My friend Marshall found this old article from 2001, believe it or not. 2001 seems like an eternity ago for so many reasons. 1) Because the world changed full stop. And 2) My world changed. Full stop. I never did appear on the Oscar Pre-Show, but I was featured on Ebert and Roeper thanks to Michaela Perreira who was doing a tech segment for them. It was one of the coolest things anyone has ever done for me. My site was then later listed as a source in one of Roeper’s books. And that’s as far as my six degrees of separation to Roger Ebert go.

Sasha Stone To Appear On Oscar Pre-Show

Mirror film critic Sasha Stone will be featured as part of the “Internet and the Oscars” segment on KABC’s Academy Awards pre-show telecast, Sunday, March 25. Hosted by Roger Ebert, the broadcast is syndicated nationally and internationally as the official Oscar pre-show.

Stone will speak as Editor-in-Chief of OscarWatch.com, an online Academy Awards analysis and prediction magazine that she created in 1999. The site, which was recently redesigned by Venice internet consultant Joshua Avedon, features Oscar buzz, “insider” information, analysis of behind-the-scenes campaigning, and discussions of other factors that contribute to who takes home the coveted golden boy each year. The OscarWatch Forums, in which movie fans from Chile to Slovakia to Zimbabwe argue the merits of their favorite films, prove once again the worldwide fascination with the Hollywood Movie.

Stone updates the site daily, and shares her own insights in the “Ed Sez” column. OscarWatch was featured as one of the top three Academy Awards-related websites on “Ebert and Roeper at the Movies” earlier this year. To read Stone on the Oscar race, see this page, and visit www.oscarwatch.com.

That’s the thing about blogging that occurred to me last night, as we stumbled out of California Adventure — the souls of our feet aching, our psyches bled out, our wallets drained – my thoughts were on the Oscars. Or they were on this other site I’m trying to get launched, or they were on a part of a site that I know needs a lot of work but if it works it will be great. My thoughts on it never end. That either makes me driven or it makes me a maniac. This is one key aspect about blogging that is different from being a journalist.

Journalists don’t have to build things from scratch. They are always getting credit — mostly from so-called PR guys – but really, most people who bag on blogger and praise journalists give the credit for doing the actual reporting. That means they make phone calls, ask questions, write a story, get paid. Lately, many of them have been getting laid off yet the bloggers remain. Why? Because most of us did it before we were making money, and many of us would do it even if we weren’t making money.

Moreover, we do it all — create and maintain the blog, pay for the server, put out content every day. And yet, we are thought of us as parasites who suck the life blood from real journalists. You’d think they’d be happier knowing that someone was taking their story and sharing it with their audience thus the story is read by more people. But no. It doesn’t work that way. It’s THEIR Tonka truck. You can’t play with it.

Do I sound bitter? I guess I do a little bit. I’m a bitter person. I eat bitter for breakfast. No, not really. I don’t really eat breakfast. But I do wish that the journalists would figure out a way to evolve into this new medium so that their loss of a job wouldn’t directly impact the way they treat and write about bloggers.

The beauty of the internet is that it’s like a farmer’s market – you can wander here, wander there – you can pick up an organic apple at one stand, some coffee at another. The mode of the giant supermarket isn’t the way it works online. There is no such thing as one-stop shopping. And what exactly is wrong with that?

Oscar season has sucked up all of my time. But I am thinking about beginning a new project and I’m very excited about it. That means I will be updating more. Right now, I just want to say that my daughter and I keep watching Burn After Reading because it’s so funny. It funnier than I ever thought it was the first time I saw it.

Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone – and now it’s time to face down the next year of my finite life. I will try harder to update more.

ReadWriteWeb sums up the nightmare for many of us who are never off the clock:

Why Future Holds More Stress

The bad news is that real-time is not going away. We are not going to settle for less than right now. This means that the future holds more and more stress. As we evolve into a society that demands more information and more information processing immediately, we are also evolving into a society of people under constant stress. The fact that computers are ubiquitous is making it all that much worse. Of course people were stressed last century as well, but in the seventies when you went home for the weekend you, relaxed. Nowadays? No way. There is no 30 minute period in my life that I do not check email. Going off the grid is really hard for many of us. Real-time is not only stressful, it is addictive.

Faster causes stress. So does the non-stop flow of information. When we are unable to fall asleep at night, we lie down stressed and thinking why? Why am I doing all of this? The tough part is that there is no other way. We do not know how to do what we do and not be stressed. So for better or worse, we are rushing forward through the sea of information towards more stress.