Spacey and Oscar: Together Forever

he Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced today that they are creating a special category of Oscar, beginning with this year's ceremony, that will be reserved exclusively for actor Kevin Spacey.

"We just really, really like the guy, you know?" said an Academy spokesperson. "That's why we've created the Kevin Spacey Perpetual Award, to be given to Kevin Spacey every single year from now on. We just think he's a great practitioner of his craft, and a delight to have around."

Speaking under condition of anonymity, at a location that may or may not have been the Viper Room, the spokesperson, wearing a Groucho mask and holding a handkerchief in front of his mouth to disguise his voice, went on to add that "This doesn't mean he won't still be eligible for Oscars in other categories, like Best Actor or whatever. It just means that we're assured of having him up on stage and thanking the Academy at least once every year."

"The great thing is, he's not some fat, bloated lunatic with his best years long behind him who walks around the set without his pants on and sends Native American women to pick up his awards and talk politics all night, like Brando. And he's not a young, talented firebrand like Sean Penn, who ignores our annual get-together and calls us all bad names. He's just a real nice guy in real life. Or so I've heard."

Casting a wary glance from side to side to make sure no one was eavesdropping, the spokesperson went to say, in a very low voice, "There is also a significant faction among the Academy members who still think he might actually be Keyser Soze, and I can tell you in confidence that that belief may have played a small part in this decision. Of course," he said, chuckling slightly and leaning back in his chair, "he could also really be the alien Prot, and disappear from this Earth in a beam of light at any time, heh. That's the beautiful thing about Kev is that you just never know, you know what I mean?"

When asked if there were plans to set up a special Perpetual Award for anyone else, the spokesperson replied, "Well, we tossed around Julia Roberts' name for a while, because most of us like her a lot, but the consensus was that we would hold off with her until she decides to get naked onscreen. Because really, how are you supposed to judge if a broad's got talent or not when she keeps her clothes on in every single movie she makes? I mean, what's up with that?"

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Ramrod Hurley at the helm. The big news this week… well, everyone knows. It's the big fat picture we so conspicuously placed atop the index page. But buried in the major national headlines was one of the most important stories we could have asked for: Tom Cruise's long battle with a male porn star is over! The victor: Tom Cruise.

It's a shame that sometimes the media gets caught up in ridiculous international headlines like whether North Korea is aggressively seeking to build up nuclear arms or the state of weapons inspectors in Iraq, and they lose touch with the simple stories that really matter. Here a man, a filthy male porn star even, accuses Tom Cruise of being gay and doing nasty things with him, and that story makes all the major tabloid headlines. Everyone read it, if in the supermarket headlines at least, and yet who will read about Tom Cruise's exoneration? It's a damn shame. Shame on you, media.

And what does Tom Cruise get for all his humiliation? Well, $10 million. But the guy will probably never pay on the bill, he's a gay porn actor, for Christ's sake. How much money is in gay porn? Don't answer that as I never, ever want to know. So basically what we're left here with is Tom Cruise, flooded with accusations and holding a big, stiff bill in his hands. A bill never to be paid. No compensation for all this.

It's nothing new for Tom Cruise. He's been hounded with claims he's gay his entire career. Research Editor Griswald Dreck says much of it stems from Tom Cruise's first claim to fame, a sitcom where he played a gay rock star married to a "beard," with two adopted kids, a show called, Queer as Fuck; that, and the fact he's gay. Which leads me to a very important note, which is to never trust anything Griswald Dreck says. But you didn't hear it here.

So why is Tom Cruise followed by gay rumors? Nothing more than wishful gay-thinking, I would guess. A beautiful, charming Hollywood star with a light touch to his nature, like a modern-day big-teethed Cary Grant. Tom Cruise has more passion than growl, maybe, more sophistication than ruggedness, but does that mean he's gay? Rock Hudson had those same qualities, as did The Brady Bunch's Robert Reed. Now what do you say?

There are plenty of people who would want Tom Cruise to be gay, I'm sure. It's hard to blame them—who hasn't considered nuzzling naked in a large bearskin blanket next to a fire with Tom Cruise? Well, I haven't. I was just trying to trap you. But no matter what gay people want, it doesn't necessarily make it so.

