Yes, you guessed it.  I thought the Oscars were a snooze fest.  Did I watch them in their entirety anyway? Yes, I did.  Do I think this every year and continue to watch them in their entirety despite how boring they continue to be year after year?  Guilty.

Every year, I look forward to the Oscars above all other award shows.  I give them the benefit of the doubt year after year because the award ceremony and the awards themselves represent something to me.  They mean something to me and I look up to the talent who are honored with nominations.  Ever since I can remember, I have made an event for myself out of Oscar night.  I watched the entire 3 hour red carpet coverage and the ceremony start to finish every single year.  I remember staying up hours past my parents just to see who won best picture.  It was a big deal to me.

I still care about who wins the awards and I still look forward to watching them because they (along with many other award shows) celebrate my personal interests and they bring additional affirmation to me in what I am choosing to pursue in my life.  So this particular frustration comes not from a place of anger towards the awards.  

So why is it that the show is the most boring of all the award shows year after year?  I mean it is seriously a muscle relaxer.  I felt like I had taken 2 ambien like 20 minutes into the telecast…and I DVRed it and was not even having to sit through commercials!  I can honestly say that I thought Seth MacFarlane was a stellar host and I saw most of the nominated films and really enjoyed many of them as well as the performances.  And even with that being true, I still felt that the Oscars were undoubtedly the most boring of all the award shows that I saw this season; a trend I have been noticing for at least 4 or 5 years.  What is it about the Oscars that makes it so damn stiff (and not in the good way)?  Even bringing in a comedian who can lighten the mood and deliver timely and still mostly tasteful jokes managed to get crickets at certain moments.  The people who make up the larger presence in Hollywood right now are all extremely likable, talented and humble people it seems.  There are efforts being made by the producers of the telecast to make the show more fun to watch (or so I’ve read).  So again I ask, why can’t the Oscars figure out how to be cool all the way through?

Currently, this is what I have come up with — it’s like the room is split between two types: the people who brought their senses of humor and who are there with a fun/light-hearted attitude all the while realizing how lucky they are to be a part of such an awesome tradition and the other half of the people forgot to have the colonic tube removed from their ass before they got in the limo.  The latter are the ones who are creating this stiff and overly conscious (or PC) energy.  They are the ones who won’t laugh when a joke has any content that might offend someone somewhere dead or alive.

Here is a message to those people who are privileged enough to be a part of the community of talent that attends and gets nominated at the Academy Awards: please ask your colonic technician to empty all the shit out and remove the tube before discharging you?  It’s not just the tube up your ass but it’s also the leftover shit that seem to be making you so stuffy and uptight that you can’t recognize how cool it is that you are at the Oscars and there are millions of people watching and celebrating your work and/or the work of your friends and peers.  Your half cleaned colon is effecting the rest of the room and America for that matter.  

Now, I am not blaming it entirely on them and I am not saying that the entire show was stiff and boring.  I thought that the first 5 minutes or so, small splashed through the middle and the last half hour were filled great moments and held my attention in a real way.  Thank you Jack Nicholson, Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lawrence, Ben Affleck and Meryl Streep for being light and comfortable and keeping us engaged.  Thank you Seth MacFarlane for actually being funny and for not being Anne Hathaway and James Franco.  It is fun to watch people who are enthusiastic, grateful, comfortable in their own skin and even a little bit giddy.

I appreciate tradition and I will continue to get excited about the Oscars every year.  I will continue to watch the awards and listen intently to every actor/director/writer’s acceptance speech.  I will continue to give this awards show the benefit of the doubt. Because, at the end of the day, I totally drink the kool aid.  But every time someone trips on the stairs or says something a little embarrassing in the heat of their excitement or nervousness it makes the show better.  Those are the moments that I remember and connect with and which warm me because those are human moments.  I hope to see a lot more tripping and taboo in years to come.  And, hopefully, less people will get a pre-show colonic next year.

As an aside, I adore Jennifer Lawrence even more so after seeing this: Jennifer Lawrence’s hilarious post-win press conference