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How they lost

I have discovered what I humbly consider to be the most perfect use of the gif wall medium possible: The reaction shots of Oscar losers. As they are broadcast, you simply cannot take them all in since they're spread out on the screen in tiny boxes, and last but seconds. They're just flickers of emotion. I think that placing them side by side on infinite loops works best to fully read the reactions of disappointment, bitchiness, feigned cheer and actual cheer. As much as losing an Oscar (or winning even) is kind of an emotional Rorschach for the nominated actors, reading their expressions is a Rorschach for the viewers. Except for the really bitchy ones. Those we can all agree on.

Below are so so many examples of fallen dreams. Each row is all of the (present) members of one year's given category (I'm only using actors and actresses here). On far right, I've included the reaction of the winners just for good measure. Have fun laughing at their pain!

For your awards-show info

It used to be that I'd do morning-after awards show posts saying, "In lieu of my normal write-up, I tweeted about whatever was on last night." Now I always do that. So, in lieu of nothing, here's my throw to my Twitter for my Golden Globes commentary. It features gif cameos and is about as valuable as any series of tweets about one thing, which is to say: not very. Whatever. I can't change who I am.

Taylor Swift is surprised

Above is a supercut collaboration between my friend and co-worker Kate Spencer and me. We were talking about Taylor Swift's shock at being applauded during last week's CMAs, she said, "Someone should do a supercut of her being surprised in public," and I said, "Curse you, because now that you've said that, I have to do it." What a fucking affliction. Anyway, you'll notice this is in the VH1 player -- Kate's idea goes on Kate's [work] blog, The Fab Life, and there are so many contraband clips up in here that there's a good chance it'd be yanked from YouTube, anyway.

The critique within this video should be obvious. I have a hard time swallowing Taylor Swift's perpetual state of shock, but what do I know? Perhaps she has a terrible short-term memory; perhaps every meaningless award you win and every standing ovation you receive feels like the first time. I haven't won any meaningless awards or received any standing ovations lately, so I'm no expert. What interests me the most is the way her quite possibly disingenuous modesty complements the quite possibly disingenuous bravado displayed in Tracie's recent reel of Kanye West's most ridiculous on-air moments. There is a reason they met on the stage of the 2009 VMAs that goes way beyond impulsiveness. The two of them are antitheses...at least outwardly.

A toast for the douchebags

If you take Kanye West's "Runaway" at face value, it's a song about the narrator's emotional cheating and flaws and how they are destroying a romantic relationship. But the context of "Runaway"'s world premiere suggested that this was no simple love song for us to behold. It came during the moment we were all supposedly waiting for, saved till the end of last night's MTV Video Music Awards and teased throughout the show. At long last, Kanye was returning to the VMAs after interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech (never mind that his would-be comeback took place just one show later, meaning he spent no time away in VMAs time). Adding to the necessity of his voice was that by the time he hit the stage, Swift already had commented on the controversy in a performance that attempted to paint her as a Christlike boon of wisdom: "You're still an innocent" was her forgiving, condescending message to Kanye, who is 33-years-old, not that innocent and at any rate, doesn't need a 20-year-old telling him about himself. He would reveal in his performance that he's plenty self-conscious as it is.

After all that, how could we read the admission of wrongdoing in "Runaway" as anything but a metaphor of his last, least enthusiastically received public act of wrongdoing? And so, when Kanye told the world, which he knew was tuned in, that we should collectively, "Run away from me baby," it was disingenuous. He didn't actually want us to do so, and he knew that we wouldn't, at any rate. Not when there was water-cooler juiciness to be had. Not when it was anchored to a gentle-but-firm beat tailored for the hip-hop heads and more delicate listeners, alike (it recalls the downtempo '90s just before Primitive Radio Gods showed moms just how nice breaks could be). Not with that that ear-worm melody, which Rob Sheffield smartly compared to Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" on Twitter. Not with that consciously arty, undeniably beautiful and entertainingly silly background of lights and fabrics and ballet dancers he performed in front of. He put the ball in our court, making "Runaway" as much about as as it is him.

Renouncing the hidden-under-the-security-blanket-of-Autotune aesthetic of Kanye's last album, 808s & Heartbreaks, he sang "Runaway" without adornment (until the insanely filtered final chorus). He was consciously vulnerable (or at least, he would have liked us to believe as much) as he suggested, "Let’s have a toast for the douchebags / Let’s have a toast for the assholes / Let’s have a toast for the scumbags / Every one of them that I know / Let’s have a toast for the jerk-offs / That’d never take work off..." Not that we need his suggestion to do so -- not with the cast of Jersey Shore around. It applies very much to Kanye, as well, as celebrating his persona before and since I'mmaletyoufinishgate '09 has often amounted to toasting a douchebag, as people have repeatedly forgiven his outbursts and tantrums immediately (we are Swiftlike!) and continue to chuckle at the indulgence of his I-can't-believe-it's-not-self-parody Twitter. It makes sense, too: as we become increasingly fascinated by ourselves as a culture, arrogance loses its stigma. Self-investment is just the way it is. It's why people think nothing of showing up in the pop culture sphere with no applicable or even apparent talent to offer or retweeting praise they've received or posting consciously gratuitous pictures of themselves or sharing their opinion in a public space. It's why we accept it these things in other people, if we can even bother to tear ourselves away from ourselves to do so.

We tore ourselves away for Kanye, only to discover that "Runaway" is not an apology. This is not the closure that it was supposed to be coming at the end of a show that was all about Kanye anyway thanks to Kanye making last year's show all about Kanye. Instead, it's a snapshot of the way things are. It's a handy guide to how the man's fame functions and what makes his persona so fascinating. It's self-awareness not as a means to improvement, but as an end. We should all be so lucky to have something so articulate to show for our introspection.

