March 2004

Now showing at the downtown Apocaplex

Filed under: American Idle

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 31, 2004 7:19 AM

California Governor orders immediate production of gigantic purses

Filed under: American Idle

On Monday, March 29, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced his state's quarter design, a 250-pound, 4-foot wide behemoth that, during the course of its production, will deplete our nation's copper supply within months. Gov. Schwarzenegger's remarks consisted entirely of "Top this, Texas!"

He took no questions.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 29, 2004 6:48 PM

Do not look directly into her eyes!

Filed under: American Idle

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 26, 2004 11:03 AM

Who's yer daddy?

Filed under: American Idle

The last president would have gotten into a bit of trouble for this kind of stuff. Thankfully, no presidential tongue was exposed. Check out the wince on the women in the lower right hand corner.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 24, 2004 12:46 PM

The Empire Strikes Back

Filed under: American Idle

If you think a little conspiracy conviction is going to halt the Martha Stewart Omnimedia juggernaut, think again! American Idle just received an advanced copy of the April issue of Martha Stewart Living in the mail, already re-tooled to fit her new niche market. With over 1.2 million Americans incarcerated, Stewart's looking to monopolize that enormous, yet untapped, demographic. We're told Martha Stewart Omnimedia will accept cartons of Kools in lieu of money for subscriptions.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 21, 2004 9:25 PM

Just When You Thought There Was No More Life to John Thomas...

Filed under: American Idle

by Hugh Bennewitz, copyright 2004

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 8, 2004 7:36 PM

Revenge of the Nerds

Filed under: American Idle

Some favorite moments from Sunday night's Oscar telecast.

PHOTO FROM YAHOO NEWS

I came into the Joan and Melissa Rivers pre-Oscar red carpet show a bit late. I had a few pints at a local bar and mistimed my viewing duties. They've got Joan, with her creepy, large Bambi eyes, working the red carpet, with Melissa safely cloistered in a studio, never shown, alas shrieking whenever the show was thrown to her. "Look, Mom! It's Ben Stiller!" "Look, Mom! It's whoever-the-fuck!" She was like a banshee, a woodland crone, casting evil spells on the ears of the viewers.

Joan does her usual gushing and fawning, all the while keeping the BBC at bay, who are plying nervous celebrities away from Joan with M&M's. A wide shot of the red carpet shows Robin Williams and, God in heaven, Bobcat Goldthwait fucking around, making people laugh at their hi-jinks. Bobcat Goldthwait at the Oscars? This doesn't bode well for the evening. Maybe he won some sort of candy bar contest that allowed him to meet a celebrity and stand on the red carpet for five minutes to get his picture taken. Either way, Gilbert Gottfried is sitting at home, farting into his couch, really pissed off.

7:00pm Switch over to ABC's half-hour red carpet crapfest. It makes you actually appreciate Joan Rivers, not an easy task. The nameless pretties on the red carpet are positively painful to listen to; even the best actors have a hard time keeping a smile on their face and not psychically trying to contact their managers to get them out of there. ABC stages an unfortunate Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson schtick. Normally, these guys are rock solid, but they too, get sucked into the crap-tasm that is the red carpet pre-show on ABC.

7:12pm Former MTV movie critic Chris Connelly uses the phrase "Oscar-nominatable" while talking to Jude Law.

7:15pm Chris Connelly uses the word "competish," speaking about Charlize Theron and Diane Keaton's quest for the Best Actress Oscar. I think he's a little too old and straight to use a word like that.

The young, shiny Ryan Seacrest-like co-host has the unfortunate habit of not actually asking the celebrities that they've forced at gun-point to appear on the broadcast a question. Naomi Watts and Angelina Jolie were left stranded when Seacrest-like reads the intro off a TelePrompTer and then turns to them, ogles their sweet, sweet bosoms, and simply gushes, "Wow!" Then points the microphone at them.

I briefly flip back to E! and the "Anna Nicole Show." She's gotten alot thinner, but is still pretty fucked-up.

Ryan Seacrest-like dude is now actually in the theater, harassing people as they sweat in their seats. He pulls a Make-A-Wish with "Whale Rider" nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes by introducing her to her idol Johnny Depp. Depp is a gentleman, but Keisha appears uneasy in her role as a cheap publicity stunt for America's crappiest network.

Have to pee again - damn fourth beer! Almost miss the opening.

