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To be honest with you, my Oscar picks last year….sucked. I got Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay right, but absolutely tanked the other categories. As an honest-to-god awards show junkie, it was a truly embarassing event. This year, there’s cold, hard, cash on the line as I’ve entered an Oscars pool — so I have to step up my game, y’all.

I’ve seen almost every film, though I may once again be making my best actor pick blind (I’m picking Jeff Bridges, and then seeing “Crazy Heart” later today; if I see it and hate it, me and The Dude are going to have some words). On to the picks!

Best Picture

Should Win: The Hurt Locker
Will Win: Avatar

The Hurt Locker was hands down the best film of the year, and I have seen 9 of the 10 nominees, it’s definitely the best of the bunch. The problem is that “spectacle” movies like Avatar make tons of money, get tons of attention, and pretty much ride that wave to a Best Picture win despite being, when you think about it, nothing but popcorn movies. (See: Gladiator, Titanic, Lord of the Rings). I occasionally support Popcorn wins; I thought Braveheart earned its win, and even Titanic. But this year? No. Just no. Avatar was boring as hell, 30 minutes too long, and in the words of Simon Cowell, painfully self indulgent. Plus, Cameron is the official King of the World Jerks.

Still, sadly, it will likely win.

Best Director

Should Win: Kathryn Bigelow
Will Win: Kathryn Bigelow

There’s no way she doesn’t win. Aside from doing an amazing job with the film, they’re going to give her this award to make up for her movie getting the shaft in the Best Picture race. Sometimes the Academy tries to be “fair” that way; like how they gave Russell Crowe an absolutely laughable Best Actor win for Gladiator to make up for him getting completely robbed of his deserved win for The Insider (have you ever seen that movie? It’s amazing; go get it on DVD, for real). Anyhow, she’s going to win, take it to the bank.

Best Actress

Should Win: Carey Mulligan
Will Win: Meryl Streep

I picked Meryl to upset the frontrunner (Kate Winslet) last year, and I was totally wrong. So this year, I’m hoping for her to upset again, this time overtaking Sandra Bullock. I loved The Blind Side. But awarding Sandra for playing a brassy Southern Belle would be like giving Vince Vaughn an Oscar for his 18th performance as a “wisecracking man child with a heart of gold.” I’d like to hope that Gabourey Sidibe could pull off the upset too, because she just seems so damn likable and how often is a 300 pound black woman going to have a shot at a Best Actress Oscar? But her performance wasn’t as special as some would have you believe, and the Academy is already going to hit their Plus Sized Black Woman Oscar Winner quotient by giving Supporting Actress to Mo’Nique.

Speaking of….

Best Supporting Actress

Should Win: Mo’Nique
Will Win: Mo’Nique

This win is the only slam dunk pick of the bunch. There’s basically no way she’s not getting it, and she was great in the movie. And I love that she talks honestly about how she doesn’t shave her legs and has an open marriage. She’s great. I loved Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air, so I’d almost like to see her upset if an upset is going to happen, but it probably won’t.

Best Actor

Should Win: Colin Firth
Will Win: Jeff Bridges

As I said, I’m seeing Crazy Heart later today; but I’m basing my Colin Firth pick on the films I’ve seen thus far. He was so great in A Single Man, even if Tom Ford’s overly stylized and obvious direction made me want to puke, and Julianne Moore tried way, way too hard throughout her shrieky performance. However, from everything I’m reading, it looks like The Dude is going to make this happen. But that’s just like, my opinion, man.

Best Supporting Actor

Should Win: Christoph Waltz
Will Win: Christoph Waltz

I forgot when pronouncing Mo’Nique the only slam dunk win that I was wrong–this is another slam dunk. And good for him, Hans Landa might be my favorite Tarantino villain since Mr. Blonde. Evil, suave, insanely intelligent, and rocking not only a badass full-length leather trench, but a giant Sherlock Holmes pipe. Love him.

Best Original Screenplay

Should Win: Inglourious Basterds
Will Win: The Hurt Locker

Tarantino won for Pulp Fiction’s screenplay in 1995, and I think the script for Inglourious Basterds blows it out of the water. Unfortunately, The Hurt Locker is going to get the nod here — as another make-up award for screwing it out of Best Picture.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Should Win: Up in the Air
Will Win: Up in the Air

I’d like to call a possible upset for An Education, but it faces the same problem that Carey Mulligan does in that not enough people saw it. Too bad, but I think Up in the Air will take this one home, and it was indeed a great script and a good movie, so I’m satisfied with it.

