The Envelope Please

Illustration by Sean McCabe
















The People’s Choice Awards are tomorrow night. The Golden Globe and SAG nominations are in. The Hollywood awards season has officially begun. Let the schadenfreude commence.

There’s really nothing more entertaining than watching actors who work a hundred times more than you lose in front of millions of people. And then pretend they’re not upset.

Sidebar: Except for the Tony Awards because A. Who cares and B. One day they’ll move out here and try and steal jobs from those of us who’ve been slogging it out in the trenches with the 22 year-olds for ten years. Don’t think you can parade your forty-seven octave range and Shakespearean talent around and come swanning into some dumb sitcom just like that. You can’t Kristin Chenoweth, you just can’t.

When the camera is on an Oscar nominee and the award goes to the other guy, the nominee puts on the I’m Okay With That face, like he had already pre-paid his ticket for the Loser Train to Loserville. He cheerfully talks to the press as he enters his limo. (Oh my God, are his eyes watering?) He goes to the Vanity Fair party and congratulates the winners. (Is that a shredded Kleenex in his hand?) He’ll go to all the parties; he’ll drink all the Cristal and then he’ll go home, call his mother and burst into tears.

And in keeping with this sentiment, is there anything more satisfying than watching a beauty pageant contestant bite the dust? When it’s down to the final two, one of those girls knows that coming in second is just not going to cut it back in her hometown of Gee Whiz, Georgia. No one at the drycleaners is going to say, “Oh great, here comes the first runner-up!” Instead they’re saying, “Uh-oh, here comes the first runner-up, hide.” The handlers who magically hustle those runners-up out of camera range are probably consultants to Osama bin Laden.

I like to watch how losers react because I’m a sore loser. I’m the asshole that tips the board over and yells “You people SUCK!” Remember how Monica always had to win on Friends? Hi, I’m Monica. Activities I can’t participate in because my friends won’t do them with me anymore: running, horseback riding, skiing, tennis, charades or cards. They’ve also banned me from any game that involves a board because I’ve figured out how to cheat at every one of them except chess. And that’s only because it requires the ability to see into the future. And if I had that skill I would own the stock market and buy new friends.

My lowest point came when a neighbor’s six-year old asked me to play Chutes and Ladders with her and I cheated and won. She started to cry because she had never lost before. She threatened to get her mother and I said, “Go ahead, I’ll kick her ass too.”

“Hi, my name is Suzy and I have to win at everything.”
“Hi Suzy!”

And when there’s no variable for cheating, I’m even worse. Back in the late 80’s I was entered into a Most Beautiful Legs of New York contest by a delusional/high/retarded/blind/yougetthepicture boyfriend, and I lost to a tower of giraffe supermodels, and yes, ‘tower’ is what a group of giraffes is called. In my defense I don’t think I should have worn those panty hose that stopped at a line across the tops of my thighs. As I was being escorted out yelling obscenities and kicking the security guards I still managed to threaten a lawsuit.

After that fiasco, I appeared on Star Search. They rated performers with a 4 star system and the more stars you got, the better you did. Only they broke it down into fractions, like I paid attention to that day in school. So they announced that I had 3 and one quarter stars and the other guy had 3 and three quarters stars and when the camera is on my face, you can see the beginning of a dark cloud forming. I wondered if Ed McMahon could take a punch. Someone from the sidelines hissed at me to get off stage and probably not a minute too soon. Needless to say, I haven’t competed in anything since.

And while we’re on the topic of winning, can you please show me the person who really believes that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game? World Cup 2006, France versus Italy in the final and Zinedine Zidane of France head-butts Marco Materazzi of Italy. Zidane is tossed from the game and voted Most Valuable Player of the World Cup by journalists. Somewhere Mike Tyson is crying into a pair of his gym shorts.

End of chat.