First things is that I want to give my best wishes to Mudge as he takes a sabbatical from his excellent blog. He says he'll be back around Memorial Day and I'm looking forward to hearing what Christopher has to say.

As for me, I have to keep going and hopefully I'll grab a lot of his readers in the process.

I finally got a chance to watch the Oscars. It was decent, I'm real proud of Chris Rock, he survived something that was completely out of his element and managed to make Sean Penn look like the human downer that he can be.

My favorite part of the show was when Rock went to the Magic Johnson Theaters in South Central and interviewed some of the patrons about their movie experience as compared to the ones that the academy decided to honor. I liked this bit for two reasons, one is that it makes the average moviegoer part of this extravagant (and extremely silly) event and two is that it proves that we will pay 8 bucks to watch a lot of shit.

People love shitty movies. Take a look at the box office numbers for the last couple of years. I Robot isn't going to win an award but it'll make 10-15 times more money than Million Dollar Baby. It's kind of sad too because "MDB" is definitely going to be among the top sports-based movies of any era and even with a Best Picture award it doesn't stand a chance against Vin Diesel and "The Pacifier".

Now, I'm not angry about this. I'm part of this crowd who loves theatrical crap. I just wish something would give. Either our movie tastes suck or the academy's suck. If $500 million worth of tickets are sold for Independence Day, it should be up for SOME sort of award. I mean shoot, SOMEONE must've thought the film had something exceptional about it.

Every now and then the average man and the Academy are on the same page (Titanic, LotR III, etc.) but for the most part its a struggle between art and entertainment.

I could understand if it were like this is in all other awards but it isn't. In the Grammys the people I've heard of win the awards. Sure 50 Cent sold more records in 2004 than Ray Charles, but Ray went platinum. And the groups that were big in 2004 (Maroon 5, Black-Eyed Peas, etc.) are up for awards because they are selling the most shit, they are on the radio the most. It would seem to make sense.

It's probably why I like the MTV Movie Awards more, it's made for the average person who likes the average stupid movie. There are far many more of our types out there than. Be honest, look in your DVD collection, I bet there's a copy of Something About Mary in there...

But where's the copy of Shakespeare in Love (1998 Best Picture). Exactly as I thought, you decided to buy the Keanu Reeves box set instead.

The other thing I don't get is how these Oscar-worthy flicks get buzz...I heard about MDB around September or October when all the critics were saying it was a slam dunk for Best Picture...

But it wasn't showing in ANY theater across America. Not Magic Johnson, not AMC, not Sunrise. Is there some sort of underground theater with a Morse code entry that shows all of these Oscar worthy flicks? I need entrance.

But yeah, Chris Rock was solid and Jamie Foxx won so it was a good show.