The 84th Annual Nip and Leg Show

Entertainment Tonight and other such news magazines were all over the red carpet bringing you the latest and greatest from the Academy Awards.The winners, the fashions, the styles, the legs and the nip slips. What all of these correspondents fail to focus on, however, is the losers. Wonder why your favorite movie lost? E! won't tell you. The Mental Mailbox will! Here is the rundown you've been waiting for.

Category: Best Picture

Winner: The Artist

Why Moneyball lost: The Natural and Field of Dreams didn't win either. Baseball + Oscar = NO! ESPN has an awards show for sports related hoopla. Try there.

Category: Best Actress

Winner: Meryl Streep as The Iron Lady in the Iron Lady

Why Rooney Mara lost: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was BUFUGLY! I mean, slap yo mama BUFUGLY! God don't like no BUFUGLY, and neither does the Academy!

Category: Best Actor

Winner: Jean Dujardin as the Artist in the Artist

Why Gary Oldman lost: Tinker Tailor bla bla bla is just too long a title. Presenters have a limited amount of time to be on stage and announce the victor. By the time "Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Tongue Twister" is voiced, the segment is over. It's not economical time use for a show that is already six hours long.

Why Demian Bichir lost: Nobody knew he was one of the nominees.

Category: Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Octavia Spencer as The Help in The Help

Why Janet McTeer lost: Hilary Swank already did the whole woman-man-Academy Award thing for Boys Don't Cry. Fret not, however - Charlotte Bronte didn't win any awards either for pretending to be a man as part of her aspiring novelist schtick.

Category: Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Christopher Plummer as The Gay in Beginners

Why Jonah Hill lost: Cher used to be laughed off screen as well when trying to be taken seriously as an actress. She did give those laughers the ultimate middle finger when she "struck" it big in Moonstruck. Someday, your time will come. Just not anytime soon.

Category: Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: A Separation (Iran) in Persian

Why The Artist Lost: There was no language, foreign or otherwise. Besides, it wasn't nominated in this category.

Category: Best Makeup

Winner: The Iron Lady

Why Albert Nobbs lost: It obviously takes far more effort to make a man look like Margaret Thatcher than it does to make Glenn Close look like a man. Frankly, I figured neither would be that much of a stretch.

Category: Best Costume Design

Winner: The Artist

Why Anonymous lost: If you're anonymous, nobody knows to vote for you.

Why Jane Eyre lost: The costumes are as boring as the novel.

In the interest of honest and fair reporting, I have only given the synopses of REAL categories. Everybody knows the other bullshit categories no one pays attention to are only good fun for Academy Award pools. I think it's high time I rented Silkwood...

You Might Suck at Life If...

Ever walk down the street and think to yourself, “WOW!!!! This idiot REALLY sucks at life.”? Or, better yet, say it out loud? At a very minimum, we encounter people with impoverished life skills at least 300,000 times a day. Idiocy is everywhere and cannot be avoided. It’s in the workplace, the morning commute, happy hour, sometimes even in our dreams. Doesn’t it suck when you cannot escape daily stupidity even when you’re sleeping? I think it’s about time we started pointing the finger back at those who can certainly stand to improve their lot on this planet.

Perhaps the most pervasive example of rampant moronity is on reality television. As we all know, reality TV is the most insipid and inane form of entertainment available. And I’m talking housewives, Kardashians and Dance Moms low. I always thought a housewife cooked, cleaned, maybe worked outside the home while still struggling to raise a family. I also always
thought fame was achieved through hard work and determination. Not these days. The spotlight is cast on you if you’re lucky enough to have a lucrative last name or you have some uncanny ability to toss around glitzy drama. Sorry people, I cannot be on board with the whole “rich white people with problems” motif. These “stars” are so out of touch with ACTUAL reality that they suck at life. Even suckier, it’s splayed out for a national audience to see. SUCKAGE!

EXTREME CHAMPOINSHIP SUCK ALERT!!! If you “star” in a reality series that does not go beyond five episodes, it’s obvious you have no place on television.

