Academy Fucks Up commune Oscar Pool Something Awful

Historic year of self-congratulation throws prognosticators a curve

April 1, 2002

Hollywood, CA

Junior Bacon

Denzel & Halle: Thanks for the heads-up, Hollywood

roving once and for all that you don't have to be white to win a token acting award, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences kissed it's own ass Sunday by awarding the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars to known black people Denzel Washington and Halle Berry.

A move trumpeted as ground-breaking and courageous by Academy publicists and people trying to sell newspapers nation-wide, the Academy was deftly able to both punish Russell Crowe for acting like an asshole (and for doing an action movie in 2000, making them look bad for giving him his 1999 The Insider Oscar that year), and open the door to give Tom Hanks another Oscar the next year there's an outstanding black actor in a leading role. Unless, of course, Robert DeNiro or Sean Penn get really sick and the Academy has to hurry up and give them more awards before they die.

Washington received his Best Actor Oscar for his work in Malcolm X, which inconveniently came out ten years ago, in 1992, the year they gave Al Pacino the Best Actor Oscar for his work in The Godfather Part II, which came out in 1974. In 1974 the Best Actor Oscar went to Art Carney, because he likes puppies.

But the Academy is nothing if it's not just, at least on a 20-year scale, and the rest of the deserving 1974 field would get their kudos in time. Dustin Hoffman would go on to win his 1974 Lenny Oscar in 1979, while Jack Nicholson had to wait until 1983 to win his 1974 Oscar for Chinatown.

The developments in this year's awards have changed everything for black actors, and by that I mean Denzel and Morgan Freeman, who both now have a chance to be nominated again. Reaction on the street has been unanimous, with Americans from all walks of life joining together to say: "That's cool. But Training Day? I guess, whatever."

The reaction at the commune offices was much more passionate, as no one had counted on this being the Academy's year to pat itself on the back. As a result, the commune's annual Oscars office pool was won by Lil Duncan, who hadn't seen any of the nominated films and filled out her ballot with some help from an issue of People magazine. Ivan Nacutchacokov had the most to be upset about, as he had spent weeks developing a complex algorithm to determine the winners, but had left out the variable that among the front-runners, the blandest film always wins.

When Ron Howard was announced as the winner of the Best Director Oscar, Nacutchacokov laughed at first, then realized it wasn't a gag announcement and stormed off in a huff, requiring him to be tasered by security personnel. No one was entirely sure the tasering was completely necessary, but they weren't taking any chances since Ted Ted had thrown our original television set out the window in a rage during the ceremony's opening title sequence, and our TV set budget had been badly depleted during Australia's poor showing at the winter Olympics last month.

the commune news. Great. Just fucking great. Red Bagel is the commune's aider and abeditor, and wants everyone to know he's seen Showgirls more times than any man alive.

Irony Bites President Bush in the Ass

Mugabe stole Zimbabwe election, president says with straight face

March 18, 2002

Washington, D.C.

Junior Bacon

The president, still not sure he sees what's so funny.

ew were surprised when statements made by President Bush last week invited the bite of irony. The president, frequently less observant of irony in his statements than Alanis Morissette in hers, was attacking Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe for stealing the recent election in his country.

Mugabe's method of election fraud was with open threats to members of the opposing party, Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change party, and discouraging voters from turning out to cast their vote for the opposition. Violence and blatant electioneering were observed around the country, though no evidence of fixing votes themselves has been brought to light.

The situation echoed the 2000 U.S. presidential election so clearly the irony was apparently visible from the outer space, though President Bush completely missed the irony once again.

"Mugabe has clearly interfered with the will of the people," said President Bush, who failed to clearly win the popular vote in his own country in 2000. "I ask him to graciously stand aside and allow the election process to be carried out without his interference."

No other method of reaction other than verbal scorning is likely to come from the United States or other western superpowers. Any pressure placed on Zimbabwe by the U.S., in the form of sanctions or other political or economical pressures, would surely invite more intense irony.

