The Oscars

I was speaking with my favorite horse, T.J. Hoofer, today, and we were discussing the woeful mediocrity rewarded by the current Academy Awards system. For those who are unfamiliar with the Academy Awards, it is a primetime event where people who are paid to pretend to be people they are not give golden, man-shaped dildoes to other professional pretenders and the people that clothe them, paint their faces, point cameras at them, and digitally insert video game characters on green walls they stand in front of. Interesting things rarely happen at these shows, except for that one time in the '90s when the Baldwin brothers formed a giant mechanical robot named Coronatron to defeat Charlie Chaplin's ghost in mortal combat, thus ensuring our temporal dimension's existence for another thousand years.
Let's run down my picks for this year (remember, you can use my advice for your Oscar pools, but I get all your money if you win. Also, if you lose, I get to punch you in the stomach):

Best Actor-
The front-runner is Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler, which is about a wrestler. I don't care, so long as Brad Pitt loses. His movie was about a guy that grows younger every year. Like Merlin. This message is for Brad Pitt: I know Merlin. You, sir, are no Merlin, and you know nothing of his work. There is also a lot of buzz over Sean Penn's unconventional interpretation of rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. as a gay, white San Franciscan in MLK.

Best Supporting Actor-
Heath Ledger certainly deserves this award for his work as a hilarious clown in the comedy laugh riot The Dark Knight, but the potential exists that his victory will force his zombie to exit its tomb to claim the statue, and zombies are a risk we cannot take. Therefore, I demand Robert Downey, Jr. win for Tropic Thunder, contingent on his attending the ceremony in full blackface.

Best Actress-
Angelina Jolie deserves an award for Changeling, if not for anything else, then to raise public awareness about changelings: tiny gremlins that murder our children and then take their place so that we are forced to feed and raise them (thus giving them access to public schools and emergency medical care).

Best Supporting Actress-
Viola Davis, for Doubt, because a viola is one of the most supportive of all instruments.

Best Animated Feature Film-
The good money is on Wall-E. I originally liked this movie about a lovable trash compactor robot living in a world where humanity had been completely wiped out, until I realized at the end that Wall-E wasn't the one who had killed everyone. It was litter or some such nonsense.

Best Art Direction-
When the artist is all like "Take off your clothes" and the girl does it and he paints her naked.

Best Cinematography-
Trivia: no one actually knows what this word means. Still, the Academy awards the category anyway, often by drawing lots amongst its members. The winner receives a golden statue, and is of course immediately stoned to death.

Best Costume Design-
Australia. You couldn't even tell that the guy who looked like Hugh Jackman was actually played by Steve Buscemi.

Best Directing-
I refuse to choose any of the movies nominated, on account of none of them showing actual penetration.

Best Documentary-
Most people think it will be Man on Wire, but I have to go with my perennial choice: Blacula.