Ink

The List: Oscar's biggest mistakes

Thursday, March 4, 2010 - 2:47pm

It’s almost assured that James Cameron will win Best Picture (and probably Best Director) at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards, set to air at 7 p.m. Sunday on ABC.

I’ve accepted this, even though I’m an “Ava-hater” and wasn’t a huge fan of the evo-Smurfs. Both “The Hurt Locker” and “Inglourious Basterds” were far superior.

Whatever. Everyone is “Avatar” crazy and I just have to deal.

My main contention with “Avatar” is that Cameron copied and pasted his favorite bits of “...

The list: Are they brilliant or crazy?

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 3:02pm

“No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.” — Aristotle

I wish I were quoting one of the great thinkers in preface to a Top 10 list about the greatest modern thinkers or a dissertation on 10 metaphysical concepts.

But, alas, this isn’t the case. Instead, I’m using it to preface a list that attempts to answer a question that vexes our celebrity-obsessed culture: Is Lady GaGa bat-crap crazy or “Beautiful Mind” brilliant?

Do you know the...

The List: 20 songs about breaking up

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 10:34am

This is the time of year when it seems as if everyone is smitten with the saccharine taste of love and commercial holidays. Barry White is in the air and everything smells like roses and chocolate.

But you know what? Love isn’t always puppy dogs, flowers and candy hearts. Sometimes, in the immortal words of the great and oraclelike J. Geils: “Love Stinks.”

Heartbreak has been the impetus behind thousands of pop songs. Today’s list goes to the dark side of love and maps out the...

Oscar noms: Winners and losers

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 11:57am

The Oscar nominations were released early this morning -- cue the hand wringing and speculation.

While I'm not surprised that "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker" were the big winners, there were a few surprises in the proceedings. Here are my assorted ramblings, rantings and ravings, presented as Winners/Losers.

To read the full list of nominations, go here. To see the Razzie nominations...

The list: The top 10 time-travel tales

Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 11:31am

Next week, “Lost” begins to end. The show that started with a plane crash in 2004 ends in May. What started as a “Survivor” drama has become a future sci-fi classic.

Hopefully, this season will bring about answers to some dangling questions.

Who is Richard Alpert and why doesn’t he seem to age? Why was there a polar bear on a tropical island? What’s with the electro-magnetism stuff? At the end of season five, one group was stuck in the ’70s, the other in the present. How will...

The list: Ten shows NBC can use to replace Leno's primetime slot

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 2:20pm

When NBC decided to hand Conan O’Brien “The Tonight Show,” it made a gigantic gamble putting “The Jay Leno Show” in prime time.

It did this for a simple reason: Hourlong TV shows are really, really expensive, while Leno cracking lame jokes for an hour isn’t. But the idea failed, and it failed for multiple reasons — mainly though, it’s because Leno isn’t funny enough to carry a prime-time slot. So long drama short, NBC is moving Leno back to his old time and his old show, and the much...

The Morning After: Finishing strong

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 1:56pm

The Morning After is a collection of rants, opinions and analysis covering the idiotic, irreverent, insignificant and interesting stories from the Chiefs and the National Football League (and maybe some other sports).

Wow. It took 17 weeks for the Chiefs to finally play a complete game.

Of course, it's all for naught really. Well, not completely. It helped to put a nail in the coffin for Denver's playoff hopes.* That's a nice coda to the season, right?

...

The Morning After: The Worsties

Monday, December 28, 2009 - 12:48pm

The Morning After is a collection of rants, opinions and analysis covering the idiotic, irreverent, insignificant and interesting stories from the Chiefs and the National Football League (and maybe some other sports).

Hope you and yours had a nice holiday weekend. The Morning After gets back up and running from the get-go (probably because the first draft was over 2,000 words!) with it's third-annual (but first time published) season wrap up awards: The...

The list: The decade's best villains

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - 2:57am

Since the first time I saw Boba Fett and Darth Vader, I've always been drawn to the bad guys in movies. I'm drawn to the conflicts and decisions that turn characters into the bad guy. (It's also probably why I'm drawn to anti-heroes like Tyler Durden in "Fight Club," Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" and Batman.)

A good guy has really one motivation: To do good. Bad guys? Well, they are far more complicated. Some are in it for the money and the power, some have a hidden agenda, some...

The Morning After: Blackout preparation

Monday, December 14, 2009 - 9:48am

The Morning After is a collection of rants, opinions and analysis covering the idiotic, irreverent, insignificant and interesting stories from the Chiefs and the National Football League (and maybe some other sports). We try to keep this column to a tight 2,000 words. Blasted right by that today. Whoops.

I had this column all ready to go. It was great. It was going to be "What I did during the great blackout of the Chiefs-Bills game." And then, someone went and bought all the...