Bryce Moore's Blog, page 157
February 27, 2017
Some Thoughts on the 2017 Oscars
It’s too bad for Jimmy Kimmel, really. Up until that gigantic blunder at the end of the show, I thought the production had gone quite well. Kimmel had kept things interesting and entertaining. The speeches had been fine. The winners were spread around a fair bit, so it didn’t feel like any one show was dominating too much. People didn’t clap in the middle of the In Memoriam segment.
Sure, the Moana singer got hit in the head with a flag, but that’s life, right? I was really enjoying myself, and I thought it was one of the better shows in recent memory.
And then they announced the wrong Best Picture winner. Not that it was Warren Beatty or Faye Dunaway’s fault. As I’ve read up on the fiasco, it came down to there being multiple envelopes for each category (up to three, from what I’ve read). So Beatty was handed the Best Actress envelope. He didn’t read the outside of it (who would?), and so he was quite surprised when he opened it and saw Emma Stone had just won for La La Land. He gave it a funny look. Faye, thinking he was being a dink, then just read what was printed in big letters. La La Land.
Cue the music and the acceptance speeches. But seriously, Price Waterhouse (the accountants who run the voting), you had so many avenues to fix this. I blame you. Step one, make sure the right envelope is given out. Step two, make sure to have someone on hand to rush in and correct mistakes before the speeches are being made. You’re right there on the side of the stage. You telling me you can’t beat an entire group of people walking up from the audience? Have a mechanism in place to make sure this doesn’t happen. I felt very bad for La La Land and Moonlight.
I also felt like Kimmel’s response was pretty poor. He tried to make it into a big joke. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t the time for laughing about it. Apologize on behalf of the show, let the new winners make their speech, and apologize once again, then move on to the ending. Steve Harvey jokes? Nope. Not that I really blame Kimmel for trying to go for humor. He’s a comedian. It’s what he does. And in a high stress situation like that, you’ll default to your instincts.
It’ll certainly be a memorable show for years to come. No doubt about that. But don’t forget in all the focus on the last 10 minutes of the show that the first few hours were solid.
As usual, I had seen very few of the actual movies nominated. Maybe one year soon I’ll be able to get out to see more of them. My kids are getting older, so regular date nights are becoming more and more likely, right? And movies are great for that sort of thing. I’d love to be able to watch more new releases. We shall see. But even having not seen them all, I enjoy reading up about them, following the predictions, and making my picks.
For the record, I ended up in a tie for the Oscar the Grouch hat last night. (Well, one person beat out the two of us who tied, but he also didn’t attend the party. So he might kind of win in spirit I guess, but as far as getting the hat goes, you need to attend in person. I had one person fly in from England to win it one year. If she kept putting in entries from over the pond and kept winning, would she qualify for the hat every year? Nope.)
So I half won the hat. Which is good. If only I’d gone for Moonlight, I’d have thought I lost and then ended up winning, which would have been perfect.
Next year . . .
February 24, 2017
A New Approach to Airfare
I’ve been searching for plane tickets for a good long while, I’d say. I can’t remember when exactly I started searching for my own tickets. Back in mid-2000s, I’d guess. And in those years, my approach to searching has changed over time. For the first long while, Travelocity was my go to website for searches. Then after a while, Kayak came in to take its place. I’ve branched out as far as how wide a net I cast when I do my searches as well. These days I include Portland, Boston, Bangor, Quebec, or Montreal. (Ottawa is dead to me. Sorry, Ottawa.)
It seems like each trip, I learn a bit more about the search process and come up with new approaches to get the most bang for my buck. I can’t just search Kayak anymore, for instance. I need to search Southwest’s site on its own, since their prices don’t show up in aggregators. And I search for days around when I want to go–not just the date in question.
Of course, the airlines have made things even more difficult. Charging for bags has made things really tricky, as you can’t just compare the base fares. You need to take into account if you’ll have any luggage, and how much it’ll cost on each carrier to have that luggage. Some carriers even charge for carryons now, which is an even bigger pain. But as I’ve been searching for my next trip (heading to Utah this summer), I came across an idea to make one of the new tweaks an advantage to me, instead of what I thought at first was a disadvantage.
It used to be, you’d search for a flight, and the results would always be cheaper if you bundled flights together. A roundtrip ticket was cheaper than two one ways. That sort of went without saying. But now I realized that airlines have pretty much ditched that concept completely. They charge per leg of the flight. I’m heading to ALA in Chicago, and a ticket from Boston to Chicago to Salt Lake to Boston was less than Boston to Salt Lake to Boston. Why? Because you could switch between carriers, and each carrier was having different sales. You could use those sales and combine them to hopscotch your way across the country.
Naturally, I couldn’t buy that cheaper ticket right then. I needed to square things away with work and make sure I had the time off, and then talk to Denisa to see if she and the kids wanted to come to Chicago with me. Once I had it all set, then the fare was gone. Curses!
