oscar noms

my predictions for oscar nominations tomorrow morning.

best picture
the curious case of benjamin button
the dark knight
frost/nixon
milk
slumdog millionaire

best director
danny boyle
david fincher
ron howard
christopher nolan
gus van sant

best actor
clint eastwood
frank langella
sean penn
brad pitt
mickey rourke

best actress
cate blanchett
anne hathaway
sally hawkins
meryl streep
kate winslet (revolutionary road)

best supporting actor
james brolin
robert downey jr.
philip seymour hoffman
heath ledger
dev patel

best supporting actress
penelope cruz
viola davis
taraji p. henderson
marissa tomei
kate winslet (the reader)

Books in 2008

here are the aforementioned 20 books that i read last year, in chronological order and with my top 5 at the end. let me know if you have any recommendations!

1. Matilda – Roald Dahl
2. Restless – William Boyd
3. The Law of Dreams – Peter Behrens
4. What is the What by Dave Eggers
5. A Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley
6. Fellow Travelers – Thomas Mallon
7. The Pacific and Other Stories – Mark Helprin
8. Billion Dollar Kiss – Jeffrey Stepakoff
9. 10 Days in the Hills – Jane Smiley
10. A Handbook to Luck – Cristina Garcia
11. Tender at the Bone – Ruth Reichl
12. When You Are Engulfed in Flames – David Sedaris
13. People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
14. When Will There Be Good News – Kate Atkinson
15. Twilight – Stephenie Meyer
16. I See You Everywhere – Julia Glass
17. Slam – Nick Hornby
18. Flesh and Blood – Michael Cunningham
19. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
20. The Emperor's Children – Claire Messud

Top 5:
1. A Thousand Acres – loved this one from start to finish, resurrected my lunchtime reading isolation, and got me to try reading more by the author (though that foray was a disappointment).
2. Tender at the Bone – Ruth Reichl is a great writer and made me want to cook – I know! Me!
3. East of Eden – wanted to love this more as Grapes of Wrath is probably in my top 3 of all time. Still devoured this one, but wish I had read it in a class so that I could get all the many meanings out of it.
4. Restless – great spy novel I read at the beginning of the year – totally entrancing.
5. (tie) People of the Book and I See You Everywhere – two new novels by two of my favorite authors – neither one was extraordinary, but I love both of their writing styles.

third time's the charm, right?

i started smoking on october 31st, 2000. minus one 11 month quitting period, and another 7 month quitting period, that's pretty much 8 years of smoking. disgusting.

one of my new year's resolutions was to quit... again. i had my coworker trish take some pictures of me trashing my last pack of cigarettes

january 8, 2009 was the first day of not smoking. being completely ill has certainly helped me have no desire to smoke in these first few days, which is awesome. wish me luck!

10 things i did in 2008

1. read 20 books
2. accidentally started smoking again and then purposefully kept doing it
3. started taking happy pills
4. moved to san francisco
5. began working at an amazing job that quickly spiraled out of control ...
6. ... and then hilariously bombed an interview for my dream job
7. visited 4 states (and drove through 2 more)
8. made innumerable racist jokes
9. volunteered my ass off for a losing political campaign
10. lost my virginity

here's hoping to keeping this progress going in 2009!

oscar season

i love movies and i love awards. hence, i love oscar season. i like checking all the awards websites and finding out what movies have "the buzz."

it's funny - before my former roommate was involved in an oscar campaign for her boss, i didn't realize that there are actually very few surprises when movies are nominated. if you don't follow all the info, you wake up that morning in february and say, oh, okay, weird, that movie or person or whatever got nominated. but it's all pretty predictable if you follow the info. anywayz...

so far, i'm fully behind "slumdog millionaire." the movie was fucking phenomenal. i thought "milk" was good not great (though sean penn was amazing). "the curious case of benjamin button" was intriguing, but really long and somehow... not very compelling. i only saw that one last night so haven't quite formed a full opinion of it yet. i might try to get to a "frost/nixon" screening tonight, but i have to do laundry so... yeah. probably not.

prop 8 and race: a community forum

just in from an event at the san francisco lgbt community center. want to get some stuff down before i forget!

panelists included andrea shorter, co-chair of the bayard lgbt rustin coalition, northern california's largest black lgbt political organization; rebecca rolfe, executive director of the sf lgbt community center; sf city supervisor bevan dufty stopped by for a few minutes; reverend amos brown; the director of the northern california no on 8 campaign; a really funny black woman lawyer who has done a lot of community organizing; and the moderator, who was from stopaids.org (i am hoping to find other blogs about this event tomorrow - i will update the names if i can).

some things that came up:

- "the endorsements didn't come too late - the money came too late. i needed $40 million on september 1st, not october 21st. the next time this comes around, give early, and give often." the director of the campaign

- there was a lot of talk about individual efforts - people sharing stories about marching here, there and everywhere, and then finding out their parents or co-workers voted for prop 8 - it doesn't always need to be a big forum, a massive march, or a traffic-stopping event - you can always do something.

- "let's be honest here. there are knuckle-headed people in the black community who are homophobic. and there are knuckle-headed people in the gay community who are racist." black lawyer lady.

- rebecca rolfe talked about how the lgbt movement doesn't have the history behind it that the black community does, in that our movement is relatively young. she also spent a good deal of her time talking about how the lgbt movement has always been about white, gay men, and how we need to reframe the movement so that people of color, women, transgender people, everyone, can get involved and feel like this is our community.

- "you are going to win this eventually. because the people who are against you? they're going to die." lawyer lady. this sparked some discussion later about how we can't write off old people, faith based groups, and minority groups just because they don't agree with us now - yes, the old people are going to die, but that doesn't mean that we can't make inroads now.

- the 70% figure. andrea spent about 10 minutes dissecting the "70% of black folks voted for prop 8" thing that was happening immediately after the election. other than reiterating that exit polls are not accurate, and that pollsters now say the number is 56%, she lamented that the media focussed on that figure as a wedge issue. it was used to divide two minority groups that should be working together.

- supervisor dufty said he thought the no on 8 campaign was "culturally incompetent." i was a little offended by this statement, particularly since he came in late, and left right after he spoke. it was a little unfair to drop a huge amount of blame on one group and then leave before the campaign was able to respond (in total disclosure, he had a sick daughter at home, so it was great that he came at all, i just... wish he had stuck around a little longer).

- one guy cracked me up when he said that racism in the gay community needed to stop on all levels - starting with manhunt profiles. "don't tell me you don't want any asians - just tell me what you do want."

okay. that's all i got for now. i'll try to update this as more info becomes available, both in other outlets and in my brain.

eta this link: sfist recap of the event. they didn't catch the names of the people i missed. i'll keep looking. i had forgotten about bevan dufty railing against the sit-in last weekend, which was pretty funny.

the bathroom bookend

yesterday began and ended in the same manner.

i woke up to the sound of one roommate fumbling around in the bathroom after showering. after she left, and as i lay in my bed trying to motivate to get in the shower, my other roommate jumped in there. fuck - this means i'm going to be late. to top it off, he started to take a shit, and since my bed shares a paper thin wall with the bathroom, i got to hear that. yay.

as i lay in bed last night about to go to sleep, roommate number 1 went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. she turned the hall light on because... she couldn't see? i don't know. but the light is right outside my door, and i have an inch and a half gap under my door, and my bed is really low, so it is kinda a nuisance. and then she went to bed and left the light on. wtf. oh and the toilet was running for who knows how long.

maybe i'm overly considerate, or just crazy, but... maybe don't stomp around the house and shut doors really loudly at 11:30p or 7a. i miss living with my friends.