculous this idea is, but I don't think he went far enough. Just hearing these people talk about what they do ("so-and-so describes his craft as blah blah blah") is completely tiresome. I think the movie industry is the only place where the employees so constantly and thoroughly try to convince themselves and others that what they do is so important and has such gravity that the Earth may indeed cease to spin on its axis if they don't show up for work.

9:15 PM: Wow, have these Oscars been a snoozefest or what? Just like the year in movies, this year's ceremony has been completely bereft of anything even remotely resembling a memorable event. Could somebody possibly shake things up somehow? Please?

9:55 PM: zzzz...zzz...wha?..huh?...Oh, it's John Travolta, even he couldn't weird things up enough to be entertaining. The rap group that won the music Oscar were amusing in their exuberance, but then they had to do the montage of people who died this year. That always has a way of bringing things down.

10:25 PM: And that's that. The gay cowboy movie didn't win, which was mildly surprising. Overall not a very eventful evening. Somehow it's not the same without Sean Penn's hair.