"President Mugabe has created an uneven playing field for the opposition," said Bush, whose brother Jeb is the governor of Florida, the state whose electoral college cast the deciding votes in favor of Bush. "He ought to be ashamed of himself," said Bush, hip-deep in red-hot irony.

Mugabe has run his campaign on platform of turning over white-owned land to native black residents and anti-imperialism. Bush, in contrast, campaigned on the platform his dad had been president.

"Surely President Bush must understand that when an election grows heated a nominee must welcome natural advantages to his campaign," said Mugabe.

"Unh-uh, don't follow ya," said Bush upon hearing Mugabe's statement.

Since Bush's "election" in 2000, irony has been an ever-present character in the Bush White House, appearing more frequently with the president than Vice-President Dick Cheney.

the commune news wishes Tonya Harding best of luck in her next celebrity boxing match, and against dignity. Lil Duncan is a commune White House correspondent and can intimately describe the Lincoln bedroom.

April 1, 2002

The Room

º Last Column: New York
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"Uncle Trey had a big rambling old house that he lived in; bigger, many thought, than a confirmed bachelor like him would ever need. We liked it, though, because it gave us lots of opportunities to play whenever we would visit him. We had the run of the house, upstairs and downstairs, except for one room that Uncle Trey warned us to never, ever go in. It was a room in the basement, at the back of the house, underneath the service porch. Most of the time we stayed away from the basement anyway, but sometimes we'd go down there and sneak a peek at the door to the forbidden room. It was a heavy door that was always locked, and we wondered what could be on the other side of it.

In the rest of the house, Uncle Trey kept artifacts from his travels around the world, and that was usually enough to keep us busy. We'd put on turbans and sit on pillows around the giant hookah in the India Room, and look at the funny pictures in a book called Kama Sutra. Or we'd test how well the native shields would protect us from the sharp spears on the walls in the Congo Room.

One time our curiosity got the better of us, though. Uncle Trey had to drive Stephanie to the hospital after a game of "Torture the Marxist Rebel" got out of hand in the South America Room. (In our defense, I have to say that neither Goose nor I thought that the car battery the electrodes were hooked up to was live.) With just the two of us there, and the prospect of Uncle Trey and Stephanie being gone for some time, we decided to take a trip to the basement.

Goose wasn't good at very many things at all, but there was one thing he had learned, and that was how to pick a lock. In just a few short minutes, we had unlocked the series of combination locks and padlocks on that big door and swung it slowly open. Inside, it was dark, the walls all painted black, and it took us a little while to see what the room contained. There were all sorts of devices hanging from the walls and the ceiling; most of them were made of leather or metal or a combination of the two. It looked like whips and belts and pokers and such, and there was a metal stand in the corner that looked like a barbecue, with a glowing fire in it and six or seven pokers or branding irons or something sticking out of it. The last thing we saw before we shut the door again was the big table in the middle of the room, with the straps all over it and somebody we didn't recognize tied down there and looking back at us.

It was almost a year later that we saw a picture on a milk carton and realized that it looked a lot like the kid we had seen in Uncle Trey's room that time. It was kind of hard to tell, though, because the kid in the picture wasn't wearing a ball gag in his mouth."

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Milestones

1992: Lil Duncan's alternative band Fuck Off is signed to a major label, on the condition they replace Lil and change their name to The Cranberries.

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Rosie O'Donnell Show "So Gay"

BY roland mcshyster

4/1/2002

Welcome back, Americanos, I hope the Oscar season left you with a smile on your face and twinkle in your eye. Here in Entertainment Policeland it's back to business as usual, sorting through the wheat to find the entertainment chaff and keeping a sharp eye on Wynona Ryder all the while. I don't know about you, but the last thing I need is some hat-stealing Hollywood brat bringing the heat down on my own private Idaho. But you didn't come here to be reminded of the harsh realities of the real world, so down with the downers and up with the Ask Roland!

Q. Rolaid, I have to admit that I was disappointed to check your column after I heard of the death of Chuck Jones, only to find that you hadn't written any kind of retrospective honoring this true Hollywood legend. W...