Something to ask if I ever meet Steve Carell in real life.

Are the pancakes in the Dan in Real Life movie poster real? If so, did you or anyone else eat them when the photo shoot was done?

xkcd vs. fruit

Today's xkcd comic features a variety of fruit arranged on a coordinate plane according to tastiness and difficulty. Here it is in case you haven't seen it already (click the picture to get the full-size version):



A few things that immediately come to mind:

1. What in the world are oranges doing on the untasty side?

2. Why didn't he differentiate between Colorado and non-Colorado peaches, or D'Anjou pears and Bartlett pears?

3. Seriously, what's the deal with oranges being in quadrant 3?

Here's how I'd arrange the fruit (click the picture to get the full-size version):

The Oscars

I didn't have anything going on last night (surprise!) so I figured I'd catch up on my email & RSS feeds with The Oscars on in the background. Then a few minutes before the show I remembered that Jon Stewart was hosting so I decided to watch it and do my email during commercials and boring parts of the show. While usually I've only seen half or less of the movies nominated for the major awards, this year I haven't yet seen a single one of the movies that were nominated for the major awards. But based on good things I've heard / how much I've liked the director's previous films I have been really looking forward to seeing:

Juno
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

And to a slightly lesser extent:

Michael Clayton
Eastern Promises
Into The Wild

Back on the have seen side, my list is still pretty short even for movies nominated for the lesser awards:

No End in Sight
Sicko
The Bourne Ultimatum
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Once
Transformers

But even though I've seen so few of the nominated movies, the show was pretty good. A few of the highlights:

* Steve Carell presenting the award for animated feature, deadpanning his intro implying it was for documentary feature. I would love to see him do that deadpan thing for an entire episode of The Office, not unlike the time Dwight got a concussion and was nice & funny for an entire episode. Maybe Michael Scott could get his own concussion, or have some sort of minor aneurysm, or something like that.

* When troops stationed in Iraq announced the award for Best Documentary Short and the award went to Freeheld, a movie about lesbians being denied basic rights. How crazy it would have been if they also announced the award for Best Documentary Feature and No End in Sight had won!

* Katherine Heigl in that red dress presenting the award for something or other.

* While I have not yet seen No Country For Old Men, it seems likely that at least part of the reason it got so many awards last night is because of the way Fargo, one of the best movies of the '90s, got stiffed for Best Picture, and the Coens got stiffed on the Best Director award that year (at least they won for Best Original Screenplay and Frances McDormand won for Best Actress), not unlike the way The Departed won so many awards last year in no small part because they've failed to recognize Scorsese so many times over the past 30+ years. Sure it was a great movie, and probably the most deserving, but it was a remake for goodness sake.

* Jon Stewart did a pretty good job hosting, although he wasn't as good as I remember him being when he hosted 2 years ago.

* By far the highlight of the show for me was when Jon brought Markéta Irglová back on stage so she could give her acceptance speech after she won for Best Original Song along with Glen Hansard for "Falling Slowly" from Once. I was so pissed when the music cut her off, and so happy after the commercial when Jon brought her back on. Her acceptance speech ended up being the best of the night. Here is the video in case you missed it:



As I said before, the show was pretty good, but I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more if I had already seen more of the nominated movies.

Comparing Hanzo Swords

"If you're gonna compare a Hanzo sword, you compare it to every other sword ever made... that wasn't made by Hattori Hanzo." - Budd, Kill Bill Vol. 2

So the other day on OfficeTally they started OfficeTally Survivor Poll: Season 2. Now, as with the previous Survivor Polls for Seasons 1 and 3, I intend to vote on each elimination. The only problem is I have no idea how I'm going to vote.

As I've said many times before, I think Season 2 of The Office (US) is one of the best seasons of any show ever. The consistency of the episodes is phenomenal, as every single individual episode is jam packed with many hilarious moments. And taken together as a whole, the season is simply a remarkable achievement.

I've long considered my favorite episode of the season to be The Secret, and my least favorite episode of the season to be The Carpet (which is still very good). Beyond that, though, I've never taken much time before to consider my order of liking for the rest.

A couple days ago I tried to separate them into 3 tiers, top, middle, and bottom. This didn't work, and I knew I'd have to try something else to get this figured out.

So yesterday I took the always enjoyable step of rewatching all 22 episodes, and if anything, ranking them is going to be even more difficult now.

I've watched all the Season 2 episodes at least a dozen times, and enjoyed them every time. But it takes something away when in the back of your mind you know that when you get done you're going to have to rank them.

After much deliberation I eventually managed to come up to the following list. I'll probably change my mind as soon as I post it, but I'd go crazy if I updated it every time I changed my time so I won't even try.

1. The Secret
2. Casino Night
3. Conflict Resolution
4. The Injury
5. Halloween
6. Email Surveillance
7. Drug Testing
8. Booze Cruise
9. Office Olympics
10. Christmas Party
11. The Dundies
12. The Client
13. The Fight
14. The Fire
15. Sexual Harassment
16. Performance Review
17. Michael's Birthday
18. Valentine's Day
19. Dwight's Speech
20. Boys and Girls
21. Take Your Daughter to Work Day
22. The Carpet

Edit (2/26/08): I have broken my word and have rearranged my list slightly, to the following:

1. The Secret
2. Casino Night
3. Halloween
4. The Injury
5. Conflict Resolution
6. Email Surveillance
7. Drug Testing
8. Booze Cruise
9. Office Olympics
10. Christmas Party
11. The Dundies
12. The Client
13. The Fight
14. Michael's Birthday
15. Sexual Harassment
16. Valentine's Day
17. The Fire
18. Performance Review
19. Dwight's Speech
20. Boys and Girls
21. Take Your Daughter to Work Day
22. The Carpet

Edit (3/6/08): Rearranged again.

1. The Secret
2. Casino Night
3. Halloween
4. The Injury
5. Drug Testing
6. Email Surveillance
7. Booze Cruise
8. Office Olympics
9. Christmas Party
10. Conflict Resolution
11. The Dundies
12. The Client
13. The Fight
14. Michael's Birthday
15. Sexual Harassment
16. Valentine's Day
17. The Fire
18. Performance Review
19. Dwight's Speech
20. Boys and Girls
21. Take Your Daughter to Work Day
22. The Carpet

Smoking

Over the last few days I've repeatedly been getting in my mind the visual of a smoker struggling to quit smoking crushing a full pack of cigarettes in his hand. It comes from a series of government PSAs against smoking that regularly aired a few years ago. I don't know why I've been thinking of it, considering I've never been a smoker. Thinking about this has led me to wonder if the visual of a full pack of cigarettes being crumpled made smokers who saw it anxious / uncomfortable / irritated and made them want to go smoke a cigarette.

Now all the commercials on TV about smoking are advertisements for various products to help people quit smoking, and the Last Thing In The World they would ever show is a person struggling with the very difficult task of overcoming nicotine addiction. Instead they have a small, unrepresentative sample of people relating their success story of how they quit smoking using that particular product, ignoring the fact the small percentage of people who do manage to quit smoking were probably so dedicated doing so that they would have been able to quit smoking using just about any of the various major methods they now sell.

not too good.

...serenity now?

Don't rack my balls, bro!

Saw this on OfficeTally this morning.