Hey kids! Do you like good stuff? Are your ears thirsty for something stellar? Do you have a cd player or an mp3 player? Do you find somewhat depressing lyrics wonderful? Did you enjoy The Bravery’s debut album and want an incredibly satisfying follow up?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, go pick up The Bravery’s new album, The Sun and the Moon. It used to be on iTunes but something happened. It’s gone. For now. But I bet a store or two has it. Go. Now.

It’s a great album. It’s so good that I’m not even going to post YouTube clips of the songs because you can’t be disappointed if you just go out and pick this album up. Or, steal it and tell the RIAA to shove it.

While you’re out picking up music, it wouldn’t hurt to also grab Arcade Fire’s second album, Neon Bible. Don’t steal this one though.

I can deal with the fact that this movie was horrendous, except for parts that weren’t. I’ve also accepted the brand new insect look of all of the transformers. But why did the central plot of the film revolve around the Allspark, something never mentioned in the old cartoons? Why couldn’t the Autobots and Decepticons have just fought over some good old fashioned, pink, glowing energon cubes? Why?

I thought the movie was dreck yet I came out of the theatre with a massive grin on my face. Go check it out if you can see it for free, you won’t be disappointed once you get past the first 2/3 of the movie.

I finally figured out what the secret to Lost is. It has nothing to do with the smoke monster or the Others or the numbers or anything like that. The secret of Lost is in how the show should be watched.

When Lost came out I knew nothing about it as I didn’t watch TV. On a whim I decided to download season 1 and after a few episodes I was absolutely hooked. I remember flying to visit a friend and watching 6 episodes on the flight. On the way back, 6 more. Then that night, 4 more.

Season 2 came out and like millions of people I watched it week by week, and wow, the show sucked. Week after week we viewers were tormented with long drawn out redundant episodes and Michael running around yelling, “Waaaaaaaaaaalt!” When the DVD came out for some reason I bought it and watched the episodes again back to back and noticed that the season wasn’t actually that horrible. It lacked the punch of the first season but by no means was the abomination that I remembered.

For season 3 I decided I would hold off watching any episodes until they were all available to watch. As my co-workers and friends complained familiar complaints about the declining state of the show, how episodes were shown with no seeming connection to the greater plot, I just covered my ears to avoid spoilers.

Having just finished watching season 3 over the course of a few nights I can say that the season was actually really good. I can empathize with my friends who watched in on a weekly basis because there were a few episodes that dragged on or that had little impact on the main storyline. But, when watched in the context of 23 episodes back to back, these weaker episodes just rolled on along blending in with the good. When a cliffhanger episode was followed up by an episode focusing on a silly character, I hadn’t built up anticipation for a week only to be disappointed. I just popped in the next episode and got instant satisfaction.

My advice to any Lost fans out there, it’s difficult, but just ignore that the show is on TV. When the DVD comes out or if you like iTunes, pick up the season and watch it in one go. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I went to Kohls with Carolyn today because she needed a frame. Kohls isn’t a store I frequent too much but I was pretty stunned when I saw this wheelchair riding manequin staring me down.

I don’t quite get it. Why do they have a manequin in a wheelchair? I have nothing against wheelchairs or those who need a wheelchair. I just find it very very odd to have a manequin showing people what they would look like wearing these ever so chic clothes if they happened to be handicapped.

The only thing I can think of is that it’s easier to move the manequin around from display to display. However there was a warning on the wheelchair that states it should not be used for anything other than display purposes. Weird.

On Wednesday there was a nice little celebration at work. Industrial Light & Magic recently brought home an Oscar for their amazing work on Pirates 2. I don’t work for ILM and I didn’t do anything really to earn my place at that celebration, but it was there, so I went. Well, I guess I started celebrating International Talk Like A Pirate Day seven years ago. So, perhaps the rising interest in pirates convinced Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer that a movie focused solely on them would do tremendously well at the box office. And I suppose my seeing Pirates 1 in the theaters a few times convinced them that a sequel would also be financially successful. So in a weird way, I guess I did have a reason to be celebrating ILM’s work on the film.

Anyway, even if I had no real claim to be there, ILM had all of their awards out so you get your photo with them. And to show that it’s not all fun and parties at work, I took this real serious picture.

Oh, and a word of warning to any filmmakers out there. If you ever win an Oscar, beware, that sucker is heavy. Seriously heavy. Remember this when you go up to give your acceptance speech as you will look really stupid when you drop it.

There were a few really nice things that happened in the last week and one that made me scratch my head. In order…

My good friend Alex Fleisig recently accepted a job at PDI to work on Madagascar 2. Similar to how the entire world must have collectively realized all was well in the world when the first slice of peanut buttered up bread landed gently on a jellied up slice of bread, this is how I feel about hearing this news about Alex. This is one of those incredibly rare perfect fits. Congrats Alex.

Carolyn had a birthday this weekend. We had a stellar time. The rain prevented us from partaking in our original plans but our plan B was equally phenomenal. We caught the Oscar nominated shorts with our friends. I had previously seen these shorts but at this screening they actually showed some of the shorts that were up for nomination but didn’t make it. There were two or three that I hadn’t seen before and I was very happy to get to see them. As for details regarding the rest of Carolyn’s birthday, head on over and read what she has to say about it.

The Danish Poet won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. I have gone on at great length about how much I love this short so I was pretty happy to see it get the recognition it deserves. I swear this is the last I will write about it. Honestly. Ok, maybe not, one last thing. The short is now available for purchase on iTunes for a measly $1.99USD. So, if you have iTunes installed, click this handy link. I’m not sure if that link will work if you’re using a browser besides Firefox, but hopefully it does.

Lastly the thing that made me scratch my head in utter befuddlement. How did Children of Men not win the Oscar for either Film Editing or Cinematography? I’ve been told by numerous people that The Departed is a terrific film. And though I was not particularly fond of Pan’s Labyrinth story, it too is a really great and original film. Both are definitely worthy of the awards they won in other categories. Even in the realm of Film Editing and Cinematography, I’m sure both films are more than worthy to be nominated. But Children of Men was just so incredibly brilliant with its camera work I’m astonished it didn’t win at least one of those awards. Oh well.

Recently we’ve begun to have parties at work just about every other week. Different Lucas companies host the event each time, and last Friday, Lucas Licensing was the host. In their invite they mentioned that there would be some characters at the party. I’m not necesarilly a huge fan of Ewoks and Stormtroopers so I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down in anticipation. My friend joked with me asking if I was going to bring a camera in. I played it cool and just kind of laughed at the thought. Clearly, I thought, I am too cool to get my photo taken with a Stormtrooper.

Well, I was wrong. When I walked down the hallway and I saw two perfectly shiny Stormtroopers standing guard at the entrance of the event, all of my “coolness” left me. When I walked in and saw a 7 foot tall Chewbacca I knew I needed some photos quick. So I grabbed my friend that had earlier asked about the camera and Chewbacca put his hairy arm over my bald head, and I was happy. After some wandering and some beer, we went over to Darth Vader and saw that his little chest panel had blinky lights. Blinky lights! Ahh, it was cool. So, here’s me, hanging with some people from a galaxy far, far away.

I’ve lived in California for a bit. I know that Californians are scared of everything. Or perhaps it’s the stores that are scared of scared Californians suing them. Regardless, there are warnings about everything… Everything. But wow, I had never seen this sign before.

And yet, I still went in :)

UPDATE: After some eye-witnesses saw my depiction of the cosmic muffin below, they conveyed their skepticism of how accurate my illustration was. So I re-created it again, even more true to life!