Golden Globes and Tater Tots

Last night was of course the amazing gala put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press. The big winners were obvioulsy the folks at Angels in America, who took best mini-series and all four acting awards possible. I have seen very little of the show, but I read the play back in my Macalester days and must concede that it is pretty fucking impressive. Its an interesting trend I think, now that all the big-shot fucking film actors want to do Broadway all the time, to take an amazing play, cast some incredible actors to do it, and then film it as like an 8 hour long mini-series. I have to watch the whole thing now obviously, but I was impressed.

I was also impressed by Mary Louise Parker (possibly more famous for her role as Amy on TV's The West Wing (which unfortunately went unrecognized last night, Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, and the show as a whole failing to win their categories) ) who won for best supporting and was wearing an incredibly gorgeous dress after having had a baby apparently 2 and a half weeks ago. She then proceeded to make the funniest joke of the evening when she said--"Janel Maloney (The West Wing's Donna Moss, assistant to Josh Lyman) said she would give me a thousand dollars if I came up here and thanked my 2 and a half week old son for making my boobs look so good in this dress." It was perfectly done I must admit.

I could go on and on further about the awards, Mystic River got the male acting props, Charlize Theron, according to most critics, cinched her win at Oscar's casa with the Best Acting by a female, and Peter Jackson finally got his personal and general props for ROTK, which I still have yet to see. I am of the opinion that the folks at the Academy are going to do the same thing and hit the last film up with collective props for the trilogy, which seems fairly legitimate for this situation.

The evening's big surprise was the BBC's hit The Office, eligible for the Golden Globes apparently only because it is being shown on BBC America. Someone else will obviously have to pick it up now that it has won both best Comedy program and best actor in a comedy. The dude who seems to be the lead actor and sort of head honcho for the whole program is admittedly hilarious. Now all I have to do is figure out when the fuck that show is on my fancy new televisual apparatus and I can DVR it. I continue to think DVR fits perfectly into the old PBR theme song, but Katie doesn't yet get it when I say "DVR me ASAP."

On an entirely different note I just finished my second fiction book of the semester, a 534 behoemeth (pronounced bo-hu-we-muth, in Steven Wright's classic Resevoir Dogs vocabularial brilliance) by Robert Coover called The Public Burning. Its basically a psuedo-historical novel about the Rosenbergs and Nixon, who was VP at the time. It has some very interesting elements and ideas, Uncle Sam for instance is a character who both plays golf with Nixon and battles the Phantom, the communist incarnation of himself. As it builds to the end it gets crazier and slightly more insane, both in style and subject. It never reaches the level of the first book we read this semester, which starts off at the level of Andy Kemp's unconscious and goes from there, if you can even imagine that. I dug this book, regardless of the fact that I attempted to read simply too much of it too quickly. Beyond that it was hilarious, since it is often narrated by Nixon as Vice-President and his commentary on the ludacris ("i've got hoes...in different area codes")-ness of the situation around him. Since the whole Rosenberg situation in general and the book in specific deal primarily with the fucked up situation of rabid-anti-communism in the fifties it has more than slight relevance for today's terrorist shiznit.

The other interesting thing, which maybe I should have known but just didn't, was that it appeared to bear some strong resemblance to the South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut film. Obviously, I know, the Rosenbergs were part of the inspiration for the whole public execution rabid violent shit anyway, but the novel has a number of themes and scenes which are explicitly put into the film that to the best of my knowledge were created by Coover and not inherent to the event itself. The book isn't as funny as "La Resistance" but I vote aff on the inclusion of this novel in the class.

Alright, its time for awesome television night part 1, as I call Mondays. We get to watch My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, followed by Average Joe 2, and then, taking advantage of both our DVR (...me ASAP) and the fact that we live close enough to Toronto to receive Canadian Television, we get to watch The O.C. two days early.

Peace,

MB-K