Every year since the inception of our hosting an Oscar party, I’ve crafted a mix CD for our guests based on the films released in that year. Not all of the scores and soundtracks I poach from are on the Oscar docket. Indeed, with such paltry pickings this year, very few of the tracks align with the Academy Award nominees.

Here is the tracklist for this years winners:

1. Earth to Asgard – Patrick Doyle (Thor)
2. The Wolf – Fever Ray (Red Riding Hood)
3. They’re Calling My Flight – Cliff Martinez (Contagion)
4. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) – Emily Browning (Sucker Punch)
5. container park – The Chemical Brothers (Hanna)
6. Immigrant Song – Karen O, Trent Reznor (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)
7. How To Kill a Vampire – Ramin Djawadi (Fright Night)
8. Nightcall – Kavinsky (Drive)
9. Moses vs The Monsters – Steven Price, Felix Buxton, and Simon Ratcliffe (Attack The Block)
10. Magneto – Henry Jackman (X-Men: First Class)
11. The Circus Sets Up – James Newton Howard (Water for Elephants)
12. The Show – Kerris Dorsey (Moneyball)
13. Man or Muppet – Jason Segel & Walter (The Muppets)
14. Star Spangled Man – The Star Spangled Singers (Captain America)
15. Hold On – Wilson Phillips (Bridesmaids)
16. Love Will Take You – Angus and Julia Stone (Breaking Dawn)
17. Can You See Jane? – Patrick Doyle (Thor)
18. Mah Na Mah Na – Mahna Mahna and the Two Snowths (The Muppets)

BONUS TRACKS: 

99 Problems – Hugo (Fright Night)

Iron – Woodkid (Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Trailer)

YouTube Playlist HERE. 

Some of the tracks are disabled because YouTube and record labels are stingy, ridiculous jerks who don’t understand new media, but whatevs. You can get a sense of the entire compilation together through the playlist feature, even if you have to listen to some tracks as stand alones. Pretty good stuff. Handing this mix CD out as a party favor on Sunday!

As always, if you ask me nicely I can mail you a burned copy of the CD via the good old US postal service. Possibly with a special, nerdy treat included. Email me at Mindy@tinyheroes.net if you’re interested! 

A mad genius exists out there cutting exceptional movie trailers turning garbage films into inspirational gold. He must be stopped! Otherwise, we will continue to waste $13 a pop for 3D tickets to crap like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Wait, it wasn’t all that bad.

In fact, parts of it were downright good and even a bit unsettling. So here’s a quick, down and dirty review of the film…because how much time do we really want to waste on a Ghost Rider sequel review? Not much time.

THE GOOD

Idris Elba. This man is a god (literally, in Thor) and he is guaranteed to save your crappy movie, or at least be the best part of it. He even steals his smallish scenes in Thor (muh favorite). Not quite sure why he was boasting colored contacts. It looked cool when he was playing Heimdahl, but went with his outfit and godly persona in that flick. Here it was obvious some studio exec was like “Idris Elba in contacts makes this movie THAT MUCH COOLER. Do it.” Elba was sporting an off-putting and unnecessary French accent, but aside from that – he was the best actor and second most fun to watch on the screen.

The special effects were the most fun thing to watch on-screen. The Ghost Rider himself is a special effect and a gorgeous one at that, with flames curling around his skull head and any vehicle he chooses to mount bursting into hellish fire. His antics are creepy, twitchy and a bit scary. The vibe for The Rider was PERFECT and clearly a lot of time and energy went into making him look cool. The action sequence were entertaining, especially the mid-point of the movie, in the rock quarry.

The audience was treated to tasty and attractive animated sequences as a narrative device. I’m always up for animated sequences in otherwise live action films. Especially comic book adaptations. Thanks production teams!

THE BAD

Nicholas Cage and his bizarre acting abilities. Loved him in Kick Ass and think he has a dry, oddball sense of humor but it was the wrong tone for this type of movie. What he emoted and what the director envisioned did not mesh well together on-screen and the effect was a mushy pile of loosely connected action sequence, while any attempt at plot was jarring on the audience. Not that anyone expected this to be Oscar worthy material, but it was a discordant mess not even on par with most Hollywood messes. An enjoyable mess, mind you. Entertaining.