Best Animated Feature

Should Win: Up
Will Win: Up

Ok, this movie made me weep real tears in the FIRST TEN MINUTES. It was so, so, good. Also: Talking Dog.

(Squirell!)

Also give this a big thumbs up for being the first animated film since my fave, Beauty in the Beast, to get the Best Picture nod.

That’s it! No live blog for the Oscars this year, as I’m attending a party to watch it with other actual humans. But you can entertain yourself with last year’s live blog, which has my favorite title I’ve ever given a post.

Here’s hoping I leave the party 20 whole dollars richer. Wahoo!

I kid, I kid!

I’ve been meaning to write this post since last week. Perhaps I’ve been putting it off because my denial over the upcoming end of the best show on TV is pretty deep at this point.

That being said, some thoughts (if you haven’t seen the season premiere, this has spoilers for it):

- First off, if you’re not reading Jeff Jensen’s weekly recaps, you are doing yourself a grave disservice. I don’t know what he knows about anything else, but when it comes to LOST, he’s my own personal Einstein.

- Same goes for Jorge Garcia’s blog. Hurley is one of my favorites, and the actor who portrays him is equally awesome. He doesn’t actually discuss LOST that much, but it’s still a worthy read.

- I like to think that (some missteps aside) (Paolo and Nicki anyone?) the writers don’t do anything without a good reason. Which is the only thing I can think of to explain why, after the incredible finale last year when Juliet got sucked into the hatch and we all cried (or blubbered for about half an hour after the show ended, if you’re a loser like me), they would bother bringing her along back to 2007 with the other Lostaways only to die all over again. She had a perfect death scene, dare I say epic!

So, the only thing I can think of is that gibberish Juliet babbled at Sawyer (”lets get coffee sometime, we could go Dutch”) before finally kicking it will come back into play. THEORY ALERT! Maybe they re-meet in the alternate universe she created by setting off the bomb, and fall in love all over again. Personally, while I know many people are tickled by this theory, I think it’s a bunch of bullcrap. Because….

- If the alternate reality ends up being the final story (ie, that everyone on the island dies or something and ends up living the alternate life), I will basically firebomb ABC. As we’ve learned in just the first episode, there are many things that are quite different about this reality. Frankly, if we’re going by a “butterfly effect” thing here, where this alternate universe where the plane never crashed isn’t quite the same (notable differences include: Sayid being from Iran (?), Shannon not being on the plane, Desmond being on the plane, Charlie’s suicide attempt, Hurley being “lucky”, Sun (maybe) not speaking English), that means that these aren’t the characters we’ve invested years in rooting for. I don’t care about them. It was nice to see Boone again (mainly because he is smoking hot), but I could honestly give a crap–in my eyes, Boone died back in season one. And will the alternate reality give us updates on Libby, Mr. Eko, and Ana Lucia–or are we just supposed to forget about them?

- The Temple is totally unnecessary. Oh, I see, there obviously wasn’t enough freaky shit going on, we need to add an entire new layer and an entire new slew of “Others” into the mix. And oh, just to be original, we will have them dress funny and act mysterious and refuse to answer questions even though Jack and the gang are finally actually asking questions after five seasons of just accepting things at face value. Totally unnecessary.

- Dead!Juliet couldn’t have elaborated to Miles a little more? He seemed to have full convos with the dead in the past, yet all she gave him was “It worked”? It seems that his talent is only as limited as the writers need it to be for script purposes.

Don’t worry, there were some things I loved:

- Fake Locke (aka The Man in Black) revealed as Smokey. Phenomenal.

- Explanation of the ash that we’ve previously seen surrounding Jacob’s cabin: it acts as some sort of shield against Smokey. So was the smoke monster trapped inside the cabin, or did Jacob really “live” there and use it to keep him out? We assume Jacob knows about the ash, because he told Bram about its use (leaving out the fact that Smokey can sumo you out of your little protective ash circle with a boulder and impale you on a handy spike, RIP Bram)…what is it? How does it play into Smokey’s mechanics?

- Solid reveal that Hurley, like Miles, really can talk to the dead. He also does Miles better by showing he can see them as well. So, now we know that Charlie visiting him in the mental institution after he left the island was for real, along with, perhaps, some of his other hallucinations over the years. But it of course leads to more questions—why can’t he see everyone? Lots of people have died on the island…why doesn’t he see everyone?

Other questions:

- Is Claire still pregnant in the alternate reality?