But that alone can't be the answer, otherwise all those rumors about George Clooney I've been starting would have caught on. No, there's something else to Tom Cruise's mystique. And I think I have it.

You see, the gay porn star wasn't lying—he did sleep with Tom Cruise; or believes he did. The answer has been so obvious I'm surprised I'm the first to reveal it. There is a Tom Cruise doppelganger out there, living la vida loca on Tom Cruise's good name. And don't get me started on Ricky Martin.

Who is the Tom Cruise impersonator? Without further evidence, it would be potential libel to say. But if I were the finger-pointing type, I'd point squarely at Peter Facinelli from the show Fastlane. Just take a good long look at him: He looks just like Tom Cruise, he's too pretty to be straight, and I could definitely drop him into a naked bearskin blanket fireplace fantasy and not notice the difference. Someone's been nailing porn stars with Tom Cruise's face, and if I were in a Fox series with Bill Bellamy and Tiffani Amber-Thiessen I'd be so full of anger and resentment there'd be no limits to what I'd do.

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Jim Henson, an unemployed sock factory worker with delusions that would make Mark David Chapman roll his eyes, titter, and run off to the closet to masturbate feverishly into a tea cozy, did not create the Muppets. Popular assumption is the asshole on that one. Nor did he even discover them, as several Kings of England before him had conferred with the strange beings on matters of state politics and interior decorating for hundreds of years. Rather, Henson's genius lay in using felt puppet totems to channel the beings from their Muppet-realm during hour-long televised séances that he would pass off as children's entertainment. How would America's parents feel if they knew the secret behind this children's television mainstay? It's a trick question, America doesn't have parents. It's a country, stupid.

Many parents would shrivel and dry up like a baked turnip to learn that they subjected their children to this brand of pagan daycare for years, parking their drooling tots in front of the one-eyed monster for hours of seemingly free babysitting. Of course, they'd crap out their own appendix if they knew that Mr. Rogers had to do his show to fulfill the community service portion of his probation. As much should have been obvious since he spent half the damn show changing clothes in order to dodge his parole officer.

Henson wasn't an ex-con himself, but he did have more issues than National Geographic. Regardless, he will always be remembered as a great American because he found a way to work through his demons and bring us all a dog that played the piano.

The real question is who in the hell was making these Muppets move, since back then they didn't have computer animation or midgets small enough to fit in a Gonzo suit. It wasn't until Chernobyl that this was possible. The evidence suggests that even Henson himself didn't know. He was primarily into the puppets, and some have suggested that his entire knowledge of the occult came from a supernatural joke book he found in his aunt's sock drawer. No one knows which joke it was that brought the Muppets to life, but my money's on:

Q. Why didn't the ghost have fun at the ball?

A. He didn't have any body to dance with.

That one's a classic.

Regardless of which joke it was that did the trick, before he knew it Henson's puppets were all possessed by former heads of state and card sharks who had got themselves on some kind of shit list in the afterlife where they always had to be on call in case somebody dug up a dusty old book of spells and read off an incantation in a fake English accent on a lark.

There are whole clubs of weird people who get together and debate over who each of the Muppets really was, but nobody can really ever say for sure. Though I challenge anyone to provide any compelling evidence that Winston Churchill wasn't the Swedish chef. It's just too perfect. And though some have argued that he's already been reincarnated as a diaper lining in dysentery country, I'll always believe that Hitler came back as Beaker. I mean, Christ, just look at the guy. They even have the same voice. I've watched some old documentary footage of Hitler and it's uncanny, "Meep-meep-meep-meep-meep."

It's shocking news for most of you, I know. But in the big picture it hardly matters, as kids still learned to count and that aliens are agreeable. Nobody got hurt, except for the days when Dr. Teeth had his pimp shirt on or that time Sweetums went apeshit and ate some of the singing pigs. But, all in all, a small price to pay for years of free babysitting, and it was still the most wholesome thing on television after the cast of Pinwheel found out about cocaine.

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