Along the same vein, most of the other actors were equally awful in their own respects. Child actor couldn’t really act. Weird gypsy mother was weird. Lecherous stooge bad guy was lecherous. A true disappoint was witnessing the lovable actor, Ciaran Hinds, who played Caesar and Aberforth Dumbledore fall from grace here with his huffing and puffing (but never really doing much) Roarke character. He was the devil trapped in human form and sort of sucked at his job. Not the actor. The character.

Oh, and then the Highlander showed up in some weird Turkish monk village.

THE UGLY

The entire plot was nonsensical. In exchange for her life, this chick sells the soul of her unborn baby to the devil, who waits until the kid is 13 years old and then seeks to inhabit his body. The kid has the same powers as the devil, but is easily kidnapped. His mother has been on the run for years, but makes amateur mistakes. Johnny Blaze wants to rid himself of his powers and then immediately regains them.

Oh, and instead of riding his motorcycle, Cage spends a large part of this movie riding around with his motorcycle strapped to the bed of a truck. Lolwut? This device is employed so he can engage in corny dialogue and character building with the weird gypsy mom and antichrist. You know, it’s fine. It would make more sense of the Ghost Rider rode his motorcycle instead.

CONCLUSION

A mess if you were trying to make sense of anything and produce a coherent narrative thread. If you want to watch an extended music video and watch some cool explosions and CGI fire…turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. Especially in 3D and XD.

Bechdel Test: “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” does not feature more than two female characters with names who converse about something other than men and therefore DOES NOT PASS the women test, DOES PASS the men test and does not feature more than two minority characters who have names, and speak to one another about something other than white people so it DOES NOT PASS the race test. 

LINK LOVE

- X-Men/Ghost Rider: Brood Trouble in the Big Easy

- Idris Elba on Thor, Ghost Rider and Prometheus (*squee for Prometheus!)

- Nicholas Cage on peeing fire (this series of interviews on YouTube is awkward and hilarious. Nic Cage, I see what you did there)

It’s your typical superhero origin story, except the heroes aren’t terribly heroic. They acquire super-powers in a mysterious glowing cave near a “rave” in the woods surrounding Seattle. I dug the Pacific Northwest shout-out, spotting our brand of coastal forests long before the space needle graced the screen.

Side note: Do people still go to “raves?”

Anywho – regular people get extraordinary powers and use them in the fashion you would imagine ordinary folks to do. They goof around in thrill seeking escapades, impressing classmates and using parlor tricks to hook up with ladies. Then, the bad seed goes nuts and gets in a knock down, drag out, levitated fight in the middle of downtown Seattle.

Absolute power corrupting absolutely is a classic tale, but one rarely told from a realistic perspective, from average dudes at your typical American High School. We are treated to all the joy and mystery of discovering human flight and telekinesis. And the horror of realizing these powers could harm or kill others. There were bits of moral pondering thrown in, but it was a little lost in the muddle of the story. I didn’t buy the philosophical quoting.

What didn’t jive well? The shaky hand cam style.Yes, it’s a cheaper way to film and also a commentary on how much we “chronicle” our daily lives, but this kind of device gets old after a while if the plot is having to stretch to account for why we are viewing things with different camera angles. Suddenly, there are two people running around who must film absolutely everything. Or one character who feels obligated to pick up where the other left off.

When the characters are constantly, or at least consistently, commenting on the presence of the camera, it takes the audience out of the film. In no way did I believe this film was a real chronicle of these super powers. The ship of sincerely believing this is found camera footage sailed with The Blair Witch Project. But it’s been recycled again and again in what would otherwise be higher quality flicks:

• Cloverfield
• Diary of the Dead
• Quarantine
• Paranormal Activity

And now, Chronicle.

District 9 almost fell into this trap. Near the beginning, we witness the filming of a documentary and interviews with friends, family and former co-workers of the central character, talking about a horrible tragedy which had befallen him. But, this facade melts away after the first 15 minutes and we are smack dab in the middle of the story, no shaky cam or faux documentary to be found. Towards the end of the film, the documentary footage closes out the story, giving it a nice end cap and raising more questions than it answers about the plot and character. It’s a device and a tool. Not a gimmick.

