JLooney.com

An Olympian died today. 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili was travelling over 90 miles per hour on a practice run when he lost control and crashed, slamming into an unpadded steel beam.

“Did you hear that a luger died today?” Paulie had shouted across the hall to me from his office.

“OH MY GOD, THERE’S A PICTURE OF IT!” Alex said in disbelief. I got up and went into his office, and sure enough, there was a picture on ESPN.com (link left out intentionally) of the crash.

“That can’t be real, right? Would they DO that?!” asked Alex, neither of us believing what we were seeing. I was stunned at the poor taste of the editors of ESPN.com.

Not more than an hour later, while reading the Huffington Post (link left out intentionally) on my iPhone, I was shocked and disturbed to see graphic photos of the paramedics and emergency crew trying desperately to revive him. It was clear from one photo that he was already dead, his lifeless eyes staring into space. I closed the app and deleted it in disgust.

Hours later, watching the news after the opening ceremonies, I was watching the local news on KSL (Link left out intentionally) and was appalled as they showed graphic footage of the crash itself. I am more angry and disgusted than I have been in quite some time.

A young man died today, not in combat, and not in some domestic or urban scuffle. A young man died today representing his country in the Olympic Games, and the media has seen fit to broadly distribute photos and video of his death.

Once upon a time, many hundreds of years ago, there was a society that similarly found twisted voyeuristic delight on watching other people die. Remember the Romans? If you have ever had a thought about the barbarism of gladiators battling to the death at the coliseum in front of crowds of thousands cheering them on, take a look inside yourself and see what you find there first.

A young man died today, and the media sees a chance to boost their ratings with sensational content. I am utterly repulsed by the choices of ESPN.com, The Huffington Post, KSL, and any other outlet that similarly publicized this young mans untimely death.

My sweetheart bought me a Blu_Ray player for Valentines day.

I haven’t really been eager to jump on the Blu-Ray bandwagon, figuring that everything’s gonna be digital-file, hard-drive or flash-memory based soon anyway. Sure, I’d read all sorts of reviews, and it’s awesome, and etc. Whatever. Most of my movie collection is on a hard drive and I stream them through the Xbox 360. It’s a pretty sweet setup.

Anyway, she bought me a Blu-Ray player and Transformers to test it out. I hooked it up, put the disc in, and aside from a slow load disc load time, was reasonable happy.

Then the movie started.

I had forgotten how pretty my TV can be! I was so amazed at the difference between Blu-Ray quality and DVD quality! And the sound, oh the sound! It’s AMAZING!

If you’ve got a nice HDTV and a decent home theater system, there’s no reason NOT to have a Blu-Ray player as part of your setup.

For reals.

You all know how much I like movies, right?

I do.

A lot.

And I see lots of ‘em. Well, I enjoy a good contest, too, and since nobody else I know is having an Oscar’s contest, I figured I would.

On Sunday, March 7th, ABC will air the 82nd Academy Awards®. I’ve decided to hold a contest, and the winner get’s a $50 Visa Gift Card from me. It’s pretty easy. Pick who you think will win, and the person that get’s the most correct answer’s wins. Easy, right? Here are the categories that will be used for the contest, and the nominees in each one:

Best Picture
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up In The Air

Best Actor in a leading Role
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
George Clooney (Up In The Air)
Colin Firth (A Single Man)
Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Matt Damon (Invictus)
Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Gabourey Sidibe (Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)
Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Penélope Cruz (Nine)
Vera Farmiga (Up In The Air)
Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air)
Mo’Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)

Best Director
James Cameron (Avatar)
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Lee Daniels (Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)
Jason Reitman (Up In The Air)

Best Animated Feature
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

In the event of a tie, there will be a movie trivia quiz to decide the winner.

Email your picks to me by clicking here, or just email me at j@brandfoundry.org with “2010 Oscar Contest Entry” in the subject line.

All entries MUST be received by midnight MST on Saturday March 6th, 2010.

Oh, and as a secondary contest, the person who refers the MOST new people to my site to enter the contest wins a $25 Visa Gift Card. Sweet, huh? Just tell whoever you refer to start their email with “referred by: ” so I’ll know where they came from. If your friends don’t include that, I can’t count ‘em.

And the $50 Oscar Visa Gift Card goes to….

Just when I think I’ve got a handle on things, and I’m feeling like I’ve wrestled my life back into the general direction that I’d like to see it going, I somehow lose control just as quickly. It’s kinda like that poor schmoe on sesame street with all those pies that still can’t walk the stairs.

Remember him? No? Here he is.

Fast forward to 1:25 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.

Remember him now?

I thought you might. You see, I kinda feel bad for him. He spends all this time making coconut custard pies, which is no easy task, I’m sure. I think it’s a pain in the ass to make ONE pie, much less NINE. Anyway, so this guy spends all day making nine coconut custard pies. They’re beautiful, delicious-looking, and he’s got them all on a beautiful silver tray. As he enters the dining room and announces himself, he realizes “Oh shit! Stairs! I haven’t been able to walk these bitches YET without falling and messing up my shit!” And even knowing that his track record with walking stairs isn’t so good, he’s got these pies that he’s worked on all day long, and the people are here to eat these pies. It’s up to him, and it comes down to these eight little steps.

And even knowing what’s always happened before and what’s at risk, he steps forward anyway.

So just a few weeks ago I was really struggling to hold things together and keep the wheels from falling off my life. Megan and I went away for the weekend, loved each other, re-connected, and I really thought I had it all handled. Sure, there was still stuff to handle and plenty to still work on, but I had my nine coconut custard pies on their pretty trays, perfectly balanced and ready to walk the stairs.

And I’m still perched there, at the top of the stairs, ready to take that first fateful step and deliver these amazing coconut custard pies to all the people waiting below, but today somebody greased the steps and threw a bunch of marbles down. Oh, and the whole room started to tilt and sway like a funhouse ride.

Good times. It’s like somebody is saying “you SAY you can walk these stairs, but let’s see how serious you REALLY are!”

And I take the first step…

A week ago yesterday I was sitting comfortable in the big chair at my house, spending the evening conversing with an old friend. We had covered the topics of career, marriage and relationships, upcoming events, etc. It was a good evening, and I had truly enjoyed his company.

Then he said something that was completely unprovoked and unnecessary – “we should sign off of Facebook for a whole week!”

Now, what went through my mind was “how effing stupid is that?! Why would I WANT to do that? Don’t you know that Facebook is how I connect with the world, and share my snarky wit and (sometimes) misguided enthusiasm for politics and religion? Who will I BE without that?!?”

What I said was “OK”

Dumb, huh?

So we each signed on one last time at 9:00PM on Wednesday evening, I to bid a fond farewell, he to harvest his crops from Farmville (which is a whole ‘nother discussion, believe you me!). Then we each deleted the Facebook app from our phones. Done and done!

As it turns out, it wasn’t as big of a deal as I had thought.

Sure, I missed the constant flow of information about what was going on in the lives of my friends and family (some more than others), and I didn’t know what to do with myself after writing a new blog post (where would I share it?), but overall, it was surprisingly easy.

I found other ways to connect – text, email, phone calls – all of these increased the minute I signed off Facebook. So the conclusion that I have come to is that I already connect and communicate, Facebook just makes it easier and extends the boundary of my social sphere.

It’s nice to be back.