Thursday, March 2, 2017

Did You Really Fall For This?

As Felix Ungar would say, "Oscar, Oscar, Oscar."

This year's show was a mess from the first limousine opening to the final wrong envelope opening.   Much has been written about the asshole from Price Waterhouse who got so distracted taking selfies that he handed out the incorrect envelope for Best Picture.   Think about it, the Academy Awards have been around for 89 years and this has never happened before.   And you think life is improving?

Interesting sidebar: can you imagine what would have happened if the situation had been reversed and they pulled the award away from "Moonlight" and gave it to "La La Land?"   It's bad enough that op-ed pieces in the LA Times several weeks ago had indirectly suggested that a vote for "La La Land" was like a vote for Donald Trump.  Of course, the morons in Hollywood are just dumb enough to think that.   

Personally, if "La La Land" wasn't going to be the Best Picture of the Year, there were other nominees more deserving than "Moonlight."   For instance, "Hidden Figures."   Or "Manchester By The Sea."  Or "Hacksaw Ridge."   While "Moonlight" was a good film, it was a trifle cliched.   And really did well because it ticked off two of the diversity boxes that Hollywood is concerned about these days.   African-American and gay.   Done.

But I digress from the title of today's blog.   Because the Oscar audience was subjected to the childish antics of the nauseating Jimmy Kimmel as host, we got inundated with silly nonsense like candy floating in from the sky and his borderline inappropriate bromance with that other box of rocks Matt Damon.

And then there was the tour bus bit.   Yeah, you know.  These supposedly unsuspecting tourists on one of those star buses was diverted in the Dolby Theater so these common slobs could hob nob with the front row Hollywood royalty.

Yeah, sure.

As soon as Kimmel started to set up this bit, I smelled a rat.   And, every step of the way, I could tell that this whole thing was staged.   Subsequently, an inside mole of mine at Kimmel has confirmed my suspicions.   But I knew it all along and here's how my detective mind worked.

First off, Kimmel introduced the concept by having an overhead shot of the tour bus approaching the Dolby Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.   I immediately yelled "bullshit."   You see, people who live here in Los Angeles know there have been bleachers and a red carpet tent erected on that very spot for over a week.   Obviously, the footage had been shot a while back.   Also, I noted the daylight.   Hmmm.   At that very moment in the live Oscar broadcast, it was already dark out.

When the tourists entered the Dolby Theater and found themselves suddenly in the middle of the Oscars, I noted their reactions.  All of them grossly exaggerated.   Overly rehearsed.   Uh huh.

As these tour bus riders wandered in, they were escorted to meet all those stars seated in the front row.   Lots of glad handing.

Yeah, sure.

Do any of you seriously believe that completely unvetted strangers would be given such proximity to the toast of Hollywood?   These are people who, for the most part, are germ-a-phobes who carry little bottles of Purell in their pockets and purses.  This would never ever happen in today's Tinseltown.  When it was revealed that the African-American couple was engaged to be married, Kimmel brought the shithead known as Denzel up to officiate their betrothal.  Oh, yeah, like that would really happen, especially given what I know about Mr. Washington, who was already pissed that he actually had to be out with his wife for the evening.

As the bit wound down, I noted something else that few friends noticed.   The tour bus group was almost perfectly diverse.  Hmmm.   I noticed two African-Americans, two Asians, two Hispanics, and a guy couple.   How lucky did the Oscar producers get by grabbing a tour bus that was exactly the love your neighbor message advertisers were hitting me over the head with all night.   Wow.  How coincidental.

What utter bullshit!

As I have learned, while the tourists were not really actors, they were also completely pre-screened and hand selected by Kimmel's staff.  And they didn't even do that well.   As it turns out, the African-American guy has been discovered to be recently out of prison where he had been jailed for rape.  

Okay, now I'm laughing.

Dinner last night:  Had a big lunch so just a sandwich.


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