Chronicle didn’t need the shaky cam gimmick to be successful. In fact, it detracted from the story and the characters. 

THE GOOD

The acting and story were fairly well crafted. I appreciated the inclusion of a non-stereotyped character of color. He was the class president and most morally upright/likable dude of the bunch. The major trope surrounding him was his death, a disappointment but not a shocker. He WAS the only black character after all.

THE BAD

Some wonky special effects, needless use of shaky cam and the general lack of women engaging with one another. It’s obviously  a story about dudes (check the “Boys will be boys” poster tagline above),  and I did appreciate that they included several female roles, though I couldn’t recall any of their names of the top of my head. There was a mom, two girlfriends and a potential hook-up. They skirted the token female shtick, but did not pass The Bechdel Test.

CONCLUSION

In general, I don’t mind shaky cam, when it is used to provide some good quality scares. It’s tough for conventional horror films to inspire those kinds of shocks you get on shaky cam. But there are ways to invoke our use of technology to record our lives, without entirely relying on it for all the visuals in a film or story. 

Bechdel Test: “Chronicle” does not feature more than two female characters with names who converse about something other than men and therefore DOES NOT PASS the women test, DOES PASS the men test and does not feature more than two minority characters who have names, and speak to one another about something other than white people so it DOES NOT PASS the race test.

And it died.

It refused to boot back up, alternating between error message black screens, wouldn’t operate in safe mode. Eventually, after running all sorts of tests and fail-safes, it blue screened and never, ever recovered.

All my data on the laptop was lost. All of my schoolwork from last term. The last four family videos I’ve put together. All the scanned photos from my parents 30th wedding anniversary slide show. Several years worth of writing, including all my TV scripts and two complete movie scripts.

It was especially upsetting, because I had recently purchased $450 worth of Adobe Creative Design software. Thank the sweet and fluffy lords they allowed two downloads. I drove out to Fry’s in Wilsonville on Thursday night to pick up a brand new HP Pavilion  laptop for around $770 (with a $50 mail-in rebate, dropping the price tag to $720).

Came back home and began downloading all the needed software to the machine, which is quite a bit better than what I lost (FINALLY, a machine I can successfully PC game with!). The specs can be found here, for anyone interested. The sound is incredible. You can use a finger-print scan to store all your passwords and automatically log into your machine. Basically, tons of cool nerdy things that made my heart flutter and soothed the stinging pain of losing everything.

AND THEN

My new computer died on Friday morning. Poor Dan, who was fighting a stomach flu both Thursday and Friday couldn’t conceive of what was happening. He also had to share some further ugly information…our external hard drive (what I call the dump drive) had also died. Well, a partition had failed, leaving the information contained on it hidden behind some wall we have to struggle to get over. Effectively, and for my sanity, I have to assume it is all gone, because any hope it can be repaired is setting me up for a nervous breakdown.

Yes, within a matter of 48 hours our external drive, my Dell and a second, brand new computer had inexplicably quit on us. All of our computing life went up in smoke. Our computer houses caught on fire, blazed up and nothing is left.

SO…

Friday evening we drove out to Fry’s, exchanged the broken HP for another new machine and came home to cross our fingers and install the suite. We called the third-party distributor and were able to get a reprieve in the form of one more download to a functioning machine. I was pretty sure at that point the software in the Suite had killed both machines. We did nothing else that first night, but install the software. The machine was able to boot up after the install, no problem. Phew.

On Saturday morning, I went ahead and downloaded Chrome and just yesterday, Dan installed Steam for Left 4 Dead purposes.

The only two programs I have not installed on this 2nd new machine (Colossus), which I installed on my 1st new machine (Real Steel) are iTunes and Spotify. I became concerned when Spotify was constantly running in the taskbar on my old lappy (Tangerine Dream), popping up ads at really inconvenient times during extended hours using other resource intensive software (dreamweaver, filezilla, photoshop, etc).

My speculative guess as to what killed my two other computers: Spotify reacting badly to some other software (or at least, installed perhaps before important Windows updates). I’m not sure why or how. I love Spotify and used it constantly. I am not attempting to disparage it or warn people away by any means. I just think there’s a connection there. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Google these terms: Spotify + Blue Screen of death. I’m not the only one who has noticed incompatibilities with different versions of Windows or creative software (Spotify + Adobe = bad news bears?)

