Awards Show Season

Well everyone, it’s awards season again! And no one enjoys awards season as much as I do. And why might I enjoy awards season so much? Is it to look on in fascination to see what the stars are wearing when they arrive at the red carpet? Is it to see what kind of performance the awards show host will put on? Is it to see the looks and reactions of surprise that first time winners display? Is it to watch as those first time winners stumble through unwritten acceptance speeches? No, I’m afraid my reason is none of these, for I would almost never waste my time watching these events as they are almost never entertaining. I enjoy awards season (and awards shows in general) because of the misplaced importance I feel that people give to them.

Let’s be honest here, watching these programs is a waste of time. Those of you who watch them from red carpet arrival until the last speech is made, do you realize that you have watched the program for like four or more hours only to see like fifteen awards actually presented? Oh, and by the way, you can probably spend those four hours doing something productive, or watching something that is actually entertaining, and then look online ten minutes after the awards show is over and find out all of the winners. But in the extremely rare case that there is actually something that is entertaining and worth watching that occurs on one of these programs, like when Faith Hill threw her hissy fit at the CMA awards in 2006 when Carrie Underwood won the award for Female Vocalist of the Year, we now have things like youtube that allow us to watch these lovely moments over and over and over again. And I do suggest that you go to youtube and watch that moment over and over and over again. Watch it as many times as it makes you laugh. Seriously, do it. Now, I know that some of you may counter by saying that a moment like the immortal Faith Hill CMAs Hissy Fit would never have appeared on youtube if someone wasn’t watching. And I counter back by saying that I know that regrettably not everyone is going to follow my advice, and in some cases (like in this case of the Immortal Faith Hill CMAs Hissy Fit) it’s a good thing when not everyone follows my advice. (As an aside, in some circumstances Faith Hill would have had a legitimate point in being upset since no one who appears on American Idol – judges included – really has any singing talent, but this fact is negated by the fact that this event was the CMA awards and all country music is crap.)

As is often the case, I have digressed a bit from where I intended to go with this post. Though it is fun to attack people for wasting their time watching these silly shows, ultimately I wanted to provide a ranking of the uselessness of the individual shows. (And before you say anything, I’m well aware that there cannot truly be degrees of uselessness. Since anything that is useless by definition has no use, some other useless thing cannot be any more or less useless than the first. But I think that you know what I’m saying.) I will now that essentially the only one of these programs that I will consider watching each year is the Academy Awards (Oscars). What happens most years is that I consider watching, but end up only watching about five minutes tops because this awards show is still ultimately a waste of time. But I think that the Academy Awards program is perhaps the only one that I would hesitate to call useless. I would say that the Emmys are more useless than the Oscars and the Grammys are more useless than the Emmys. But these are the major awards shows and so they should be expected to be less useless. However, the Golden Globes are a joke. We know this because in many cases it is framed as a preview to the Oscars. Why should we take the Golden Globes seriously if the subject most talked about following the Golden Globes is how the winners are well positioned as front runners for the Oscars? The Golden Globes seem by their very nature to function as a preview of the Academy Awards. In other words, the Golden Globes are useless. (I mean the very fact that there are different categories for dramas and then musicals/comedies makes these awards ridiculous. I still have no idea how they define a musical.)

Of course the other awards programs (and awards themselves for that matter) get ever worse (e.g., MTV Movie Awards, CMA Awards, Daytime Emmy Awards), but there is a category of awards that easily trumps all others in sheer uselessness. And you guessed it; these are the “Choice” awards. These are the Kids’ Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards, and People’s Choice Awards. I list the awards in that order for a reason; I list them in order of increasing uselessness. The Kids’ Choice Awards can almost be forgiven their uselessness. They are created for the children, and the children cannot faulted for watching such nonsense. It is not their fault that such trash is created for the purposes of entertaining them. And to the extent that the children are allowed to vote for winners themselves, what does this even signify? What does a poll taking of a bunch of eight year olds really mean? Of course we now move on to the Teen Choice Awards. Yes, the Teen Choice Awards are a joke, but contrary to what some might believe, these awards do not become less of a joke than the Kids’ Choice Awards because of an older voting populace. These awards become more of a joke because why do I get the feeling that would the nominees in any particular category be those individuals vying against one another for some office in a high school student council election, the results would be exactly the same? The Teen Choice Awards is a popularity contest, no more. And finally we come to the People’s Choice Awards. There is nothing that I can say that can truly overestimate how useless these awards are. However, I’m going to try anyway. It’s almost as if several years ago someone decided that adults needed their very own student council like popularity contest. Some of the categories that are used in these awards are among the stupidest things imaginable. Let’s see they have had categories such as these: Favorite Movie Actor and World’s Favorite Movie Actor in the same year, Favorite On-Screen Match-Up, Favorite Leading Lady, Favorite Tour, and Nice ‘n Easy Fans Favorite Hair. I mean why not just have a category called Favorite Movie Pimp, or Favorite Movie Pimp/Ho Match-Up? The possibilities are endless, and I truly believe that as long as these awards exist there is at least 75% chance that those awards categories that I have named will actually be chosen. I’m pretty much done with this but here are a few more categories that I think the People’s Choice Awards should use: Least Crappy Performance by a Soap Opera Star in a Made for Television Movie, Best Movie Facial Hair, Best Use of a Fanny Pack in a Movie or Television Program, Best Use of Rob Schneider as a Movie Prop, the Faith Hill Award for Most Embarrassing Moment at an Awards Program. There are so many possibilities, and I’ll tell you what, why don’t you tell me your crappy People’s Choice Awards category suggestions.