But the approach stayed with me. What if instead of insisting I buy all my tickets at once, I just broke the trip up into smaller legs and search for each one individually? I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I’m giving that a shot this time. I’m basically doing three searches. One for Boston to Chicago. One for Chicago to Salt Lake. One for Salt Lake to Boston.
Already I think it’s paying off. I just bought my return tickets from Salt Lake to Boston, direct, for $127/person. A roundtrip direct flight was costing around $450. I think that’s a really good price for that flight. Let’s hope the other legs end up coming down some, as well.
One additional advantage I already see about this approach is that it opens up even more avenues for searches. I can fly into one airport and out from another. Leave from Portland, if it’s cheaper, and fly into Boston. (I’ll be parking in Augusta, where it’s free, thanks very much.) Breaking apart a trip into legs gives a lot more flexibility in the search, and flexibility is power.
I’m not sure if I’d do this for a shorter trip. But this is going to be a couple of weeks, which can prove to make a real difference. I’ll let you know how it goes. If I could do the whole trip for around $350, I’ll consider it a success.
February 23, 2017
First Overnighter
Believe it or not, but last night was the first night Tomas has been away from home on his own for the whole night. No family there at all. We don’t do sleepovers as a rule, so he hasn’t had that sort of experience before. But the young men in our local church congregation have set out for a winter campout. Two nights, one of which is going to be spent in a snow cave of their own construction.
We’ve gone camping before as a family (years ago), but certainly never during the winter. So this trip involved a lot of new purchases: a better sleeping bag, thermal sleeping mat, etc. He left yesterday all geared up for an expedition. Which no doubt it will be. It’s a two mile hike to a cabin in the woods, which is how many a horror movie starts out. They pulled their supplies in on sleds. He was very excited, though I made sure not to tell him just how far two miles is. He’d gone skiing yesterday for the whole morning, so I imagine he was pretty beat at the end of the day.
It was strange not to have him home. You’d think he’s off on his own, gaming or reading or working on homework, that it wouldn’t feel too much different to have him not there at all. You’d be wrong. We definitely felt like one less person was in the house. Strange to think that in about five years, he’ll be leaving the house for good. His main home will be elsewhere, whether on his mission or at college.
I’ll wait to blog about that until we’re closer to it, thank you very much.
I’m really wondering what it’s been like for him. My hope is that he realizes there’s a lot more to life that Denisa and I have been helping him out with, and he comes home with new perspective.
Maybe that’s wishful thinking.
In any case, it’s exciting for him. He was really looking forward to the trip. He’ll be home tomorrow around noon. Here’s hoping he’s not an icicle . . . (The weather here in Maine has been really warm the last bit. It was 56 degrees yesterday. I’m not really worried about the temperature. And even if it gets too cold, there’s the cabin there for them to retreat to, should they need to.)
Good luck, Tomas!
February 22, 2017
Behind the Scenes on Another Birthday Video
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that a few years ago, as I tried to come up with something to get my mom for her birthday, I came up with the idea of making her something, instead. So I enlisted the family, and we made a music video to Copacabana, since Barry Manilow is one of my mom’s favorite artists.
That was a lot of fun, though for reasons I’ve forgotten, we took the next year off and did something else for her birthday. (Maybe it was the fact that we were dealing with a 10 month old baby at the time.) But we returned in 2015 with The Lion Sleeps Tonight:
And then in 2016 with Close to You:
This year, I wanted to branch out a bit. Enough with the music videos. As I brainstormed potential directions, I hit on an idea. Each year on my birthday, my mom has always told me she knew right when I was born, because it was right after The Waltons finished. She was a big Waltons fan. Go figure. I’ve known that story my entire life, so this time, I decided to adapt the opening credits of The Waltons. For those of you who might not be familiar with the source material, here it is:
I have never watched an episode of The Waltons. I’m guessing this opening scene shows all the main characters of the family coming together to celebrate Dad buying . . . a new radio? No clue. But it looked like something we could totally do up here in Maine. Of course, it’s the middle of winter right now, so we had to adapt it a bit, ending up with A Maine Edition of The Waltons:
As far as projects went, this was pretty smooth. I spent time dissecting the credit shot by shot, then figured out how to translate those for our family. As usual, the biggest obstacle was figuring out how to film everything. I wanted a shot with the whole family in it, but we didn’t have someone to hold the iPad. (I shot and edited the whole thing in iMovie on my iPad.) Denisa came up with the solution: I just backed the car up into the right spot and propped the iPad up on the top of it with some books.
Other than that, it was kid wrangling to make sure everyone stayed focused. (Hard to do when it’s a lovely day and there’s all that cool snow to play in.) Then I also discovered that the music I bought for the movie was a bit shorter than the actual theme song, so I had to toss out my timing notes and just go based on the audio cues. Yes, I realize that I obsess about this probably more than is healthy, but that’s how I roll. I wanted to get it as good as I could.