I’m still reeling from the shock of losing all my data.

AND I WANT TO WARN YOU.

Please back-up your important data. Using four different methods:

1. An external drive. You can even use programs to set up automatic downloads, so you don’t even have to think about it.
2. The cloud. I signed up for Carbonite on Sunday. Again – automatic downloads. I don’t have to think about it. Check here.
3. Hard copy. You remember CDs? Well, that’s where all our family videos reside now.
4. Thumb drive (jump drive). For seriously, every time I complete an assignment, it goes on my thumb drive for temporary purposes. I don’t trust thumb drives. They get weird errors and can be scrambled by improper ejecting methods.

FINALLY: Trust in Google. Without Google Docs, my novel would have been lost. Without Google Music, my entire 10,000 song collection would have vanished. Without Picasa, my pics would be gone. I <3 Google for salvaging some shreds of my former computer life. A year or two years ago, this would not have been the case.

LIFE WILL GO ON POST COMPUTER APOCALYPSE

I learned a valuable lesson the hard way, and it’s important for my sanity to turn this horrible experience into something productive. Don’t let this happen to you. Backup your important data on an external drive, the cloud and in hard copy. Don’t let your computer house burn down without a fire safe for your passports and baby pictures.

This is also the time of year in which movies about women (which aren’t angling for Oscar noms) tend to flash quickly across the big screen and then go to die small deaths on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Those movies? Haywire and One For The Money.

One centers on a rogue spy trying to clear her name and seek revenge against her would-be-killers and the other is about a noob-bounty-hunter seeking to secure a large reward against a former lover. While romantic entanglements ensue, these were the side plots of otherwise excellent story-telling about believable female heroines.

The similarities?

Each are coping with the end of committed relationships and unemployment of sorts – both of which factor into the plot and their motivations. Mallory Kane is a “black ops super soldier” who can run, jump and kick ass with the best of them, but can’t seem to escape the scheming and plotting of her former boyfriend, Ewan McGregor.

The adorably named Stephanie Plum is unemployed and newly-divorced, seconds away from losing everything. Through sheer nepotism she lucks into a gig which allows her to pursue an ex-boyfriend, Jason O’Mara (a delicious Irishman from the short-lived but awesome US version of Life on Mars), for a $50,000 reward and solve a neighborhood crime in the process.

Each movie features an attractive array of Hollywood hotties to entertain the ladies in it the for the eye candy. Both display violence towards women, but not in a heavily sexualized manner. It is violence in the line of duty, while doing the job and it could have happened to male counter-parts just as easily.

The differences?

One is pure control and calculation (Mallory), the other is comedic timing and bumbling tactics (Stephanie). Mallory kicks ass, the scene with Michael Fassbender in the hotel room, being the most raw and powerful scene in the movie, though I particularly loved the roof-top chase. Watching Gina Carano was glorious and her action scenes had everyone in the small theatre groaning and exclaiming in sympathy with her victims.

Mallory was the only female in the movie being hunted, antagonized and terrorized by a bevy of dudes. I’m not really buying the lone huntress vibe here. It’s a typical male crafted and conceived female action heroine and the only thing setting it apart is Carano’s glorious physicality.

Stephanie, on the other hand, is a spazz and inadvertently allows honest people to be beaten and even murdered because of her naive approach to solving crime. She is assaulted by a witness she interrogates and is nearly blown up by a car bomb (and shot a few times by the suspect she pursues). She is vindictive towards the former boyfriend, having at one point hit him with a car “by accident.” In short, she has flaws and character weaknesses which make her identifiable. I wouldn’t know the first thing about bounty hunting and neither does she. She learns the ropes from an attractive co-worker named “Ranger.”

She has regular family dinners, engages with a female co-workers, visits with female prostitutes and talks to a witness who is a mother. She also engages with her boss, a cousin who is a cop, a male suitor and suspects. You know, an entire world of people of various genders, sexual orientations, shapes, sizes, backgrounds. It’s like real life! Take note other screenwriters!

