balding angrily

As you know, Jen-An and Owen came over last night for the Oscars. Unfortunately, no hijinks ensued, but I got pretty twisted by the end of the night. When we were going to bed, Jerry said, “It seems like you didn’t have a good time.” I never understood how straight guys could get so emotionally attached to football games such that when their team loses, they are in a bad mood for the rest of the day. That’s what happened to me.

As usual, I passed out Oscar ballots, and everybody filled out the ballots before the show started. I chose with my gut. I chose for upsets. I picked Ryan Gosling, Djimon Hounsou, Penélope Cruz, and Adriana Barraza over what I found out later were the favorites going into the awards. They honestly turned in my favorite performances of the year. Well, the favorites of those nominated. And honestly, Little Miss Sunshine as best original screenplay? That’s just a slap in the face to the writers of National Lampoon’s Vacation, seeing as how they wrote the same movie twenty years ago.

Other moments of Alex hanging his head:

• West Bank Story for Best Live Action Short - Jerry and I watched all the live action shorts, and this is the only one that was a true groaner. From the opening West Site Story snaps to its end, I was in misery. I was aghast that this heap of warm compost was chosen by the Academy to represent the best of the short subject. And the acceptance speech wherein the fella that produced said steaming heap shows hopes for peace in the Middle East? What part of the short that I watched gave evidence? The part where the Palestinians are represented wearing kabobs on their heads? The part where the guy dresses as a giant menorrah? The part where the Palestian does that leleleleleleh thing and shoots off an automatic weapon? (Actually, I laughed at that part.) Please tell me, Mr. Winner, you wrote this piece to make people come up with solutions for the Middle East crisis. Please ask me to take you seriously now.
• An Inconvenient Truth winning for Best Documentary Feature - As most people know, I’m a huge supporter of green causes, but this, to me, seemed like another example of Hollywood patting themselves on the back for being good. If you were going to judge each documentary on which subject is the most serious - and please, we all know that’s how the documentaries are judged - Deliver Us From Evil is, by far, the more important subject. If the Academy was seriously interested in green causes, instead of giving an award to Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge for that shit song, a portion of the proceeds from last night’s broadcast would have gone to a group lobbying D.C. to pass stricter air admissions standards or a heavy tax on Hummer owners. I honestly want all Hummer owners to be round up and shot.
• Happy Feet winning for Best Animated Feature - What the shit? Okay, I’ve never seen it, and I hear it’s good, but come on, everyone knows that Pixar ALWAYS wins this award as well they should. Plus this win started off the whole Hollywood-is-Green-Look-How-Green-We-Are-Wee-For-Green! Circle Jerk. I guess I’m not done with this subject. I’m scared about this whole emphasis on green because when Hollywood hops on the bandwagon, we can be assured it’s just a fad. What was that shit about last night’s Academy Awards being the first green telecast? As Ellen (who did a great job, by the way) stands under one billion watt light bulbs? Um-kay.

So, yeah. I guess I understand the plight of the straight man whose team loses on Super Bowl Sunday. Jen-An won our pool last night. I, who saw the most movies last year of all the people in our group of four, came in dead last. But I’m not bitter. Not at all. This deathly un-funny post is definitely not the result of being trampled.