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Monday, February 26, 2007

Things we forget to remember

Ladies and gentlemen of the United States of America,

We are a nation of short attention spans. We all know this and accept it. Personally, I'm kind of proud of it. God bless Amer.

But short attention spans don't excuse bad memory. And there are two things that Americans forget every single year:

  1. The ads in the Super Bowl, while highly anticipated, are ALWAYS "disappointing". Every single year.
  2. The Oscar ceremony—no matter who is hosting, no matter what movies are nominated and no matter what unthinkable disaster has happened in the year preceding—is always boring. Yes, yes...there are interesting subplots and big upsets and interesting speeches. But these are a tiny majority of the time, and everything in between is so achingly dull that you can only watch it in the presence of your smart-ass friends who could make anything entertaining.
I am in no way saying that we should not watch either of these. I'll watch both of them every year until the day I die (or have a damn good excuse like "same night as the Belle & Sebastian show" or "was in the hospital). But just remember when these things come around: the Super Bowl commercials are never as entertaining as you thought they'd be, and the Oscars are a tedious bore-fest occasionally interrupted by something interesting. But only occasionally.

10 comments:

doug said...

All's I know, in the case of the Oscars, this is what the DVR or TiVo was made for. This is where that technology shines. Same with American Idol - you can watch that show in about 15 minutes (well, assuming you watch it at all).

Reid said...

Oh, yeah. American Idol is great on the DVR, but pretty tough to watch as it's going on.

But...recording the Oscars is a bit like recording a sports event. For me, it takes an enormous amount of fun out of it knowing that the winners are already decided and widely known as I'm watching it. I just can't bring myself to care. I know that others are different (like when Jerry Seinfeld picks up the phone and says, "If you know what happened in the Mets game don't tell me because I taped it, Hello?")

But if you can stand it, you're absolutely right: it's the way to watch it.

doug said...

oh yeah, I know what you're saying - I have a real hard time watching a dvr'd sports event - well, except the tour de france (which I'll have a hard time watching again - for many other reasons), but I started watching the Oscars about an hour or so in - so, I didn't feel too not current...just late. Then, it ran sooo long that fake time caught up with real time, and I had to watch the commercials and boringness with all the other poor saps out there. I probably wouldn't have watched it on Monday night or later. Also, have you noticed that the Oscars have become a big commercial night like the Super Bowl? It's not as big, but it seemed like there were some pretty big new ones - like that iPhone one. Also, since it does run so long and late on a Sunday night, having / going to an Oscar party is much more difficult than a Super Bowl party...need to move to the west coast I guess. Just for the Oscars.

Hans said...

Man, what a drag to have fake time catch up with real time. Dug, you should get yourself a watch with a minute hand, a millennium hand, and an eon hand, because when they meet it's a happy land.

I usually don't get to see the Oscars for one reason or another, and I'm usually disappointed until I hear how boring it was. So this year, even though I had the night off and a cable television set in my house, I made a conscious decision not to watch. I woke up yesterday and read the list of winners in the paper (well, the wave paper), and didn't feel like I'd missed out on anything at all. So that's going to be my new tradition. I'm pretty pleased with it so far.

doug said...

Ellen was good - I really like her comedy though, but yeah, you really didn't miss much. I also figure that if something was really good enough, it would circulate around on youtube - kind of how SNL is now - no need to watch (for MANY reasons), but if the occasional good skit gets through, you'll end up seeing it as some point.

xtianDC said...

SNL this past weekend was painfully unfunny. But I suffered through it to see the Arcade Fire, who were fantastic. Of course as my eyelids started getting really heavy and I was struggling to stay awake, it occurred to me: duh, I can let dvr handle the rest of this and get on to some zzz's...

Speaking of DVR, I'm recording today's FA Cup rematch b/t Man U and Reading. So I don't want any of you jackasses ruining it for me by blurting out the score. Capeche?!

prs said...

ManU - 77
Reading - Stove

HAha. Ruined the game for you!

Reid said...

Is Ned's Atomic Dustbin playing Reading? If so, I like their chances.

xtianDC said...

London 0 Hull 4

kris said...

Wait, and what was interesting about the Oscars this year? Was Cher even there?