The O Word

My longtime readers and fans know that I have only contempt for that silly trinket known as "The Oscar". This is why I have refused ever to accept even a nomination, let alone the award itself, for the full 79 years of it's meaningless existence. And, to give them their due, the Academy and it's cadets have honored my feelings by never nominating me for anything, although they could have at least shown me the respect of nominating me and letting me turn it down. People might get the right idea, particularly given some of the people who have been nominated in the past. (John Travolta? Ryan O'Neal? John Wayne? Delores Delgado? Larry Olivier? Get real.)

In any event, The Oscars have grown into such a major event, the so-called "Gay Superbowl", that they are impossible to ignore. So what the swill? I might as well weigh in with my two Euros. I was of course, begged to be a presenter, but I swore off presenting the award after the debacle of 1949, when I nearly had to present an Oscar to that hateful sow Delores Delgado; a fate I avoided only by quick thinking, and announcing Jane Wyman as the winner, assuming, I'm sure correctly, that the words "Delores Delgado" on the card in the envelope were simply a misspelling of "Jane Wyman". Additionally, there is no open bar at The Oscars, so I watch it at home like you nobodies out there, where I can enjoy an aperitif or 30 while the show drags on and on. So now I present my own thoughts and observations of the endless program.

To begin with the most important point, let me set my own and everyone else’s minds at rest: once again this year, my face and name were not included in the Obituary Montage. Despite all appearances to the contrary, it seems I have not died yet. What a relief, although I do wish they would move the Obituary Montage up to earlier in the show. It's hard to concentrate until the suspense is over. I'm sure Peter O’Tool, sitting there in the Kodak audience, was equally relieved to not see himself.

That said, I was horrified to learn that my beloved Don Knotts had passed away during the last year. I had no idea. He never phoned to tell me. What a man! How well I remember those nights of unbridled passion, as he erotically tied me up in Knotts. With that trademark tremble of his, the man was a living vibrator, even if he was, once in a while, The Incredible Mr. Limp. Well, it’s nice to know that he has been, at long, long last, reunited with his career. I wonder if they recognized each other in the hereafter; it's been so long.

There was a half hour delay getting the show started, owing to the fact that last year’s Oscar Award Show wasn’t quite over yet. While we waited for Brokeback Mountain to get robbed of it’s deserved reward, ABC filled in with a dull half hour of Red Carpet coverage. Please! I stopped getting The Red Carpet back in the 1940s, and I don’t miss it. I understand there was an amusing moment over on the TV Guide channel, when Joan Rivers mistook Melissa Rivers for Forest Whitaker, an easy mistake anyone could make, particularly if you do no preparation at all.

After a completely pointless nominee montage, which erred greatly in omitting clips of Caligula from Peter O’Tool’s & Helen Mirrin’s clips (What an oversight!), first-and-last-time Oscar Hostess Ellen Degeneris made a daring break with Oscar Host Tradition. Normally the hosts, usually funny people like Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, and last year's superb Jon Stewart, deliver stinging, hilarious, incisive, side-splitting comedy monologues you talk about for days. Ellen made the unexpected choice of instead opening the dreary, endless ceremonies with a laugh-free, dramatic monologue, with fewer giggles than a Sophoclean tragedy. I must say, Ellen delivering her tragic monologue dressed in a coat from Captain Kangaroo's hand-me-downs, made David Letterman’s disastrous hosting job a decade back look a lot better. I never thought anyone could make me recall with nostalgia Chris Rock’s Oscar monologue.

They did move to the top of the show, the montage on the Technical Oscars Award Ceremonies, generally known as "The Boring Awards." I don't know why the gorgeous Jake Gyllenhaal chose to present this part of the show in drag, but he should not have shaved his chest.

I was certainly impressed by the Mormon Tabernacle Sound Effects Choir, though I wish I could have heard them singing the disemboweling sounds that Apocalypto was filled with from end to end. It's bound to be pleasanter and more musical than It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp.

Everyone was shocked when great actor Alan Arkin beat the odds-on favorite for Best Supporting Actor: comedian, homophobe, and friend of the working tranny, Eddie Murphy. Maybe if they'd held back the release of Norbit until after the ballots were in, Eddie might have won, although a famous homophobe winning during a ceremony hosted by a famously out lesbian seems borderline inappropriate.

