Abnormalities of Life

The 78th Annual Academy Awards were last night. They begin with the normal rigmarole and soirees as every Hollywood A-list event, except this is the really big one.

I tuned in for about 10-15 minutes of the pre-show that highlights everyone's arrival onto the red carpet. I watched Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams of Brokeback Mountain arrive and participate in perhaps the most ill-prepared interview of all times.

The reporter, some C-list celebrity reduced to nothing but a fashion commentator, asked Mr. Ledger what it was like having his career so definitively marked and changed by his performance in this movie. I cannot recall his uninteresting answer, but I remember it coming off as sublimely unremarkable. The reporter then turned to Heath's baby's momma and asked what it was like for her to "take a relatively small part and make it something special enough to be nominated for best supporting actress". Looking like a star-struck twelve year old that just got to take her picture with Justin Timberlake, Michelle sports a million dollar smile, capitalizes on the innocent sparkle of her eyes, and replies "It was easy; I had a great actor to react to".

Are you nuts? You KNEW this question would surface at least once throughout the evening, and you couldn't prepare a better answer than that? You were soooooo brilliant in Brokeback. Jen Jen Jen, you and Joey and Pacey and Dawson always spoke so eloquently as teenagers. Too eloquently if you ask me, but you didn't so I'll move on. Because of this, I had such high hopes that your vocabulary would just continue to improve as you matured. I was sadly mistaken. Now I realize that you were a struggling B-List actress until you started knocking boots with the gay cowboy and are probably a bit starstruck. But as long as he's hot--and with you--you will be too, so snap out of it and get a better publicist that can teach you how to think on your own feet.

This was the beginning and end of my date with Oscar--I only agreed to go anywhere with him to make sure Desperate Housewives wasn't going to be on. So I grabbed the remote and showed him to the door. Luckily, there's Fox, always known for being easy and entertaining and often quite edgy.

From here, I watched Bad Boys II with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Yes, I know. I'm crazy. I saw the first one and liked it. And it takes place in Miami which, despite my ill-fated experience there during Hurricane Wilma, still holds a special place in my heart. Well, thank you to Janet Jackson for ruining a perfectly unexciting movie with over censorship. Darn, crap, Fooey, and (my favorite) Mother Lovers replaced the normal expletives that make action movies about drugs and violence so great. To top it off, the sound was out of synch with the video giving me the feeling that Will Smith and Bruce Lee were suddenly long lost brothers.

So Sunday nights, usually the best night for entertainment, severely disappointed me. I had a very short date with Oscar that didn't go well, the Simpsons weren't home, Wisteria Lane was blocked by a runaway red carpet, and the Bad Boys looked more like the Hardy Boys. Perhaps I should reexamine my viewing habits, or maybe even pick up a hobby that doesn't require so little thought.