Essential Knowledge

I bought The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge- all 1096 pages- for under five dollars. I like it because, like my older reference book, The 1997 Information Please Almanac, it's full of facts and whatnot.

You can look up, say, the country of Chad, or find a mini biography of Patty Hearst. One of my favorite sections is "Awards"- Nobel Prize, Pulitzer, Grammy, and Oscar. You can see, for each year, who won for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Supporting Actor & Actress. What I wish it had, though, is all the nominees. It's always fun to see who was snubbed. In 1980 Ordinary People famously beat Raging Bull for Best Picture but I'm thinking of the Best Song catagory for 1999.

I remember at the time Trey Parker and Matt Stone made a big deal because their song from the South Park movie lost to Phil Collins's song from one of those Disney films. "Blame Canada" was nominated and I think the Academy thought that made them very cool and "with it". They ended up ignoring the song that should've won: Aimee Mann's "Save Me" from the Magnolia soundtrack. It's probably the best song they've nominated in the past 30 years, maybe the best ever.

Anyway, most of my books are in storage at my parents' house so when I'm bored and have an hour to kill, I'll look through the NYTGtES and look up subjects that I'm clueless about, like stocks and bonds and baseball and afterwards I feel just a little bit smarter. It's a good feeling.