March 5, 2010 | celebrities, lists

Many professional associations hold ceremonies recognizing outstanding achievement in a given field. Give a guy a personalized plaque and it’ll be at least a week before he places a silent call to his boss followed by an email saying he can’t make it to work that day due to a case of acute laryngitis, and sending out resumes like distress signals.

The awards show that trumps them all when it comes to stroking more egos than a brothel on Small Penis Island is the Oscars. Watching them, you have to pinch yourself to remember that Ben Kingsley only played Gandhi, and had no part in actually helping India break from colonial rule. The approbation doled out will have you believe that the recipients spent their lives massaging lepers and filling holes in the ozone layer by hand rather than lolling about in a Malibu pool while a personal assistant organizes a timed sprinkler light display in front of their on-set trailer.

This pomposity reached its pinnacle in 2009, when nominees for the acting categories had a past winner read their IMDB highlights and explain why they were the best thing since the flush toilet. Even those who don’t have a hope in hell of winning can go home basking in the knowledge that Jack Nicholson reenacts scenes from their movies in his backyard gazebo.

The hauteur, the lack of perspective and the threat of being exposed to the comedy of Billy Crystal are reasons enough to get caught up on your Home Shopping Channel viewing come Oscar night. But there have been some moments in the history of the Academy Awards that are obnoxious even by the sky high bar set by Hollywood:

10) George Clooney, Best Supporting Actor for Syriana, 2005:

In 2005, George Clooney’s affected Oscar speech for the baffling Syriana summed up just how deeply Hollywood’s head is implanted up its ass. Responding to host Jon Stewart’s earlier dig that Hollywood was out of touch with America, Clooney said: “I would say that we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood… It’s probably a good thing. We were the ones talking about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t popular and this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were sitting in the backs of theaters.” Clooney failed to mention how this same group shoved more ethnic stereotypes down people’s throats than racist Uncle Lou the master impressionist at a family barbecue.

9) Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra as hosts, 1975:

The film chosen as the best documentary for 1974 was “Hearts and Minds” a hard-hitting documentary on the Vietnam War by Burt Schneider. Bob Hope, one of the hosts that night was featured in the documentary in a less than flattering light: as a hack comedian and cheerleader for an unjust war (in other words, accurately). He was no doubt refraining from doing knuckle bumps with anyone when Schneider was announced as the winner, but was peeved into action when the documentarian took the opportunity to read a message from the North Vietnamese after the recently signed Paris Peace Accords: “Please transmit to all our friends in America our recognition of all they have done on behalf of peace.” Jane Fonda obnoxious? Sure, but the guy had just won an Academy Award for a film condemning the Vietnam War, so fair pool. A furious Hope scribbled down a message and cajoled fellow presenter, Frank Sinatra, into reading it, purportedly “on behalf of the Academy”. “We are not responsible for any political references made on the program, and we are sorry they had to take place this evening.” Hope became persona non grata at the Oscars following this for invoking the name of the academy because of his bruised ego.

8) Debby Boone (Award for Songwriter Joseph Brooks):

In 1977, singer Debby Boone performed “You Light up My Life” at the ceremony. The ditty would later go on to win an Oscar for songwriter Joseph Thompson, who would go another few decades without accomplishing much before returning to the limelight as a defendant in a slew of rape cases. Boone thought it wasn’t fair that deaf people should be kept from enjoying this terrible song, so she brought a group of 11 kids on stage to sign the song for the hearing impaired watching the broadcast. As it turned out, the 11 kids were not deaf, as everybody had assumed they were, and had no clue how to sign. Deaf people called the performance “mumbo jumbo” and likely offered up a single digit you don’t need conversational ASL to comprehend.

