Emmy Schmemmy

Usually, televised award shows are a slamdunk for garnering lots of laughter. You wait for the inevitable lapses of taste, the eternally banal spontaneity of pseudo-celebrities, and those other misguided moments that can only be provided by live television.

Well, Sunday night, Fox devoted three plus hours to the 59th Annual Emmy Awards and produced the worst kind of bad television. It was so horrible it couldn't possibly be funny. I'd like to tell them where they can find my bank account of life because they definitely need to credit me back three hours and ten minutes.

I just know that, on Monday morning, there were a bunch of TV Academy bigwigs pacing around their Lankershim Boulevard headquarters and trying to figure out what they did wrong. They could start with Fox, which essentially staged a 190 minute infomercial for their new Fall lineup. They could follow up with some questions for the idiot who designed the Westbury Music Fair-like set, which was better suited for watching an evening of entertainment from Lainie Kazan and Myron Cohen. It all looked like the Senior Awards assembly at Beverly Hills High. There was too much going on and another assault on the senses very much like what goes on between innings at a Met game in Shea Stadium. I was half expecting host Ryan Seacrest to start shooting Pepsi t-shirts into the audience.

The Emmy folks should also track down whoever the genius was that designed that bizarre cutaway for whenever somebody said a bad word. You suddenly would see this long shot of the audience with this huge Studio 54 disco ball. The first two times they did this, I was more confused than I was during the last minutes of the Sopranos finale.

Ryan Seacrest, as an awards show host, is no Johnny Carson. He's not even Bill Cullen. On American Idol, he does an expert job of being a traffic job. On the Emmys, he felt compelled to take a few stabs at humor. At one point, he popped out in some Shakespearean get-up, which would have been funnier if people in the audience weren't assuming that it was probably something that came straight out of his closet at home. He totally forgot that he's supposed to be the straight man for the event and leave the comedy to pros like Brad Garrett. Unfortunately, for the latter, it's becoming sadly apparent by the minute and hour that he is absolutely nothing without the Raymond writers. Brad's banter with co-star Joely Fisher as presenters was so incredibly painful that I was praying for an impromptu cut-in from President Bush at the White House.

I was astounded how many awards there were for mini-series and specials. I knew nothing about Broken Trail, Wounded Knee, or some dreck called the Starter Wife. Competition had to be pretty slim when you consider that Debra Messing got another acting nomination. Robert Duvall came up on the stage so much that you figured he was one of the accountants from Ernst and Young. When somebody was not present to pick up their Emmy, I considered it a win-win for the audience.

While I've always found Jon Stewart amusing, I don't get Stephen Colbert or Steve Carell. It's that smug "we're more clever than everybody else in the universe" attitude that permeates everything they do. The bits they participated in seemed to go on for hours, especially the one with Colbert running around with a leaf blower that he probably borrowed from his gardener for the night.

Poor Sally Field. She simply cannot accept an award without making an ass of herself. For some inexplicable reason, she started to babble about the war in Iraq. Cue the disco ball. Whatever she said was probably too incoherent to be offensive and, let's face it, the closest she's gotten to Iraq was probably the world premiere of "Jarhead" at the Chinese Theater.

I'm also still trying to comprehend what was behind that Wayne Brady bit about some nutty Fox show about singing lyrics. And, the tie-in of "Jersey Boys" to the Sopranos was a little more flimsy than it appeared. I just figured that they had these guys booked and tried to figure out how to best utilize a Broadway act on a show saluting the best in television. if there were no Sopranos this year, they simply would have figured out how to connect Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to Ugly Betty.

Most of the actors who won Emmys clearly looked out of place and fearful of what was to come next. Their tentative acceptance speeches all gave the appearance that their backstage press conferences would involve some sort of invasive surgery. I don't understand how James Spader wins year after year, especially when his competition is James Gandolfini. And I have a sense that Jeremy Piven is the next John Larroquette---winning year after year simply because people are too lazy to read their ballots.

Al Gore is now making the rounds of all the award shows and it's a matter of time before he gets one of those Nickelodeon Kid trophies for doing his global warming Powerpoint presentation in crayon. He's gotten a lot of recognition for stating what scientists have known for years. The only difference is that Al Snore has dumbed it all down to a third grade level, which is still too advanced for most Americans. You start to think that he's the one who actually invented the polar ice caps. The guy would be a lot more impressive if you didn't stop to realize that he's flying to all these events in a private jet from his Tennessee mansion, which apparently is one of the biggest energy guzzlers in the nation.

Of course, we are now getting Tony Bennett shoved down our throats at every opportunity. Except everytime he turns up, he looks like some old guy who got lost on the way to the grocery store. But, apparently, the joke's on all of us as he's gotten himself some 25 year-old wife. He may not be able to find the bathroom, but he certainly knows where he keeps the Viagra.

There was no Emmy win that I was completely invested in except for the Sopranos grabbing Best Drama. But, that didn't happen till way past 11PM and I already was applying some ointment to my bedsores.

The capper to it all is that this year's Emmy celebration got the lowest ratings since 1990. And, if they don't fix what they broke this year, they might as well let Telemundo telecast it in 2008. Nobody ever understands it anyway.

Dinner last night: pot roast, potatoes, peas and carrots.

And tomorrow.....from New York!