- Is Sayid really alive or is he now a new Fake Locke? We know that Fake Locke was really Smokey the whole time, and Locke’s corpse remained in the coffin, so posession of a dead body doesn’t seem to be his MO. Did the dirty water just have a delayed reaction? Is he Jacob reincarnated?

- Does Rose still have cancer in alternate reality? Because that would be a BUMMER.

- Speaking of Rose, did her and Bernard also shift out of 1977 and into 2007 with the others when the bomb went off? If so, where are they? I’ll bet they are going to be pissed that Jack ruined their “retirement” without asking them. What a douche he can be.

- Now that they are in the same year, when will Jin and Sun be reuinited?? For christ’s sake, I sat through all of season 5 with them apart, let’s have something good happen, okay?

- Was Richard a slave on Black Rock?

Questions from Over the Years that I Want Answered Before We Wrap this Thing Up:

- What’s the deal with the “virus” and the “quarantine” and all those numbers-marked injections Desmond used to take?

- How does Smokey show you images from your life? What’s that clicking sound he makes? Can he only “appear” as dead people?

- What was with the polar bear experiments?

- Did they ever explain why The Others kidnapped the children? What were the “tests” they did on Walt?

- Speaking of Walt, what was the deal with him projecting himself into spots on the island? And the creepy talking backwards business?

- Who really killed Sayid’s wife? Who were the men Ben had him assassinating?

- What was with the “sickness” that overcame people on the freighter and caused them to go crazy?

For more nagging questions, please view this epic video. This stuff will make your head spin after a while so I’ve got to end it here. Share your own LOST thoughts in the comments, especially after tonight’s episode!

Facebook ads are a near constant source of blog posts when you have nothing else to say.

I used to complain about how Facebook used my single status to taunt me with ads questioning whether I was “29 and alone again?” or “Worried he’s not out there?”

Or they’d try to sell me on birth control pills while simultaneously claiming to “accept” my Virginia baby.

And then there’s the incident with the man-boobs.

The latest? They are trying, like an 80s soap opera villain with a faked pregnancy, to drive a wedge between me and my boyfriend:

This is a good point. Where IS my boyfriend!???? He’s in Chevy Chase, according to this very reliable Facebook ad. WHO DOES HE KNOW IN CHEVY CHASE???

Thanks Facebook. I’ll take care of this immediately and then you can get back to taunting me with singles ads. But this time, I’m 30! So they’ll be like “Hey Old Maid, worried about your womb cobwebs? Freeze what few eggs you have left today!”

I used to be a regular contributor at Blogstring.com, my buddy Nate’s most excellent 2.0/startup-marketing blog. I haven’t written in over a year, because I suck, but my email is still available there.

As such, spambots grab it and send spam that is essentially “from” me to god-knows-who. Spam-Sarah apparently really wants you to invest in some products that will, er, enhance your manhood.  I also love how they turn up in my gmail spam folder all at once, and beneath recipes for Spam Pie.

Oh and btw, Spam-Sarah is really NSFW…and while I approve of her use of “licentious” as a word-nerd, her general grammar is just…sigh.

Look, Facebook, I get that you need to make a buck. I generally don’t find the ads you display all that intrusive or offensive (with the exception of the “29 and Single?” ones I used to get, which I translated as “29 and worried about all the tumbleweeds rolling around in the barren wasteland of your womb?”). They’re there, I’m used to it. (Actually though while we’re on the subject, what’s with the one that says Obama wants moms to go back to work, and it’s an animated pic of a lady doing bicycle crunches?)

But on this one, you might want to double check your records…Not sure what I said or did to get this ad, but, ummmm…yeaaaaaaah.

(Slowly leaves the room…)

My first feminist role model was, undeniably, Julia Sugarbaker of “Designing Women”.

This character knew her way around a takedown, whether expressing her point of view on sexual harrassment or standing up to a bitchy beauty queen.

In short, Julia Sugarbaker didn’t take any crap from anyone; nor did she suffer fools easily.

I think I can say with authority that the smart and talented women in social media, particularly those at Podcamp Boston 4 last weekend, all have a little Julia in them. How else can we describe the spirited and thoughtful posts springing out of the Podcamp discussion on gender and social media?

So why do I still feel so disheartened?

I think it’s because by and large, the women on the lawn that day seemed to fall in step behind Chris Penn’s conclusions. To wit, that sexism, or a “glass ceiling” effect, has nothing to do with the lack of women on the social media “A-list.” That anyone who thinks so is just falling victim to “self imposed limitations.”

