“I used to get irked with Toyota Prius owners. These guys are notorious for driving below posted speed limits, slowing to a stop far out from a stop sign or light, taking their sweet time when the light turns green or creeping through parking lots so silently that they startle pedestrians. […] Now, I’m one of those annoying Prius drivers. ‘I can’t believe you,’ my lovely wife said to me the other day. ‘You drive like an old man.’”
 — Why do Prius drivers drive like that? Because they are basically playing a video game with the mileage.

Saxophone legend Maceo Parker turns 70 today. To celebrate, here’s a nearly 10 minute version of “Cold Sweat.” If you’ve got a little more time, you might enjoy this.

“Robots and humans acted together in harmony for this particular performance. But Hirata suggested that robot actors could begin replacing human actors within the next few decades.”

Don’t you think it’s super-awkward when someone pays you a lot of money and then publicly admits that they regret doing so? Anyway, do you think Jonah Lehrer will pay the Knight Foundation back that $20,000 they just gave him to explain why he was fudging things in his work? (But then, the Knight Foundation does a lot of pretty unfortunate money-spending, to be honest!) Still! Tell us all about it in the comments… over at the Knight Foundation’s blog.

Whenever the meat supply on Knifecrime Island is perceived to be compromised, the government of the day trots out an unlucky official to take one for the team and graze on whatever bits of gristle and hoof they want to reassure their suddenly squeamish countrymen — people who eat sausage made out of dried blood on a regular basis — that everything’s just fine. Nearly a quarter century after an agriculture minister attempted to fell the fear that crazy cows might do further damage to the already addled grey matter of that cursed island’s lager-fueled legion of louts by attempting (unsuccessfully) to cram a BSE-burger into a 4-year-old’s mouth, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron allowed himself to be photographed consuming something called a “black pudding dinky pork pie,” which, he assured his stabby compatriots, was perfectly safe. Later that afternoon the Prime Minister visited the internationally famous Epsom Downs Racecourse, where he ran the track in a record 2 minutes, 3 seconds. Meanwhile, here is some historical perspective.

It’s the fourth-most emotionally terrible day of the year! A calendar.

There have been a lot of Current Events going on lately, man, seriously, the Maniac Ex-Cop out in Los Angeles doing “Asymmetrical Attacks,” then holed up in that cabin, 30 people killed in a human stampede during the big Kumbh Mela in India, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States of North America got buried in precipitation, there’s drones flying around, the Pope quit, and then Ted Nugent didn’t shoot an arrow into POTUS at the State of The Union Speech, nor did he holler out “MY FACE IS A MASERATI,” which was kinda disappointing, and they had the Grammy Awards on Sunday, which, when you do the diminutive, you call it the Grammys, I guess, that is correct, the plural, but it just kinda looks ignorant, grammar-wise, especially with the semi-homophone going on there, almost? I don’t get too psyched about the Grammy Awards, a buncha people congratulating each other for selling ringtones, and the crap in between the music isn’t even entertaining enough to be irritating. I like the Golden Globes and stuff, you know? Oscars, that’s an awards show, man, Actors are definitely good enough spoken-word performers to at least be entertaining annoyances, eh?

So every year I like to pick who will win the Oscars, and if you like the Oscars, you probably get in on one of those things where you try and pick ’em all, and this makes it a lot like Super Bowl, my favorite Holiday of the year, and Oscars more and more totally does the whole “pre-game” thing like Super Bowl does, only it’s with who got picked and who will win and what clothes people will wear and then they get people out on the “Red Carpet” talking about absolutely nothing for hours and hours waiting for the players to show up, and there’s bleachers where people sit just to see movie stars, and I like to have snacks and yell at the screen in a roomful of people who have filled out the Oscar Pool sheet I circulate in the hope I can take their money for attending my party. Good times. I never fucking win.

But it is never too early to start winning your Oscar Pool! Get your ass out on The Internet and do some research. I totally respect if you have a Feeling about if somebody should win an Oscar, but the whole thing about the Oscars is it’s not about Deserving or Earning, man, it’s about all the people who get to pick the Oscars, and while they are generally like you and me, by which I mean they have no-way no-how seen all the movies they are supposed to be picking prizes for, there’s also the whole backbiting tradition of Hollywood, and so part of your picking needs to be taking into careful consideration how many Enemies the nominees have. Like with Steven Spielberg. When they do the announcements for Oscars, they have a buncha people in the auditorium for the presenters to present to, and they usually cheer or applaud for stuff, and a lot of ’em probably don’t know who is getting nominated, and when they announced the names for Outstanding Bestness in Directing or whatever, there was applause for David O. Russell for the Silver Linings Playbook, there was applause for Ang Lee for Life of Pi, and then when they got to Spielberg, for the Abraham Lincoln picture, there was zero applause. So that makes me think there are people in Hollywood who have a problem with this guy. I don’t know why, like, what did this guy ever do except put money in Hollywood’s pocket? Is he a jerk to the crew people who do all the Heavy Lifting? Is it because he re-did E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Photoshopped-out the guns? Really? What is it, what did this guy do to make Hollywood not want to Award him any more? Is it because he is the most successful guy alive in Hollywood right now, hah? Haters!

But the Haters get to vote, yes? This is the great Mystery Factor to the Oscars, the Members of The Academy who were invited by The Academy to become Members of The Academy, a buncha movie stars who maybe won an Oscar, they get to vote, Movie Industry Executives, writers, musicians, stunt coordinators, they get to vote. Ray Dolby, the guy who invented the extra button on old stereos that kinda did something, he gets to vote. I wonder if he saw The Master, you know? Maybe on DVD?

This time I’m thinking, all you gotta do is get in the heads of the ones who will bother to vote, right? You can also use this fun “infographic” from the Los Angeles Times for background. You could try backwards-profiling the members to figure how they will vote. As the L.A. Times says, “the roster of all 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a closely guarded secret.” But because they have reporters, they were able to at least assemble this helpful “members since 2004” list.

No offense, but howcome Jennifer Aniston is a member? Is there a reason besides being an actor? Is she active in the workaday world of Hollywood or something? Is she somebody who might wanna run for President of the Academy some day? I mean, if the Academy said it was because she was in Office Space, I would totally be OK with that, but seriously, why is she on there? She never even got nominated for an Academy Award, and for Golden Globes and Screen Actors SAG thing, she got nominated for her teevee show “Friends.” Again, no offense, I enjoyed The Break Up and The Good Girl, but meanwhile, I can’t find anybody in the Academy from the 3–6 Mafia, and they won a fucking Academy Award.

Next week I will list my highly Scientific picks from these categories for the Academy Awards pool I do at my house. Tiebreakers are Official Running Time (without going over), final person on the Dead People montage, and number of Dead People on the Dead People montage, in that order.

Previously: Winter Wants To Kill You

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias.

★★★ The grayness behind the shades made it seem as if raising the shades wouldn’t be worth it. When the shades did roll up, though, there was brightness in Jersey; the clouds were rolling up too. Before long, they rolled down again. The near gutter was dry dirty pavement, but the far side was still awash in slush. Surviving dirty snowbanks presented themselves unexpectedly, cutting off the best jaywalking angles. The afternoon light and blue evening were as appealing out the windows as the morning had been unappealing.

Straw bears!

Hey, I heard a bit of Rachel Kushner’s new novel The Flamethrowers last night, and it is awesome. It comes out in April, which is exactly when one wants a book. Do you like books? You should pre-order this book then! The joy of pre-ordering books is that you forget you’ve ordered them and then they arrive and you’re like “what is this??” and then you’re like “OH HEY THIS IS SUPER DUPER GOOD.” (Disclaimer: it’s entirely possible that she read the sole lone only good part of the book and the rest is hot trash, but that seems unlikely.)