Fortunately, there was still a supporting performer award for a famous homophobe, when Jennifer Hudson picked up her gold statuette. Of course, Jennifer insists that she's not a homophobe, it's just that in her church, God hates fags and is sending them all to hell. She's sorry about it, but she doesn’t make the rules; her god does. Of course, she might wonder why, if God is going to send all homosexuals to hell, why did He/She create them homosexual in the first place? But then, if people applied logic to matters of faith, all the churches would be empty. Jen darling, in order for something to be a sin, it has to involve the exercise of Free Will. Homosexuality is in-born. It’s not a choice, therefore it can’t be a sin. I know your church says differently, but guess what: your church is wrong.

We know that it is God who chooses the winners, because Miss Hudson had to thank God twice in her speech. (Where was the orchestra-drown-out when we needed it?) But why would God then reward a godless lesbo like Melissa Etheridge? Theology makes my head hurt.

It was very big of Moraller-than-thou Jennifer to lower her standards enough, between her God shout-outs, to thank her director, openly-gay, damned-to-hell, Bill Condon, for directing this first-time amateur into an Oscar-winning performance. "Dear Bill, thank you so much. I'll think of you kindly in heaven, while you're burning in hell for all eternity."

The Oscar Show producers this year were clearly concerned that the show would run too short, and come in with oodles of time left over, so they helped to inflate the running time by including the overwhelmingly pointless little backstage segments with the charisma-challenged Chris Connelly (What can they have been thinking? Did he say one word that was worth bothering to hear?), and the odd, entertainment-free, living shadow-puppet bits, that must have spiked viewership in Indonesia and Thailand. How about cutting those idiotic time-wasters? Then the people being honored might not have to race through their teensy acceptance speeches.

Remember when James Taylor had long hair? Remember when James Taylor had hair? However, when the camera came in close, we saw that James does still have long hair. It's growing out of his left ear.

President Al Gore, and his constant, longtime companion Leo DiCaprio, gave a speech about something. I wish I could say what it was about, but President Gore’s dynamic oratory skills always send me straight to Dreamland. I know he said something about the Oscars "Going Green," but they always are, as the audience is always full of losing nominees, green with envy. But doesn’t the release of an evening’s worth of Hollywood Hot Air seriously contribute to global warming, especially when it’s broadcast worldwide?

Deep down in the canyon-like Kodak Theater, Melissa Etheridge was yodeling in the canyon once again. Openly-lesbian, damned-to-hell Melissa, won the Best Song Oscar over the numbers sung by God-fearing straight woman Jennifer Hudson. Yes Jenny, God hates fags, and gives them Oscars to show His loathing. Maybe that’s why He made so many of them marry me.

When An Inconvenient Truth became yet another documentary feature to take the gold for Best Song, it occurred to me that Melissa Etheridge was the perfect person to explain global warming to Faux-President Bush, as she has a great deal of oral experience with bush. I might add that, after last year’s incomprehensible win by It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp, Melissa’s song I Need to Wake Up (A title she was inspired to write after chatting with President Gore.) was not expected to win, as it has a melody. How last century.

Every time Ellen returned to the stage I was surprised anew, as each time she left the stage, I instantly forgot she was hostessing. Forgettable, thy name is Ellen. The woman’s tepid humor never goes for a belly laugh, and never gets one. It’s like a baseball game in which every batter bunts. But she did change her clothes for almost every re-entrance. By the end of the show, she must have worn every outfit her brother owns. Ellen darling, what would be so terrible about wearing a lovely gown once in a while? You can still be a lesbian in a nice frock, you know. Claudette Colbert managed it for years.

William Monahan, screenwriter for The Departed, won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, apparently for writing "Two priests and a nun walk into a bar," which he adapted from original material by Henny Youngman. Monahan, showing a natural inability to edit himself, began his acceptance speech by re-inserting material he’d already cut, and then talking long enough to be among the very few winners to get the orchestra-drown-out. But he did look lovely in Eva Longoria’s hair.

The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Tree-Hugger Award was presented to Mrs. William Friedkin. A nearly-lifesize Tom Cruise, in describing Mrs. Friedkin’s career, mentioned that she'd recently "Left show business," a lovely euphemism for "Was fired." Tommy himself recently left reality, a lovely euphemism for "Nuttier than a hundred snickers bars." All right, I admit that’s not really true. It wasn’t recently.