By the end of the film Stephanie does tackle a suspect, mace another and then unload an entire clip into a dude’s chest. She is able to handle herself , but the rawness doesn’t translate in the same way without an MMA fighter doing the dirty work. Katherine Heigl fighting crime in high heels and a sun dress (at first) eventually melted into skinny jeans, boots and a leather jacket. Trading her femininity for something functional but still sexy. I dug it.

Conclusions

While I enjoyed watching Gina Carano as Mallory kicking real ass, there wasn’t much else to learn about her character except she loved wine and her Papa. Since Soderbergh is responsible for this malarkey, I’m blaming it all on him and his writing team.

Stephanie Plum on the other hand is charming, off-beat, and a fully realized character. One For the Money is directed by a woman and the script featured a team of female writers. I’ve never read the book series, so I have no comparison or pre-conceived notion of what the film should be. My favorite part: the romance is only a piece of the puzzle, a very small one.

Both were pleasurable but passable watches and bode well for the kind of heroines we want to see gracing the screen. Fully realized, action packed female characters who are believable in their roles, be it because of physicality (no more stick thin action waifs) or because of well-written and well-rounded roles.

Bechdel Test: “Haywire” does not feature more than two female characters with names who converse about something other than men and therefore DOES NOT PASS the women test, DOES PASS the men test and does not feature more than two minority characters who have names, and speak to one another about something other than white people so it DOES NOT PASS the race test.

*Bechdel Test: “One For The Money” features more than two female characters with names who converse about something other than men and therefore DOES PASS the women test, DOES NOT PASS the men test and does not feature more than two minority characters who have names, and speak to one another about something other than white people so it DOES PASS the race test.

1. Superheroines in Comfy Pants +  How RPGs Talk To Women

Those links are straight from The Mary Sue, which is a great female centric nerd blog you should already be following on FB, Twitter or through some other social media venue.

Personal favorite:

Bat Woman in Comfy Pants by MichelleSix

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2. Lana Del Rey’s The Hunger Games

The perfect spoof and mash-up of the songstress everyone loves to hate + the increasing hysteria surrounding The Hunger Games.

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3. Neko Case is Recording a Song for The Hunger Games

I predicted this! A Neko Case song kicks off every one of my Hunger Games playlists. She already has so many great songs to choose from, it seems strange that she would need to record another. Ah well, I guess that’s how these soundtrack thangs work. Along with tracks from Arcade Fire and The Secret Sisters, this is absolutely going to be a must buy. Looks like there will be two separate albums – the actual score by T-Bone and James Newton Howard. And then another full of conventional songs inspired by The Hunger Games. It’s going to be released March 20, 2012. Om nom nom.

4. New Spiderman Trailer

Funny, we were just remarking about this last night after receiving the San Diego Comic Con catalog where Peter Parker and Mary Jane are posing front and center. I was in the “looks alright to me” camp, and Dan was in the “I like the web-shooters” camp. Our buddy and current house guest Troy who is easily the more Spidey-obsessed seemed a bit “meh” all around and was much more excited about the potential new Star Trek series.

Last weekend Dan finished reading/editing his copy and we sat down to bull-doze through a couple writing exercises which have helped me steer the book in newer, better directions.

The first was doing a character study of four main characters using 34 basic pieces of information (relationships, political beliefs, flaws, strengths, etc) and fleshing out details I hadn’t otherwise considered. This was especially helpful with one character whose motivations had remained a mystery even to me and therefore muddled up the plot. Honing in on his background brought the character to life and he is going to fill in story elements which have been missing. Woot to that.

Secondly, we collectively answered the following questions about what these four characters wanted:

1. What does the character want?
2. What are their motives for wanting this?
3. Where in the story is this made clear to the reader?
4. How do we learn what the character wants? Dialogue? Action? Interior Thinking?
5. What or who stands in the way of them achieving it?
6. What does the desire set in motion?

It surfaced that my central character’s wants weren’t clear and she was being pushed around by the plot, reacting instead of acting. Changes needed to be made. I’ve been able to re-frame the entire last half of the book, which will only require manipulating a few scenes and adding another to work. Fingers crossed on that one.