7) Greer Garson, Best Actress, Mrs. Miniver, 1942:

Greer Garson won the Academy Award for her role as a strong wife and mother in World War II England and to support the war effort, the Oscars that year were made of plaster (producers of the Adult Video Awards take note)—a fact you can pull out of your hat if charades fails to enliven the dullest party imaginable. Garson rambled on for what the Guinness Book marks as the longest Oscar acceptance speech in history, one that made the Gettysburg address seem like a knock-knock joke. The presenter sat down and in an eerily prescient moment being that Cuba Gooding hadn’t even been born yet, Garson touched on the arbitrary nature of the awards. Wags dubbed it longer than her performance in the film and due to her long-windedness, speeches were capped.

6) James Cameron, Best director for Titanic, 1998:

Fittingly, as he also directed the Abyss, just when you thought things couldn’t sink any lower, Cameron proved the sea bottom could still be trawled. After thanking the cast earlier for giving him “pure gold every day” (since this is one of the worst films ever to win an Oscar, we’d hate to see how things would’ve turned out if they’d given him the stuff that rusts), Cameron noted “this is for a real event that happened when real people died and shocked the world in 1912 and I’d like…to do a few seconds of silence in remembrance of 1500 men, women and children who died.” Don’t’ forget, earlier he’d completely shattered whatever sense of solemnity he’d manage to craft among the drunken Hollywood assembled, by pumping his fist in the air and shouting: “I’m the king of the world!” not to mention following up that moment of silence with “now let’s party ’til dawn!”

5) Laurence Olivier, accepting the Irving Thalberg Award, 1979:

Olivier is often considered the greatest Shakespearean actor ever to fill out a codpiece while many of his acting rivals only graced a stage when it came time to bask in the glow of their charitable foundations. Olivier has consistently avoided the type of movie that topped box offices that year, such as Meatballs and The Muppet Movie and could’ve elevated the tone of the proceedings by dropping a bit of the ol’ Bard rather than copy that would’ve been edited out of the shittiest ‘thank you’ card, with this: “The prodigal, pure, human kindness of it [the Academy giving Olivier the award]—must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me at this moment, dazzling me a little, but filling me with warmth and the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow.”

4) Adrien Brody, Best Actor, The Pianist, 2002:

Brody won the Oscar for the Pianist and must have made the director of that film, Roman Polanski proud when he grabbed presenter Halle Berry and dipped the actress for an ill at ease lip-lock. He then cemented himself as a likely pincher of flight attendant bottoms with the lecherous quip: “I bet they didn’t tell you that was in the gift basket.” A follow-up was a meandering spiel mercifully interrupted by the band– a full minute after the usual cut-off time – but not soon enough to prevent Brody from sharing his revelation that war is indeed an ugly thing.

3) Julia Roberts, “Best” Actress, Erin Brockovich, 2001:

In 2001, Roberts, previously known for being out-acted by her body double in Pretty Woman, beat out Joan Allen, Ellen Burstyn, Juliette Binoche and Laura Linney – all far superior actresses. Roberts neglected any pretense of trying to keep things moving along with an under-two-minute speech, by going over six. Given lightning is unlikely to strike twice and she’ll never be granted hardware again, we can cut her some slack, but what made her speech particularly intolerable was her haughty bossing of the orchestra conductor. “You’re so quick with that stick, mister man, so why don’t you just sit down.”  Why the poor slob didn’t strike up the band with an up tempo “Roll out the Barrel”, we’ll never know.

2) Vanessa Redgrave, best actress for Julia (1978):

When Michael Moore won his Oscar for Bowling for Columbine, he proved himself one of the more disliked people in Hollywood by actually being booed by a room full of liberals when he called Bush 43 a “fictitious president” leading the country into a “fictitious war” (the latter sentiment likely not sitting well with the families of soldiers having their “fictitious asses” shot off overseas). But he at least won the award for what could loosely be deemed ‘a political documentary’. Vanessa Redgrave’s Oscar came for her role in Julia in which she played a woman struggling against tyranny in Nazi Germany, so it seemed incongruous to say the least, to single out “Zionist hoodlums” during her speech. That anger stemmed from a sympathetic documentary Redgrave made that same year about the PLO. While “hoodlums” were burning her in effigy in the stadium car park Redgrave said: “I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you’ve stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums, whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world.”