A note to the still-ecstatically beautiful Catherine Deneuve: if you’re going to present an Oscar the very next day, perhaps that’s not the best time to get your left breast pierced, although it looked quite fetching.

Let me understand this: Pan's Labyrinth won 3 Oscars. None of the other Best Foreign Language Film nominees had even one other nomination, let alone an Oscar, yet somehow Pan's Labyrinth is not the Best Foreign Language Film?

Why wasn’t Pan's Labyrinth nominated for Best Picture?

Why wasn’t Letters From Iwo Jima nominated for Best Foreign Language Film? Consistency, thy name is not Oscar.

Was Larry David working as a seat filler?

As part of it’s Oscar Sweep, An Inconvenient Truth also won Best Documentary. Here’s an Inconvenient Truth; President Gore is boring.

The wonderful musical genius Ennio Morricone was given an honorary lifetime achievement award. Oh no! I had no idea he was dying!

I was just falling asleep as Oscar entered it's 6th or 7th hour, when out trotted Huge Jackman. He always wakes me up! He should get an award: Hottest Man in Show Business. Huge darling, drop by Morehead Heights anytime. You won't have to jack, man.

Matthew Broderick’s personal assistant, Michael Arndt, won Best Original Screenplay, and kept his speech short, as Matthew needed a cappuccino. In his acceptance speech, he used the word "Funnest". There is no such word. It’s "Most Fun". It’s always encouraging to see a man who hasn't even mastered simple English grammar win an award for writing. It gives new hope to all the other illiterates out there with a screenplay they’ve knocked out between fetching their employer’s laundry and walking his dogs.

While Thelma Schoonmaker was accepting her award for editing The Departed, her director and friend Martin Scorsese was seen blubbering and wiping away tears. There’s only one possible explanation; he’d gotten bored with the show, let his mind wander, and was thinking about Anna Nicole Smith. That buxom cadaver reduces many a tough man to a sobbing child.

In thanking her co-stars and associates on The Queen, Helen Mirrin callously failed to mention the Corgi she worked with, even though he was on stage himself shortly thereafter. Now that poor, snubbed pooch is confirmed in his opinion that all women are bitches.

So, is it possible to play someone named Queen Elizabeth and not win an Oscar? Helen did, and 7 or 8 years ago, so did Sir Judi Dench, who stayed away this time, as she was afraid they would give her Oscar to Helen.

Let's see: we had a lesbian hostess, an Oscar to a lesbian song writer/performer, sexually ambiguous Sir Judi Dench nominated for playing a lesbian, and Helen Mirrin won for playing a big old queen. Getting the message, Jennifer Hudson? Maybe God hates fags, but the God of Hollywood is a Dykey Likey. If Brokeback Mountain had been about even cowgirls gettin' the blues, it would have won.

Forest Whitaker, in his acceptance speech, said that his being an actor arose from "My desire to connect with everyone." You know, my desire to connect with everyone is what made me a slut.

I realize that Idi Amin was a paranoid nutcase who would behead you for looking at him "Funny," and I know that Forest is one of those intense method actors who stay deeply in character at all times (Not my technique at all, except when playing whores.), so I assume that’s the reason no one ever had guts enough to tell him that Idi was never King of Scotland.

When Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola came onstage together, was I the only one who thought they were going to sing Three Little Maids From School? So, do you think Steve, Francis, and Marty Scorsese were all rubbing George’s nose on their Oscars? When George asked why he’d never won an Oscar, someone should have suggested he watch The Godfather, Shindler's List and The Departed, and then take a good, hard look at Attack of the Clones.

Anyway, it was great to see Best Direction go to Marty, despite my love of the other nominees: West, North, and Up.

I was shocked to see the Best Picture Oscar being presented by Lex Luthor!

I adore Diane Keaton, but is she anorectic? I can't remember the last time I saw a woman whose hair was wider than her waist.

Finally, Lex announced that the Best Picture was The Departed, which, five minutes later, perfectly described the audience, who were sprinting for their cars, while I hit the wet bar.

My choice for Best Direction? The EXIT Signs!

Cheers darlings.