7:30 The broadcast starts with the geriatric Sean Connery slurring through some shittle about movies being why we're on this earth, then introduces the opening sequence Billy Crystal always does, where he places himself in the nominated movies and says wacky things. Some of it isn't bad, like the sequence where documentary filmmaker Michael Moore attempts to stop the "Return of the King" war, labeling it unjustified, only to get squashed by one of those big elephant things. Nicholson closes the sequence as Gandalf, handing Crystal his magic shades of super-coolness. Crystal follows this with his "Wonderful Night for Oscar" medley, which always blows. Nicholson appears absent from audience.

Cell-phone spokesperson Catherine Zeta-Jones comes on stage to deliver the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. If frontrunner Tim Robbins wins will he be the first to test the 5-second delay? Sean Penn is sitting behind Robbins looking like a 40-ish Robert DeNiro. Tim Robbins just thanks everybody, including his mate, Susan Sarandon, whose C-cups look ready to bolt at any second.

7:57 Angelina Jolie strolls onto the stage to present Best Art Direction, the bounce of her bosoms timed perfectly to the cadence of the applause. Two boob comments in two paragraphs - should have cut myself off at the bar. "The Return of the King" begins its tally.

Robin Williams hands "Finding Nemo" the Best Animation Academy Award, possibly the last one Disney will get for awhile, now that they have broken ties with the real movie magicians over at Pixar.

Before the commercial break, the telecast attempts an NFL-inspired "Sounds of Oscar," showing Tim Robbins' win again, most likely attempting to capture what was whispered among Sarandon, Robbins, Penn, et al. It failed miserably - we hear nothing but applause. Odds are we won't see it again for the remainder of the telecast.

Channel 5 rolls out their new ad campaign, featuring Ed Asner in Lou Grant mode, giving a pep talk to the anonymous KSTP news team. Great idea. Lou could totally kick the shit out of Don Shelby and his little ukulele in those dumbshit Channel 4 commercials. Have you noticed the Target-esque color branding in those commercials lately? And how Mark Rosen sort of looks like that happy clown from the potato chip boxes? Something to think about.

Renee Zellweger squints her way through the Best Costume nominees. ROTK nabs Oscar number two.

Nicholas Cage introduces "Master and Commander" while his extended family, the Coppolas, are shown in the audience, with Bobcat Goldthwait clapping giddily behind them.

Renee Zellweger returns to the stage to accept the Best Supporting Actress Oscar from the great Chris Cooper. My Jack White prediction (the two may or may not be still dating) did not come to fruition, but when Renee thanked her "Jerry Maguire" co-star, Tom Cruise, you guessed it, they zeroed in on ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

Tom Hanks comes out to introduce a tribute to Bob Hope, while the camera pans to everyone in the audience over 70, including human-liver-spot Mickey Rooney and Julie Andrews. Strangely, the tribute featured only clips from Hope's thirteen-time tenure hosting the Academy Awards. Oscar takes the opportunity to blow itself during the Bob Hope tribute!

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson come out to introduce the Best Live Action Short category. The best part was one of the two winners hogged all the time, prompting the wrap-up music. The look on the other guy's face was priceless! He may ever stand on this stage again! His one shot snuffed out by his co-winner and now former collaborator.

During the Animation Short acceptance speech, an audience shot reveals Billy Baldwin in the house. Bobcat and Billy - is this the People's Choice Awards?

Liv Tyler in 1950s librarian glasses (don't people wear contacts anymore?) introduces the first nominated song, with Alison Krauss singing and Sting playing some sort of ukulele/accordian/organ grinder thing. I thought he was trying to call Mt. Pilot with it. Then Liv comes back out ... to introduce a second song, the other nominated song from "Cold Mountain," featuring Krauss, Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett. Are they going to do all five songs in a row? Does Krauss have something else going on later that night? The nominated songs provide a nice interlude between the boring parts - you gotta spread them out a little bit!

Liv comes out again to introduce "Into the West" from ROTK, sung by the great Annie Lennox. Angelina Jolie is filmed clapping like an 8-year-old after Lennox finishes. And then, yup, you guessed it - to the commercials! Ah, but before that, they attempt another "Sounds of Oscar" with Zellweger's win. It's official - the Sound of Oscar is mass applause. But let's get back to the three songs, then a commercial - how do these songs rate that they get before-commercial treatment? Are the songs coming back after the commercials? An hour from now? Two hours from now?

