Here's the MP3. 

 2/28/2011; 11:44:35 AM.   .

I watched the Oscars last night, of course. A dull show, compared to years-past, made completely evident by a tribute to Bob Hope and a brief appearance by Billy Crystal. I like Anne Hathaway, and James Franco is okay. But they sucked as Oscar masters of ceremony. I'll take Alec Baldwin or Steve Martin, Whoopie and Robin. This will be the long-forgotten Oscars. And it was a fairly forgettable year at the movies, as well. Imho of course.

I was glad to see The King's Speech win so many awards. And was equally pleased to see The Social Network not win. The former was a surprisingly good story, and while they say it wasn't historically accurate -- the same can be said of Social Network. Seems relatively harmless to get the story of a long-dead royal wrong. But not so harmless to tell the wrong story of how software is developed, and what it's like to be a developer. That's the world we live in now, and the software stars are the new royalty. But we're not rock stars. Software is hard work, requires enormous dedication, focus and intellect and a drive to win. None of that came through in the movie about Facebook. They focused on Zuck's geekish weirdness with girlfriends and conference rooms full of lawyers and university administrators. BFD. Since when do lawyers matter? Seriously!

But the Oscars got one thing right -- if you haven't seen Inside Job, you must -- now.

You don't understand anything about the world you live in until you understand that the bankers are every bit as depraved as they appear to be. The media has not told the story about their bosses. Not a big surprise there, I guess. There was a moment when our political leaders were outraged, and spoke up. It's there in the movie. But we've gone back to sleep. We'll wake up again, that's for sure, and it'll be worse next time through the loop.

You can buy Inside Job on Amazon today, for delivery next week. Go get it now. It's a wonderful movie. With it we get back to a tradition of telling ourselves the truth. We need a lot of that to dig out of the mess we're in.

 2/28/2011; 9:45:55 AM.   .