FACTOID: Redgrave’s middle finger was compounded by further obnoxious behavior later on in the night when screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, there to present the award for best screenwriter, decided to upbraid Redgrave for her speech earlier in the evening: “I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple ‘Thank you’ would have sufficed.” It would have sufficed for Chayefsky to announce the names of the nominees rather than just blurting out the name of the winner following his rant.

1) Marlon Brando, best actor for The Godfather, 1973:

Winning his first Oscar in 1959 for On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando accepted the award with humility, grace, and brevity worthy of rousing applause.  “It’s a wonderful moment and a rare one,” he said, “and I’m certainly indebted. Thank you.” Fast forward to 1973 when it was pretty much assured that Brando would win the Oscar for the Godfather, and he pulled off the most obnoxious stunt in the history of the Academy Awards. Instead of attending the ceremony, Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather, supposedly as a representative of the Apache tribe, to read a prepared statement about Hollywood’s negative treatment of Native Americans. There were probably a few Italians in the house who found this ironic. Littlefeather, whose Apache credentials later came into doubt as she was reported to be a Mexican actress, had been given a 15-page statement by Brando to read, though the booing and catcalling that greeted her speech cut that short.

February 7, 2010 | celebrities

Prior to his talk show, Jimmy Kimmel was circus master  of the trampoline T&A tableau that was The Man Show and recently he earned our boundless respect for going on the Jay Leno Show and giving viewers the only funny Ten at Ten segment in the show’s mercifully brief history, and further slapping Leno Down by impersonating him for an entire episode of his own show.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have his slapping hand at the ready when purity-ringleader Nick Jonas appeared on his show this week and implied that Dylan can’t sing.

Nick Jonas, a member of eponymous fraternal rubes who help fund Disney shareholder 401ks, awkwardly made his way through the interview with Kimmel, obviously made uncomfortable by Jimmy’s humor, and looking like he would run for the exits screaming “Jesus Saves” when the host broached the subject of sex.

During the second half of the interview, Jonas was discussing a remake of We Are the World in which rapper Lil’ Wayne was supposed to sing Bob Dylan’s original part. When the Louisiana rapper protested, “but I can’t sing”, the Jonas Brother quipped to Kimmel ‘Exactly!’

We assume Kimmel held back from shaking this kid by the lapels and slapping him until he became aware of how inappropriate it is for a maker of confectionery pop music to disrespect one of the all-time greats. Somehow, though, we think Bob Dylan will be able to weather this assault from a singer whose music does the opposite of what good music should do and that is encourage people to fornicate.

We’ve covered a few beefs here before, but this isn’t going to be anything close to a fair fight, like say, one between former Bloods gangbanger The Game and human flak jacket 50 Cent. The closest we’ve come is covering a restaurant beef between George Clooney and Fabio, who just never got the acting recognition he deserved. Here we are comparing Dylan, a musical meteor shower, with Nick Jonas, a discount firecracker.

But let’s see how it plays out on the tale-of-the-tape, even if it seems, to use a different metaphor—-blue fin tuna versus bycatch.

Bob Dylan has been called the voice of a generation

Nick Jonas has been a spokesperson for adult-onset acne

Dylan’s influence can be felt in literary, folk, jazz, hip hop and poetry circles

Nick Jonas’ influence can be felt in a mall food court.

Bob Dylan’s songs have been covered by thousands of artists globally from every genre of music

Nobody has covered a Jonas Brothers song to the best of our knowledge, or at least, have not fessed up to it if they have.

Bob Dylan wrote a critically acclaimed memoir, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle that spent 19 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Nick Jonas dated Miley Cyrus.

Bob Dylan received a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize committee for his impact on American culture and academics have lobbied Nobel members to award him a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nick Jonas, with his brothers, appeared in an ad for Baby Bottle Pops.

Bob Dylan was cited in Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century where he was called “master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation”.

Nick Jonas has been photographed in Bop  and Tiger Beat

Bob Dylan Choice Lyrics:

‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Jonas Brothers Choice Lyrics:

How long will I be waiting,
To be with you again
Gonna tell you that I love you,
In the best way that I can.

