Big Night

What Eminem and Helen Mirren have in common

I’m very comfortable with my sexuality.

Like any well-adjusted heterosexual or homosexual, I understand that I was born the way I am and no amount of homosexual laser beams (or “gayserbeams”) that the gay mafia sends out over the airwaves or through fashion magazines will ever change this a bit. Off the top of my head, the only exception I can think of is the one time in fifth grade that my friend Bazzoli and I were late for school and had to take a shower together to save time (we swore we’d never tell anyone). But other than that, I’ve always been completely comfortable with who I am: an over-stimulated heterosexual garbage disposal, who believes he derives some sort of cosmic universal power from his penis (aka “a guy”).

I’m so comfortable with my sexuality that I can watch the Oscars every year and feel completely at ease shouting out such comments as “Replay that! I want to see Hugh Jackman walk out again” and “More Ellen please!” and “If Nicole Kidman wears one more Vera Wang dress that shows off those bony chicken-wing shoulder blades, I’m going straight to the bathroom to donate my lunch.”

This year’s Oscar party (consisting of my roommate, myself, and a bong made out of an old Little League trophy) kicked off at seven o’clock sharp with snacks, drinks, and little party hats with playful Hollywood clichés like: “The Blood of Yingzhou District of the Documentary Short Film category makes 2003’s the The Collector of Bedford Street look like A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, the preposterous 2005 winner!”

After wading through the initial superfluous awards, which pit the smash-bang excitement of “sound mixers” against the high-octane thrill rides that are “sound editors,” (the difference being that mixers get all the chicks), we got to the good stuff, like Jennifer Hudson’s win as Best Supporting Actress for Dreamgirls. After all, here’s a woman who a year ago was just another hopeful contestant on American Idol, that vile testament to the inanity of the American public, while on Oscar night George Clooney presented her with the statue and escorted her (dreamily) off-stage.

The night also had a strong political bent, first of all, simply due to the sheer diversity of the nominees, of which my roommate strongly disapproved. As the Spanish language film Pan’s Labyrinth wracked up multiple awards, he became more distressed. “Look at all the Mexicans,” he said. “How are Americans supposed to get Oscars if all these goddamn Mexicans will just win them for cheaper?”

Secondly, because of the film, An Inconvenient Truth, the show soon degenerated into an Al Gore-felating competition (Dame Judi Dench won without even being there simply because she wins all such competitions). The ex-VP even received a standing ovation when his film won Best Documentary Feature. Because many of those people clapping so furiously likely own private jets, multiple homes with millions of square feet, and generally leave Godzilla-sized carbon footprints, this special moment won an Oscar only minutes later for Best Overlooked Ironic Statement.

I was also disappointed to see the film’s song win. Written and performed by Melissa Etheridge, “I Need to Wake Up” has lyrics that surely must have been stolen from an undergraduate drum circle at Antioch College: “It’s time to break-up/ It’s time to wake up/ Come on, let’s wake up/ Because global warming’s bad/ real bad/ And George Bush is a Nazi/ And I like organic pomegranate juice” (At least I think that’s how it goes). It’s hard to fault well-meaning people who want to help wake people up to the very real threat of global climate change, but this song is the equivalent of that John Mellencamp/Chevy commercial tune for liberals (“This is Arrrrrr Country”).

As Ken Watanabe came on-stage to present the next award, I tried to discuss this strange political parallel of tritely written music with my roommate, but it was too late. He was already yelling at the screen. “This is our country!” he shouted. “Go back to the Mexican Oscars! Los Oscaras, asshole!”

Of course, the big winners on Oscar night began with Sir Helen Mirren (the “Sir” means she’s British; that’s how they do it over there), who in addition to winning Best Actress for The Queen also collected the Best GILF Oscar. Sir Forest Whitaker was next, winning Best Actor for portraying psychotic Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (I didn’t want people to think that I wouldn’t use “Sir” as Whitaker’s title because he’s black).

Finally, the night wrapped up with a well-deserved Best Director trophy for legendary auteur Martin Scorsese, who is responsible for most of the movies that raised me while my parents were locked in their bedroom having meth-fueled sex. Scorsese won for The Departed, which also won Best Picture, and deservedly so, as it features Jack Nicholson asking Leonardo DiCaprio to dispose of a human hand and Mark Wahlberg cussing creatively:

“Do you have your spies out there?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe go fu** yourself.”

Yes, it was a night of lessons from Hollywood. The lesson of perseverance when reaching for a dream. The lesson that crime pays, at least on film, and the bloodier and more disturbing the better. The lesson that women can still have eye-dropping cleavage at age 93 (thank you Sir Helen Mirren). The lesson that global climate change sure does suck, but not enough to spend time thinking of anything else the rhymes with “wake up” (my suggestions: “steak pup” or “cake cup”). Finally, we learned the lesson that movies have the power to move us, to touch us, to uplift us, but one thing they can never do is make you forget about how you admitted to showering with your male friend when the two of you were ten years old.

And I think that’s a lesson we can all afford to learn.