Thanks to the accelerated awards schedule, this year's Oscar nominees will be announced earlier on the calendar than ever - tomorrow morning. As I have since 1997, I've put together my annual, blogarrific predictions of the five films that will be nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards:

1. The Departed
   
2. Dreamgirls
   
3. Babel
   
4. The Queen
   
5. ( Read more... )

Last week was so exhausting - for pleasant reasons, mostly - that I'm now forced to do one of those catchall, week-in-review LJ posts. But I'll spare the disinterested from my spew with the magic of lj-cut tags.

( My iPod died on Friday and was replaced by Sunday with a top-of-the-line iPod video. )

We had an action-packed weekend, as bradamant and I piled into el__guapo's and online_stalker's car and drove down the Eastern seaboard for the first-ever VirginFest concert. The concert was in Baltimore; but we drove on to D.C. the night before to crash with my uncle Michael and his wife Annie, my two youngest/hippest elder relatives. They let us all crash at their lovely ( Read more... )

FYI to those who've been reading my Charting the Charts posts: after three weeks of, shall we say, test-marketing, I'm moving them over to my "official" blog. This week's edition, replete with news about Trousersnake and underage pop tarts, is here.

If you're so inclined and haven't done so, I recommend adding the LJ feed molanphypop to your friendslist. ( Read more... )

Behold, the new classic parody video from "Weird Al" Yankovic, "White and Nerdy". Funniest thing he's done since "Smells Like Nirvana," and actually a better hip-hop parody than "Amish Paradise."

Not to spoil too much, but - favorite lines:

• "Keep your forty, I'll just have an Earl Gray tea."
  
• "My rims never spin - to the contrary / You'll find that ( Read more... )

URGENT! Concert-related question.

Beck is doing a short tour for his new album. NYC date is Wednesday, 18 October, at The Theater at MSG. Tix are $55 via RipOffMaster and are already on sale (as of 4pm this afternoon). I can't buy 'em till tomorrow - credit-card issue - but I am thinking of going. Anyone interested?

I'm a day behind schedule, because my day job is actually kinda busy this week. But better late than never, here's what's going on in this week's Billboard charts.

Go shorty, it's ya B'Day. As expected last week, Beyoncé Knowles storms to #1 with her new album B'Day (released the day after her 25th birthday). Less expected was the total - about ( Read more... )

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Here's what's going on in this week's Billboard charts.

Voice of both the Disco and iPod Generations. As predicted in this space a week ago, Mr. Robert Zimmerman scores his first-ever #1 debut, biggest-ever SoundScan week and first chart-topper in 30 years, as Modern Times takes the top of the album chart. Presumably Steve Jobs, Boomer mogul and ( Read more... )

Inspired by several of my LJ pals, most specifically damonbradl, I'm going to do one of those weekend-recap posts. Except instead of organizing it by days, I'm going to organize it by topic - in my case, by pop-culture ephemera. Since Friday was such a quiet day at work for me, let's start the weekend recap with Thursday and the VMAs.

MTV Video Music Awards ( Read more... )