Boo Oscars, yay beer!

Could any group of people be more predictable than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? What a ridiculous group of chumps.

I think the overall biggest embarrassment id the predictability of the lot. Point out something they do wrong, call them prejudiced for it, then watch them overreact for the next couple of years.

The biggest example of this is the whole handling Denzel Washington. I love Denzel. I think he’s probably the best actor in Hollywood who isn’t really old, and as good as any, as well as being a good man in real life. Now look at his film biography. How he never won for Glory, Cry Freedom or The Hurricane is beyond me, but the year following people calling the Academy racist he won for Training Day. Riiiight. I like Training Day, I own it on DVD, and he was very good in it, but DMX could have played that role and the film would have been 95% identical. Seriously. Either American Gangster or Remember the Titans would have been better, roles where no one else could have done it without transforming/ruining the movies.

I’m not saying there wasn’t any racism in the history of the Academy, but what made it worse was the knee-jerk reaction to select less than perfect performances to make up for it. Jamie Foxx did a borderline Ray Charles impression and won an Oscar for it. Will Smith (a better actor) was incredible in Ali (a better movie) and lost. Now we have these “oops” moments to treasure, to gaze upon and stare back at in incredulity.

Well, two years after Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash and everyone threw the tizzy fit to end all tizzy fits (they both should have lost to A History of Violence, which wasn’t nominated), Sean Penn won for a slightly scenery chewing performance in Milk. It wasn’t terrible, but this category was stacked this year. For my pick, Mickey Rourke gave the performance of a lifetime in, The Wrestler. At least they didn’t hand Milk Best Picture, too. Way to represent, poor children of India.

Of course, it’s only right to bring up the biggest screw job in Oscar history, Shakespeare in Love topping Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. The former is a solid, enjoyable chick flick, the latter probably the greatest war film ever made. It redefined the genre, permanently. What makes this screw job, and the victory of Crash, most embarrassing is how predictable they were in retrospect. Let’s see, we have a story about a bunch of people writing, putting on, and acting in shows, and a web of interracial interaction set in LA. I wonder why the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in Los Angeles, went for them…

The second worst part of the Academy dropping the ball is the counter-reaction to the film “lucky” enough to pull the upset. Shakespeare is not a bad movie, but for many it’s synonymous with feces for beating SPR. I know critics who actively enjoyed Crash before it beat Brokeback, and now use it as a punch line. There’s a lack of reasoning in these antics. It’s childish to change your opinion of one piece of art because you prefer another. Children, can’t we all get along?

Economic Meltdown

Today as I drove through town, nearly half the stores were closed. The streets teemed with the unemployed; it was if 1/3 of the city was just walking around, 100,000 with nothing to do but loiter. Scarier still, people looked hungry. Like all they wanted was to work, and all they needed was a job, any job at all, so they could get food for their kids. Truth is, there was barely enough food on the store shelves, thanks to the drought in the Midwest, and people with jobs could barely afford it. I couldn't believe how bad the economy had gotten.

Of course, none of this happened. Well, not since the Great Depression was at its worst in the 1903’s. Since then, we haven’t had a really scary economic crisis. In lieu of actual suffering, now we make up our crises so we can over-react and buy the swill the media sells. We are a cowardly lot, and one that loves the drama.

The economy is in a recession. That’s a fact. A financial panic? Absolutely. An “economic meltdown?” No, not quite. Actually, not even close, though I ripped that tag directly from a headline. Unemployment is up to 7%, headed for 8. It will probably even hit 9. Of course, no one mentions that during the economic boom of the 90’s, most of Europe still had unemployment from 10-11%. That’s how bad unemployment is now, only 20% lower than Europe’s in the good times. So let it be written, American capitalism is a failure!

Actually it’s not. True, the stock market is down 40%. As Ronald Reagan said, "Never confuse the stock market with the economy." Though he and I have some different ideas about economic policies, he was right; they aren’t the same. The market moves in minutes and hours, and even in seconds. The economy moves in months and years, and even in decades. So with the huge drops in the market, you might expect some huge fundamental change in retails sales the month that preceded the crash. You’d be right, and today everyone “oohed” and “ahhed” at the 1.2% drop in September. That’s right, just over a 1% drop from the biggest consumer spending September in history and people think the end has arrived. For every 100 big screens that would have sold, one didn’t. For every 1,000 shirts that would have been sold, only 988 were bought. Oh, Lordy, kill me now.

We are not in the midst of a plunge either to mercantilism or to communism. We’re okay. Something around 90% of the country made the same amount of money this month that they did last month. Heavens to Betsy. Americans are still rich. Americans are still fat. Americans still run the world. Any one who says differently is selling something. More specifically, selling a newspaper.