Welcome to awards season, 2046
by Kate Zimmerman for the North Shore News, Jan.22, 2006
WE’RE now 22 days into 2046, and it’s time for the re-launch of the year-long awards season.
As we all know, the Kevin Federline Humina-Humina Hooters Awards Show unofficially kicks off this annual period with the infamous geezer’s traditional salute to buxom stars of yesteryear, yesterday and next Wednesday. 83-year-old Tommy Lee will get the Hooters Appreciation Lifetime Achievement Award when this show is video-podcast on the weekend. Vintage (and explicit) footage of him and on-again, off-again wife Pamela Anderson is promised.
The Federline show is always a cheap thrill. But we here on the multimedia-savvy west coast of the United States of North America (U.S.N.A.) only pay attention to the three shows that matter: The Beijing Film Critics’ Awards because they are hosted by the world’s greatest superpower, Winnipeg’s Golden Globes because the ’Peg is the U.S.N.A.’s capital of culture, and San Francisco’s Academy Awards, because they’re the oldest.
The latter, of course, were held in L.A. until last year, when southern California fell into the sea after the big quake. “Finally!” we all joked at the time, but don’t worry, the sentimental tributes to “everything we’ve lost” have been in the works since the day after the disaster.
Honestly, it hardly matters what the locale, these galas are always the same. Robin Williams will trundle out in his motorized wheelchair to make an unintelligible fart joke. The camera will scan the crowd for someone -- anyone -- who laughs at Williams’ flatulence routine and will, once again, alight on Tom Green.
The dance sequences, unfortunately reinstated in 2036, take place on a planet further and further away every year. This time, the main dance for the Beijing Film Critics’ Awards event will be situated in the city of Sitobyongeeee, Pluto, and the dancers will have been practicing it in a spaceship en route to the site for nine years. Here’s hoping the choreography’s up to date (doubtful!) and not plagued by gravity, like last year’s showstopper. As you’ll recall, that was supposed to end with 200 colourfully dressed squirrel-cats being shot out of stainless steel cannons to make animated fireworks. We can anticipate a teary-eyed tribute to these tiny martyrs to show biz, now being pieced together in a cryogenics lab on Mars.
We can also expect to see Dakota Fanning wearing something outrageously prim at each of the 2046 awards shows, which will cause a mass of protest from fans. Last year the megastar was egged by onlookers at the Golden Globes for wearing a gown that covered her from ankle to clavicle. When people asked how it was possible to wear so much material on a largely synthetic human body, she claimed the seams at the sides and top of her dress had kept the ensemble in place and no double-sided tape had been required.
As host of the Academy Awards, Zenon Isax will doubtless do his usual stream-of-unconsciousness rant. Those of us in the audience who are over 100 will surely once again deplore the decision in 2040 to make the event “more real” by insisting that its host be unclothed. I don’t know about you, but there’s something about the sight of a sleepy, naked, professional dullard who is wired for sound that always puts me off my Chicken Proletariat.
It is, of course, traditional to eat Chicken Proletariat during awards shows, washing it down with pseudochampagne. Recipes diverge but my own consists of chicken substitute with pepper. I go a little wild, admittedly, but then I am one of the few who actually remembers real chicken. Would you believe that people had so much chicken at their disposal before the plague, some 40 years ago, that they actually got sick of it and rolled their eyes when it was served? “Soy vey!” as the Jewish vegans like to say.
But back to the awards shows. The Golden Globes is currently my favourite, largely because of its locale. Now that the earth has been so conveniently warmed, Winnipeg is a balmy paradise and watching the vast array of hummingbirds and parrots alighting on the hairdos of the stars is a treat in itself. I like the way the awards show camera always pans over to the Red River to show us the reefs full of tropical fish, and all the joyful snorklers who fly to Winnipeg in the wintertime from the Caribbean, where it is, as everyone knows, too hot and dry to swim.
The Globes, which of course are awarded by the Bollywood-Brollywood-Hollywood Foreign Press, will this year honour such stars of screen and Blackberry as wunderkind filmmaker Phinnaeus Moder. If he were the old-fashioned sort, Moder would thank his parents, former superstar Julia Roberts and “cinematographer” Danny Moder. But nobody gets the time to make those kinds of speeches any more. Moder Jr. will likely just grimace into the camera, or pick his nose, or do something that wasn’t already done by Apple Paltrow-Martin last year in her numerous trips to the podium.
No doubt the highlight of the Academy Awards will be the montage in honour of Ashton Kutcher. The prospect of Kutcher, 68, finally receiving the kudos that have mysteriously eluded him thus far is even more exciting than the Academy’s major tribute last year. That homage, of course, was paid to Jim Carrey’s and Jeff Daniels’ brave (if unfunny) piece of cinéma vérité, Blinder, Deafer and Even More Dumberer Than Before. (Too bad neither star could see, hear or comment upon it.)
Dame Demi Moore will likely be in the audience for Kutcher’s big moment, tremulous and adoring as ever (she’s got some kind of “condition”), and as provocatively dressed as any 84-year-old with torpedo-shaped breasts deserves to be. Rumour has it that Kutcher will be given a Lifetime Achievement Oscar by Bernie Mac, his co-star in his greatest masterpiece, Guess Who, for the kind of ovation-worthy moment Hollywood has always been able to summon up so readily. Bets have been placed on whether Mac’s first remark will be a hilarious “You been punk’d!” Of course, at almost 90, he’s a tad unpredictable.
A clogging performance by Reese Witherspoon (who, at 60-odd, has optimistically changed her name to Fresherspoon) should dominate the artistic segment of the Oscars. Her dance is meant to be a melancholy tribute to those who “went to Atlantis,” the euphemism used by the world for the Hollywood victims of last year’s mega-quake. Fresherspoon has promised that the piece will be evocative, as a soundtrack featuring the rumbling quake will be heard, with the anguished thumps of her clogs used as punctuation. Fresherspoon’s longtime husband, Ryan Phillippe, will also play the jaw harp to signify Nature’s untamable cruelty.
Sir Jude Law will wobble onto the stage at some point, as well. It’s impossible to see the formerly handsome actor without being astonished once again by his immense girth, but with an oeuvre that includes his lavish remake of Dude, Where’s My Car? -- this time about the ravages of Alzheimer’s -- he still manages to bring a tear to the eye. He will be physically supported by a large group of Law progeny (products of five wives and many nannies), ranging in age from 4 to 47.
You’re going to need hemp-kerchiefs and plenty of them this year, boys and girls. Bring on the shows!
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