Never Mind the Bollocks, Here Come the Oscars
Chris Rock didn't do a half-bad job, and he had a couple of good riffs going (especially on George Bush's reelection last year, likening him to being a worker at the Gap who ended up with a till missing 70 trillion dollars at the end of the day and going to war with Banana Republic over some phantom T-shirts that didn't materialize in the end). Still, without some big pictures that could get people excited, this year was just flat, flat, flat. I even noticed that during the acceptance speech by the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner, Lou Gossett was taking a bit of a cat nap with mouth open and head tilted back. This was the first year in I-don't-know-how-long that I didn't host my annual Oscar party, and I don't know if I can ever go back. But I'm not saying never again.

As far as the politics of the night, it was pretty clean... except for the British woman who won for some short or documentary who used the word "bollocks." In case you don't know what that means, my fellow Americans, that mean balls. And we're not talking the tennis variety. I sure hope the Parents Television Council starts writing their cards and letters to the FCC to bitch and moan about this.

If you're not familiar with the PTC, they've written by far the vast majority of letters complaining of indecency to the FCC--about 99%. But in order to protect the young (their Web tag line is "Because Our Children Are Watching"), they must remind us of the worst that they find on TV. Here's a bit from Frank Rich's Sunday column (which is about the selling of the Oscars as something a bit trashy, but whitewashing it for the live telecast):

Cheering Mr. Upton on is the Parents Television Council, the e-mail factory that Mediaweek magazine credits with as much as 99.9 percent of all indecency complaints to the F.C.C. in 2004. It is also quite a little fount of salacious entertainment in its own right. On its Web site, the organization's tireless "entertainment analysts" compile a list of every naughty word used on television and invite visitors to "Watch the Worst TV Clip of the Week." An archive of past clips - helpfully labeled individually by sin ("gratuitous teen sex," "necrophilia") - is there for your pleasure, with no requirement for the credit card number or membership fee that porn Internet sites use as a roadblock for children.

This week's Worst TV Clip of the Week--available only in Windows Media Player (I wish they were more egalitarian about their video format to better spread the word on this salacious library of sin)--is from CSI. Hey, I've seen worse, even on CSI. Hell, I'd even nominate that Beyonce/Andrew Lloyd Webber duet from the Oscars tonight over that CSI clip.