Idol and Service

On Wednesday, I watched the season finale of American Idol. I was happy to see they brought back the little cowboy with the turkey who could sort of sing for his one and only opportunity in life to perform in front an audience of that size. This season I haven't really been rooting for anyone in particular, although I would have preferred to see Katharine McPhee win over Taylor Hicks. I just feel like she would be someone I would listen to on the radio, whereas Taylor will probably be relegated to the easy listening contemporary station. He's just a little too Joe Cocker. But, like I said I wasn't rooting for anyone really, so this all changed when Taylor won. I saw David Hasselhof crying in the audience. It was all worth it.

This week I finally tried the Italian restaurant a few doors down from my apartment. I decided to order takeout, but I checked out the reviews online first. They were all along the lines of "good food, worse than terrible service." A couple of the reviewers said the waitstaff and owner were the rudest service people they had encountered. I was warned that you can either be completely turned off by this or allow it to just be a weird quirk of the establishment. I decided to adopt the latter attitude and call them. After I ordered, they quickly hung up on me. When I went to pick up, there were no pleasantries and the owner ignored me after handing me the credit card slip to sign. It was a little like dealing with the Soup Nazi. I have to say for the price, they give you a lot of food and it's pretty good. The place is called Banducci's.

This holiday weekend I will be embarking on my apartment search. Not really looking forward to this, but it must be done.

I really have no theme this week

I've been assigned web backup at work, so when my co-worker goes on vacation I'm in charge of updating our website. The entire website is at my finger tips. I like the power.

I'm currently watching Wild Things. It's on FX, which unfortunately means they have dubbed over half the film and cut out the other half. Bill Murray still rocks though. Whenever I watch Neve Campbell, I can't help but picture her looking very strained and almost unable to get out the words, "God, Bai," referring to her tv brother. Party of Five was some good melodrama.

The first film project I worked on in Austin is making its US theatrical debut next week. Unfortunately it's playing in NY/LA so I don't know when I'll get to see it. While I usually can figure out how distribution works on films, I must say I have no idea why this movie is already out on DVD in Italy and yet it hasn't made it to the theaters yet in the US. Perhaps the Italians were more open to controversial subject matter.

This is my random thought of the day - how did Sean Connery get so tan?

Email Commentary and the Crazies at Union Station

I have not posted anything of late. I apologize. But I have a little piece of humor in email correspondence I have received over the past couple of days to make up for it. I recently emailed my parents the new trailer for Al Gore's movie about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, after spending a good portion of a car ride across southeast Texas talking about this subject with my immediate family. Here are the comments of each of my parental units:

Dad:
Looks interesting. Like to see it. Gore could run for president on energy at the present time. We need a national campaign on energy alternatives in this country.
Dad

Mom:
Is this going to be a feature film in the theaters? Thanks for sending me the trailer. I am a big fan of Al Gore and would vote for him if he ran for president. I like him better now than when he did run for president!! If he does decide to run you should work on his campaign. Love Mom

This got me thinking of when I met Gore outside Hillbilly Heaven, a hick bar outside St. Louis. People chanted "Gore Gore he's no bore, he's the man that we adore." I did not chant this, but for 2008 if he did run I think the new chant should reflect an anti-Bush sentiment. Something like this: "Gore Gore you will not hate, Vote Al Gore in 2008." Having said all this I don't think he'll run.

Over the past couple of weeks I have started to keep track of all the people I encounter when walking past or through Union Station which i do everyday twice a day, at least. Here's what I've found - I believe Union Station is a dumping ground for area mental hospitals. There hasn't been a single day that I've walked past where I haven't seen someone either a) talk to himself, b) twitch and ask where their medication is or c) scream profanities into a cell phone at a highly increased volume usually while staring at a wall. The former seems to be the most prevalent and usually these encounters happen in the afternoon. Anyway, I'll leave you with a link to the Union Station of yesteryear.
http://unionstationdc.com/bs_01.asp
I don't know, it kind of reminds me of The Shining.