Oscars Recap

I want to start this post off by promising that I will not make a habit of posting about topics outside of the sports world.  In fact, I polled all of my readers, but results were inconclusive because Rachel was not picking up her phone.  Feel better, kid.  Anyway, I recognized when I decided to transmit my thoughts across the “Internets,” that I would wind up eating a lot of crow.  Crows, baby!

I readily concede that I have been, and will continue to be wrong about a lot of stuff, including some of my predictions last night, but Sandra Bullock over Meryl Streep has rankled me like nothing since Winnie Cooper dumped my boy Kevin Arnold for a lifeguard in the last episode of The Wonder Years.  Have you no decency, woman?!  I will readily concede that I have not seen Webster, I mean Diff’rent Strokes, I mean The Blind Side.  And I don’t intend to.  Enough with minorities being saved by white people already.   I’m not here to bury The Blind Side, though.  I also don’t mean this as an indictment of Sandra Bullock, who seems like a truly lovely woman, a veritable Miss Congeniality.

No, I’m mad that Meryl Streep has now lost on more consecutive Oscar nominations than anyone in history, other than Katharine Hepburn, has nominations.  How can that be possible?  If Meryl Streep starred in a movie where the dramatic conflict was whether a faulty gas stove could boil a pot of water, she’d still make it Oscar worthy.  She’s as good as it gets – which didn’t deserve any Oscars, by the way – and she needs to win an Oscar pronto.  I’m going to get started on the script.  Meryl, a wood burning stove named Earl and a pot with a hole in it.  Oscar gold!

Speaking of The Blind Side, did anyone have: when a crazy white woman bum rushes a soft-spoken black guy at the podium in the Best Oscar Moments Pool?  I thought she was Michael Oher’s mom on some bad medication.  It makes you wonder why security isn’t better at the Oscars.  This would never have happened if Bea Arthur or Farrah Fawcett was still alive.  Oh, wait, they are both still alive.  They must be since they weren’t in the dead folks montage, right?  Did you hear the excuse from the Academy?

But Oscar bosses have defended their decision. Bruce Davis, the executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says,

“It is the single most troubling element of the Oscar show every year. Because more people die each year than can possibly be included in that segment. You are dropping people who the public knows. It’s just not comfortable.”

As the author of the post points out, why do you need to cut any of these people now?  Cut Jeff Bridges’ speech – at least he’ll understand the explanation, considering he’s, you know, still alive.  Would anyone really complain if the montage was 45 seconds longer?  Anyone who didn’t walk out once Ben Stiller took the stage, I mean.

Finally, my predictions:  I spit the bit.  Let’s face it.  Four for eight.  On the plus side, the first female Best Director and the first black Screenplay winner.  Nice job, academy.  Now if you can just find the time to honor Meryl Streep before she gets the loudest cheers during the dead person montage…