The Nature of Things

To those viewers, like me, who were offended by Seth MacFarlane's gross "We Saw Your Boobs" musical number on Sunday's Oscars show (not to mention all the rest of his misogynistic schtick) here's a bit of payback. Equal opportunity sexism!

Did you watch the Academy Awards show last night? We recorded it and I watched it later and zoomed right through all the commercials and the often interminable acceptance speeches that I didn't care to hear. I actually watched the "entertainment" portion of the show. I should have zoomed through most of that also. I did not know who Seth MacFarlane was and I'm willing to bet that a significant portion of the audience was in the same quandary as me. I read later that he created "Family Guy," another show which I've never watched and never will. Apparently, he is considered young and hip and edgy, none of which describes the demographic to which I belong, so perhaps it was not surprising that I found him rude, repellent, and unfunny in equal measures. Joan Walsh says I shouldn't blame him . I should blame the producers of the show who knew what they were getting when they hired him and who approved his execrable script in advance. Well, there's ple...

Sunday night brings the presentation of this year's Academy Awards. The greatest suspense over the Oscars this year is which movie will win the Best Picture award. So far, "Argo" has won just about every award in sight and so has its director, Ben Affleck. But the history of the Oscars is that movies rarely win the top award if the director has not been nominated for the Best Director award, and Affleck, unaccountably, was not nominated. So will the picture break tradition and take home the prize, or will "Lincoln," "Zero Dark Thirty," (whose director also was not nominated), or any one of the other fine films in the running pull an upset win? At this point, I think any other film winning would qualify as an upset. Whichever film wins, it will be the 85th movie to do so. How many of the other 84 can you name? Well, here's your chance to try. Nelson Carvajal has put together a video with a scene from each of those movies, along with, at the end, a s...

People love to bash the Oscar Awards show, and truthfully, I haven't watched it in several years. The last time I watched I remember it as being interminable and interminably boring. But last night as I walked through the room where others in the family were watching, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin caught my eye and ear and I sat down to watch. I must admit, much to my surprise, I quite enjoyed it. Steve and Alec were a good team, I thought, and they struck just the right note of irony as they poked gentle fun at the high-powered Hollywood celebrities in front of them, particularly their prime target George Clooney. They actually made me laugh out loud a few times, which isn't always easy. Several of the presenters brought smiles and chuckles, if not outright guffaws, as well. Ben Stiller was a hoot in his blue Na'vi makeup presenting the award for make-up artistry and Tina Fey and Robert Downey, Jr. played off each other perfectly as they presented the screenwriters...