There are a couple of goofs. For example, a continuity error where Denisa should be on the porch already (in the second shot when I’m already out of the car), but it all came together well, and I’m proud of it.
In any case, happy birthday, Mom!
February 21, 2017
At Capacity
I post on here a lot about all the things I do. About the goals I make and the order I bring into my life so that I can get all the different things I want to do done. But it occurred to me today that one thing I haven’t posted about is a rather serious side effect of all that. Something that happens to me on a fairly regular basis.
I get burned out.
It doesn’t (thankfully) throw me off my game for too long, but there are days when I just look at all the things I have planned for myself, and I don’t want to do any of them. It’s not that I have something else I’d rather do. It’s that I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to write, don’t want to read, don’t want to play games, don’t want to watch movies, don’t want to clean, don’t want to get chores done, don’t want to go outside, don’t want to exercise, don’t want to do anything at all.
This can be a really frustrating experience, especially when I’m so used to getting so much done. But I think it’s a reaction to that. I have my days pretty well planned out before the week begins, and there’s not a whole lot of room in them for error. Before I open my eyes each day, there’s a brand new list of chores and responsibilities I need to get done, and it’s typically the same chores and responsibilities I needed to get done the day before.
Not that I think I’m alone in this. We all have our routines and responsibilities, right? But I do wonder if my hyper goal setting lifestyle makes me more susceptible to it than most. It’s like those goals feel like a weight around my neck, pulling me down constantly. They’re not particularly heavy, but they’re constant. Always there. The only day I usually take off is Sunday, and part of me is beginning to wonder if that’s healthy for myself.
The thing is, it feels wrong to take Saturdays off as well. After all, those are the days I don’t have my regular work, so I theoretically have all this extra time anyway. What’s a half hour of exercise and an hour of writing? The exercise will help me to stay healthy and thin, and the writing . . . if I were to give up writing on Saturdays, I’d end up with 52,000 fewer words written per year. That’s a whole lot of words, folks, and I just don’t feel comfortable shutting the door on that productivity.
So instead I push through. Even on the days I don’t feel like getting anything done. I force myself to go on and churn through that to do list, item by item. But what this also means is that I often don’t feel like doing anything else. Like anything added to my to do list is going to break me. This is Not a Good Thing when it comes to a happy family life, since there are often things I need to do as a father or husband to help out. My kids will need help with homework. Denisa will need help around the house. And ironically, even fun things we want to do as a family can feel like a burden when I’m feeling burned out. They somehow transform into just another item on the to do list that needs to be checked off before I can be finished.
I don’t have any real solutions here to give you. No bright ideas about how I handle this, though I assume many of you deal with the same struggles. I really just wanted to take the time to post this so that if there are those of you out there who are facing the same issues, you realize you’re not facing them alone. We always try to present our best face to the public, and that can lead to a lot of insecurity and self doubt when life for us seems so much more difficult than life for others.
And that’s all I really have to say about that now.
February 17, 2017
Movie Review: Spotlight
Oscar time is almost upon us, so it’s high time I finally caught up on last year’s winner, right? Spotlight is available right now on Netflix, and it’s a flat out incredible film.
I’d been avoiding it mainly because it seemed like it would be a downer of a movie. The investigation into the Catholic priest child abuse scandal in Boston? How in the world could that do anything but depress me? And when I’m busy, I don’t want to have my entertainment bring me down. But the time had finally come to check it out, and I’m very glad I did.
In a nutshell, this movie is the best depiction of the research process that I’ve ever seen. From the forming of the initial question (Is it true that Catholic priests were abusing children?) to the way it deepens as the research unfolds (how many? When? Where?), it’s all there in black and white. As a professional librarian, this is the sort of thing that really excites me. (Go figure.) Research can be incredibly difficult and complex, but at the same time, it can be very exciting to do, and this movie somehow captures all of that. (Probably because the stakes on the line are so much higher than with many other research projects.)
More than that, it’s got excellent acting and writing. There’s a reason it won the Oscar for best original screenplay. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton both stand out in the cast (Keaton is so much better in this than in Birdman, which felt much more like a gimmick to me than anything else.) The plot ratchets up the tension well, and by the end you just have to keep watching because you’re so intent on finding out what happens.
The movie is rated R for the subject matter and a few swear words (2 or 3 f bombs), but I really feel like this is one movie everyone should watch. Not just to find out how awesome research is, but to see what happens when people in power use that power to cover up evil. I could just as easily see this sort of thing play out in Salt Lake City as Boston. Churches do a lot of good, and so if all that good comes at the cost of a little bit of bad, what’s the harm? That sort of thinking can really fester and rot away the insides of a good organization, until good people are making very bad decisions. It sets up a false dichotomy, because it’s not an either/or situation. Good churches can both do good and not do bad. It’s not like the Catholic church could only do the good things it was accomplishing only on that condition that 6% of its priests were able to continue to molest children.
So if you typically avoid R-rated films, this is one I’d consider watching anyway.
I gave it 10/10.
