Blender magazine has a short bit up on their website showing the top 10 favorite songs of presidential candidates McCain and Obama.  It’s an interesting mix of selections that seem hand-picked to appeal to certain segments of the population without seeming too elitist or divisive.

I can just imagine some smoky back room in each respective campaign headquarters as staffers sift through lists of songs ranking them against polls and verifying the lyrics won’t be offensive to anyone.  I mean come on, are we expected to believe that these are the actual songs these candidates like?  Do they think we are that naive to not understand that anything presented to the public for either of these men is carefully choreographed and screened?

McCain’s picks are certainly old school while Obama’s are more current with some old school mixed in.  Sinatra is popular for both.  McCain has two Abba songs in his list including Take a Chance on Me, no irony there.  While Obama tops the list with a Fugees song, Ready or Not.  No hidden message in that title.

It was interesting to me to see the list filled with more mainstream music…no hint of classical or jazz in sight.  Not even some popular classical stuff like some Mozart or perhaps the second movement from Beethovens 7^th symphony (a personal favorite) or a famous aria.  There was no Thelonius Monk or Miles Davis.  But then again, if anything like that made the list, I’m sure it would be taken as elitist…not something either man wants to be seen as.  Just another sign that these have been scrubbed and sanitized to present just the right impression to the American public.

I’m sure there will be more lists in the coming days such as their favorite books, movies or foods.  And if we’re lucky we’ll soon learn who their favorite person is for their choice for Vice President.  A position I’m sure will be chosen based purely on that persons ability to lead the country should the opportunity present itself and not chosen based on how the decision will be viewed by the public to win over a contested state or to appeal to a certain demographic.

I don’t mean to sound cynical…but I am.  It’s just the way you become after having lived through these things a few times and begin to understand the game that gets played.  It’s sad, but it’s the way it is and no matter how either candidate tries to present themselves as different or outside the mainstream, the truth is, if they made it this far, they are the mainstream.  So, go read the list, give a little chuckle as you think that it was actually someone’s job to come up with that list for each of the candidates and move on to something more important like whether they wear boxers or briefs.

The title of this film, In Bruges refers to the town in Belgium.  This information is provided to the viewer during the opening narration of the film.  So from the title, one can assume that the events that take place in the film must occur in Bruges.  Make sense?  Ok, now that that’s clear.  On to the review.

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In honor of the start of the 2008 Olympic games in China, I’m posting a video highlighting a lesser known event.  It’s of course from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  It seems no matter what topic you pick, there’s always a Python video that covers it.  I guess they had to stretch to keep filling up those half hour shows.  Anyway, enjoy.

When I was a kid, the Olympics were a big deal.  They only happened once every four years and BOTH the Winter and Summer games happened in the same year.  Of course, there were only 3 or 4 channels on the TV anyway, so anything out of the norm was a big deal.  Today, not so much.

Also back then, the Olympics were for amateurs, no professionals allowed.  You could really admire the athletes who devoted their lives to training for these games with little monetary support.  Today, it seems like every sport in the games has professional athletes competing.  To some extent it spoils the meaning of the games.

Then there’s the medal count.  The media likes to show which countries have the most total medals, like that’s any sort of measure of the worth of a country.  I guess they have to figure out some way to create competition between the countries.  What would be interesting is to list it in different ways, like, the ratio of medals to the number of participants or the ratio of medals to per capita GDP, or the ratio of medals to the number of media covering the event from that country.  I’m sure there’s all kinds of ways to slice the data that would be more entertaining.

So I personally don’t plan to watch much of the Olympics, it’s just not something that I find all that interesting anymore.  But let’s hope it’s a safe games and sure, I hope the U.S athletes do well and in a few weeks it will all be over and we can go back to watching the media show the bashing going on between McCain and Obama.

I like a good ghost story…they can be creepy, scary and down right bizarre.  But finding a good suspenseful scary movie built around a human story is a hard thing.  There’s only been a few that I’ve found and enjoyed over the years.  What drew me to this one, was Guillermo del Toro, who was the producer of this film.  He’s the guy behind such movies as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, both of which I enjoyed.  The Orphanage has all the elements of a good ghost story but is ultimately a human story dealing with loss and remorse.  I really wanted to give it 3 and a half stars, but no images for that, so 4 stars it is.  I really need to get off my *ss and create them one of these days.

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My recent trip to India was my fourth over a span of 17 years and the place has changed alot in that time.  I thought I would write about a few of the things I noticed on my last trip there, but I don’t want it to sound like I hate the place, since I don’t.  There are alot of really cool things about India and lots of great history to explore and every trip has been enjoyable.  But there are some things about the culture that I find odd.  Not odd as in strange, but odd in that they don’t seem to go together, so more like at odds with each other and that gets my mind going.

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