The following is an actual (read: completely made up) transcript of a conversation between writer/producers of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards from Sunday night:

Producer: The show is only 3 hours long. How do we make people want to go to bed before the Best Picture is announced and shortchange the winner-to-be’s acceptance speech due to time constraints?

Writer: Another musical number with Neil Patrick Harris?

Producer: Nah, people enjoy him. Might give them a second wind. We want people to go to SLEEP.

Writer: What if we unnecessarily put five actors on stage before both the Best Actor & Best Actress nominees are unveiled…Yeah, Five actors who….who….Who have previous relationships with the nominees and….and….

Producer: Yes….yes…GO on….you’re getting there…

Writer: …who have previous relationships with the nominees and who each ramble for 5 minutes about what great people the nominees are and include a bunch of inside jokes? That’ll make the show AT LEAST 30 minutes longer than necessary, right?!

Producer: Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Say you remember the first time you and I were working on the Academy Awards five years ago? It was your first time doing it and you said to me….

(Five Minutes later)

Producer (cont’d): …and I’ll never forget the fact that you pimp slapped an intern. That really stuck with me. Congratulations on your success, Writer.

Editor’s Note: I’ll give you one guess as to what my only gripe was with Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony. Of course if they really wanted to trim down speeches and time, maybe they should have heightened security…

Fun Facts About Kathryn Bigelow…

1.) She used to be married to Jim Cameron.

Here he is wishing her congrats last night - nice find @msaleem

2.) She directed the timeless, tour de force - Keanu’s magnum opus, and one of Swayze’s magnum opi - Point Break.

…that clip is about twice as long as the tribute they gave Swayze last night, which I found irresponsible.

Anything else I should know about Bigelow?

Ethnocentric World Cup prediction of the day:

The game between the U.S.A. and England on the first Saturday of competition will be as highly regarded as a temperate Super Bowl - say Tampa Bay vs. Oakland in 2002.

The U.S. will triumph 1-0, resulting in, hopefully, a drinking freely in the street event for those of us who choose to get engaged. I’ll probably be here, if you’re in New York and would like to join in the fray.

Too bold?

….

Today indeed marks 100 days from the start of the World Cup. Seems like just yesterday we were talking about the draw ceremony - I learned what the group of death is, but am still not sure why Charlize Theron was part of the selection process?

FIFA President, Joseph F. Blatter marked the day by commending South Africa for their preparation. It full of praise, both literal and metaphorical.

From FIFA.com:

The FIFA World Cup in Africa is a love story - a love story between the African continent and myself which began when I was the technical director of FIFA. It has come a long way in a long time. It has been a road travelled with trust, confidence but with patience as well. When this country was awarded the World Cup, there was a lot of work to do. We had to convince people that one day we would give back something to Africa. Africa has given so much to the world and to the world of football.



I’m very proud and very happy that this love story is coming to the ‘wedding celebration’. We are speaking about 100 days to go, but this all goes back to 17 May 1998 when I was campaigning for the FIFA Presidency for the first time and I said that, ‘We have to bring the World Cup to Africa.’ This is what I mean by having patience, as South Africa did not win the first time in 2000 when it lost by one vote to Germany, but with patience and perseverance you managed to win the right to host the World Cup in 2004.

Check out the rest of Blatter’s remarks here: Blatter: The dream is alive

Photo via FIFA.com

The not-exactly decorated UK Olympic squad returns home tomorrow after just one athlete received a medal. Amy Williams, pictured above, who’s as cute as she is, I’m assuming, goddam crazy got the gold in skeleton.

In an article in the Guardian today, the Team UK brass is pleading that they need more funding if they’re going to do better in 2014. The team fell short of their lofty overall goal to win three medals - sigh, could have beaten Latvia (two silvers in the men’s skeleton and doubles luge).

Read more about the internal strife that is the British Olympic Association: UK Sport sticking to no compromise policy over Winter Games funding

Photo via The Guardian

The Tiger Woods press conference is going to be Grade A caliber B.S…unless he’s cries. If he cries, it’s going to rule (and hopefully inspire a slow jam). But most likely, it’ll be awful, not at all like this…

via videosift.com

The Wu Tang Clan, not likely to be amongst the six people who were invited to today’s Tiger event.

Tuesday night, I went to my first Trey Anastasio concert at Terminal 5 in NYC (conveniently located on 11th Ave near all the bad nudie bars. Woohoo!). For those of you who do not know who Trey is, he is the lead singer of Phish. For those of you who do know who he is, below is the set list:

Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB
February 16, 2010
Terminal 5
New York, NY

Set One: Shine, Cayman Review, Push On ‘Til the Day, Alaska, Mozambique, Gotta Jibboo, All That Almost Was, Drifting, Liquid Time, The Birdwatcher, Night Speaks to a Woman, Tuesday, Brian and Robert*, Strange Design*, Sample in a Jar*, Chalkdust Torture*, Wilson*

Set Two: Sand, Alive Again, Last Tube> Show of Life, Sultans of Swing, Ether Sunday, Black Dog

Encore: Magilla, First Tube

* – Trey Solo Acoustic

Now, I am not a huge Trey fan. I like some of his music, he’s a phenomenal guitar player, and it was an excuse to drink beer and hang with my buddies on a Tuesday night (I sincerely hope I have not offended any Phish Heads reading this by saying that). Here is what I learned:

1) I will get the sophomoric, frat-boy comments out of the way first: We saw one woman we deemed attractive. Moving on…

2) Several of the songs Trey and Classic TAB played? They originally wrote ‘em and they were later adopted by Phish, prompting one buddy to say “HA! Phish is like a glorified cover band!” (again, Phish Heads, he is a big Trey fan. He was kidding. Please no hippie voodoo on us).

3) The concert started at 8:30 and lasted (minus a short break in the middle) until midnight. Set two was 70 minutes alone. However, the energy was high the entire time and it’s hard not to get excited when there’s a second-set ending cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”:

Get the Led Out…

4) Trey ended the show with “First Tube,” the first song he wrote with Classic TAB. Enjoy this jam-tastic bit from 10/25/08:

Trey with Classic Tab - \”First Tube\”

5) Finally, the concert was a blast (if you get a chance to check the band out, after one concert I suggest you do so) but there was a TINY part of me that was hoping we’d get a surprise guest…like this one:

Phish featuring The Boss

For all you romantics out there, here’s what happens when you search for love on the internet - Google vs. Facebook…

Poems and bones.

Cookie dough & pillow fights.

You don’t want to know what the Twitter search revealed, or (goes w/o saying) any number of Craigslist searches.

Happy Valentines Day, lovers.

…and Happy Nat’l Real Talk Day as well.