Entering all the paper edits into the digital copy may seem tedious, but it’s liberating and exciting to be at this stage. I’m experiencing a resurgence of energy and motivation towards completing this work, now that I’m not attached at the hip to a binder and pen. Once I have the edits entered and the outlined changes made, my parents will received copies to edit. After they’ve given their feedback, we will release the book in digital format on the Kindle. It might be another month or so before that happens, given my school-load, internship and job hunt will also be priorities.

Other writing issues have popped up in the editing process – the curse of repeated words and phrases. Does this happen to any other writers? I’ve started a list of words and with the help of the find feature, am able to locate them in the text and edit them right then and there. The biggest offenders? “That” and “Hands.” My proclivity towards speaking with my hands is apparently showing up in all my characters.

This blog entry helped me identify Ten Writing Mistakes Authors Don’t See, among them using repeated words and empty adverbs. I’m giving myself some slack on many of these things, given 50,000 words were vomited forth in one month with little to no pre-thought. I had an idea (from a dream), a loosely outlined plot, character names and some semblance of location.

It seems a little backwards to write the story first and then do the research later, but I think that’s just how I work. I like to see the entire forest and then I’ll start picking which trees need to be eliminated. Or bolstered.

I’ve also scouted out some editing software called AutoCrit. Is anyone familiar with this? Yays or nays? I’ve been able to accomplish the same goals with time, attention and the editing tools in my word processing program, but I’m certain I’ve missed something and having a computer program to spot these glaring details might be worthwhile. Especially if I’m going the self-publishing route and won’t have a real flesh and blood person to do this work for me.

One horrible side-effect of editing: I am now mentally editing my text books. InDesign is the worst offender. The word “that” appears at least once every other sentence. Sometimes two or three times. I cringe inwardly when I locate it.

An added bonus: The writing in my blog entries will hopefully improve.

**For those who are interested, here’s a brief synopsis**

In a Dystopian future ruled by fear of a deadly virus, a young woman is orphaned when her parents die in a terrorist bombing. She is horribly disfigured and taken in as a ward by the global corporation, Prothero. They use her to test new medical technology by implanting her with an artificial heart, ear and eye. As a discarded experiment, she participates in mandatory national service while plotting a way to extract herself from Prothero’s clutches and rescue a friend from her past.

Although movies about women rose to meteroic box office success via Bridesmaids and The Help, they certainly aren’t represented in the Best Picture nominations. There is only one movie on the Best Picture roster that would pass the Bechdel test for women or race. It manages to accomplish both. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only movie I’m even pulling for. Yeah, I’m talking about The Help.

Usually this time of year I’m in a mad scramble to view all the Oscar nominated films before the big day, but I can predict from this vantage point who is going to win based on all the politicking that comprises these awards ceremonies. Please be advised, these are my knee jerk reactions.

Best Picture: The Artist (Hollywood is predictable in it’s love and lavishing of praise upon feel good “foreign” films)

Best Director: Martin Scorsese – Hugo

Best Actor: Brad Pitt – Moneyball

Best Actress: Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor: Jonah Hill – Moneyball

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer – The Help

Best Original Screenplay: Bridesmaids – Annie Mumolo, Kristen Wiig

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Ides of March – George Clooney

Perhaps I will watch The Artist, which is the only flick with the potential to shake up the predictable picks. Also, I reserve the right to completely change my mind by Oscar air date, so friends and family who usually bet in our Oscar party pool, don’t go getting any ideas.

My favorite films of the year were all comic book or science fiction related, and those will never be deemed worthy of Oscar material. No bitterness here, right? Really, there is a bit of bitterness. I don’t expect anyone to give loads of love and credit to all my super nerdy interests. But I hoped for at least a nod to Young Adult.

Is anyone else over the George Clooney and Brad Pitt bromance? Clooney’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was kinda barfy. We get that you guys are the hottest thang in Hollywood right now. Good work.

There is a twinge of sadness for the dudes who got shut out. What about Leonardo DiCaprio who’s been in a string of good films in the last five or six years while going completely un-noticed? Or Ryan Gosling who has busted his butt in independent flicks and whom you couldn’t possibly ignore this year if you were living or breathing in the world. Also Michael Fassbender, my favorite sharp tooth Magneto who stole the show in X-Men, Jane Eyre and apparently flopped his wang out for Shame (on my “to see” list). Poor guys. Don’t you know Clooney and Pitt will never gracefully share the spotlight? They are like the Jay-Z of their medium. While they exist, very few others can rise in the game, unless given the blessings of royalty. Even then, it’s tough competition.

