Hot Air

Like a ton of other people, I watched the Oscars last night. I generally hate award shows, I don't see the point of having a competition for art. Theatre, film, music and the like are not sports, and it's somewhat annoying to see them treated that way. And the shows themselves are usually really annoying and boring. The Grammys are the absolute worst, I don't even remember the last time I even tried to sit through that nonsense. Call me when they bestow a lifetime achievement on Billy Bragg or Robyn Hitchcock. I'm not holding my breath.

But I still watch the Oscars for some reason. Probably because I was a theatre major and that's what you did. If you were in rehearsals for a show, it would be scheduled around Oscar night and there was always a party. There would be lots of drinking and a lot of bitching about who got "robbed" that particular year. Good times.

Last night was supposed to be a mini version of that. Our friends Joe (also a theatre major in school) and Megan were supposed to come over. A perfect time for Joe and I to drink beer and criticize everybody and everything in the Oscar telecast. But the weather forecast for New York last night was not pretty, which meant that Megan would have to get up even earlier for work this morning to be able to take the Long Island Railroad to work instead of her usual two hours on the Long Island Expressway, which would probably be covered in ice and dumb shit drivers who think they drive great in the snow (they don't). So they stayed home so they wouldn't be getting back at 1:00am to have to wake up at 4:00.

It was too bad. Except that I got to keep all the Boddingtons I bought for the occasion for myself. First introduced to it by my buddy Armando several years ago, it is one of my favorite special occasion beers, with all its rich and creamy goodness. Mmmmm.....

Anyway, it was great to see Martin Scorsese win last night of course. It will never make up for the intolerable cruelty of having lost to Kevin Costner in 1990, but still, it's good to see a long overdue recognition of the greatest director of his generation.

Probably nothing in the Academy Awards is as bad as the usual choices for original song, and this year, despite that I generally like Melissa Etheridge, was not much better. Three nominations for songs from Dreamgirls? They are nothing more than slicked-over, homogenized, musical theatre versions of the "Motown Sound" from a show that was crap even in its stage version.

Meanwhile, some of the most interesting original music in a movie was completely shut out. How they could give so many nominations to Little Miss Sunshine but overlook the song Til The End Of Time by DeVotchka is just mind-boggling. It really was the best song written for a movie this year (listen to it here if you don't believe me). Rewarding over the hill rockers and vanilla-flavored, pedestrian crap is supposed to be the Grammys' job, but there is no shortage of that at the Oscars either. It seems that their only nod to anything interesting every year is Randy Newman, but even his recent stuff isn't nearly as good as his 90s movie songs. About the last time the Academy took a chance on anything interesting for songs was the 1997 to 2000 run of Elliot Smith, Amy Mann and Björk. And they lost to that horrible Titanic ballad, Phil Collins' Tarzan song (which amazingly enough, was even worse than just normal Phil Collins) and a late career Bob Dylan snooze-fest, respectively.

Last night also had a lot of praising of Al Gore for "inspiring everyone here" to do something about global warming. Now that's all well and good. I personally feel pretty good about my low contribution to the amount of global warming-causing gases in the atmosphere. In fact, I would say that I'm probably better than a vast majority of my fellow U.S. residents when it comes to that.

Listening to the way people were talking on the stage last night and the way everyone cheered when Gore was thanked for making the country change its ways about carbon pollution, you would think that all the people of Hollywood were better than the average person about not contributing to the green house gas problem. But does anyone seriously believe that? How many people in the Kodak Theatre last night do you think took the subway there? Seriously, of all the places in L.A., that part of Hollywood is probably the easiest when it comes to public transportation. There is a subway stop literally outside the front doors of the theatre at Hollywood &Highland. (Though that station was closed yesterday for "security" reasons, the next one is only a few blocks away at Hollywood & Vine) From there you can take a straight shot one-seat to the Valley, or downtown and transfer to light rail that will take you to anywhere from Pasadena to Long Beach. But I have yet to hear of any stories of DiCaprio popping out of the subway or hopping off the bus and making his way to the red carpet. Or dropping his bicycle off at the valet.

So while all of the famous people were talking the talk about global warming and clapping for Al, do you think anybody in the building last night besides some of the ushers and bartenders, and maybe Ed Begley Jr. if he was there, got there by any means other than a car? And I've never heard that they make a hybrid limo.

I guess celebrities' way of contributing to solving the problem of global warming is to tell the rest of us to take the subway.

Boy, I hope that personal sacrifice doesn't put them out too much.

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on them. I suppose it's too much to ask them to walk to the bus stop in those brutal Los Angeles winters. Brrrr.