Awards, lists and laziness

Inspiration: The long weekend

Created: Tue 28 Jan 2003 19:34

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Well, I'm back at work after a lazy long weekend in the heat. On Saturday, jud and I went 'round to my folks' place and had lunch in their air-conditioned house with them and my paternal grandparents. Dad's garden has improvements each and every time I visit, though this time I could barely stand to be out there because it was so hot.

On Saturday eve, I lay on the couch for a few hours watching the 2002 Golden Globes, and playing my new gamecube obsession, Zoocube (a puzzle game involving animals - genius) during the ads and in the boring bits (like the whole Gene Hackman DeMille award - yawn). For most Americans, the 2002 Golden Globes are probably a faint memory, but us Aussies had to wait nearly a week for them to be broadcast on TV. And the best part about it is that when we finally get to watch them, we've never even heard of half the nominees before - like the TV shows The Shield, Curb your Enthusiasm and Monk. The only place I'd ever heard of any of these was last year's Golden Globe nomination list.

The Globes aren't really about who wins or loses. They're more about what people wear, the looks on the faces of the losers, and how much people embarass themselves when they present or accept an award. The night started off well in this regard, as Meryl Streep spent the first 15 seconds or so of her acceptance time for best "Actress In A Supporting Role" (over-abundance of capitals courtesy of the Globes, not me) adjusting her breasts and bra - she even stopped to take a good look down there, just to make sure they were both in the correct position. You'd think that after being in the public eye so long, she would have realised that if her boobs weren't perky enough before she jumped up on stage, then it's too late - you've just gotta live with them being the way they are. It was a truly awful sight.

Other notables from the night:

• The guest presenters: were the gift bags they offered utter crap, because they seemed to have an awfully high percentage of D-grade celebrities presenting. I mean, Tim Allen?
• Stuff-up of the night where the person attempted to turn the mistake into a joke: Brendan Fraser telling the crowd to "please salute me" instead of telling them to salute some woman from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
• Sharon Stone: the dress was one thing, but why was she yelling out the nominations? Did she forget that there was a microphone provided in order for her to be heard? And doesn't she realise that it's the height of rudeness to interrupt an acceptance speech? She interrupted three times - I'm surprised Richard Gere didn't punch her in the nose!
• Macaulay's younger brother Kieran Culkin being nominated for an award: who would have thought that a Culkin could climb to these sorts of heights?
• The cutaway shots: hilarious! My favourite was of Sigourney Weaver, who could be seen saying "was that for About Schmidt?" to the person next to her towards the end of a speech. Pay attention Ms Weaver!
• The clothes: Note to Lara Flynn Boyle: Björk can get away with it, you can't.

On Sunday, we donned our best painting clothes and headed over to Andrew's new place to help him cover the walls of his new place in splendid colour. As we rolled, edged, mixed, poured and splattered, we listened to the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown. A word: if you hadn't previously figured out how easy it is to rig such a "contest", this year all you needed to do was listen to who made it into the number 26 spot. Salmon Hater's song 6.66 (i.e. one hundredth of the number of the beast) seems to have made it onto the list purely because Adam and Wil told people to vote for it. From here, it's easy to figure out that anyone who can gather a vaguely decent number of people together (or who is willing to spend enough time doing it themselves) can vote enough times to get whichever song they so choose onto the list.

Assertions about the meaninglessness of this list aside; what a dull list it was. I don't think I ever expected anything else, but when the list contains five songs each by Queens of the Stone Age and Silverchair, and four each by The Foo Fighters, Grinspoon and The Vines - that's damn near a quarter of the list taken up by only 5 bands. Are these 5 bands really where music's at for 2002? Is the lowest ranking QOTSA song ("You think I ain't worth a dollar" if you're wondering) really still that much better than some of the other music released in 2002 by bands that didn't make the list at all?

Though, looking at other years, I guess it could have been a lot, lot worse:

Triple J Hottest 100 winners by year

• 1989: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
• 1990: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
• 1991: Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
• 1992: Jesus Jones - Right Here Right Now
• 1993: Denis Leary - Asshole
• 1994: Cranberries - Zombie
• 1995: Oasis - Wonderwall
• 1996: Spiderbait - Buy Me A Pony
• 1997: The Whitlams - No Aphrodisiac
• 1998: The Offspring - Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)
• 1999: Powderfinger - These Days
• 2000: Powderfinger - My Happiness
• 2001: Alex Lloyd - Amazing
• 2002: Queens Of The Stone Age - No One Knows

And finally, Monday. An incredibly lazy day spent on the couch pretending I was at the Big Day Out by watching Channel V's coverage for many hours. I tell you, I could almost feel the sweaty bodies rubbing past me in the mosh pit.

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