Am I wrong in these assertions? What are your Oscar picks? 

My birthday is rolling around (March 14th) and every year about this time I make up a list of things that have their awesome turned up to 11. You can expect random, expensive and amazing tech gadgets to follow:

#1. NFC Micro SD Card

http://moneto.me

Retail: $75ish (Price not final from Moneto)

My current phone is a LG G2x. Great little device, lots of power, great screen but no NFC. And I want Google Wallet.  The NFC SD card from moneto debuted at CES 2012 and gives any iPhone/Blackberry/Android phone access to all the NFC goodness you could want! In case you are wondering the device is still an SD still has storage, only 4gb currenlty but they are working on more.

Finally! I can pay for a Big Mac with my phone!!

#2. JawBone Up

Http://jawbone.com/up

Retail: $99.99

I think this year is going to see a lot of devices that start to take advantage of your ubiquitous internet connection via your phone. I am speaking of watches that connect to you phone via Bluetooth and tell you who’s calling without having to take your phone out your pocket, or piloting a quadrocoper via remote video and your phone as the controller.

The Jawbone Up is a bracelet you wear, it works as a pedometer, tracks your location, and your sleep patterns (via the accelerometer), it uses your phones internet connection to upload this data and compile it into a readout that will help you better understand how you live and work. In addition it has a really cool wake feature. Since the Up is able to see and understand what level of sleep you are in, it can pick just the right time to wake you feeling refreshed and awake, it does so with a series of vibrations. I am excited to try this out and review the metadata it is able to collect on myself.

Creepy computer monitoring me from afar: Check!

#3. Bluetooth Headphones:

Amazon Link

Retail: $47.99

A wireless headset is a pretty basic idea. I like the foam ‘earplug’ style, it’s like noise cancelling, but cheaper. I go through my $10.00 Target bought Skull Candy headphones about one pair a month. The reason is the damn jack, it’s ALWAYS BREAKING. So I have decided I want something without a jack. And here we go.

Now I can talk to myself like a crazy person walking down the street!

#4. Nest:

http://nest.com

Retail: $249.00

Mindy (TinyHeroes) loves to have the heat on at night. In the bedroom we have a small in-wall cadet heater, it’s thermostat has gone crazy in it’s old age and now is either on pumping heat out all night or off. This means every night I wake up in a 300 degree bedroom and have to go and turn the damn thing off, and another hour later, it is freezing in the room. Welcome to my special hell.

The Nest add the smarts of a smartphone to a thermostat. It is connected with wifi, has a motion sensor and learns your movements and habit. I will, for example, turn the heat to the desired temp right before we come to bed, turn the heat down a bit after we fall asleep, and back up when we wake. IT IS AWESOME AND I WANT IT IN MY HOUSE.

Also, it looks like HAL9000 and glows red when the heat is on. Will my Nest dream…?

#5. Motorola Xoom:

Xoom Site

Retail: $499.99 (but much cheaper on craigslist)

This is an older tablet but it is already updated with ICS and can be found used for a discounted price. It has a front facing camera and is nice and fast. I am always looking for new tablets. I am excited about the future of Android tablets, and this would allow me to use and experiment. The possibilities are endless. Hhmm.

#6. Roomba:

Roomba Site

Retail: $349.99 – $599.99

This one I’m not really expecting to get. But IT’S A ROBOT THAT CLEANS YOUR FLOOR. How cool is that?? I have two pugs and with all their hair it would be nice for a little robot to clean all that crap up for me. And I would feel like the Jestons.

#7. AR Drone:

http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/usa/

This thing is too cool, I’ve hinted at it before. You can control this thing from a remote camera on it via your phone. You can also record HD video from it, your own aural shots!! The downside is you only get a 12 minute runtime

:*(

But just think of what you could do!

Well there we go. If I was independantly weathly I would own all of this junk. But hopfully I can come away from this birthday with one or two of these

Any tech gadgets you can’t live without? Comment Below!