#471 Score-Osc

I watched the Oscars recently. Every now and then it’s important to take part in a big overly-hyped television event. If there is one thing that’s led to the demise of civility it’s that we don’t do enough together and therefore don’t share common reference points. It’s especially important for a humorist, who depends on his audience getting key facts before he swoops in with a Hawaiian punch line. Back when there were only three channels on TV and we all watched the same vanilla Wonderbread family sitcoms, it was easy to make jokes that everyone got. And Ellen Degeneres showed that perfectly in the Oscars. When she said that the since the Oscars was now a “green” show she would do her part and recycle old jokes, then proceeded to throw out some Gilligan’s Island observations, the whole audience cracked up. Jokes about Babel would have come off as if they were in a foreign language. In any event, a couple of things I noticed about the Oscars. First, don’t give an Oscar for musical scoring to an Italian who only speaks Italian. You’d be surprised how verbose a musician can be. And verbosity in a foreign language with a musical scorer who apparently doesn’t understand a music cue—to get off the freakin stage—was incredibly painful to watch. And speaking of scoring. Is it Martin Score-say-see- or Martin Score-seh-see? They called him both ways. Notice they didn’t dare call him Martin Score-sissy. But it was confusing. His name had more pronunciations than al queda. Oops, shouldn’t have said al queda in something that will end up on my blog. Those guys in the black van will be parking outside my house again. So really, isn’t old Marty looking more and more like a lost Marx brother everyday? With those horn rims and his black eyebrows, he should win the Oscar for the Eugene Levy look-alike contest. Another cool thing about the Oscars is you see the same commercials you saw last at the Super Bowl. Except they’ve been edited to exclude anything that caused any consumer uproar. The Suicidal Robot commercial I talked about a week ago had the crucial “robot about to jump over the bridge” scene cut out and the robot gazing fearfully at a metal compactor instead. Yeah. Cool idea. Have a despondent entity about to be trash-compacted instead of about to jump off a bridge. I don’t know about you, but execution seems so much more fun than suicide. Also like the Super Bowl, the Oscars had play by play announcers and color commentators. This year with some guy backstage keeping a running tally for those of us at home. The only thing they were missing was the obligatory women reporter on the field. And finally, Oscar folks, let’s shorten up the walks the celebrities have to take on the way to the podium. If time’s so short you’re going to cut off acceptance speeches, then we don’t need saucy saunters, struts, and swaggers stretching salaciously across the stage. Alliterally. America, ya gotta love it