A small step above the aforementioned mirth is the reality competition shows. I, for one, actually really enjoy “Dancing With the Stars.” It’s interesting to see some old familiar names and faces. But we all know who infiltrates these programs – the C-list. If you’re on a show like this or “Celebrity Apprentice” and you’re fired in Week 1, you suck at life.

If you are a commentator on World’s Dumbest Criminals, you’ve achieved a new level of suck that not even Richard Hatch has achieved. Tonya Harding? Come on!!! You’re not even a comedian and you’re no funnier on this show. Just…SUCK!!!!

A brief list of people who also suck at life include cell phone driver talkers, slow walking (or completely stopped) sidewalk hoggers, entrance blocking assholes, and George W. Bush.

There is a special place in suck hell for stroller parents. You SSSSUUUUCCCCKKKK with a capital SSSSUUUUCCCCKKKK!!!! I’m not talking about the two who exist that are actually considerate of the world around them. I’m talking about the “world owes me a favor” type. You are not the Queen of Sheba just because you decide to strap your “special bundle” of screaming flesh into a sidewalk stealing tank. Entire sections of town should not be blocked off
when your baby needs a new designer diaper. Restaurant staff should not have to ask their customers to accommodate your jet liner baby carrier because you want to overtake a nine-person table with just you and your sorry sack of germ spewing spawn. Put your thing in one of those baby carrying knapsacks and treat it like the accessory that it is.

I think it’s now time for the Real Housewives…

Ahead and Behind of the Times

As the subject of many a limerick and bar bathroom
scrawling, I pride myself on being part of the social continuum. Obviously,
however, I’m a bit behind the times. Evidently, reading “For a mediocre time,
call Jay” on a wall (I mean ACTUAL wall, not Facebook wall) is old school.
These days, it’s more like “For a mediocre time, send a tweet to @JJayBooty.”
Also, to be “with it,” I need to link Twitter to Facebook to Klout to YouTube
to Google + to my VCR to my walkman to my Atari. I can barely link one keychain
to the next. This process may take a while.

If you’re an active Twitter user, where the character limit
is 140, you’ve probably stopped reading by now. This is already too long, yes? If
this were posted on Facebook, you may have read a few words, clicked “Like,”
and moved on with your day. Flattering as that definitely is, do read on…

I hearken from a day when we wrote phone numbers on napkins,
went online using rotary dial, and tablets came in Excedrin bottles. We’ve gone
from the “me” generation of the 80s to the “i” (intentionally lowercase so as
not to piss off Apple) generation of today. Same idea, different pronoun. I do
not own an iPad, but my iTampon serves me just as well.

In the golden days of yesteryear, whoever had the most toys
was the most popular. Nowadays, whoever has the most followers, likes and trendings
is the person to be. I avoided using the term “fans.” Seems passé. For example,
Justin Beiber (I don’t give a flying crap if I spelled that correctly) has 212
quabillion followers and a Klout score of a perfect 100. All of these Beaver
Hunters put him on top of the world, and it has to be due to YouTube seeing as
MTV hasn’t played a music video since “Vogue.” Much like when you see a twit of
#JETS and nothing else, you may be asking at this juncture, “WHAT’S THE #$%^ING
POINT?!?!?!” Achieving fame and popularity is far less of a process than it
used to be. The spotlight is but a mere few clicks away (smoking toddler,
anyone?) and you no longer have to work as hard as William Hung on American
Idol to achieve notoriety. Having a sex “tape” (“tape” in quotes because
really, who has “One Night in Paris” on VHS?) can’t hurt either.

Sex “tapes” can actually be beneficial, especially if you
are some form of female benefactress. The days of “men are studs, women are
sluts” are gone, and thankfully so. Today, if a man uses sex to get ahead, he
is a womanizer, polygamist, misogynist, asshole, etc., but if a woman does the
very same, not only is the “tape” released but celebrated and rewarded with a
reality series.

I hope you have enjoyed this “then to now” retrospective. Now
if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to turn off my phone, go for a walk, and come
back and watch The Golden Girls. On beta.