Teh Gay Super Bowl

Had it on in the background after Big Love and Conchords, but still can't bring myself to care enough to pay attention. Unless Jessica Biel is giving out tech awards, or something cool like that, but after about thirty seconds of grinding my loins against the teevee screen my back gave out. And I went five for six in the main categories on my Hollywood Stock Exchange derivatives, with Penn fucking up my perfect pick-six over Rourke.

Haven't gotten around to seeing either of Penn or Rourke's movies yet, but both are solid actors with what appear to be great performances in very good movies. Which makes it a choice between people; i.e., a coin flip between insufferable and punch-drunk. I will say that I caught Pope of Greenwich Village a couple weeks ago and still think it's underrated, some of Rourke's (and Eric Roberts') best work, and HBO showed Dead Man Walking last night and I still think it's overrated, but with a very good performance from Penn.

More entertaining than the Oscar telecast itself is the usual commentary from the kulturkampfers, picking through the mess for peanuts and corn, crowing that at least they didn't step in it. (Although the visual of Harry Smith weeping is pretty funny. Fuckin' grow a pair, boyo. You're allowed to cry at the end of Old Yeller, and maybe The Man Who Would Be King.)

Good times. I'm surprised they didn't just watch Forrest Gump and CSI:NY reruns and be done with it. I mean, I like Gary Sinise and what work I've seen from him here and there, without really knowing or caring about his politics or whether I can have a beer with him or not. He does yeoman's work in one of too many indistinguishable procedural shows, good on him. But these wistful Sinise/Jindal mancrushes of theirs make Harry Smith look like Robert Mitchum.

If they're really serious about "changing the culture", they need to grow up and realize that it's never gonna happen in LA or NY, two towns that are unabashedly dedicated to instant gratification. They've got job security, however low-paying, as moralizing scolds; the people they are lecturing neither know nor care about their wretched existence.

But if their shining vision is to remake endless variations on The Ten Commandments or some such, why not just set up shop in Branson and get on with it? Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. I have a feeling they know better, but in over-emphasizing the decadence of Big Bad Hollyweird and its mezzofanuc denizens, they neglect the set of debauched subcultures it caters to. This is the only area of commerce where these people think it's a bad thing to give people what they want, and plenty of it.