Laugh, and sometimes you laugh alone...

So did anyone watch the Academy Awards last night? I didn’t watch… I usually find those awards shows a bit boring and tedious (does it REALLY take that long to hand out a couple dozen awards??). Not to mention self-indulgent. I’m surprised you can get so many celebrities and their giant, inflated egos into one single theater. I did flip over to the channel for a few seconds right around the time Helen Mirren won her best actress award, and happened to see the camera cut to a shot of Clive Owen looking quite handsome, and I thought, “well that’s it – the highpoint of the night… not gonna get much better than that…” so I switched to a different channel. (Clive, I thought your “Children of Men” was pretty horrible – and don’t even get me started about “Derailed” – but at least you look good when you’re making bad movies…)

But I did, of course, notice that Martin Scorsese was at long last honored for best director. When I look at the list of movies Scorsese has directed – Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Color of Money, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and now The Departed – I realize one thing: I have never seen a single Martin Scorsese movie. Not one. I can only assume this is because I was never aware of his talent as a director. Oh, but NOW – now that he’s won an Oscar – I’m sure I’ll be more apt to give him a chance now and then.

Instead of the Oscars, I was watching the Simpsons – they ran the Christmas and Halloween episodes from last year, which I somehow managed to miss the first time around. Rick always seems to think I’m weird if I watch a show like the Simpsons with him, because apparently I laugh at things that are only mildly funny. Or at least Rick thinks they’re only mildly funny. Like on the Halloween episode last night, there was a scene where Bart tells Milhouse he wants to complain about his Krusty the Clown alarm clock because, “it squirts acid in your face when the alarm goes off – look.” And then he hits a button to demonstrate, which squirts Milhouse with the acid. At which point Milhouse goes, “Argh! You already showed me before!” I mean, c’mon – how funny is that? You already showed me before… that’s hilarious… am I the only one who thinks so? Eric? You think that’s funny, right?

Rick and my dad were out this weekend talking to someone about the houses being built in another part of our neighborhood, and when Rick got home, he was like, “oh, we talked about you a lot… yeah, we told the guy this and this and this about you...” Apparently, I’m “quirky” and that translates into good conversation material. “Lisa likes to turn the temperature down to 45 when she sleeps… Lisa won’t eat seeds… Lisa has an irrational fear of pool drains… Lisa laughs at stupid things on the Simpsons…”

But hey, it’s not such a bad thing to be “quirky,” right? Quirky isn’t so bad… it’s when you cross the line from “quirky” to “bizarre” that things take a turn for the worse. Like Britney Spears shaving her head and checking herself in and out of rehab fifteen times. That’s really bizarre. But me thinking that the Wizard of Oz is the scariest movie imaginable? Well, that’s just quirky. That guy on the travel channel who’ll eat anything in the world, even if it’s still alive? Kinda bizarre, if you ask me. But me refusing to eat fish because fish tastes like dead fish? Quirky. How about that nutty astronaut who drove across the country to kidnap her romantic rival? Bizarre. Me sleeping in a tent outside Clive Owen’s house while I write my daily “I love you, please marry me” letter to Derek Jeter? Well, that’s… uh… okay, you’ve got me there…

You already showed me before! So funny… :)