And The Award Goes To:

Award Ceremonies suck. I watched a few moments of the academy Awards last night. I had never fully realized how terrible these shows are. I will now list the reasons.

1) Because I am pretty busy (and I imagine many of you are as well), with a day job and the pursuit of comedy at night, I don't really get to the movie theater that often these days. Movies get to dvd/on demand so quickly now that its really the way to go. The point? I, and I imagine millions of Americans, haven't seen most or all of the movies/performances nominated.

2) Acceptance speeches. Actors/directors/whatevers either get up there and use it as a pulpit to spit their views or name drop a bunch of people that I haven't heard of. There is also the awkwardness of someone standing up there in their moment and the band trying to play them off. Awkward.

3) The self-importance and arrogance of the awards. Members of an 'academy' of film get together and decide what art is best for a year. Imagine other groups getting together to honor themselves every single year and having it televised. "The united academy of road pavers presents 'the roadies' " Everyone uses roads so why is it unrealistic? This academy decides what I'm supposed to be entertained by and completely misses the point of movies and movie making. Sometimes they get it right and the 'best picture' award goes to an awesome movie that has more universal appeal: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Silence of the Lambs, Braveheart, The Sting, Rain Man, Rocky and others. Other times, the best picture goes to something that only industry people like or something that isn't for everyone. They'll give it to a movie that a much smaller group can appreciate and stand atop some sort of critical high horse and tell us we should be watching: Chicago, The English Patient, Shakespere in Love, Terms of Endearment, Unforgiven and others. I don't happen to like any of those second group. They may be good movies and they may not be but just like I hate sports where you are judging by some artificial criteria of 'art', I despise the idea of a group of people I've never met telling me what art is good. You cannot judge art!

Do they like Point Break? That's a sick movie. So is Top Gun, Real Genius, and The Rock. They are fun movies. How can I trust their opinions?

4) Much like the winter Olympics, these award shows seem excited about adding awards. How many of you saw this year's nominees for best short film? Best animated short? How many of you noticed the best technical directing? How many of you were pissed when the makeup team you were rooting for got shut out again? I've never heard of any of these people and they are shoved down our throat as the group of people that makes films honor themselves...on tv which they all think they are better than. Hypocrisy tastes like candy.

5) I think john Stewart is funny, but his hands were tied. The awkward, hacky, PG comedy of these shows makes me want to throw up and have that kind of awkward feeling afterwards like you have to throw up more but don't have anything left to throw up...

6) The fact that the academy basically ignores all things comedic makes it an inherently flawed group. I get not recognizing Dumb and Dumber, but the only comedic performance I can remember being rewarded was Jack Nicholson in as Good as It Gets and he had to have OCD...For whatever reason, comedy is seen as an inferior form of movie making. Bull crap. People go to the movies to be entertained. You can be entertained in a myriad of ways: moved to sadness (Shindler's List), moved up and down the spectrum (American Beauty), and moved to joy and laughter (dozens of comedies that are ignored every year). Was there a more entertaining movie in 2005 than Wedding Crashers? Can you honestly tell me that you didn't love Vince Vaughn's character? He nailed it. Maybe he needs to impersonate a dead musician to get some recognition. Ridiculous.

7) The last sucky thing about the Oscars and other award shows are the people watching them that have sucked back about 1 million hours of E! and think they are in the know and start talking like they are in the biz: "Totally thought Broke-back was a lock", "I thought Jamie was a shoe-in for Best Actor", "I can't believe Spotless Mind won best screenplay..." What is a screen play? Do you really know? Is it the same as a script? Is it a list of instructions for the director? You don't really know do you jackass? Shouldn't the best movie of the year have the best screen play? How can they be mutually exclusive? They should go hand in hand. But they don't because the awards are political. Oh, did I not mention that? Yeah, they are and that's another reason why its a waste of time.

Leave Hollywood to their self-indulgent island or self-importance and other hyphenated terms and watch what you want.