The Hurt Locker turned out to be the big winner, edging out Avatar. I didn’t see the movie, so I can’t comment on it, other than it was great to see Bigelow beat her ex-husband James Cameron and become the first woman to win an Oscar for Direction of a Feature. Speaking of James Cameron, how ridiculous is the man? I mean, obviously he’s an absolute genius who knows what he’s doing – no arguing that, but his ego and weirdness bothers me. I love how whenever Avatar won an award, the recipient felt the need to point out James Cameron is amazing. Can’t you just picture him putting this in their contract? Great times! However, I did find it amusing that they sat Bigelow — Cameron’s ex-wife and main competition for Best Direction — right in front of Cameron. And to his credit, he was a great sport about his loss, cracking a big smile and applauding for his ex-wife. He was a gracious loser later on as well, from what I’m seeing on-line, even joking with his former wife — http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kyy65bYCta1qzocrco1_500.jpg.

There were no surprises anywhere else. Jeff Bridges won the award for Best Actor in a much weaker field from last year’s amazing performances, while I’m assuming George Clooney came a close second in the voting for putting a great performance in Up in the Air. Sandra Bullock had a great speech when she accepted the Oscar for Best Female Lead, and in my opinion deserved the nod for her role in The Blind Side. Mo’nique took home Best Supporting Actress and had an interesting edge-y speech, while Christoph Waltz took the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his amazing role in Inglourious Basterds In my opinion, this was the strongest category this year!

Elsewhere, Up took Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score and rightfully so, as Pixar once again reigned supreme on Oscar night. The Best Documentary Feature left a strong impression on me as the entries are all movies you should go out of your way to see if you get the chance. The winner — The Cove — particularly is a great flick I highly recommend, among with Food Inc..

I thought Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a tremendous job hosting the festivities. They were very funny together, and had a nice chemistry that made them great co-hosts. Martin has always been great in this role! I also like that the Academy didn’t use the same format as last year, where the four major categories (Lead and Supporting Actor & Actress) had five previous winners do the presentation. This year, only Best Actor & Actress had five others introduce the nominees while last year’s counterpart winners presented the victors. Overall, a good show! Let’s hope 2010 is good for movies so that the 83rd edition of the Oscars is a great one!

Well, only the next day, I got a nice pleasant little surprise as I logged into my facebook account. A new layout!

Facebook loves to do this every year or so, it seems. They change their site around, and while it’s never really clear why (And God knows, I love reading their B.S. reasons they put up!), it’s always clear that one thing happens — more and more personal information is leaked out, and the site controls your interaction with people even more.

For example, I don’t know if everyone is aware, but every time there’s a layout change on Facebook, your Privacy settings might get tweaked. I found that out the hard way! So be sure to check ALL of your Settings after a layout change, to make sure they’re set on what you want.

Further, it seems that the layout changes are really made to be able to sneak a few more ads in and to force you to use more apps and other Facebook-related crap that will require you to submit your whole life to a third party.

Look, the folks at Facebook obviously know what they’re doing. They’re the #1 social-network group in the world, and have made millions through their site. However, it’s people like that you should be most scared of! Not only do they have access to so much information, it’s almost as if they’re forcing you to communicate in a way they want. Another prime example of what I was talking about in my “Communication is Dead” entry!

Every time there’s been a Facebook layout change, people have complained. It never seems to be a “good” change, so to speak. Here’s my advice to Facebook.com — Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Instead of making Layout changes that make absolutely no sense, why don’t you try and figure out how to fix your Facebook Chat application because in the year 2010, it’s by far the most embarrassing part of your website!

Anyway, sad to see Manning lose, although I’m happy the Saints and Reggie Bush did win the big one. Good for them. From the beginning it became obvious it will be a game of one error, as in whoever makes the first mistake will suffer the consequence. And that’s how it played out, ultimately.

While E-Trade struck again with the “milka-what?!” baby commercial, my favorite two spots were actuallyt he Leno/Letterman/Oprah ad for The Late Show and the Google ad. Here are the links for your viewing pleasure on YouTube (while they’re still up!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU (Parisian Love — Google ad)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcEx767TIas (Leno/Letterman/Oprah ad)

A few years ago, I remember that it was a big deal for most high school students to own a cell phone. I remember because I was one. We all used to talk on the phone (phone being our home phones lines), and that’s what was “cool.” We’d make plans to hang out, or just catch up with friends. Then the era of cell phones came to be. With more carriers on the market, prices were accessible to everyone, and kids started having cell phones. That broke the barrier and changed the way of communication.

First came the notorious text messages. How popular were those?! This was essentially the first step of communication death. Because instead of calling someone, hearing their voice, and sharing a few moments together (the closest to real face-to-face conversation known to humans at the time), we now sent texts. Short messages that often times didn’t even use full words in order to “fit” so we don’t get charged extra. To me, communication has never been the same since.

By 2000, just about everyone had access to the Internet. The boom of AIM, Yahoo!, and MSN messaging services was felt. The cell-phone industry adjusted, quickly putting these services on cell phones. Sure, while one could have a full-fledged conversation online, which was definitely better than texting and came even closer to real communication, it forced people to think differently.

You see, somewhere in this period we lost touch with what’s important. Communication is not just verbal. It’s very much physical. It’s about emotion being shown, facial expressions coming through, a crack of a voice, etc. What I’m trying to say is that 50% of real communication is body language. This never comes through when you’re behind the keyboard of a laptop or a cell phone. The feeling is gone. It’s just plain words popping up on a screen. Words that you can’t often understand as the writer intended you to.

Fast-forward to 2010. MySpace and Facebook completely choked the life out of this communication game. We shortened the text messages to “statuses.” Now it’s not even about being direct with people. It’s about telling the whole world about your life and social experiences. We’re not even communicating directly with each other. We’re just looking at Facebook statuses, pictures, and yes, here and there comments. We make our own judgments (EVERYONE is guilty of this, there’s no hiding that fact) of what people mean and what they are truly trying to say. It’s as if communicating isn’t even the main point. There are all these other things to worry about and deal with. It’s almost like a game.

And if communication wasn’t down to its last breath, there’s Twitter. Now you do what Facebook and MySpace used to do… but in 160 characters or less. And how crazy is Twitter? From CNN and other news networks breaking news in one sentence, to NBA players and other athletes going on their twitter accounts to break news, to the common folk telling the world they are at the gym or they need to poop. That’s the sad reality of where communication is.

Here’s the scary question – what’s the next stage? Can you kill something that’s already dead?

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad these social-networking sites are around, although I do have my bones to pick with them. I’m a user of all three. There are good ways to use them. There’s also a good way to communicate online in 2010 through video chat and the like which makes you feel as if you’re face to face, but the bottom line is that what’s “cool” and “hip” is far from that. It’s being short, indirect, confusing, often annoying, and yes — not communicating.

Here’s hoping for a change!

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@microphonehead5 sounds like you did it real big! my weekend has consisted of studying & more studying damn finals in reply to microphonehead5 #

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