The idea seems to be that if women aren’t succeeding, they have only themselves to blame. Quite a convenient theory, I’d say.

The argument that claiming sexism plays a part in any challenge we face is encouraging women to “play the victim” is far from new. It’s a straw man that’s tapped repeatedly in debates about feminism. And it positively reeks of privilege. Male privilege specifically, although the number of women adhering to it also hints that it might also be privilege of experience. That is, if you haven’t experienced something personally, it must not exist.

In an old but good post about privilege, Barry Deutsch quotes a paper on white privilege. Its author argues that white people are “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.”

With regards to sexism, it’s the “invisible system” that was the crux of my comments during the Podcamp gender discussion. It’s not always about some tangible, moustache-twirling man making a conscious decision to discriminate against women, or keep them off the stage at conferences. I argued that cultural issues are at play here, unspoken “rules” that we’re taught from a young age, and the constant messages we receive about women in the public eye. We are scrutinized far more closely, and judged much more harshly. We’re bombarded with messages that our appearance matters more than anything.

I mentioned at the sesssion popular livecaster iJustine as a woman who has “made it” in social media. Is it a coincidence that, along with being very smart working very hard, she is also a blonde bombshell? On the flip side, someone should ask her how much disgusting, sexual, or harassing email she gets. Someone should read about Julia Roy’s experiences being an attractive woman at the top of the social media game. Better yet, go back and read the story of what happened to Kathy Sierra.

Something tells me the men on the A-list aren’t dealing with these types of issues. Is it any wonder we might be somewhat reluctant to promote ourselves? What are the auto-suggestions when you type “iJustine is” into Google?

Naturally. As a woman if you’re hot, you’re golden. Unless of course you have opinions. Then you’re also annoying. Can’t have that.

Penn’s major comment during the session was that it “doesn’t care what’s between your legs, just between your ears.”

I was shocked at this statement, and moreso that the group actually erupted into applause after he said it. I basked in the irony that everyone seemed to think he was making some sort of statement on equality by using provocative language that dismisses the entire feminist movement as, basically, a bunch of whining vaginas.

Have there not ALWAYS been women with plenty going on between their ears? Are there not currently TONS of women in social media who are incredibly smart, incredibly accomplished, and incredibly under-represented everywhere–from the stage at SxSW to the Power 150?

Chris says we need to just “be awesome.” I’m sorry, I was unaware that we weren’t already awesome. I can name at least 100 awesome women right now. Why is it the responsibility for changing the state of affairs all on us?

Continuing his odd inclination to use language in this debate that boils women down to their genitals, Chris says of Michelle Wolverton, the terrific lead organizer of Podcamp Boston, that she “didn’t become lead organizer of the first and oldest PodCamp by demanding a chance because she’s got a vagina.”

Excuse me, but what? Find me one example of any woman who has written or spoken about this issue who has claimed that women should be given more speaking roles becuase of our “vaginas.”

This seems to be a consistent confusion, so let me clear it up right now. No one is saying that conference organizers just pick any old women off the street and give them a mic just because they’re women. No one.

We’re saying that women who are already equally deserving of these chances, women who ARE “awesome,” have been overlooked. And we’re asking that it be corrected.

It’s been a couple weeks since I posted here. I’ve been swamped personally and professionally, and after my sound drubbing at the hands of Big Red in the Great July Blog-off (aka, Another One of My Dumb Ideas), I decided to just take a little writing break.

But it’s fitting my first post back should be about Podcamp Boston 4, as it has hooked me up to the juvenation machine with regards to getting excited about my usual nerdtasticness . In fact, I might start geeking out a lot more on this blog, instead of just using it as a repository for my lame thoughts on the latest episode of “True Blood” (which I thought sucked, by the way, tonight’s had better be an improvement), and other assorted inanery.

After spending the last 36 hours fully geeking out, I am zonked.

I can has nap?

But I’m also psyched. I’m psyched about all the great discussions I had this weekend, and all the great connections I made, and people I met, and all the incredibly smart women who have (believe me) about a thousand different things to say about the state of gender and technology, and all the old Boston social media friends that I got to spend time with for the first time in forever. (I forgot how much I missed them.)

Most of all, I’m psyched to take everything from this weekend and pour it into my work–I never blog about work and I don’t intend to start now, but I’ve been doing lots of exciting stuff lately. And I sometimes forget how lucky I am–based on my Twitter stream from the last couple days, it is pretty obvious how passionate I am about this stuff. And I get to immerse myself in it every day–how many people can say that?!

