The Oscars. They’re, like, the Super Bowl of award shows. Only with slightly better officiating. [As far as big events go, the Super Bowl has the edge because the speeches are far more articulate: “How’d we win the game? Well, basically, we scored more points than the other team. Then we poured my favorite sports drink on Coach. This was very funny to me and my friends. We laughed and we laughed. Then we got a trophy that I can’t even take home. Bulllllshit, man…”]
Oscar night is — as far as I can tell — the one night we can watch people who are paid to say things for a living, go, “umm… oh… God, umm… first I want to thank… wow, this was… this is… a mistake… I, uh…” Only to be followed by a thoughtful speech and the words, “Now, [insert son/daughter name here], go to bed.” Which is a joke that should, itself, be put to bed. These people make it sound as if they can’t afford nannies or parents to do the task of watching over their off spring, as the little bastards train for a life in rehab.
Winning an Academy Award is a big deal too. Or, at least it was, until Marisa Tomei won one. The Russell Crowe nod didn’t do much to restore its luster, either. [Oh. And by the way, Alan Arkin DID deserve his award. It was really a lifetime achievement honor, anyway. Frankly, anyone involved in the launching of Second City…]
But when you’re living here in the City of Brotherly Facelifts, the Oscars have a special added meaning: gridlock.
Oh, my holy god.
The problem is that I live pretty close to the Kodak Theater. And that makes for a fairly inconvenient truth which, coincidentally, won an Oscar. [Unless George Bush wants to take THAT away from him, too.]
I blame the traffic jams on People™ magazine, which is only slightly harder-hitting and accurate than Fox News. Is it really that important for its subscribers to have a place to sit to watch Gwyneth Paltrow enter the Kodak Theater to receive her posthumous lifetime achievement award? I mean, it’s important to keep up her exceedingly low self-esteem but Is it really worth the meticulously well-planned detours and the headaches? No. No, it’s not.
That said, it’s actually kind of an interesting spectacle to watch 100’s of limos navigate their way through Beverly Hills, West Hollywood [,etc…] an hour before the show. The Goodyear™ Blimp, hanging in the sky; helicopters, circling the perimeter — hell, even the trannies were dressed to the nines. [Or is it sixes?]
But my thoughts as all of this buzzed around me were simply, “acting is a beautiful career. Celebrity is rubbish.”
I’m not likely to change my mind on that point.
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