Bob Dylan has stayed relevant, constantly reinventing himself as an artist and his most recent albums are among the best of his career.

The most remarkable thing about Nick Jonas is that he has diabetes.

Bob Dylas has been a colossal figure in American music for half a century.

Nick Jonas writes his own songs—-but let’s point out that Danielle Steele and Stephenie Meyer write their own books but that doesn’t make it right.

Projected Winner: Any single day Dylan has spent in a recording studio victorious over the entire output of Nick Jonas’ career.

January 15, 2010 | Rants, celebrities, lists

Well it’s all over but the chants of “You suck Jay” and “We want Coco” – Jay Leno will return to host The Tonight Show, yet another decisive victory in his long, extremely successful campaign championing mediocrity in comedy.

In 1992, in a move that riled both the previous host, Johnny Carson, and anyone with a sense of humor who had not been somehow decisively thwarted in life, Jay Leno won The Tonight Show spot over the far funnier, innovative legend of Late Night, David Letterman.

Leno then spent years upsetting anyone who made the mistake of turning on the television during a commercial break, figuring it had been tuned into Letterman and then getting into bed only to have the Chin appear on the screen and realizing too late that the remote was out of arm’s reach. His show was popular among the lowest common denominator of comedy fans, which also meant that it was hugely successful for a number of years since a surprisingly huge number of people embrace crap.

Then the hope of pre-midnight laughter on NBC arose when it was announced that Leno was going to be stepping aside for Conan O’Brien.

Often when current, big shot comedy writers talk about their formative experiences, they talk about being on one of three writing teams: SNL, Letterman, and Conan during his time at Late Night. Conan wrote some of The Simpsons all-time best episodes, including a Shark Guy favorite, “Marge Versus The Monorail”, and he actually improved upon what had up to that point been the funniest franchise in late night talk show history, “Late Night With David Letterman”, with his team’s own hilarious sketches, top among them Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, and the Masturbating Bear.

The first week of the Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien contained more fresh ideas and innovative comedy than any single year of the show under Jay Leno. It seemed that Team Coco was going to extend and improve upon The Tonight Show franchise just as it had done with Late Night. Admittedly, this was far easier to do as it was building from the ground up comedy-wise with The Tonight Show, but still, all positive up to that point.

Of course, rather than fading into an endless succession of Las Vegas stand-up dates playing to rooms full of lobotomized people, Jay Leno announced that he was going to move to 10pm, which he called the “new 11.30pm”. He did the impossible and managed to produce a program that was even more derivative and uninspired than his Tonight Show.

Leno might have been stroking that big chin of his when he made this decision, as it turned out to be a crafty one. The Jay Leno show comprised lame skits, monologues so bad they almost seemed antagonistic, and set pieces that made one wonder if the writer’s strike had really ended. Much good humor had already been sucked out of the world by the time 11.35pm came on and The Tonight Show began.

For Conan, following the Jay Leno show was like being thrown out of an airplane with a 200-pound weight on your back instead of a parachute. As Leno himself said in this interview when justifying why his own show was tanking at 10pm.: “Lead-ins are important. On the nights when we have a strong lead-in, we are competitive; on the nights we don’t, it’s up to us to try and carry the ball ourselves….”

To salvage the wreck of the Jay Leno Show debacle, NBC decided to give Leno back his 11.35pm slot, perhaps reasoning that it would be impossible for Leno to decimate his own audience by leading into his own show. After a few disingenuous jokes about how he had been “fired again”, Leno accepted the offer, undoubtedly thrilled to steer the Tonight Show franchise back on the path of unchallenging mediocrity that he has long championed.

Below we have identified five traits that we find particularly irksome about Jay Leno. This is by no means a definitive list — we make no mention of Leno’s band leader, Kevin Eubanks, the most uncharismatic man on television — but here are The Five Most Annoying Things About Jay Leno.

