In a week that has had the hairs of the world standing on end (were the miners dead or alive, will Ariel Sharon become a retard, etc), the only piece of really important news is that Jon Stewart is hosting the Oscars.
The Grande Enchilada must confess she's been an avid Oscar watcher since Liza Minelli sang Cabaret and they had that amazing Shaft musical number, back in the day when there were streakers and David Niven was alive, and long before they had 15 hours of sweaty, stiff-jawed, narcotically pumped stars trudging on the red carpet like wild herrings on an assembly line.
Every year I vow not to see the Oscars ever again and every year I succumb to the temptation. It used to be like watching a car crash: very, very bad but you couldn't look away. Hollywood peeps in the 70's were loopy. Back in the day Marlon Brando sent Pocahontas to collect his prize and we all looked forward to not seeing Woody Allen collect his. In the 80's you could count on an utterly embarrassing spectacle like the Snow White debacle with Rob Lowe or other equally vulgar dance clunkers choreographed by Debbie Allen, who should be barred from the proceedings posthaste. And in Mexico, where I saw the telecasts, I particularly enjoyed listening to 2 simultaneous translators understand Johnny Carson's jokes and still set their tongues a-twisting trying to render them into Spanish. That alone was spellbinding.
Now that the Oscars have become like watching paint dry on the one non-padded wall of your cell at the insane asylum, and NOTHING EVER HAPPENS, I heartily welcome the news of Mr. Stewart bringing his charming chutzpah to the ordeal. I hope that, for the life of him, he stays away from the teleprompter and the terrible jokes written by that scary furry man who was recently starring in Hairspray.
Here are some tips to the Academy to make the Awards watchable:
• Kill the Oscar for best song, for the sake of mankind. No more musical numbers, ever. This may actually help bring world peace.
• My favorite part is the obituaries. Make it longer.
• Kill the kill music. Let the stars embarrass themselves and their agents and their mom and dad and God above, and their publicist and stylist and trainer and pusher....
• Let the camera linger on the faces of the losers as the winner's name is said.
As for my fellow sufferers, I recently discovered a way to make the Oscars almost bearable: drink lots of hard liquor.
And watch the pre-show either on mute or with the soundtrack to the Ride of the Valkyries: very übermenschy, very Leni Riefenstahlish. Very glam.
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