BEHIND THE LAUGHTER. The Oscars were as cumbersome as usual but, bouyed by the unstoppable force of my office-pool picks (Stewart's crack about film editing was much appreciated), I didn't actually start screaming until the third song from Enchanted. It was the black guy suddenly representing Caribbean flava that did it. (I guess Mencken and Schwartz musta gone to Sandals last year.) Now, if they had also brought out a hip Latina and a kickline of differently-abled princes and princesses, I could have rolled with that, but as it was I had to scream and scream again, scream like Blacula, scream for my life like the Tingler was in the house. And it felt damn good.

Thank God we can set aside the usual bullshit for a night of Hollywood bullshit! Well, not all of us can -- like a troll sticking a headshot of Jessica Alba to the face of his love-doll, rightwing bloggers have to superimpose liberal smackdown scenarios ("And Day-Lewis wins! Clooney’s feeling the snub." Wait, what?) onto any event before they can relax and enjoy. But at least, in their emotional crippled way, they're having fun. And whatever pleasure it gives them to write stuff like "Decent people wouldn’t have even nominated these depraved films," I reap at least double that. So hooray for Hollywood! And next year, let's give the honorary award to Kitten Natividad.