OsKarZ with Kalashnikov fantasies

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 15:55

Last night I unwillingly caught a glimpse of the Oscars – while tossing and turning with another night of insomnia in Brussels, Villette I defaulted into watching TV – At that hour that means channel surfing through boring Euro zones via cable. I have never been able to stomach the osKars… I am impervious to its magic appeal. I suppose I could watch it if I recorded it and could fast forward through what I don’t like about it… (I say that every year and every year I forget) I turned the OskarZ on accidentally while channel surfing paused when I saw scenes from The Corpse Bride – then scenes from the newest Wallace and Gromit which I haven’t seen… then I realized it was the OsKarz and I was like, oh dear… there is Tim Burton in gentlemanly form getting sidelined to some very annoying Britishers. Not that I don’t like Wallace & Gromit but the Corpse Bride was a First and Wallace & Gromit are like on their 3rd sequel by now…
Then a mechanical wax museum like effigy of Dolly Parton was rolled out onto that Las Vegas-esque stage looking like a hybrid feminine Frankenstein constructed out of discarded Barbara Streisand, Joan Collins and Joan Rivers body parts. This monstrosity happened to jerk around like a marionette on strings or dare I say a Ms. Bojangles… while appearing like a science fiction androne cybergenetic genetically modified clone based loosely on the corpse of a pseudo country “western” signer based in Appalachia and that nasty Nashville… sss$nAyshVille - Actually I am something of fan within reason to Ms. Parton and her career – but what I saw on stage representing Dolly Parton looked like a public service announcement on why NOT to have plastic surgery. But the mechanical jerkiness of the andrones movements suggested an electronically controlled armature underneath all that padding and stretched, genetically modified, begged, borrowed or stolen, human skin. But where was Dolly? She was probably in the TV land audience looking like everyone’s dignified grandmother, with thinning white hair with a body incapable of defying gravity on its own all while going unnoticed watching the spectacle and gasping wondering who that mess on stage was supposed to be…
“noooo that isn’t supposed to be meeee – that’s not in my contract!!!!!!!!!!”
then going back to knitting in her rocking chair while keeping a weary eye on the computer tracking her vast economic empire. Somehow I prefer Johnny Cash courageously aging naturally in everyone's face and nearly dying as such in an unforgettable last Music Video performance. Perhaps Ms. Parton is an American national collective pychic Grandmother of sorts and maybe it would behoove her to act like one while onstage!
With all due respect for an Appalachian sister, like that other Oscar – Mr. Wilde said “negative attention is better than no attention”…
My pal and comrade Bart told me on Anspach Blvd - (la Villette’s answer to Santa Monica) today in that pretend 70’s skyscraper zone that looks like it belongs in some Matrix post apocalypse scene - that Brokeback lost to Jim Jarmusch’s Crash*… Shame on Jim… What I don’t get is the last time I saw Crash it was some movie by someone important – a boring movie in fact mixing pornographic titillation with automotive destruction – that crazy movie lost in an alternative OzCarz that year to the Beloved John Greyson and his delightful Canadian feature film-ette titled Lillies… So for that reason I haven’t even had any desire whatsoever to see the new and improved Crash. Maybe Jarmusch’s Crash (actually Broken Flowers) is a good movie but I still have the heebeegeebees from the last on screen Crash from the previous decade.
The only entertaining moment of the Oskars of that brief visit I made – was watching Reese Witherspoon so charmingly fiddle with those annoying envelopes that are so characteristic of the misery of the Oskars. Women dressed to the hilt with layers of fake nails on their finger tips trying to casually open those anachronistic paper envelopes while employing all the crass waspy poise of 1950’s Beauty Pageant – at least Ms. Witherspoon could do that with her trademark irony and compelling smugness over the absurdity of it all. Or so I see her. She was the highlight of my fifteen minute visit with that abominable Hollywood institution - the Wizard of Oz-Carz. I just can’t wait until the day when all those oversized plastic oskar effigies come magically to life from all of Hollywoods hysterical self centered paganism and yielding Kalishnikovs those golden calves take to the stage to machine gun down anything in the audience that moves. Now that would be something to watch and remember! As it is last nights oskars was just another expensive but cheap spectacle best forgotten already: A carnival of Vanity and an exercise in gluttonous Futility intended to distract American’s from what their President and his administration are doing and not doing in Iraq and elsewhere.
*This is blatant mis-information as Jim Jarmusch has nothing what-so-ever to do with either Crash movies. Jim Jarmusch movies are excellent and powerful masterpieces which have molded and shaped my life with their imagery. Life in Villette is chock full of mis-information do like we do and deal with it.
...Or like my very special pal back home explained to me: "Crash has nothing to do with Jarmusch, Crash is some ridiculous Hollywood exercise in self-congratulation over its supposed liberalism. Also (this Crash) has nothing to with the (19)90's movie same-titled by David Cronenberg. The Oscar-hogging Crash is a piece of garbage and too many people voted for it in order to have a reason NOT to vote for BBM (Brokeback Mountain). I can’t get too excited about any of it - Nice that George Clooney won, and the script writers and director for BBM".
By the way Crash when pronounced in proper Ohio dialect is two syllables with a y sound in between... say it this way "KraY-ssSH"