I love movies more than most people do. At this stage of my life I could use my accumulated Movie Watcher points to make a down payment on a Toyota Corolla or finance a vacation to Toronto if they would accept my AMC card. I go almost every week and I see everything from indies flicks about gay cowboys eating ice cream to broad romantic comedies where people of a certain gender may or may not be into someone of the other. I read movie blogs all the time. I can usually tell you what new films are coming out on any given Friday without having to consult Fandango.

But for all the love I have for Hollwood’s output, I have an equal amount of scorn for award shows like the Oscars. From the vapid commentary on what the starlets are wearing as they walk down the red carpet to the awkwardly phrased acceptance speeches the entire broadcast strikes me as a supreme waste of time. I’m all for recognizing outstanding work in screenplays, direction, and acting but the whole affair is such an overblown exercise in celebrity obsession. Too much attention goes to dissecting hairstyles and dresses or explaining the dating choices of the attendees and not enough on the actual content of the work that the show is ostensibly designed to recognize.

Hugh Jackman is hosting this year. While I would be hard-pressed to say an unkind word about Wolverine, I don’t know that he can successfully hold the attention of the viewer through the whole broadcast. Past hosts with extensive comedy experience like Jon Stewart and Dave Letterman have had trouble keeping the show moving forward so Jackman will be in good company if he stumbles.

But my problems go beyond annoyance with the pomp and circumstance that surround the ceremony and into the conceptual core. The Academy makes some odd choices in the way  it picks nominees, trying to split the difference between rewarding risk-taking heartfelt turns in little seen films like The Visitor and recognizing the Oscar Bait showiness of Artful Roles like Brad Pitt’s portrayal of the titular Benjamin Buttons. But nobody saw the former and the latter was as safe and conventional as it could be. That dichotomy between the unseen and the overseen lies at the heart of why the Academy Awards can never truly become a means of either recognizing the best or rewarding the riskiest.

Add to that the smug, self-congratulatory tone that can’t help but seep out of a four hour telecast of actors honoring themselves and you have a truly unbearable night of television.

Everyone hates paying the ridiculously high price for a gallon of gasoline, even if it is less than they pay in other countries. I live in a city where the gas prices are among the highest in the state, in a state where the gas prices are among the highest in the country, in a country where the gas prices are the among the highest middle of the road/lowest in the world. While I don’t drive often and use public transport as often as I can, it’s easy to get frustrated when it seems like you have to sink your entire paycheck into your gas tank. But before you try to drag your local gas station attendant through the pay window and lay a beatdown of biblical proportions on their ass, stop and reflect.

The owners of your local Kwik-E-Mart are not responsible for the pinch. In fact they are victims of it to a much greater degree than you are. Owners of gas stations make virtually nothing from the sale of petroleum products alone. Think about it: How often do you see a gas station that sells only gas? Probably never. They almost always sell snacks and porn or do mechanical work and that’s where the real money comes in. The profit margin on a gallon of gas is next-to-nothing. The Freakonomics blog reports one local Shell station owner is fighting back against the company kamikaze-style. Like an enraged Viking Berserker, the owner doesn’t care if he drives himself out of business as long as he drags his opponent screaming down to hell with him. The owner bears the improbable and slightly hilarious name of Bob Oyster plans to fight back. He says

“that Shell and other big companies are squeezing service-station owners way too hard, and he plans to shut down his station soon anyway. “I’m going out with a bang,” he said. “And I don’t care if I don’t pump a gallon on the last day.”

His plan is to jack up the prices even higher than what the oil company sets for him in order to create negative branding when the people associate his inflated numbers with the shell logo.

Get ‘em, Oyster.

link (via Freakonomics)

Click here to view the embedded video.

via Warren Ellis

He makes some good points. Chief among them, that in most areas we want the elite, from sports to warfare we admire those who have the natural talent and discipline to drive themselves to excel in their chosen fields. But not in politics. For some reason, we have a tendency to want our leaders to be folksy and accessible instead of smart and competent. Now I’m not saying that people who have the word “State” on their diplomas are incapable of leadership, or that only the wealthiest of wasps understand the needs of the country. But I like the idea that of the philosopher king even if it doesn’t always turn out for the best. I want the geekiest of the geeks to fix my computer when it is broken, I want the greasiest of wrench monkeys to fix my car, I want the tweediest of coats to teach me in school and I want the smartest people in the world working on the problems of how to govern.

I agree with Maher that there is nothing wrong with looking to the elite, and I’m pretty sure you won’t find very many of them under the tutelage of Robertson who functions as a kind of caricature of fundamentalism gone awry. But I don’t think we necessarily need to keep the justice department staffed with the top 1% of Harvard and Yale. The real problem I have with the fact that this administration recruits so heavily from Regent is that it yet another mowing down of the church-state barrier in favor of a fundamentalist Christianist agenda. If Regent were a place of serious academic chops instead of a bible-thumping diploma mill, there might be more justification. It seems clear to me that the primary reason for hiring so many Regent alumni has far less to do with their legal acumen than their religious convictions.

I’ll get back to talking about comic books and mixed martial arts later…