While I Was Sleeping

We had the Golden Globes, which are always kind of interesting to watch, because occasionally you'll get a drunk movie or TV star up on stage.

The Office won the award for Best Comedy Series. I really enjoyed The Office. There's an incident and a conversation between Tim and Gareth about a stapler in the first episode that made me laugh so hard I missed the next couple of minutes of what happened.

Saw that Renee Zellweger, won...she was very good in Cold Mountain.

Tim Robbins won best Supporting Actor for Mystic River, over Last Samurai's Ken Watanabe. Bill McCabe disagreed. I felt like, as great as Ken Watanabe was in Samurai (and he was excellent), Tim Robbins shed all his skin and become somebody else completely when he played Dave Boyle in Mystic River. I read Dennis Lehane's book, and saw somebody else completely in my mind, but Robbins' performance convinced me totally.

And Bill Murray got awarded for Lost in Translation. From the CNN article:

"There are so many people taking credit for this that I don't know where to begin," Murray said. He also thanked director Sofia Coppola "for writing a film that was so good that everybody in this room says, 'That lucky son of a bitch: It could have been me.' "

Oscar nominations come out Tuesday, right? I say I don't care...but yeah, I do.

Moving On.....

The WWE held the Royal Rumble tonight. The Royal Rumble is my favorite pro wrestling event. It's a 30 man, over-the-top rope Battle Royal, with entrants entering at 2 minute intervals, and the last man standing getting the main event title shot at Wrestlemania, which is the biggest show of the year.

For one, I just like Battle Royals. I think they make for interesting storytelling, and I always wonder about the logisitics of trying to tell several different stories at the same time in the same ring. The WWE has made it even more interesting the past couple of years, as they split their roster in two between their Raw show on Spike TV, and their Smackdown show on UPN, with very little crossover between the two. So the Rumble match is not just 30 guys with stories, there are stories from two different shows that intersect.

And for another, the Royal Rumble is the one pro-wrestling event where little unpredictable things can still happen, even in the pre-determined world that is the squared circle.

Chris Benoit won, which is excellent. I remember first noticing Benoit way back in 93 or 94 when he did a stint for ECW, which ran on SportSouth, and thinking "this guy's frigging awesome." And then he showed up in WCW, and he was one of the reasons I made sure to watch Nitro every Monday.

Benoit's a worker out of the Bret Hart mold, in my mind. His ring skills and his ability to carry duller workers to a good performance have gotten him to the top, more than a flashy persona or over-the-top microphone work. He's also smaller than 90% of the wrestlers on the WWE roster, and given Vince McMahon's hard-on for giant musclebound guys having a punch and kick contest, it's a breath of fresh air to see somebody smaller and more technically skilled than most, like Chris Benoit, make it to the Main Event of the Biggest Show of the Year.

Last,

While I was sleeping, I had a dream about riding on a train. One of the cars was a prison car, and if you did anything to piss off the Commandant, you got sent to the prison car. I didn't get sent there, but everybody in my party did. And then there was a prison riot on the train....Remember the scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, when Pee Wee is saving the animals from the burning pet store? The prison riot was nothing but small animals running past my seat.

Well. It's 2 in the morning. Let's see what manner of deviltry I can get into tonight.