BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

5. Matt Damon, Invictus – This guy’s career has made an interesting arc, starting with writer/heavy actor in Good Will Hunting, and sort of evolving into the new thinking-man’s Van Damme. That’s still less than an actual thinking man. An Afrikaans accent is hard, but let’s not give an award to someone for frosting his tips. Same Chances As: Eric Roberts in Runaway Train, 1985. Odds: 50/1

4. Woody Harrelson, The Messenger. The former barback at Cheers is actually one of the better actors that no one realizes is a good actor. The problem here is twofold: people think of Joan of Arc when they hear ‘The Messenger’ and no one saw that movie either. Same Chances As: Richard Farnsworth in Comes a Horseman, 1978. Odds: 45/1 Read More

Let me get right to the point:  Conservatives just don’t do well with comedy. Intrinsically, they are simply unfunny.  It’s been proven and stuff.  This is because… they suck the taint from the fringe of my balls I’m about to teabag them with.

I wasn’t looking for trouble.  Trouble came dunkng for me.

See, I’m addicted to this cyber-gadget I’ve written blogged about before.  Twitter.  Perhaps you’ve heard of this contraption.  I think it’s the offspring of an illegal iGay relationship between Jobs and Gates.  I dunno.

I dabble in politics.  Mostly, lately, I try to stay out of it (aside from the post I stuck here yesterday).  Today had to be different though.  Here’s the offending tweet:

@dmataconis: @markos Has any liberal been funny since The Smothers Brothers ?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Now, I may stink.  Let’s grant that out for you sheep dag logicians who will resort to arguments such as that later on down the yellow brick road made of cyberbits.

Take my lame intertubes-comedy powers away from me.  They were never there to begin with anyhow, right?  I suck.  We can assume this arguendo.  I couldn’t do standup if my Mom was on life-support and in need of one laugh in a room full of stoners.  Like, I really suck.  Happy?  Ok?  Granted.  Here we go…

The Smothers Brothers?  No liberal comedy since then?  Please.  Liberals fucking own comedy bitches.

If you don’t like it, don’t watch and read our shit.  Go watch Glenn Fucking Beck and his testicle retracting comedy tour.   Maybe George Will is doing the Def Comedy Jam at The Apollo.   Why do I feel the need to even write that which is self-evident?  Why must I use an allusion to The Constitution I know Tea-Baggers won’t get in the latter sentence?  Do they even understand the difference between the words, former and latter?  I know that confuses the little fuckers.

But I impress.

Let me get those not blessed with a life in Twitter Hell up to speed.  “@Markos” is Markos Moulitsas — the fellow who started The Daily Kos and the internet.  The other gentleman, umm… did not start the internet.  He’s a libertarian and free to read this if he’d like.  By doing so of course, he becomes a communist.  Like me.

Anyhosers, I couldn’t let that shit stand.  I mean come on.  Liberals own comedy.  Like it or not, it is what it is.  Markos got involved.  The interwebs got involved.  A cacophony of libertarian and conservative comedy collaborators coincided and cluttered my mention box which sadly, does not begin with the letter, “c.”

So, I challenged the bastards.  To a comedian draft.  Anything goes in cyberspace, and it doesn’t get more intellectually lame than this.  Has to be a record.  A comedy draft.  I am a fool.  To the windmills…

I  gave my opponents (and by proxy with Markos via a retweet) a head start.  They could pick the first ten comedians and I’d help them.  The aforementioned libertarian came up with Drew Carrey.  That was it.   Ok.  I’ll give him Drew Carrey.  He’s on The Price Is Right.  I’ll be damned before cursing the grounds a wayward Yodeler battles with a yellow ruler.

Tweets flew in.  No named comedians though.  I had to help.  I gave them Penn Jillette, a self-proclaimed libertarian whose name I might have misspelled.   One could argue he’s a magician, but, I’m happy to be a reasonable sort.  They can have friggin’ Penn.  He’s an Aristocrat and gets a pass.

Who else?  Dennis Miller.  The only punchline for him would involve some serious fisting.

Oh yeah.  Frazier.

That’s pretty much where conservatives and comedy stop.  To a death-mobile crashing halt.  Unless you count Palin from the other night — but, if you’re like me, massive organ failure is not comedy.  One could argue Leno is a conservative (don’t know), but then you’d have to further contend Leno attempts comedy.

From the top of my head: John Belushi, Lenny Bruce, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Pryor, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Sarah Silverman, Lisa Lampanelli, SNL, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, Cheech, Chong, David Letterman, Dave Chappelle, Dave Attel, Larry David (I could do a list of Daves), Rob Delaney, Gladstone, G. Xavier Robillard, Richard Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld, my jock strap from eighth grade, this shoe horn, Senator Al Franken, and my middle finger.

Get real.  I present a challenge.  Come up with ten comedians who are outspoken and conservative or whatever.  You can’t.   I’ll line up ten of my comedians.  We’ll get some blades, a couple of broken beer bottles, the tunes from West Side Story, and a bunch of coke.  It’ll be swell.

With that, I leave you in a wake of cyber-blood and guts and the souls of lost abortions and chicken sandwiches and all the internet has to offer.

Emoticons!

So people apparently love gambling. Let’s fill in some blanks.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

5. Anna Kendrick, Up In The Air. As stacked as the leading lady category is, the supporting section is like the premade sandwich section at Ralph’s around 1am. This chick had the worst fake cry in movies since Mike Meyer’s splashed water in his face in Waynes World 2. Same Chances As: Rosie Perez in Fearless, 1993. Odds: 40/1

4. Penelope Cruz, Nine. Penelope, who is a pretty good actress in spanish and the female Keanu Reeves in English, has the tough spot of being nominated for a movie everyone agreed kinda stunk. To give her the award is to excise everything from consideration save the performance. Since when do the Oscars do that? Same Chances As: Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal, 2006. Odds: 21/1.

3. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart. The victim of savage blowback. No matter how good she is, doubters will say that they could have put a table next to Jeff Bridges and it would have gotten nominated. Kinda like when evaluating Bird and Magic without thinking about their supporting casts. Or Manning vs Brady. Sports sports sports. Sports. Same Chances As: Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas, 1990. Odds: 9/1. Read More