The VMAs were otherwise so boring this year that I did not feel like writing my usual recap of them. If you're interested in what I had to say in real time and enjoy reading things in reverse chronology, you can check out my Twitter.

Easy, Breezy, horrible

I think Chris Brown's tears at the 2010 BET Awards were sincere. I think that when you are an entitled brat who can't for the life of you figure out why no one wants to listen to the supremely shitty music of a pop star-beater ("It’s nothing else that I can do. I’m doing everything that I need to do," is how he put it), it must feel really good to receive the attention you were before you beat that pop star. I think this was a perfect storm of acceptance from his peers and the self-actualization message of "Man in the Mirror" that led to Chris Brown's onstage breakdown. (From where I sat, it was hilarious at first, shocking to watch unfold, and unsurprising in retrospect.) It may have been the most sincere thing he's done ever, but at least since beating Rihanna. It was also incredibly unprofessional. He had a job to do -- salute Michael Jackson -- and instead, he shifted the focus to himself. This is why you don't invite Chris Brown to perform a tribute. When he beat Rihanna/his career to oblivion, he showed that he has a hard time controlling his emotions. Well, look how much things haven't changed! He couldn't even sing a line of a song that he was assigned! The general tone toward him seems to be one of forgiveness and I wonder why. He only furthered his reputation as a volatile wreck. The very act of crying is what makes everything better? Absurd and ridiculous. Let's remind ourselves of this next time we have a murderer or rapist or BP exec whining in front of cameras, OK? Or don't. Whatever. Be as emotionally irresponsible as you want. It's apparently the thing to do now.

I'm sure you would like gifs of him crying, so...

MTV Movie Awards: Worst Thing I've Seen All Year

And here's the best of it:

 

(Apologies in advance for repeating some stuff I already said on Twitter Some things said in the heat of the moment demand more than 140 characters for later clarification.)

It's amazing how this year's MTV Movie Awards managed to be simultaneously of its time and out of touch. You would think that something could either be one or the other, but there it was, vacillating like a fan and blowing different flavors of shit everywhere. When the soothing, anonymous teaser voice announced prior to one commercial block that we would soon "see if Robert Pattinson’s new hairdo is enough to keep Kristen Stewart away from Taylor Lautner’s abs," I thought, "Yes. That is where we are as a culture." But as Twilight and blog-level writing paved the night, groan-worthy references to things too old to be relevant and too new to be retro-cool filled the cracks. Jokes were told about Pulp Fiction and the comedy in R. Kelly's music and "swagga." J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer were thanked for their contribution to cinema adapted from literature. Rain, winner of the Biggest Badass Star award for his now award-winning work in Ninja Assassin (bears redundancy, no?), asked the crowd, "Why so serious?" after bombing one of several of the night's jokes (the most stand-out dud was Jason Segel trying to make statutory rape funny with iCarly). Also repping '08 were multiple skits involving Tom Cruise reprising his Tropic Thunder role (?), including one that had Jennifer Lopez performing her five-year-old song "Get Right" for no fucking reason, not even an imminent greatest-hits release (!?!?!).

Even Aziz Ansari's opening skit, which contained relevant references to Precious and The Blind Side (relevant in that they were both released in the time since the last MTV Movie Awards) and a not-so-relevant but timely gag about Justin Bieber's hair, felt stale. You'll be shocked to hear that a gay angle taken by Russell Brand and Jonah Hill could not sell yet another Team Edward/Jacob joke. The red-carpet hour was devoted to The Jersey Shore. Even though it was annoying and featured Sway misreading "craving" as "crahvving" (or maybe that's how he says it?) and conceding that Obsessed is "a great movie," it was the night's best hour.

Do I even need to mention that Betty White was there? This wasn't an awards show as much as it was a night of remembrance for things that were popular to varying degrees at some point. But still, some people were committed to coming across as having fun!

 

I guess it's true, an actress' work is never done.

Waaah! Don't read my Oscars recap!

I'm having a temper tantrum and I don't want anyone reading me even though I'm putting this in a public space! Waaah!

 

Keep moving, keep moving. Nothing to see here, except for, oh, everything.

Grammy coverage...or something!

I'm in L.A. for work, which is great because the normal person in me loves visiting L.A. (however briefly), but the workaholic in me freaked out when he realized that I wouldn't be around to do my normal online awards-show kvetching the day after the Grammys. So here's me being resourceful: I called up my friend Mary Carey to record some video commentary while watching the show with me, and the result is the video above (the off-screen voice is of her husband, Mario Monge). In the rare event that I use video for what would normally be written, I tend to refer to such offerings as "meager." I think you'll find that with Mary Carey in the picture, this is, in fact, quite ample. (Thank you, thank you. I'll be making obvious jokes about the former-ish adult performer all night...)

Anyway, this was fun (for me at least!). I love Mary, and I love how far we've come. It seems like yesterday that I was paying her $20 to sit on my lap naked. I think I could probably get a discount at this point. Moving up in the world, I am!

(I don't really need to inform you that the language is NSFW, right?)

GGsFYI

Mariah and her glorious fun bags would like you to know that instead of a post on the Golden Globes, I Twittered it. Might be beside the point to go back and read it now, and it's certainly less colorful than my normal awards-show posts with screen shots and gifs and whatever, but I couldn't possibly bring myself to give that treatment to such shitty shit. Anyway, if you want my comments in 140-character, chronologically inverted format, check out my Twitter. Or don't! It's over anyway! In the words of Tracey Ullman, go home!

The American music whores

I've always known that the American Music Awards is the most masturbatory major awards show our fine country has to offer, but now I have the gif to prove it: