Birthday awkwardness and Oscar Noms hit.

Yesterday was my birthday. Woo woo, party hats, a stripper riding a zebra, Big Secord playing "Taps" on the bugle - there was pretty much everything. Including one of the most awkward moments of, until now, my entire life.

I write for a variety of music sites across this vast internet, and on occasion I've written some fairly scathing, fairly stupid reviews of a few live shows. I won't name names, or even link to my ill-tempered rants against bands, but I'll say this: yesterday, as pretty much the first event of the first day of my 27th years, I was confronted by a musician who'd not only read one of my negative review but been, deeply, deeply affected by it.

I stood in my coffee shop yesterday, recognized the face of someone I'd seen live and someone I'd written a terrible review of, and I decided, because I am very stupid and very excited to chat with anyone even slightly recognizable, that I would introduce myself and inform them that I'd seen them live. Seriously, who on Earth would know me or know of a review I wrote six months ago for one of the many tiny sites I work for? No one, or so I thought.

I said, "Hey aren't you X from that band X. I saw you play a couple of months ago." There response, "Is your name Noah?" And if you can imagine how awkward the sort of conversation that starts with, "You wrote a terrible review of me once" and includes the phrase, "You're writing helped, to some degree, put me in the hospital" you'll be underestimating by a good good deal. And all I could think the whole time was, "Happy Birthday Noah!"

Turned out to be a fairly enlightening conversation for the both of us. And if this mysterious musician ever reads this, I would like to publicly thank them for both not taking a swing at me and being as graceful a human being placed in that situation could possibly be.

Lesson learned: no matter what you write or for who, there's always a chance that someone that it matters to will both read it and be affected by it.

I was drunk by 5 'o' clock last night, so I didn't get around to watching even a smidgen of the Nazi-romance that is The Night Porter. Luckily for me the Oscar nominations dropped today. My beloved Benjamin Button picked up 13 nominations for which I'm happy. Honestly, looking at the list I can't think of anyone that got badly left out, but I am shocked that Robert Downey Jr. got nominated for Tropic Thunder. I mean he was good, but one of his lines in that movie, describing the smell of his urine is "Mm, smells like bologna."

Check them all out right here.

Friday: Sigh, lets be honest, probably nothing about Criterion.