Passion runs rampant in the geek community. This was a flamingly gorgeous weekend in Boston, and hundreds of people gave up time with their family and friends, or even just time to sit outside with a book, to commune with fellow geeks and talk about social media. That’s passion, people. And I love it!

I will have much more to say about Podcamp in the next few days. But in the meantime, I need a nap and a beer. Not necessarily in that order.

What a disappointment!

So, short of the crazies who get dressed up as witches and wizards and line up for days for tickets to these things, there are few who were more excited for the latest Harry Potter movie than me.

I still remember getting the book when it was released in 2005. It arrived the day of release from Amazon. I got into my big comfy arm chair that I had at the time (why the hell did I give that thing away?), started reading and didn’t stop until I’d devoured all 600 pages. I then buried my face into a throw pillow and sobbed for 20 minutes straight.

I didn’t shed a tear at the movie, and not only did I yawn about half a dozen times, I even checked my watch at least twice. There was no such boredom at any of the 5 preceding films (despite their ups and downs in quality).

The biggest problem with the movie is that in attempting to stay as true as possible to the books, everything felt like it was on “hurry up”, and so much got glossed over.

There wasn’t nearly enough McGonagle. Not enough of the Weasley’s joke shop. Not enough Hagrid (and I’m not even that big a Hagrid fan), not enough Neville, not enough Snape, not enough of anything. The only thing the film got truly right was Harry and Dumbledore’s relationship. It royally dropped the ball on Harry and Ginny’s. How do we dedicate so much time to Ron and stupid Lavender and hardly any to Harry and Ginny?

I also can’t stand the kid who plays Draco. He was perfectly cast at age 11 but…purberty reeeeally didn’t suit this poor guy. He looks far too wimpy/nerdy/geeky. Malfoy is supposed to be at least somewhat menacing, isn’t he? Instead he looks far more like the kid who gets bullied, not the other way around–amiright?

Gimme yer lunch money! What do you mean, no? Why are you laughing??

In the end, I found the movie profoundly disappointing. Still rank it better than Azkaban (despised that one), but below Goblet and Phoenix, still holding to the top spots. (If you’re wondering, and are as big a geek as me, I do not count the first two films much in my rankings. From Azkaban onward it was an entirely different tone–the Chris Columbus films were more “children’s movies” than the direction the series has taken since.

Is it possible to die of geekery? Because I might.

Well…almost back.

As you may have read over on Matt’s blog, I was hacked recently (well, I never) and my blog was cut to ribbons. It was actually deleted altogether. I pictured Matt with a big evil mustache, twirling and cackling as he tapped away at his evil keyboard, thwarting all my plans to utterly destroy him in our July blog-off. He’s claiming innocence, I remain suspicious.

I still can’t seem to upload images (and images are missing from old entries) and my dashboard looks 100% different than it did before, so I might need to continue consults with my buddy/webmaster, the brilliant Nathan Burke, to whom I owe at least a few growlers of blueberry beer when I’m in Boston for Podcamp for fixing things up around here.

The solution is only to post several entries in one day and post-date them to take care of the deficit. Which I will do. Tomorrow.

Until then? Sleep!

I got an iPhone 3GS about a week ago. I love it. LOVE it. I don’t really need to explain all the reasons I love it–anyone who has an iPhone totally understands, and anyone who doesn’t is obviously just totally consumed by jealousy.

For our latest in the July blog-off, Momsey picked the iPhone as the topic, namely our favorite app. I’m not sure yet, becuase I’ve only had it a week and I actually haven’t downloaded all that many applications. I like Urban Spoon for restaurant recommendations, the iFart for juvenile amusement (I really don’t understand people who can hear a fake fart noise called “I am Fartacus” and not crack up laughing), TweetDeck for Twitter use, TrailGuru for tracking my runs, Beejive for chatting..

Oh, and Brushes–it was five bucks. And amazingly awesome. Except I suck at it. But still, you can create actual awesome finger paintings, and I love to doodle. What can I say?

But other than that I really haven’t spent a lot of time in the App Store. So instead of using this post to sing the praises of Shazam, which I agree with Matt, IS really really cool…I’d rather spend it asking you iPhone users out there to weigh in. Aside from the apps I’ve arleady mentioned, what’s the one you can’t live without? What’s the best free versus paid?

Sorry this post is short and lame, but with a friend in town this weekend, my brain is functioning somewhere between punch drunk, sleep deprived, and “blergh.” Thinking about eating a low fat fudgecicle and going to bed early. After “Dexter,” of course.