5. Shameless Corporate Shill

Network television is run by ads, so anyone on it can be dubbed a corporate shill, but there’s a way to handle that without seeming like the president of the local chapter of the Big Industrial Pollute, Fatten and Stupefy fan club.

The late comedian Bill Hicks once admired Leno, but grew disillusioned when he saw Leno on TV stuffing Doritos in his gob for cash.

This from Alternative Reel’s Top Hicks quotes:

“Selling Doritos on TV? What a fuckin’ whore. And not even when he needed the money either, you know? If you’re a young actor, I’ll look the other way, but the guy makes $3 million a year, he decides to hock Doritos to make more money. You don’t got enough money you fucking whore? You’ve got to sell snacks to bovine America now? It’s Satan fucking him in the ass on national TV man . . . fuck . . .”

To this day, Leno is no stranger to sucking at the teat of Corporate America, as this compilation from a September episode of his terrible recent foray into prime time makes clear.

4. But Says He’s Not in it for the money

It’s one thing to prostitute your creative output in the pursuit of filthy lucre. We can understand that, and we too like our lucre, the filthier the better. But Leno claims he’s not in it for the money.

He told Rolling Stone:

Showbiz is not that hard. People make it difficult. The problem starts when you have to have all the money. I don’t need all the money. I’ve said this a million times, and it’s clichéd, but I’ve never touched a dime of TV money. I put it in the bank and live off the money I make as a stand-up comedian. That keeps me honest.

If the money isn’t important to him, and he doesn’t give a crap about doing anything worthwhile in comedy, then why does he insist on continuing with the show?

3. His Nice Guy Shtick

Mention Jay Leno and the most common response you get even from those who would rather watch their own open-heart surgery in the OR is that he seems like a really nice guy.

First, who cares if he’s a friendly guy in real life, and tips generously at places with valet parking? Overly talkative people on the bus are often quite amiable, but we wouldn’t want to listen to them deliver monologues after the news, especially if the experience is not preferable to discount root canal at the dental college. But more importantly and as recent events make perfectly clear: he’s not that nice. Leno undermined Conan with his lousy lead-in show, and even went so far as to say in an interview that he would be happy to take up the reins at 11.35pm again “if [NBC] wanted it”. He said that before anyone suggested that NBC might return him to his old slot, and was basically implying that he’d happily knock Conan out of the position if given the opportunity.

Leno denied having any such ambitions in his Rolling Stone interview: “I said, ‘Guys, whatever you want to do.’ I’ve never been one of these guys that breaks up with a girl and goes, ‘But why? If I do this, will you go out with me?’ I’m more like, ‘Babe, if you don’t want to see me, I’m gone. It’s over. Thank you.’ ”

Actually, he’s more like the passive aggressive guy who gets dumped and then waits for the right moment when his ex is either drunk or suffering from low self-esteem to sweep in and get a leg-over.

2. Horrendous Monologue Jokes

Also in his interview with Rolling Stone, Leno lists extending the monologue from 3-4 minutes to 14 as one of his innovations during his time at The Tonight Show. Since his monologues elicit more groans than recent gunshot wounds, this hardly seems like an innovation worth bragging about.

If these zingers from recent episodes of the Jay Leno show are any indication, he could have extended the monologue to PBS Pledge Drive drive proportion and not registered an increase in funny material:

(on the link between hemorrhoids and marijuana):
“Talk about a doubie up your bootie!” -Jay Leno

“Well, it’s growing more and more likely that California will legalize marijuana. You mean it’s not already legal?” –Jay Leno

“Well of course, the big political story, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got himself in hot water during the election, when he described Barack Obama as a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no negro dialect.’ See, that may explain why Reid was the Senate majority leader and not the Senate minority leader.” –Jay Leno.

1. He was funny once

It may seem shocking, but Jay Leno was actually funny once. As Patton Oswalt noted in this Comedy Death Ray segment, Jay Leno’s current incarnation is all the more disappointing because at one time capable of producing great comedy.

Here, in a segment from Late Night With David Letterman, Leno does a bit on hackneyed comedy, and it seems a shame that he would go on to become synonymous with just that.