two-twenty

the oscars, the grouches

To make the six hour Oscars presentation slightly more tolerable, two-twenty opted to play the New York Post's Academy Award Drinking Game. According to the official rules, we were supposed to imbibe, and dutifully did, whenever the orchestra cut off an acceptance speech and whenever LOTR won an award. We added our own list of criteria, including any references to royal title, uses of malapropisims/miswords, thanks to god, and references to Miramax or the Weinsteins. No one thanked Jesus (thankfully), but if they had, that would have meant a shot. We still found our way into the vodka. Due to a secretarial snafu in which Alex transcribed "crying --> shot" without preceding the dictum with the word "winner", Ash's adherence to the letter of the rules, rather than the spirit, had us, uh, in the spirits progressively more often as the show went on and on and on. We will be sure to rewrite the rules with more attention to detail for next year's circle-jerk telecast.

So, yeah. We know who won. And we still don't care. But here's what we really want to know...

Who sent all the women the same bias-cut silk gowns and why did Sandra Bullock's look like a cake?

What was on Peter Jackson's wife's head, a hobbit?

Did Michael Douglas wear his sunglasses through the first third of the show because it was broadcast in hi-definition?

What was with the shampoo commercial graphics?

Is Sofia Coppola borderline-illiterate?

And, most importantly, is the only reason the Apocalypse did not enter its final phases when Sting took the stage with Phil Collins because at that exact moment -- accounting for the five second delay -- Billy Joel and Elton John countered their combined energy by grasping each other's piano-man-hands somewhere on the other side of the planet?