A very funny Washington Mutual commercial.

ROTK snags Oscar #3 for Visual Effects.

A bald Jim Carrey zips onstage to present the lifetime achievement award to Blake Edwards. The 81-year-old cruises across the stage in a motorized wheelchair, snatches the Oscar from Carrey's hands and flies through a break-away wall, a la Peter Sellers, from Edwards' "Pink Panther" movies.

A shot of Sofia Coppola applauding for Bill Murray's "Lost in Translation" introduction reveals Will Ferrell in the audience. No sign of Jon Lovitz.

Scarlett Johannson presents the Best Make Up Oscar to the ROTK crew. The movie is now 4-4. John Travolta and Sandra Bullock hand ROTK the Sound Mixing Oscar. The movie isn't nominated for Sound Editing, so the other epic, "Master and Comander," scores that one.

Naomi Watts and Alec Baldwin hand the deserving Errol Morris the Oscar for the Best Documentary, "The Fog of War." Audience applause shot reveals Jack Black in the crowd. Jack Black, Jack White, Jack White, Jack Black. It would have been perfect.

The Dead Guy Roll Call starts with a special homage to Gregory Peck. Forgot Art Carney died last year. Thought he died in the 1980s.

9:53 Hangover starts. Ugh.

Sting and Phil Collins come out to introduce Best Original Score. Collins stills has a teensy-weensy strip of hair on the top of his head. It looks like someone gave him a French cut on his head. Howard Shore from ROTK nabs the award and the movie goes to 6-6. Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore hand ROTK the Editing Oscar, bringing its total to seven. If "Mystic River" wins Best Picture, it'll be too cruel.

Jamie Lee Curtis comes out, and I think I can once again talk about breasts. She was bulging out so far, it was gravity defying! I thought I saw veins. She introduces Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara as Mitch & Mickey from her hubby Christopher Guest's movie "A Mighty Wind." The song from "The Triplets of Belleville" rounds out probably the best group of songs nominees in quite some time, thanks in part to the absence of Disney schlock stinking up the joint.

10:14 Okay, so Will Ferrell and Jack Black are on-stage to hand out the Best Song Oscar. But this still doesn't explain why Billy Baldwin is not being escorted out of the auditorium. They hilariously sing the "lyrics" to the get-off-the-stage song the orchestra starts to play after your minute and a half are done. The "Mighty Wind" song garnered the most applause, but it was Annie Lennox and the ROTK crew walking away with the Oscar.

A heavily-bronzed, and still sort of eyebrow-less, Charlize Theron strolls on stage to deliver the Best Foreign Film Oscar to Canada's "The Barbarian Invasions," whose acceptors were sharp enough to thank ROTK for not being in the category.

Jude Law, who looks like he's losing his hair, and Uma Thurman, who looks like lederhosen exploded onto her, hand the Best Cinematography Award to the other epic again, because, that's right, ROTK was not nominated in this category. Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola hand Peter Jackson and company the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, bringing ROTK's total to nine.

10:40 I declare Best Animated Short Film the United Airlines commercial I just watched.

Tom Cruise is introduced. "Last Samurai" co-star Ken Watanabe is shown. Nicole? No. He gives the Best Director Award to Peter Jackson, whose shirt is slowly untucking itself. 10-10.

Adrian Brody comes out to deliver the Best Actress Oscar to Charlize Theron. Charlize thanks her lawyer (ugh) but recovers by thanking her mother, crying in the front row.

10:56 I really hate that Arby's oven mitt. What a Hamburger Helper Helping Hand rip-off.

Nicole Kidman comes out to deliver the Best Actor Oscar. No shot of Tom Cruise. Sean Penn dyes his hair. Sean Penn wins.

Steven Spielberg, wearing a salt and pepper TV evangelist-esque swoopy wave of thinning hair on the top of his head, hands Peter Jackson the Best Picture Academy Award for a record-tying eleven Oscars.

During the closing credits I discover the Ryan Seacrest-like dude from the ABC red carpet show is named Billy Bush, which is such a porn star name. I call him a forward-thinker.

For a much wittier, more scathing, and funnier account of Sunday's award show, the extremely talented Cintra Wilson at Salon.com explains all. Get the free trial if you have to - it's worth it.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 1, 2004 11:43 PM

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