28th: If anyone come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up, though he be your inferior; and when you present seats, let it be to everyone according to his degree. Yesterday's Entries 2000: My City by the Bay CURRENTLY READING Trace EGO STUFF
I'm a proud
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MEDIA MADNESS 21 September 2004 Two of my favorite programs in the television year are the Oscars and the Emmys. Call me shallow, but I just love that stuff. It’s my "SuperBowl." It’s too bad they’ve started cutting people off in their acceptance speeches now and that they use the 5 second delay to cut off "unacceptable" statements, and that people are cautioned against making political statements (though I thought Meryl Streep very cleverly accentuated the need that we all have for being told the truth. Subtle, but not so subtle.) It was always fun in the old days when technicians nobody heard about or cared about would literally take their 15 minutes of fame and thank everybody they’ve ever met in their lives. Elaine Stritch kind of harkened back to those days, and it was fun.
I don’t know if anybody has seen her At Liberty, but if you haven’t DO. It’s an incredible piece of theatre and there was never a doubt in my mind that she would take home an award for the performance. It’s kind of like going on stage, opening all your arteries, and bleeding for 2 hours--and doing it in such a way that you enjoy it--and so does she. It was also fun seeing the two "real people" brought on stage to announce nominees. They were genuinely shocked to have their blindfolds and earphones removed and discover they were in front of 6000 TV people.
I miss the days of Bjork, and the days of Cher. The days when people would show up wearing all sorts of completely outlandish costumes that we all would be talking about for days afterwards. Women now seem to be much more subdued, much more glamorous, and, since the infamous "red carpet" has taken on such importance, it becomes an ad for various couturiers and jewelers. However, the new in style, if this show is to be believed, is that boob shot--whether it was the front cut-outs displaying a lot (e.g. Mary-Louise Parker, accepting her Emmy for Angels in America), or the the top that looked like a bikini, with boobs sticking out the sides at the back. Or Sharon Stone's dress which left little to the imagination. Obviously the brassiere industry is in serious trouble.
Men usually look pretty good, except for Bill Shatner, who looked like he'd just come back from a quick trip to the grocery store, with his suit, shirt open at the neck, and no tie
I was pleased to see The Sopranos, my guilty pleasure--how can I like a show that focuses so closely on a bunch of misogynist killers?--finally got its due, and took home the award for best Drama Series. I happened to stumble across a rerun of the multi-nominated Angels in America on HBO this week and was very glad to have the opportunity to watch it. I’d say watch it again, because I eagerly tuned in when it was first aired. Ellen and Shelly joined us for the broadcast, but I wasn’t able to stay awake. Not because it wasn’t riveting, but because it was just on too late and I was too sleepy. So I had seen bits and pieces of it, but not the whole thing. But the rebroadcast was on in the afternoon and I could handle that, so I was glued to it for two days. It’s very easy to see why it won all the awards. This time around I knew that Meryl Streep played the rabbi at the start of the movie, and I still couldn’t find her behind that makeup. Marvelous acting job. And Al Pacino was just terrific as Roy Cohn, as was Jeffrey Wright, as Belize, Cohn’s nurse, who won a Tony for this role on Broadway. It was lovely to see Tony Kushner give his heartfelt thank you speech after his award for best screenplay, thanking his husband and expressing his hope that someday they could be legally married and "make an honest homosexual out of me." It was ironic that after this lovely evening of accolades for a show which Streep described by saying, "The bravest thing in the world is that writer who sits alone in a room and works out his grief, his rage, his imagination and his deep desire to make people laugh. And he makes a work of art that then transforms the world with the truth, because that's all we want, you know. It's all we need.'' that I would read a report about Jimmy Swaggert this morning. You remember Swaggert. He was the televangelist caught in flagrante delicto with several hookers in New Orleans, right? And then after a tearful apology to his congregation was discovered again at the same tricks a few years later, remember? Well, Swaggert, in a recent speech aired on a Canadian radio broadcast said,"I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died." His congregation cheered. The broadcast prompted irate calls to the Canadian radio station, for which I salute the wonderful Canadians (hi, Marn!). The radio station issued an apology. (For the skeptics, the media link is here, but I couldn't get the media to connect. The statement comes about 36:30 minutes into the program) Isn't that just swell. This man of God is ready to kill a guy if he thinks he's looking at him in the "wrong" way. I'm sure God is so proud to have this representative speaking for him. And probably totin' an AK-47, which Bush has now declared he can buy again. At the same time that Swaggert was swaggering around about the sanctity of marriage being preserved, Brittney Spears was being married for the second time this year. I wonder which of those traditional marriages the philandering Swaggert and others of his ilk are fighting to protect. In the midst of that, two men who have been together in a loving relationship for decades can't be legally married and the government of all the people...all the people... is trying to make certain that they will never, ever have equal rights in this land of the free. Is it any wonder that with all the ugliness of reality, I look forward so much to the big awards shows each year? Website of the Day This is a news report from Reuters, about how some people are trying to use legal trickery to avoid taking responsibility for criminal activity. Check your
state and see how your children fare in our president's promise of No Child Left
Behind. |
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Created 9/15/04
